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KDE GUI Software Linux

Seven Years of KDE Celebrated 326

Posted by simoniker from the a-hearty-kongratulations dept.
Ashcrow writes "Almost exactly 7 years ago, Matthias Ettrich announced the start of a new desktop environment, originally called Kool Desktop Environment. Check out LinuxFrench's article (English translation) and the news at Dot KDE. Thanks to the KDE Team for a great 7 years!"
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Seven Years of KDE Celebrated More

Seven Years of KDE Celebrated

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  • Congratulations to the KDE team. Choice is the spice of life, and they've helped provide it!

    -Erwos

  • at least it wasn't (Score:4, Funny)

    by joeldg ( 518249 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @01:53PM (#7262311) Homepage
    at least it wasn't "kewl d3skt0p env."

    though sometimes when seeing the latest junk for karumba I start to wonder..

  • I was always told that the 'K' in KDE didn't mean anything. It was just picked because it came before L in Linux. Meh... anyway congrats to the KDE team for bringing me a good working desktop environment all these years. If it wasn't for KDE, I wouldn't have switch to linux. Cheers!

  • KDE or Gnome (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mgarriss ( 615232 )
    I recently built a new box and got to the point where I had to go with either KDE or Gnome (not both, time was an issue). I choose KDE because it seemed that the project has more momentum. Am I way off here? I'd love to hear slashdoters sound off on this one.
    • This thread is _not_ the place for it... go and "Ask Slashdot"...
      • Why not? It is significantly more likely (s)he'll get answered here than getting an ask slashdot posted. You'd probably be one of those assholes that says "That's what google is for." anyway.

    • Re:KDE or Gnome (Score:4, Interesting)

      by LX.onesizebigger ( 323649 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @02:11PM (#7262486) Homepage

      You're not way off. You're not spot-on either. Fact is, you make your own choices, and that's a good thing. Personally, I prefer KDE, but I probably know as many, if not more, people who use the Gnome. (This could be because most geeks I know, I know through Uni, which insists on the Gnome, though switching to KDE is a matter of issuing a single command.

      My reasons for KDE are first and foremost its configurability. I can set shortcut keys in any native KDE application and for the system as a whole to do what I want it to do. I find that the integration is slightly better for the things that I use, but that all depends on what you do use and what your priorities are.

      You'll hear a lot of people flaming KDE. The thing I hear most often is that it is too Windows-like. My response to this is that you can configure it to act very much like a number of different environments, and I fail to see how this is a bad thing, especially given that Windows have made a few sane user interface design decisions (though they have also made some really poor ones in later years, and the underlying structure is helplessly flawed).

      A lot of the bucketings that KDE cops are due to experiences with earlier versions, and indeed they were pretty sad, but some Gnome-users that have seen my setup of KDE have been impressed to the point where they went ahead and downloaded it. It really has come a long way, and I'm amazed to see the rate at which it has been improving just over the last few months.

      So Kongratulations to KDE. Have some Kake.

      • > The thing I hear most often is that it is too Windows-like.

        Oh how things change. In the early 1.x days, everyone complained that it was too Mac-like!
      • Still, KDE has some significant issues. The KDE family of programs is the only thing I use every day that I can easily recall running in to bugs with every single day.

        That said, why do I use it?

        It's not that configurability thing, although that comes in handy on occasion. It's also not power, although much of it is very powerful software. Mostly, it's a complete lack of anything else.

        Konqueror is horribly buggy as far as its rendering goes, although it is mostly stable. I just use it because it's the bes
    • Install both!

      Free software is great isn't it? Its about choice and not who has the fatest wallet..

      Untill real reccently I use to be a kde fan for many years. However I do not like the bloatness of too many items and cluttered start menu. Gnome2.4 is by leaps and bounds better then its earlier versions. The 1.x with used sawfish or enlightenment was very unintegrated and an awefull mess in terms of UI design. That is changing.

  • Kudos to the KDE team!! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bigjocker ( 113512 ) * on Monday October 20, 2003 @01:56PM (#7262340) Homepage
    In 7 years they have created a wonderful desktop. For some years now we have olny used Linux at home and at office, and my wife (designer) and my son (7 years old) use it comfortably thanks to KDE, OpenOffice, Mozilla et al.

    Thanks for a wonderful product, and for demonstrating that a holy war (QT license, QT vs GTK, KDE vs Gnome, etc) should not deminish your efforts.

  • KDE sucks (Score:1, Troll)

    by extrasolar ( 28341 )
    The licensing of QT sucks ass, and when Microsoft buys Troll Tech, KDE will be stolen from...

    Sorry, was having flashbacks
    • The licensing of QT sucks ass, and when Microsoft buys Troll Tech, KDE will be stolen from...

      Please explain how GPL sucks ass, and how Microsoft will be able to steal KDE, which is GPLed.

    • > The licensing of QT sucks ass, and when Microsoft buys Troll Tech, KDE will be stolen from...

      If Microsoft buys TrollTech and they change the license, the last GPL'd version of Qt will automatically become BSD-licensed. [kde.org]
    • I hope you guys aren't being serious. In case you are, I was *joking*. Don't be so pathetic.
  • KDE is my desktop of choice and part of the reason I decided to give linux a go. Congrats KDE guys!
  • I've got KDE 3.1 with SuSE 8.2 and I'm seriously impressed with it. It's the best version yet! Cheers people! You've got a great product, keep it going... :)

  • Wine (Score:4, Funny)

    by jetkust ( 596906 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @02:02PM (#7262394)
    I really had to install Wine sometimes just to play solitair, what an overhead!

    So now the real reasoning behind KDE is revealed: To build a non-windows solitaire device.

  • Kongratulations (Score:5, Funny)

    by cK-Gunslinger ( 443452 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @02:02PM (#7262399) Journal
    Kongratulations to the KDE development team. I kan hardly believe that it has been seven years for this krazy and kool environment for linux. There's gno way that Gnome kan katch up with your konstant innovations in application naming! Gnow that I think about it, Gnome's gnot even kapable of kashing in on single-letter usage they way KDE kan! Keep the gnew stuff koming!

  • Early screenshots? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by caluml ( 551744 ) <slashdotNO@SPAMspamgoeshere.calum.org> on Monday October 20, 2003 @02:04PM (#7262416) Homepage
    Anyone got any screenshots of the earliest KDE?
  • I'm just a user and this announcement makes me fell really old.

    I had alot of fun compiling KDE 1.0 for the SPARC 5 I had on my desk back then - though it was little slower than CDE at the time.

  • KDE is loved (Score:2, Insightful)

    by novakane007 ( 154885 )
    In this month's edition of Linux Journal, KDE was rated as the favorite desktop environment by the readers. There's a nice birthday present for you KDE!

  • Kept Me Off Drugs^H^H^H^H^HWindows (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tarsi210 ( 70325 ) * <nathan@@@nathanpralle...com> on Monday October 20, 2003 @02:05PM (#7262431) Homepage Journal
    Around 1999 I had for a few years been experimenting with Linux but hadn't really ever made the switch for more than a week or two, due to lacking real desktop usability. I discovered Slackware and KDE almost in the same heartbeat and converted....and stuck, finally. KDE was the power behind keeping me on Linux and off Windows. Now I have a great desktop that I use every day for hours on end and love every minute of it.

    Good job, KDE, and keep going. Gnome? Don't you boys give up, either, because it gives KDE motivation to keep churning out quality. However, you should buy them a beer or two because they've done some fine work for the *nix world, no matter which side of the fence you like to sit on.
    • Yep. KDE is what got me off Windows too. I tried Gnome with Redhat 5.2, but was rather dissatisfied. I couldn't even figure out how to make an icon on the desktop (Remember, I was TOTALLY NEW to desktop GNU/Linux). Then I tried KDE and everything was a lot more familiar to me.

      Now that I'm fairly experienced with Linux on my desktop, I've thought about switching over to Windowmaker or a lighter desktop. However, KDE is just so damn pretty these days it's hard to give up. Yeah yeah, I know it's bloated and t
    • Even today, Slackware and KDE are a fine combination. I just finished setting up a Slackware 9.1 box for my wife and was really impressed with how simple it was, and by the obvious work that has gone into integration and testing.

      The only things I needed to add for her were OpenOffice, Acrobat and XawTV - they all installed without incident.

  • Gnome Behind Again (Score:5, Funny)

    by jimshep ( 30670 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @02:08PM (#7262458)
    Once again, GNOME is behind KDE by a year. No matter how much effort developers put into GNOME, it well never catch KDE in the annivesary department.

  • Time for the Krusty Komeback Klassic! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Moridineas ( 213502 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @02:12PM (#7262495) Journal

    KKK?!?!? uggggghh

  • wooo!! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Karma Sucks ( 127136 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @02:14PM (#7262517)
    Thank you KDE, for beautifying my desktop for 5-6 years now.

    Matthias Ettrich, you showed it was possible to do something we thought was not possible or did not have the confidence/ability to do. Even Miguel de Icaza was amazed with the potential KDE was showing and we all know that led to GNOME! You started something great, man.

  • Wow! (Score:2)

    by Micah ( 278 )
    It's neat to flash back to the early history of KDE.

    Back in early 1998, I was setting up a Linux system with a custom program I wrote to help my church manage ticket sales. It ran a KDE 1.0 beta. The hardware? 486/100 with 16MB RAM. For the most part it ran fine!

    One has to wonder why it takes longer now to do anything in KDE 3.1 on a 64MB machine than it did under KDE 1.0 on a 16MB 486.

  • The Seldon Plan (Score:3, Interesting)

    by timothy ( 36799 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @02:24PM (#7262618) Journal
    ["KDE Sucks! GNOME rules!" (reverse, repeat)] (reverse, repeat)

    Both of these projects are so good now, it's great while browsing to run into comments occasionally (going back years) asserting that one or the other would cease to be, or that the presence of both in the world of free / Free software was harmful, because it mean duplication of effort, dilution of attention, etc.

    Ha!

    Hari Seldon *must* have been involved, to see how much these allegedly self-motivated projects catalyze each other.

    However much you like either one, note that KDE now has integrated CD (and DVD!) burning software -- IMO on par with anything I've seen on the commerical side (Nero, etc) whereas before I prefered GnomeToaster to anything else, and GNOME now has a good file-chooser (which had been one of my least favorite points about GNOME apps).

    Meanwhile, with the right libraries on your system, the Virtucon-backed fluxbox [fluxbox.org] gives you access to the best of both worlds ;)

    timothy

    • Well, I wont play partisan desktop politics, but I remember starting off trying out both KDE 1.x and early versions of Gnome from the old Redhat 5.0 distro. Before that I had used WindowMaker, and I liked both KDE and Gnome much better as it was fairly easy to get things working without hacking too many configs.... I've used KDE almost exclusively since 1.1x, though I do look into Gnome from time to time. I must say I think that Gnome has actually gotten worse... why the hell does Nautilus suck so F'in bad?

  • Interview with Mathias Ettrich... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by joestar ( 225875 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @02:27PM (#7262647) Homepage
    There was an interesting interview with Matthias Ettrich, done in 1998, and available here [linux-center.org].

    Amazing to see how KDE grew since then, and a good reminder of all these (past) issues with Qt, and the QtMozilla huge hack...

    And by the way, is this "KEmacs" thing a reality somewhere? :-)

  • No, Gnome is NOT a KDE alternative. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 20, 2003 @02:27PM (#7262648)
    Everytime KDE is mentioned, gnome advocates try and convince me why is GNOME is better, when it is NOT! Here is a detailed description WHY GNOME SUCKS KDE RULES!

    1) The file dialog.
    KDE 0.x ALPHAs had a better file dialog than gnome! Today, the KDE one is the best file dialgog in existance, with influence from all desktops.

    2) More apps!
    KDE comes with over 150 Apps in the full install, with applications for all fields, plus its sleak integration with non kde apps (eg gimp, openoffice) make things more consistant.

    3) Configureable as hell.
    The KDE control center has loads of knobs/dials/sliders and boxes to fiddle with, yet keeps things elegent. In gnome, half the options don't exisit and you are rudley told "use gconf-editor n00b by gnome zealots" (not joking about this, telling the truth gets you a -1, troll and footnotes).

    4) I-kandy!
    The Kde eye candy is really powerful, with styles such as dotNEt, mosfet liquid, kermamik, Crystal and more. Looking at art.gnome.org [gnome.org] reveals the same old theme in different colours. Since gnome dosen't provide a colour changing dialog for its widgets most "themes" are just colour changes. The Crystal from CVS is an Aqua killer, your eyes will want to love it.

    5) Its development framework rocks.
    Take a good look at kioslaves, kparts, dcop, arts and qt and see why KDE is a programmer's dream. Modern c++, wonderful IDE [kdevelop.org], powerful command line scripting. Gnome gives you obsolete c, with a bunch of kludge libraries such as glib, Orbit, bonobo to hack together a application.

    6)The defacto choice on Linux. All major Distributions support it by default. This means Mandrake, SuSE, Xandros, ArkLinux, Jamd, Lindows, Slackware, Knoppix, Gentoo and more. How many gnome ones can you mention (Redhat, sure if you like using server distros as your desktop Debian, nope thats the old 1.4 branch Gnoppix, a retarded knoppix rip off.) Most distributions offer gnome as an unsupported alternative.

    Also, the only reason why gnome was created in the first place is null and void. Now that Novell has taken over Ximain you can expect VENDOR lock in. Want groupware for linux? Thats $300 a seat.

    Get the new Mandrake 9.2 and see the Quality of KDE vs the Sorry state of Gnome 2.4 (and, they STILL haven't fixed that ****ing file dialog), not to mention they REMOVED ALL THE FEATURES. Gnome 2.2 is probably the only gnome version remotley close to kde, that is, KDE 2.0, not the KDE 3.2. I tried the "brokenboring" alpha of it and when it is released this december it will finally put Gnome out of it's misery and kill it off the Linux desktop.

    • mostly wrong (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Ender Ryan ( 79406 )
      1) The file dialog. KDE 0.x ALPHAs had a better file dialog than gnome! Today, the KDE one is the best file dialgog in existance, with influence from all desktops.

      Yes, KDE's file dialog is superior to GNOME's. This is the one thing that I find annoying.

      2) More apps! KDE comes with over 150 Apps in the full install, with applications for all fields, plus its sleak integration with non kde apps (eg gimp, openoffice) make things more consistant.

      KDE comes with over 150 apps that are mostly worthless, rea

      • Re:mostly wrong (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Jameth ( 664111 ) on Monday October 20, 2003 @04:38PM (#7264085)
        You can do the same with GNOME, without touching GConf. For some more advanced tweakage, you will need to use GConf, which is pretty easy(not near as painful as windows's regedit).

        Likewise, cutting off your hand is not as painful as disembowling yourself, but I would still rather just eat breakfast. Hence the reason I avoid such crap.

        As for integration, KDE's "make other apps use KDE colors" hack is disgusting. If you want "integration," -- if by integration you mean widgets that look the same -- use Geramik, Bluecurve, or Mandrake's whatever-it's-called.

        I really don't think looking identical is what is needed for integration. As an example, WinAmp integrates excellently with Windows.

        Yes, KDE is pretty configurable -- if by configurable you mean you can change colors, fonts, and keybindings.

        I'm guessing he means as in 'every option on the system'. Not that it's that far, but Appearance and Desktop are only the first two minor sections. So, we have panel functionality, backgrounds, colors, themes, feedback, desktops, window behavior, and all that stuff there. Then there's desktop sharing, e-mail functionality, LAN browsing/chatting, web browsing (including all its subsections), personal information, file manager functionality, mime-types functionality, spell-checking, session management, X display, keyboards and mice, printers, sound playback, system notification, boot manager configuration, date/time, font management, linux kernel setup, login management, default paths for many basic locations, cryptography, password feedback, accesibility, reqion settings, and about a dozen other things. And, yes, all of those things are actually configurable by KDE. That isn't just colors, fonts, and keybindings. Actually, I never mentioned keybindings. You can also configure keybindings.

        5) Its development framework rocks. Take a good look at kioslaves, kparts, dcop, arts and qt and see why KDE is a programmer's dream. Modern c++, wonderful IDE, powerful command line scripting. Gnome gives you obsolete c, with a bunch of kludge libraries such as glib, Orbit, bonobo to hack together a application.

        GNOME has C++ bindings for everything you need.

        I'm not a programmer very often, but how do 'C++ bindings' equate to 'kioslaves, kparts, dcop, arts and qt' seeing as those do have C++ bindings. Not saying the parent wasn't wrong with that 'Gnome gives you obsolete c' line, but I don't think you exactly refuted his point, either.

        Fucking kids...

        First, please don't fuck kids.

        Second, just because the parent post was rude in several places doesn't mean you need to be derogatory. It just sounds bad, reducing you to their level. And, yes, the original post was too harsh in its responses, but it did have much accuracy in it.

        • Likewise, cutting off your hand is not as painful as disembowling yourself, but I would still rather just eat breakfast. Hence the reason I avoid such crap.

          I thought I was pretty clear that touching GConf is really not necessary. Less than 1% of people would ever need to use it. I use it for 2 settings, and they're things that KDE doesn't even allow at all.

          Don't make fucking mountains out of molehils... Sheesh...

          I really don't think looking identical is what is needed for integration. As an examp

      • You know, GNOME wouldn't be where it now is if people stopped trying to convince themselves that it's as good as KDE, and just freaking *made it happen*, instead.

        And this comes from a former GNOME guy. I'm not gonna rant or correct some faulty assumptions in your post, it's just not worth sinking to that level (however, I'll try to point out some of your good points further down, for the sake of fairness). Besides, there are much cleverer people than I with in depth knowledge of both environments that make
        • That's the most valid reason on Earth to be using anything. So please drop the would-be technical comparisons that GNOME can't and won't win because it's just fucking not designed to, dammit. Go back to writing the freaking best code you can, and let people enjoy GNOME if GNOME is what they enjoy. Blind zealotry turns people -away-, you know?

          WTF are you talking about? I responded to a post spouting blind zealotry against GNOME and making a false technical comparison! I'm not a damn zealot, I like and us

    • For me, the #1 reason why KDE is better than GNOME is GNOME's appalling support for multi-monitor, non-xinerama desktops (hint: it doesn't). Even though I use blackbox, if I had to choose between KDE and GNOME, KDE would win for that single feature.
    • 6)The defacto choice on Linux. All major Distributions support it by default. This means Mandrake, SuSE, Xandros, ArkLinux, Jamd, Lindows, Slackware, Knoppix, Gentoo and more. ...snip... Most distributions offer gnome as an unsupported alternative.

      I'm not really sure what you mean by "supported" and "unsupported". I don't know about the other distros but as a Slackware user I can tell you that the distro has no apparent "default desktop". It includes both GNOME and KDE, and you just choose which one y

  • I'm using it... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by binary paladin ( 684759 ) <binarypaladin&gmail,com> on Monday October 20, 2003 @02:33PM (#7262706)
    I switched over to KDE from Gnome about 2 months ago after using Gnome since 1.4ish (and I used 2.0, 2.2 and 2.4).

    I like KDE better. That's really all I can say. Gnome isn't bad, but I spent too much time wondering if Gnome was ever going to get polished. That and Nautilus just sucks.

    When I was using Windows I used Directory Opus as my file manager and when I first started to use Linux full time that was the program I missed the most. Then... then I found Konqueror. Life's been good ever since. From that point it was a slow conversion to KDE as a whole.

    I'm very happy with it. Koffice included. I'm very much looking forward to SVG support in the next version as well as a few other little bits I've read up on.

    Good job guys!

    And just a clarification, I like Gnome. I just like KDE better and you know what's cool? I'm not longer stuck between these two choices:

    Windows DE or Windows DE.
    • > I switched over to KDE from Gnome about 2 months ago after using Gnome since 1.4ish (and I used 2.0, 2.2 and 2.4).

      Same, except I switched earlier. I absolutely loved GNOME 1.4, and I just find GNOME 2.x horrid. KDE (just works) for me in ways that GNOME 2.x doesn't.

      I don't use half of the things in KDE, but then again, I didn't use half of the things in GNOME either.

      Choice is good.

      Oh yeah, directory opus is awesome. I like it better than Konqueror still, but Konq-cvs is getting there!
  • That means it should have all of my annoyances worked out sometime in 2006 [joelonsoftware.com]!
  • Disclaimer: I don't care about purity of licenses. I don't care about C vs C++. I don't care about RMS.

    KDE is just the most remarkable piece of free software I've ever seen. It's so big, so slick and advances at such an incredible pace. It works perfectly, and just the same on Linux, Solaris and BSD (though I haven't used and BSDs in a while). It's wonderful.

    I used to love GNOME, but now, with the best will in the world. I can't take it seriously as a rival to KDE.

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