A Sneak Preview of KDE 4 350
An anonymous reader writes "In recent times, a lot of discussion has been generated about the state of KDE version 4.0 and as Linux users we are ever inquisitive about what the final user experience is going to be. This article throws light on some of the features that we can look forward to when KDE 4.0 is finally released some time this year. The article indicates that the most exciting fact about KDE 4.0 is going to be that it is developed using the Qt 4.0 library. This is significant because Qt 4.0 is released under a GPL license even for non-Unix platforms. So this clears the ideological path for KDE 4.0 to be ported to Windows and other non-Unix/X11 platforms."
Memory (Score:2, Informative)
They need to work more on that cause thats the reason why I'm not using KDE. I like the UI but KDE is just to bloated so I use Gnome instead, even though I hate most of Gnome's UI.
Re:Memory (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Memory (Score:5, Informative)
http://spooky-possum.org/cgi-bin/pyblosxom.cgi/kd
tldr: they have (essentially) the same memory requirements.
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Unimpressed...KDE 3.X is in a "mainteinance" state because most of the KDE guys are working in KDE4, still gnome only was able to "catch up". And one of the reasons to use C instead of C++ (besides the "easier to make bindings" reason) wasn't that C++ was more "heavyweight"?
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Except that KDE devs expect KDE4 to significantly reduce memory usage. Again.
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Re:Memory (Score:5, Interesting)
What you will see is KDE4 by default using a huge glob less of memory, but if you run an old KDE3 or Qt3 app, suddenly memory usage will kind of go up when the compatibility libraries load.. disk usage will go up too because of them. But in most systems, 90% of the time the CPU is fairly idle and memory usage is the most important performance factor; not just memory-limited systems, on huge multi-GB desktops too.
What I really want to see is KDE4 running on Qt4 directly on the Linux framebuffer; get rid of X. Then something like MythTV running on top of it; bringing requirements down by removing some of the extraneous cruft (X no longer has magic mouse and keyboard drivers since the USB HID system does most of the work, would be one example) is a good goal too and KDE4 is also doing some of that.
I'm not sure what direction GNOME is taking, but at least there is a lot less ability to do so with GTK; they pride compatibility without compatibility libraries, and new functionality comes with new applications and rewrites of applications which never made the grade (Ubuntu Edgy had a bunch of them) - it seems to be a more pronounced, feature-rich development cycle with less chances to sit down and optimize something old. Both environments seem to be focussing on simply PROVIDING user experience than optimizing it. However KDE has a lot more baggage; components like the browser, office suite are all part of the KDE offering, which GNOME doesn't have an encumberance on. Optimizing KDE gives more results for less work. Optimizing GNOME seems harder to justify considering very few things will benefit but the toolkit and desktop itself. Maybe I'm wrong though...
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And one of the reasons to use C instead of C++ (besides the "easier to make bindings" reason) wasn't that C++ was more "heavyweight"?
Only among those who don't know what they're talking about. There's nothing in C++ that's inherently "heavyweight". Object-Oriented code often tends to be a little heavier because the tools make it so easy to generalize, and OO developers often end up writing code that may be needed someday, but isn't now. C programmers are less prone to that particular error.
However, the flip side of that focus on generality and reuse is that if it's used well it can actually reduce the code size and memory footprin
Enough of the waffle (Score:2)
Let's see your results for the same scenarios or, if you don't think his scenarios reflect usage, some other typical usage patterns.
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--
Evan
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I own a PIII Sony Vaio with 128MB RAM. Kubuntu Dapper run just fine, as long as you don't open anything like OpenOffice and Firefox. I use Konqueror and KOffice, and it has been a nice experience so far.
GTD Anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
I use KDE for the sheer convenience and ease of use. Windows seems like it's virtually stood still in time for the last four or five years. KDE has far surpassed it, ease-of-use-wise. Gnome is still such a joke. I don't get it. How is it that Firefox, Thunderbird (at least on Linux) and other packages have to emulate Gnome when it comes to: finding files (GIMP and Firefox try to be so Gnome-like -- sucks!), the whole "Would you like to do this? No? Yes?" anti-natural-language (but oh-so geek-orthodox) OK / Cancel thing. Why do so many distros (Red Hat, Ubuntu) have Gnome as the default? Makes no sense.
I'll trade a little "bloat" for "getting things done" any time.
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It's like the Motorola 68020 architecture and Assembly instruction set
great (Score:2, Insightful)
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I'm not picking sides, it's just that KDE is genuinely better *for me*. I'd of course stick parents, mac converts, etc on gnome in an instant. And I won't recommend what I don't use, so I guess I'll be spending half and half from now on...
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wtf are you talking about? they work like a charm with X11 forwarding over ssh.
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What is thin about it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If no shred cmd in Konqueror its good fer nuthi (Score:2)
Performance (Score:5, Interesting)
When was the last time a new version of Microsoft Windows came out with a faster user interface?
Re:Performance (Score:5, Funny)
When you bought the new computer?
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Maybe it's a typo, but just to clarify: KDE is already based on QT. It's just that KDE 4 will be using QT 4, whereas the current KDE uses QT 3.
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summary is wrong.
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Re:Performance (Score:5, Interesting)
"When Qt designer was ported to Qt 4.0 - only the neccesary changes to make it compile - the libqt size decreased by 5%, Designer num relocs went down by 30%, mallocs use by 51%, and memory use by 15%. The measured Designer startup time went down by 18%"
Now try to imagine the savings for the whole KDE desktop
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Huh? I've never seen the Windows UI being "slow"? I don't really know what you mean...
You saying there's a difference in e.g. Windows XP compared to Windows 95?
Are you really talking about the Windows USER32 and other such subsystems or rather simple application requirements?
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Huh? I've never seen the Windows UI being "slow"? I don't really know what you mean... You saying there's a difference in e.g. Windows XP compared to Windows 95?
Go run both on, say, a 300Mhz PIII. To make the difference even more extreme, only put 64MB of RAM in it.
There is a noticeable speed difference even on modern hardware, but some people are more sensitive to it than others. If you don't notice it on modern hardware, you'll definitely see it on old hardware.
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Software that takes advantage of it is fine. Software that wastes it to no advantage is not.
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Of course your RAM has llamas. You viewed a webpage with my sig in then typed it into a terminal.
However, it's worrying how many llamas can't be explained that way, isn't it?
From dot.kde.org (Score:5, Informative)
Also, with this article specifically, a few of the graphics are temporary, most notably the background that's pretty obvious in ksysguard. Yes it's horrible for that app, no it won't be there in the finished version. It's a temporary background being used in several apps at the moment for a placeholder.
Also, the start menu isn't finalised yet from anything I've heard, that's the start menu designed specifically for Suse - it's been on Slashdot before.
KDE looks like it will be coming together quite quickly and quite soon. Several major components are pretty much complete and are being polished now. Looks like pretty fun stuff - don't believe anyone who says it's vapourware.
Re:From dot.kde.org (Score:5, Informative)
Read the comments there as well for some interesting info.
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Glad you mentioned that before I posted! I was about to rant about how much I hate the look of that start menu. It looks too similar to the Windows XP, expanding-to-fill-the-screen-with-icons-all-over-t he-place one which drives me mad. That said, I do occasionally have trouble finding seldom-used stuff within my KDE start menu (is $APP under Settings, Utili
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i didn't like that tabs were switched on mouseover instead of a click, and applications were 'sliding' instead on click of opening on mouseover (makes navigation much, much slower).
but, on the other hand, you customise your favorites list, which is most you ever need - and for other things you can use search bar at the top.
suse linux upto opensuse 10.2 (i think 10.0 and 10.1, maybe others) had a classical start menu with a filter
Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better (Score:2, Insightful)
I wish they'd follow GNOME or Firefox
Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better (Score:5, Interesting)
But that's OK because Gnome isn't for me.
Please, Gnome is a slim pick up and go desktop for new users, KDE is a customisable and flexible desktop for power, business or techie users. I like it this way, it gives everyone a desktop that they are comfortable with. As a techie, I want KDE to stay the way it is, please don't try to change it to something it is not.
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No it doesn't give everyone a desktop they're comfortable with. If you put twice as many options in a user's face than they would reasonably expect or ever require they are going to get co
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Your solution, especially for Windows, involves huge difficulties for me as an advanced user. You're actually suggesting that if you use Windows and want to do something the least bit advanced then I should buy a new program o
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Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better (Score:4, Insightful)
Likewise, GNOME hides the options so deep as well, that only a poweruser spending the day on Google is ever going to even figure out how to get to them.
At least KDE (and Windows) put the options where you can find them using just the normal flow of the GUI.
This whole "assume the user is a drooling moron or an ubergeek, with *nothing* in-between" really puts off a lot of "competent" Windows users.
Just a bit of a windows bashing... (Score:2)
Yeah you bet, every advanced option you can imagine is on plain view for you to change your GUI based
REGISTRY EDITOR
KEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre
in the registry and add the following DWord value
CascadeFolderBands and set it to 1.
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Those options aren't gone, they are just exposed in GConf. People who complain about a lack of configurability in GNOME haven't figured out how to use gconf-editor.
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Have you used it? Have you been on the gconf mailing list? Have you read the docs that exist? It doesn't work very well, is very poorly documented and can't really be used to import and export settings - the Sabayon project is an application designed to meet the import and export problem - so it won't always be like this. The c
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Just a clarification here. While i agree that Gnome is a good desktop for new users I need to make clear that not everyone who preffer Gnome are new users. I am not a new user and I preffer Gnome against KDE any day of the week.
This reminds me of the time when someone on slashdot told me that I should not be using XUBUNTU because it is for people that is supposed to kn
Some criticism of gnome mostly past (Score:5, Informative)
Fortunately the people that wanted a version of MS Windows that they wrote themselves running on linux (only) but not understanding the features of the platform have moved on - leaving us with two fairly decent environments with just a few remaining flaws.
Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better (Score:5, Insightful)
Disagree.
I use Gnome because I have a million and one things to do and so long as the interface isn't annoying, looks ok and doesn't get in the way, then it's good for me.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a power, business and techie user. When KDE 1 came out I spent loads of happy minutes changing every setting just to how i liked it on my home PC. Partly because I could and partly because I found the default kde setup annoying.
I now use Ubuntu (at work) and have never felt the urge to change a single option. Now, the techie in me wants to do cool things at a PC, not change how the taskbar looks.
Mod parent up! (Score:2)
Sometimes, I get the impression that the bulk of KDE fan
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I agree, and I don't doubt that opinion is widespread. I tend toward installing Gnome for others because it gives the appearance of simplicity and it's generally less annoying looking than KDE (I think the operative word kids use today that would describe it is less "gay"). But dear Lord, Gnome is as dumbed down and featureless as Windows, if not m
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For that matter, I would like to say that the major drawback I found in KDE is not that the options are too complex, but that there are so many different ways to get to the settings from Kicker. Changing the windowing settings could lead me to three different interfaces,
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Have you ever had the feeling that "this program is awesome, but there's this really annoying tiny thing I wish I could easily change"? I had a couple of these with GNOME last time I tried it, and I've never had this with KDE 3.x.
GNOME is already
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Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better (Score:5, Insightful)
Hear hear!
You're so right! I wish the KDE team would realise that a pleasant desktop experience involves editing
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KDE on MacOSX (Score:3, Interesting)
KDE vs. Gnome (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:KDE vs. Gnome (Score:5, Funny)
Troll or not I think you have just pegged the perfect Gnome slogan:
"So easy it's stupidly difficult."
KFG
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No you don't. Application "failures" are almost always memory protection errors. There is no useful error message to provide unless you compiled the app with debugging symbols - and then, you're probably going to be working with the corefile anyway. Looking at an out-of-bounds memory address isn't going to do you any good.
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That way you can have a useful backtrace without using up memory when the program is running.
Debug info doesn't use memory (Score:2)
Question: When will it be released? (Score:2)
NOOOOOO....... (Score:5, Interesting)
I like things as they are with separate applications. If Kicker hiccups and falls over I can relaunch Kicker, if Super Karamba falls over, then I can simply restart Super Karamba, if the desktop falls over then I can restart the desktop... if the "all in one app" Plasma falls over, than what??? do I have to restart KDE? I don't want flaky Super Karamba widgets threatening the entire desktop... and I only want to run Super Karamba if I want to, not by default...
It will auto restart (Score:2)
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1. Right. It is also true, as you say, that it "can run for days on end"... but even running a simple bug-free widget set, it rarely runs for a week without spontaneously crashing.
2. The threading model in SK is fundamentally flawed. All widgets halt while one is updating. So if for some reason one takes a long time (network connection is down, it performs a heavy calculation, etc.) the entire SK portion of the desktop simply freezes for a length of time
Kool! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Kool! (Score:4, Insightful)
MSPerhaps, MSthat MSshould MSstop MSeverywhere.
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ior imaybe iyour igrip is inothing.
Pardon my ignorance... (Score:4, Insightful)
... don't like Oxgen (Score:2, Flamebait)
Abstract handhelds (Score:2)
KDE 4.0 to be ported to Windows (Score:2)
Bloatware? (Score:2)
- smaller than 3?
- lighter weight, with fewer programs running in the background just to *run*
the damn thing?
- faster?
mark, who went to IceWM years ago, since *it* comes up in under 20 seconds, as opposed to a minute or more for KDE.
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Whee... the first.... (Score:2)
I tried Gnome, and hated it. As others have said, it's designed to be simple, but I found it aggravating. Haven't used it in years, and have no intention of ever trying it again. KDE was alright, but it was slow as molasses. I still haven't figured out why the default is to dump debug information to console... if I'm running in X, I don't need to see that, and every call to stdout() slows down the system. It's a lot faster if you go into the source and
No, no, no (Score:2)
Stop spreading this bollocks. Qt 3 was released under the GPL. GPL is GPL, and platform restrictions would contravene Paragraph Six. There's nothing to stop you from porting Qt to Windows, VAX/VMS or even the ZX81, if you were so inclined. The only reason that earlier versions of Qt were never ported to Windows is simply because most Windows programmers don't want to work on Open Source code for the benefit o
It's rather lonely in here! (Score:3, Interesting)
That said, the main reason I avoid KDE and GNOME is performance - most of the stuff it does is just overhead I don't need (and why does KDE -not- use the xscreensaver interface instead of their rather....useless wrapper?!!), but if they were able to improve the reliability of KDE, and make it possible to lower it's footprint to something that is, say, just -slightly- more than your average WMW I might consider it.
Ooooo eye candy! (Score:2)
You should not have to wory about how your GUI is built, but it does matter that it works better (which just happens to be achieved by building it differently).
Re:Still not there yet.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a new convert to KDE, after years of predominantly fluxbox usage, with the odd dabble into Gnome. This is mainly because I principally used Linux over VNC or ssh, so KDE was out of the question, too slow over the network.
Now I have the novelty of a fast local Linux box, and decided to try out these fancy Graphical Desktops a bit more. The new Gnome is good, but I must say I am becoming more and more impressed with KDE as the days go on. I still like my fluxbox though, simplicity does have it's appeal sometimes. Can KDE ever be that fast though, I doubt it. Not that I care much about load times on KDE, 99% of my computer usage is text editors and the console. Those are two things that run fast on any system.
KDE on windows? Sounds interesting. Windows is just a games environment or dumb terminal into my linux cluster for me normally, I'd love to have KDE on XP. A fast KDE frontend for Vista might actually make me consider buying that heap.
Re:Still not there yet.. (Score:4, Insightful)
But if you mean just the window manager and such, and not Quanta/Konqueror/Konsole... I'd have to pass. KDE is useful to me. It's not about looks.
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Note you can't do this in GNOME. They have a stupid "reduced resources" which assumes that wireframe move is always faster.
Actually, I've moved over to xfce for VNC sessions. Very nice. Running two copies of KDE one box is
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With modern distros, it is easy to start a second login session - select the 'Failsafe' or whatever it is called login, where you only get an Xterm for the new user. Then do ssh user@remote.computer.address and once logged in, do 'init 3' (if X is running there, to kill it) then 'startkde'.
The result is KDE and X running on your local computer and only the xclient data travelling over the network - sweet.
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Thats right I never used it in the 2 years I had it as a desktop in my last job. I love it when people karma whore but pretend they're making a valid counterpoint.
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CDE - the common desktop environment as seen on Solaris is so old now that the above poster cannot be accused of being a clueless newbie - just a loud idiot talking about something they know nothing about. KDE got it's name from the similarity to CDE - which I believe predates Windows95. It is not original but is certainly not a MS Windows ri
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It is true there is nothing with "start" acutally written on it even if the menu comes up from the bottom from each panel button - but many of the things you are talking about here were even on the first mac with a few small differences.
Remember - KDE gets criticism for looking dif
Re:Hmm , let me guess... (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually its a CDE [wikipedia.org] ripoff.
CDE predates win95, and was based on the many desktop WIMP environments around in the late 1980s, such as HPs VUE.
A lot of the things you imagine are Windows interface paradigms are actually basic HCI stuff (Fitts law, Roman language left-right convention, and whatnot) that pretty much dictate colour schemes, icon size, icon behaviour, left to right conventions, etc.
The only thing I can think of that is a Windows thing is the position of a main menu button in the bottom left, its easier to mouse to the top of the screen than to the bottom because of the way the muscles in the hand/arm work. In truth the KDE button can be located anywhere, its just the default themes that just happen to position it there, cos that's where most computer users look to find a central control.
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Okay, but did it act like OSX? And do you have a link to some instructions on how I can configure it that way? Out of the four major desktop environments (Windows, OSX, Gnome, KDE) I like OSX the best, but my new computer isn't going to be a Mac so I'll have to switch...
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Err... I was talking about things like using OSX keyboard shortcuts, not having a Start menu, etc. mostly -- eye-candy is not my biggest concern. I would use GNUStep, but that project seems to be in rather poor health and I'd end up having to use GNOME or KDE apps anyway...
But yeah, Compiz and Beryl are definitely things I'm interested in, especially since the new laptop will have a well-supported GPU for once (an Intel GMA950).
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Yes.
KFG
Re:You know that... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Didn't anyone learn from OS/2's mistake? Don't make your OS irrelevant!
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A few KDE apps being available on Windows won't make Linux or the *BSDs irrelevant. And it may very well help people switch to Free apps so they can later switch to a Free OS without pain.
Re:Windows port ? (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps you're unaware of the fact that QT, the API that KDE is based on, has always been cross-platform. The only thing that ever stopped KDE from running on Windows or Mac OS before was licensing -- it wasn't GPL'd on platforms other than unix/X11 until QT 4.