KDE 4.7 – a First Look At Beta 1 264
A few days ago, the KDE project shipped the first beta of the upcoming 4.7 release. Reader dmbkiwi submits a link to a rundown of what 4.7 looks like, snipping from which: "Previously it was Gnome that was the steady plodder making minor incremental changes through the 2.x series, building stability and only adding minor features. However, with the recent releases of both Gnome Shell and the Unity desktop on Ubuntu, the Gnome/Ubuntu side of the desktop linux equation has made radical and controversial steps away from the well loved Gnome 2.x series, leaving KDE 4.x as the 'steady as she goes' option."
The interface doesn't need to be changed much (Score:3, Interesting)
People who use KDE are typically coming from Windows so the default should look similar. However the good thing about linux is customizability. As long as we can customize it to look however we want most of us will be happy.
Gnome and Ubuntu Unity have removed the linux edge of customizability. It's only a matter of time before I switch from Gnome 2x to KDE 4x. The next big step for Linux would be to take advantage of 3d rendering to improve functionality further. The zoom is something I use on a regular basis. Perhaps being able to flip windows(frames) and being able to write on the back of them would be a useful feature as well. There are plenty of ideas for functional eye candy but I think linux is at the point now where it shouldn't look towards Windows or OSX for new feature ideas, and it shouldn't try to fix an interface which isn't broken, it should just be adding new features and options, new eye candy which increases usability, and new more powerful abilities, such as intelligent agents that a user can program to automate certain tasks such as burning a DVD, searching several search engines to find certain information on certain topics, all of this could benefit from agent based AI.
I suggested this to the linux community years ago and their excuse was there wasn't enough bandwidth. It's 2011. The majority of the country is broadband now. There is enough bandwidth to build an intelligent agent into KDE and if they wont do it then I might just go ahead and do it for them.
(For anyone who doesn't know what an intelligent agent is, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-agent_system [wikipedia.org] an agent is a robot, in this case multi-agent is multiple robots which search for and process specific information you tell it to. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_agent [wikipedia.org] )
The agents in a multi-agent system have several important characteristics:[4]
Autonomy: the agents are at least partially autonomous
Local views: no agent has a full global view of the system, or the system is too complex for an agent to make practical use of such knowledge
Decentralization: there is no designated controlling agent (or the system is effectively reduced to a monolithic system)[5]
Typically multi-agent systems research refers to software agents. However, the agents in a multi-agent system could equally well be robots,[6] humans or human teams. A multi-agent system may contain combined human-agent teams.
Re:The interface doesn't need to be changed much (Score:4, Interesting)
I still don't understand why KDE and Gnome are such big deals. Maybe I'm too Windows-centric, but what I expect from the GUI is simple: a launcher/taskbar widget, configurable window management and theming, and a handful of integrated utilities or configuration panels that govern common functionality among all apps (e.g. network shares, security defaults, notification prefs, video accel).
Beyond that, the rest of KDE seems like truckloads of cruft to me. I find the bundled apps largely deficient in functionality and stability, they're like "store brand" knockoffs of specialized 3rd party apps. Rather than wasting so much effort on these bastard subprojects, why not deliver a solid API and widget library that allows 3rd parties to properly integrate with the look and feel ? Let the GUI people focus on building the GUI, and let the app people focus on apps.
KDE 3.5 was fast, lean, maybe a little hard on the eyes but it did everything I needed without getting in the way. Everything since then has been a bad acid trip through OSX envy and good-old-fashioned programmer-designed atrocity. Just look at Windows 7, they pared it down from Vista to be as simple and efficient as Microsoft can be. Less baked-in functionality, but plenty of hooks to extend it IF AND WHEN NEEDED. Isn't that supposed to be the Unix way ?
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Beyond that, the rest of KDE seems like truckloads of cruft to me. I find the bundled apps largely deficient in functionality and stability, they're like "store brand" knockoffs of specialized 3rd party apps. Rather than wasting so much effort on these bastard subprojects, why not deliver a solid API and widget library that allows 3rd parties to properly integrate with the look and feel ? Let the GUI people focus on building the GUI, and let the app people focus on apps.
I think I agree with much of what you are saying. The only counter-argument I can think of is that KDE's inclusion of 'subprojects' might not really be a distraction to the main thrust of the project. I say this because the contributors to the little programs might not be the same as those who work on the KDE core. I think that the core team has provided a fairly good API and widget library (or Qt has) and this allows all these 'little programs' to exist.
That being said, I agree that many of them are just n
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strangely enough, I found the Walgreens brand whitening toothpaste (which had a text blurb: Compare to Crest Whitening) to be far superior to Crest's Whitening toothpaste. go figure.
Re:The interface doesn't need to be changed much (Score:5, Insightful)
I still don't understand why KDE and Gnome are such big deals. Maybe I'm too Windows-centric, but what I expect from the GUI is simple: a launcher/taskbar widget, configurable window management and theming, and a handful of integrated utilities or configuration panels that govern common functionality among all apps (e.g. network shares, security defaults, notification prefs, video accel).
You were deprived of a proper desktop as a child. You know nothing of multiple workspaces, the ability of your applications to share their data with each other, even the simplest things like changing the color of your window decorations is beyond your ken. It's like you were raised in a cage.
I find the bundled apps largely deficient in functionality and stability, they're like "store brand" knockoffs of specialized 3rd party apps.
I think you're out of your mind. Okular is the best document viewer I have ever seen. Show me a pdf reader that does a third of the things that Okular does, and does them half as well, and I will eat my hat. Kontact is absolutely gold. Even the file manager has been doing things for three years that Windows Exploder still can't even imagine doing. Marble...well, I was gonna say Marble's the best at what it does, but actually, it's the only application that I'm aware of that does what it does.
why not deliver a solid API and widget library that allows 3rd parties to properly integrate with the look and feel
Yeah, we got that. We've had it for years. Have you looked? No you haven't, have you?
KDE 3.5 was fast, lean, maybe a little hard on the eyes but it did everything I needed without getting in the way. Everything since then has been a bad acid trip through OSX envy and good-old-fashioned programmer-designed atrocity. Just look at Windows 7, they pared it down from Vista to be as simple and efficient as Microsoft can be.
"foo n-1 was the best thing ever, new is crap, Windows 7 is shiny." Okay then. Use Windows 7.
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I agree almost across the board. My only issue is that I think Gwenview is a piece of crap from a UI standpoint compared to the old Kuickshow. Kuickshow was an inspired PERFECT app. You can still compile kuickshow under KDE4, and it still works perfectly. I just don't understand why they refuse to maintain it as a fully supporteds piece of KDE4.
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Regarding the ctrl+v and rightclick-paste comment, it's quite simple to 'fix' this. There's an x clipboard and there's a system clipboard. You can sync them using klipper (the thing that looks like a pair of scissors in the kde system tray). If sync'd, you can copy by selection or copy by ctrl+c and pasting (ctrl+v) always pastes the last copied thing.
Your complaint is valid, though, in that middle-clicking pastes only what you selected and copied, not what you ctrl+c'd. My solution to this is simple: use
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Linux has its fair share of problems and idiosyncrasies, but this guy is whining because the car has a weird third pedal and there's no D on the stick thingy between the seats. Not gonna get it.
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I guess you missed the part where Qt closed the bug as OUT OF SCOPE, as in not a Qt problem but a Linux problem. But I see the anything that breaks with the holy gospel gets modded down, so...
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And please let it stay that way. I swear, if Linux ever changes the behavior of selecting+middle click I will switch to Windows. That feature alone is just so freaking awesome. For all the mouse-addicts, like me: just select a text, drag your mouse, middle click and you have copy&pasted it.
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Yes, it is. Try pasting anything in a terminal with Ctrl+V. Won't work. Right-clicking -> paste does. Try copying from the URL bar, closing Firefox/Chrome/whatever and then pasting the previously copied address somewhere. It's gone. At least in Gnome 2.30. Dunno if using KDE makes any difference.
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I was just going to post the same as you, until I read yours. Like you said, Ctrl+Shift+V does the trick in a terminal. Nothing wrong with that. I wonder if the OP ever tried using Ctrl+C or Ctrl+V in a windows command prompt window? So to copy/paste in windows you have to go into the menu and do it from there. You cant just select text either...you have to activate the menu and select "mark", and then I think it automatically copies when you right-click or something. its completely unintuitive.
I think
Re:The interface doesn't need to be changed much (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think KDE4 is overblown except in one respect. If you could just can that imbecilic desktop and replace it with a single simple folder view like in KDE3 and Gnome2, where you can put launchers and objects, KDE4 is basically perfect. Now, I haven't been able to figure out how to rip out that crippling piece of garbage from KDE, but I am sure the KDE team could easily add a single radio button to allow the user to just enable or disable it. It's like how they let you switch the start menu to the normal, useful "classic style," instead of the godawful new style which copies one of the most HATED and DESPISED "innovations" of Vista.
In all other respects, I see no fundamental flaw with KDE4. I find it in no way mysteriously slower or more ponderous than KDE3. I am just perplexed when people claim this. Obviously, the first thing you do when you bring it up is completely turn off all the "desktop effects" horse shit, and then it works fine.
And as far as I can see KDE has some wonderful apps. Kate, for example, is a superb multi-document text editor. Gnome has nothing remotely comparable. I know of no standalone one that is better. KDE Office would be a wonder if we weren't spoiled by Open Office, so I admit I don't use much of it. Obviously, I use Firefox instead of Konqueror (usually). But I see no way in which the KDE guys have built a less than first class API for 3rd partiesa to properly integrate with. If they won't do it, and instead use the GTK horror, it's hardly KDE's fault. KDE's is vastly superior in every way.
Konsole is so many orders of magnitude better than Gnome terminal or anything else, that it is like the adults vs the kindergarten to compare them.
If you really and truly want a bare desktop with no cruft at all, you just use Xfce or LXDE. But I must warn you that they have substandard "little things." The clock cannot be adequately customized. The other applets are similarly deficient. I suppose we could port forward all the superb Gnome2 applets if we had the energy, but gosh darn it, I just want to USE a desktop that is neither INSANE nor DEFICIENT as it is.
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Oh. I see that they *haven't* fixed Plasma. Got it.
Since there seem to be some KDE devs here, I will engage.
I concur with some posts below me that KDE3.x was much more similar in UX design than Gnome to the post-95 Windows's, which is what the entrenched user base is coming from, in large part. I always preferred it to Gnome myself for that reason.
Plasma? Can't figure it out at all. I'm sure it's The Cutting Edge, but it left me bleeding. And while I see that the Trinity project is still chugging alon
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You are a gentleman and a scholar. None of the users I talked to knew you could do that, nothing I read hinted at it, the wording of the settings screen is cryptic, but it's easy once you know the trick.
Now I have NO reservations about KDE. OK, some of the applets are way underformed, but I am confident THAT can be fixed, even if I have to do it myself.
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Kind sir, a thousand times thank you! I searched and asked and couldn't find that simple fact
I now have NO reservations about KDE. Once you know 1 or 2 tricks; this one being the absolutely critical one, there is no reason to despair.
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I still don't understand why KDE and Gnome are such big deals
They're not - unless you're a nerd who enjoys wasting time fiddling around with pointless things for the sake of it.
Re:The interface doesn't need to be changed much (Score:5, Insightful)
People who use KDE are typically coming from Windows so the default should look similar.
Where does this notion come from? I've see in it before and I doubt it has any merit.
In fact, I would expect that the majority of people coming from Windows use Gnome since it is the default DE for Ubuntu and other popular distros.
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KDE is at least by default more windowsish and GNOME is more Macish. Unity is even MORE Macish than that...
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The taskbar at the bottom with a start menu in the same location. The kde desktop is nearly identical to the windows desktop.
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KDE is the default DE for openSUSE, which is another very popular Linux distro. It is not quite as popular as Ubuntu, but openSUSE is big. Also, how much of Ubuntu's userbase actually uses Kubuntu instead of Ubuntu?
Between the two, KDE has much more of a Windows feel and if I were t set up Linux for a family member used to Windows then I'd opt for KDE for an easier transition.
I personallyuse Xfce these days and what I love about it is that I can make it look similar to Windows or make it look similar to Gno
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Basic statistics: ~10% of the desktop audience is on a Mac, well under 5% on Linux. So *by definition*, people coming to KDE as their first Linux desktop are coming there from Windows.
Yes, yes, he doesn't actually say that in the quote, per se, but he implies it, and you accept it in your reply.
So the *real* question is: who set those machines up, and what did *they* prefer.
And yes, KDE (3, and now 4) was the preferred desktop on SuSE, all the way back to, I think, 9.0, which was my first version of that w
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No you don't. KDE is sensible: it has a settings menu...
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Because KDE apps have so many settings, you need a whole menu just for them.
And then when you open up a settings dialog, it has its own settings menu [img.ly].
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In GNOME, You Edit your Preferences.
Not any more.
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Or in the case of kde 4.0, "early sub-pre alpha." I remember quite vividly at the time of launch that they weren't saying anything like "don't use this if you're not a developer." No, I remember reading article after article raving about how awesome it was, how innovative that was, how pretty it was, how it and all the new backends like Akonadi and Strigi and Ne
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such as intelligent agents that a user can program to automate certain tasks such as burning a DVD, searching several search engines to find certain information on certain topics, all of this could benefit from agent based AI.
I suggested this to the linux community years ago and their excuse was there wasn't enough bandwidth. It's 2011. The majority of the country is broadband now. There is enough bandwidth to build an intelligent agent into KDE and if they wont do it then I might just go ahead and do it for them.
I'm afraid I can't follow you here. I can imagine AI development being held back by lack of CPU performance, RAM or simply the fact that this kind of thing is extremely hard to make, but... bandwith? What does an AI even need a lot of bandwith for?
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Gnome and Ubuntu Unity have removed the linux edge of customizability.
I've been customizing linux desktops for over 15 years now, and i'm sick of it!
Back in the mid-90s, you had no choice but to customize almost everything in a linux system, as the defaults were skeletal. But, gradually, over the years, more and more usable defaults were built in to distros - which has been a very good thing.
With virtually nothing i can waste hours customizing now, i can just adapt to what's there and spend that time doing productive work (or, more likely, unproductive procrastination, like t
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"should look similar [to Windows]"
Did I miss something? Or did they finally fix Plasma so mere mortals can figure it out?
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Thats actually not a bad idea. You could fit roughly 3 times the information (I hope my math is correct?) in the same space if you move from squares to cubes.
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They could use any shape they want to project the windows onto. They could project it on a shape with more sides than a cube. They could even wrap windows around a sphere. The fact is we need more screen realestate and 3d is one way of getting it.
Reality check: How does this give me more screen real estate? My screen is 1920x1200 pixels no matter what. I can flip the contents by hitting alt-tab, clicking an icon on the taskbar, switching desktops, picking from a list of tabs or just plain scrolling down the page as well as plenty other "2.5D" ways that give me infinite space - just not all at once. I agree that sometimes pseudo-3D can be useful like say flipping through album covers or something, but there's inherently no more "space" in 3D and I'd
The interface doesn't need to be changed AT ALL (Score:2)
You're right. Actually your screen is NOT 1920 x 1200 - it's unlimited x unlimited because of multiple desktops. Your DISPLAY is a 1920 x 1200 WINDOW into this unlimited screen. These multiple desktops give you a SINGLE control to access all the information that is there. This is far better than a multitude of idiosyncratic 3D widgets on a single desktop, each of which contain separately hidden information (IMPOSSIBLE to discover without reading help systems I might add), with access SEPARATELY controll
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Color me baffled; I have no idea how you can say multiple desktops don't give you more work space. I'm willing to believe it's just one of those little things I don't understand how anyone could look at it that way. I'm not going to tell you you're wrong; I'm just going to say that, yeah, other people find it a fine solution.
What is hard for me to accept is that you can't set up a panning X any more. Just because I could never stand the thought of using it that way shouldn't mean they should take that fu
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Color me baffled; I have no idea how you can say multiple desktops don't give you more work space. I'm willing to believe it's just one of those little things I don't understand how anyone could look at it that way.
I'd walk up behind you and smack some sense into you, but apparently you'd see me coming. And creationists say people aren't evolving!
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I have no idea how you can say multiple desktops don't give you more work space
Does it allow you to have more windows open on your screen at once? No. The screen's your work space, not some bunch of virtual desktops. Open windows in the foreground are where you work and multiple desktops don't allow you any more space for that. All it does is allows you to organise your background windows in a way that maybe suits you.
I can imagine if you regularly switch between several different tasks, all of which require an exclusive set of windows, and you stay with each task for a reasonable amo
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I agree that sometimes pseudo-3D can be useful like say flipping through album covers or something
I know not everyone runs a lot of applications at once but if I'm running a dozen or so then
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You get more screen space that way the same way you can fit more words in a whole book than on a single page.
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They could project it on a shape with more sides than a cube. They could even wrap windows around a sphere.
I like compiz [google.com].
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The fact is we need more screen realestate and 3d is one way of getting it.
3D doesn't give you any more screen realestate at all - it's just a different way of organizing your open windows. You've still only got the same number or pixels in your screen and it doesn't let you see more windows at once.
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For crying out loud, look at the goddamn KDE 4.7 beta 1 screenshots in the article! LOOK AT HOW MUCH WASTED SPACE THERE IS! In the screenshot of Dolphin, look at how shitting massive the icons are! If they were half the size, you could get twice as many shown at once, and still be able to see the thumbnail image just fine.
Everyone that has been using kde since the pre-dolphin era uses konqueror for their local file storage browsing, dolphin is horrendous in comparison.
Those of us that use kde day to day likely don't encounter most of the suckier new items, simply because we keep on doing it the older way. (most useful aspect of konqueror imho, browsing sftp like it were local and copy/pasting etc like normal)
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Then there's Nautilus, which is increasingly popular for KDE, and has very accessible configuration controls. You can specify Icon size, spacing, whether text is present, whether text is underneath or beside icons, and even whether the same spacing as the largest icon and text needs should be used throughout or icons should be spaced minimally. You can decide what file types should be shown as thumbnails, and further specify what the maximums size files to trigger thumbnails are. You can even have it play
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Dolphin is not the same. (even if it uses the same backend for regular file browsing)
For starters it defaults without a location bar, with an information bar and folder selection bar. These things can be fixed of course, but are a very annoying default that konqueror doesn't have to deal with. However a few things that can't be fixed (or at least I haven't seen how after briefly loading it) you cannot get rid of the icon size buttons that take up considerable space and clutter the interface, the forward and
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Re:Or stop fucking wasting space. (Score:4, Funny)
He may be a Gnome guy and simply doesn't realize that the KDE structure isn't designed by totalitarian bastards who KNOW what is BEST FOR YOU and damn sure won't be caught dead giving you the CONTROLS to actually TUNE IT.
More on multi-agent based AI (Score:3, Interesting)
So I mentioned this in my previous post and I recognize some people don't know why or don't understand why this would be useful. So I'll give some examples of what agent based AI can do for those who don't know and how it could be implemented.
To implement multi-agent based AI on linux first there would need to be a backend or a framework of some sort that would allow scripting languages such as python, ruby, and perl to connect to it. The framework or backend would have to be written in C for certain intense data processing tasks. The front end should allow programmers of all sort to write their own scripts in their favorite scripting languages to create robots. These robots should have the ability to automate system processes.
For example I decide I need to do research on artificial intelligence because I don't know what it is, so I should be able to tell the robot to search Google, to find X amount of articles on artificial intelligence which meet certain criteria. This could be done using regular expressions. But of course this isn't all that I need to do. I have a to-do list for this specific robot related to the topic of AI, to download certain files from the net and install them, to then load up and use certain files to process certain data. All of this should be automated completely and should happen in the backround and it all should be related to the topic of AI.
The news robot on the other hand I would program to act as an RSS feed, this robot would look not just at specific websites such as slashdot, but for specific articles on slashdot and present those articles along with research on certain keywords or buzzwords it thinks or suspects I know little about or wont understand.
The log analyzer robot could analyze logs for me and highlight any potential redflags, and then if it finds them run through an automated process that I determine is best for dealing with these redflags.
Each robot would be assigned to a task. Each robot should have the ability to do what the user could do, and it should be simple to show the robot or program the robot into doing it a number of very highly complex tasks.
The problem with using computers is most of the stuff we do each day is just routine. Most of us fit into certain patterns. Robots would allow us to save time, we can leave the computer on all day or all night and it will do a number of boring clicks and boring tasks that take up a great deal of time. This saves time and increases productivity.
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multi-agent based AI
It's an army of Clippys
it should be simple to show the robot or program the robot into doing it a number of very highly complex tasks
Yeah... how many decades have we dreamed about the Star Trek computer or Lt. Cmdr. Data by now? Computers aren't ever going to figure out what you're trying to do and make all the complex decisions themselves. The fact of the matter is that to make it to complex things you have to write complex scripts. And try as people may, we still haven't found anything better than the current programming languages, which most people can't grok. Every attempt to "humanize" it has failed because it
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Sounds like you've got it all figured out. Since no one else has thought of this, or precisely your specific "isn't that hard" implementation, I take it you are actively working on the system of which you speak?
Please let me know when I can download the beta version of your product. I would also like to subscribe to your newsletter.
I would like to see this scripting environment of yours, it sounds revolutionary... I would settle for just being able to write & run scripts myself... if only I coul
two weeks without KDE... and not missing it (Score:4, Interesting)
before someone mods me '-1 flamebait', let say a few things:
1- NOT a gnome fanboy. i dislike gnome in all it's incarnations, always did.
2- i use windowmaker. always have, always will
3- i only had parts of KDE installed to use some of it's applications from inside wmaker (mostly K3B, koppete, ktorrent and dolphin)
now, in the last two weeks i apt-get purged all things KDE4 from my system (kept only pana, a fork of amarok 1.4). the reason is that newer versions of KDE were starting to interfere with my way of doing things. what tipped the scale was keyboard configuration.
you see, i don't use graphical login managers, i log from good old fashion console, then type "startx" by hand. i consider this a must, since i use debian unstable, so breakeage of x.org because of updated kernel, ati drivers, etc sometimes happens. this means i have keyboard with swapped ctrl and caps lock, as well as locale (pt_BR) configured on the console. with wmaker i don't even need a keyboard section on xorg.conf, it just goes with what's configured on the console. that is, until you fire up a KDE app and it loads all those libraries. other thing that i had configured manually was CPU frequency management, so i don't run the risk of overheating the notebook when doing something CPU intensive on the console. i use userspace governor with kpowernowd and it works just fine.
keyboard becomes all messed up, KDE insisted in changing the frequency governor to wathever it damn well pleased, not to mention taht the load time for all those libraries was atrocious, i had to wait some 20 to 30 seconds until kopete, bluetooth applet and power applet loaded.
after i ditched everything, now i'm using XFE as file manager, pidgin for IM, gnome's bluetooth applet, xfburn and qbittorrent (a qt app. it doesn't load all the KDE libs like ktorrent). the result is faster load times for the GUI, less anoyance and no loss of functionality.
if the KDE guys make their environment behave better when a KDE app is loaded from some other window manager, maybe i'll give it another shot. until there, it'll stay out of my computer. i have better things to do with my time than fight against misbehaved apps that try to wrestle control of my system out of me.
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I use WindowMaker, Enlightenment, AfterSTEP, FVWM2, OpenLook, KDE, Gnome and the one that's an Archimedes GUI ripoff. Not usually at the same time, though that's happened, but whichever one happens to fit my mood and/or fits with whatever I'm doing better. I can't understand those who live in a single GUI. It's like trying to live in a single country.
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It's like trying to live in a single country.
It saves you from having to hire an expert because you need detailed advice on matters such as double-taxation treaties?
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if the KDE guys make their environment behave better when a KDE app is loaded from some other window manager, maybe i'll give it another shot.
Now, this is a problem right there. If you load a KDE app in a different window manager, then it isn't "their environment" anymore. Making KDE apps behave nicely in other environments is definitely not KDE people's priority. The same goes for GNOME, to be honest: I've had some unpleasant time trying to setup applications with GConf while not using GNOME.
While I am can totally understand your case and sympathize with it, I think you're right that KDE is not for you. It's meant to be much more exclusive. It
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- You should not set the frequency manually. This is the job of the OS/the hardware. And they know best.
- KDE respects the locale unless you have specifically told it not to (as in, configured alternate keyboards)
- Login managers do not prevent you from logging on the console: if there is a lockup, reboot and specify the runlevel at the grub/lilo prompt
- The first KDE app will take 20s to start, because it needs to start the configuration cache and the system bus. These apps benefit
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Of course, there is nothing like Amarok (2, yes, I'm a fan)
For media playback, I recommend you try mpd, of course that is just the daemon, there are many front-ends for it and I imagine a qt one (I use ncurses one and the firefox plugin when people are over)
Amarok doesn't play well with jack, which is what all the cool kids that want serious low latency audio use for that audio subsystems many neat features.
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But I like the integration with the lyrics, and wikipedia, and the videos! If I just wanted the music, I would never launch a GUI.
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I'm not sure about you, but for the most part I consider music a mostly background thing. While it plays you can do other things. Looking at the lyrics and videos is an active affair, and one that takes all of five seconds to google. Why have that clutter in your music selection interface? And why introduce the dependency of a network to retrieve said information?
It is more than readily accessible via google if so inclined.
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On the other hand, the guy is really trying hard to make his life miserable...
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Posts like this are the reason people don't want to use Linux.
People do want to use linux - lots of them.
Is Android a next gen KDE competitor? (Score:2)
Is Android a next gen KDE competitor? Android is after all essentially a desktop environment, but also a layer isolating the Linux kernel. Despite being a childishly avid KDE-fanboy I imagine that neither KDE or Gnome will "make it", get total dominance on the Linux desktop. Therefore, what are the chances that Qt, controlled by a "Microsoft controlled" Nokia, could be considered a risk by Google ... Hmmm... Ramblings, as I could not not fit the pieces together, and I'm getting very offtopic... Help me out!
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Android throws away too much of the GNU userspace and replaces it with Java/Dalvik-based userspace to be of any use to a desktop Linux distribution. If any migration of desktop environments from the mobile space is to happen, my bet would be on MeeGo, they build on top of GNU userspace and allow anything X or terminal-based to still run.
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No more so than Sugar is. One of the great things about heterogeneous environments is that you tend to see specialization and optimization rather than outright competition (which just drains resources from everyone). Everyone gets a perfect whatever-they-want rather than half-baked one-size-fits-all solutions (which, by trying to compete with everyone, will always lose against everyone).
Giving KDE a new chance. (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe it's time to be cautiously optimistic again.
When Unity came out, I gave it its 21 days[*]. After that time, I was still not very happy with it, so I figured that after using Gnome 2 for a while, it was time to give KDE another chance.
Well, I'm glad I did. There are still little niggles here and there if you look up close, but as a whole, things work pretty darn well. They've finally managed to return to that KDE sort of state from the 3.5 days, where multitudes of little features activate as needed to support your workflow and otherwise stay the fuck out of the way. Klipper is still so freaking convenient that I miss it sorely wherever I don't have it (the Gnome equivalent, Glipper, unfortunately didn't work very well for me). Also, Chromium now natively supports the KDE password storage thing. Quassel is like a smoother X-Chat with less bugs.
All in all I've been somewhat pleasantly surprised, and I think I may keep it after its 21 days. There are still things that annoy me -- their overthought Akonadi thing, for instance; seriously, guys, I shouldn't need an RDBMS to freaking read mails -- but much fewer so than I feared. Maybe it's time to be hopeful again for that Linux desktop thing we've been hearing about.
[*] When trying out a new tech, you've got to give it at least three weeks of real use, it is said; otherwise you can't necessarily tell if it sucks or if it's just different from what you're used to, and thus, uncomfortable at first.
Re:Giving KDE a new chance. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd agree. Interestingly, I'm finding this with GNOME 3: it's surviving the "three week" test pretty well so far. I think it's the "interface gets the hell out of the way" factor, too: you end up working with apps and documents, not fussing with settings.**
The problem, if you can call it that, is that the distro of choice for GNOME3 (Fedora 15) makes it a little hard to get going out of the box. It's not by any means insurmountable, but it's a little harder than it should be as some things are missing entirely (an Office suite really ought to come preinstalled) and playing "find the repo/RPM" is a lot harder than "It's probably already there, and if not it's trivial to find a PPA" of Ubuntu.
I'm interested to see what, if anything, the Linux Mint folks will make of GNOME 3, and it's unfortunate that Ubuntu isn't going this route. It really is a good DE, and it would benefit from Canonical's (former, traditional) user interface polish.
** I find myself fussing with settings a lot in KDE, and more often than I'd like in Ubuntu 11.04.
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The problem, if you can call it that, is that the distro of choice for GNOME3 (Fedora 15) makes it a little hard to get going out of the box. It's not by any means insurmountable, but it's a little harder than it should be as some things are missing entirely (an Office suite really ought to come preinstalled) and playing "find the repo/RPM" is a lot harder than "It's probably already there, and if not it's trivial to find a PPA" of Ubuntu.
I dunno what a "PPA" is, but if you're finding it hard to install things like LibreOffice on Fedora, you're probably not using yumex. The first thing i install after a new Fedora install is yumex. It's not quite as good as synaptic, but it's close. The only repo you're likely to need, other than the default fedora ones, is rpmfusion - and it's trivial to install that from their web site.
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The problem, if you can call it that, is that the distro of choice for GNOME3 (Fedora 15) makes it a little hard to get going out of the box. It's not by any means insurmountable, but it's a little harder than it should be as some things are missing entirely (an Office suite really ought to come preinstalled) and playing "find the repo/RPM" is a lot harder than "It's probably already there, and if not it's trivial to find a PPA" of Ubuntu.
It might not have been there by default if you installed from one of the live CDs as opposed to the full DVD. I don't know what's included on the Fedora CD spins by default as I tend to use the full DVD versions or I use preupgrade to update an existing system in place.
Still, installing office applications is trivial and you don't need to play "find the repo/RPM". RPMs are organised into groups and the groups are easy to list with either on the command line with yum or with the several graphical package
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Word. Yum isn't bad (PackageKit is, though), but I find myself craving Aptitude and Synaptic
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That's what I found as well. You could install it on Ubuntu, but it didn't really work well and much of what patches and packaging is done to make Ubuntu Ubuntu actually make matters worse. Fedora 15 was designed with GNOME3 from the get-go and it shows.
I can see what the point of Unity and GNOME 3's Shell are, and I think GNOME is a little closer to the mark, at least at this juncture. Both could learn from each other, as they have complementary strengths
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About akonadi: when 4.7 comes out, if you are using kmail/kontact you will be happy: it is really faster than the current non-akonadi-using mailer. If only for IMAP PUSH it would be worth it.
And the integration with nepomuk, I am pleased to say, works! full-text search in attachments is cool. Having the link to the right mail pop-up when doing alt-f2 "some relevant text" is awesome.
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I tried KDE for a few days due to the switch to Unity to Ubuntu 11.04. I found it rather slow and heavy wait still, compared to the last time I tried it.
I'm now using XFCE in conjunction with Compiz and I'm enjoying it immensely. I suggest you give XFCE a try.
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I've been using KDE4 since about KDE 4.2.2, and have just upgraded to KDE 4.6.3. For the most part I really like it; it's got a long list of features and a large feature-rich set of applications, and I enjoy the Qt backend, too. There are three major exceptions to the things I like, and one minor exception.
Tthe major exceptions:
1) Strigi
2) Nepomuk
3) Akonadi
Strigi and Nepomuk are what turn most people off to KDE4, because these both cause performance problems. Strigi is a Desktop file indexer; Nepomu
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IDEs are full screen anyway. Yeah, I'm an expert at vim (it's got so many shortcuts that each user has their own quirky way of using it. None of us use more than about 20% of them). The point is to stop moaning about how many clicks it tak
Kde 4 is so last decade (Score:2)
I want a new cell phone interface. One where key functionalty is removed and only one app can be shown at a time with strange mouse gestures that take up the whole screen to shuffle between apps with no buttons focused on single tasking.
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[......] strange mouse gestures that take up the whole screen to shuffle between apps [......]
Try <alt><tab> - it's worked forever.
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And it works even better in Gnome 3 - you can use the mouse or arrow keys to pick the window you want while you've got alt + tab held down. You can also use alt + ` (backtick - probably immediately above the tab key) to switch between different windows of the same app.
i'm a KDE user. I actually like gnome 3 (Score:2)
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I got well into tiling window managers. I used ION for 2 years and swore that I would never go back. Then the author started acting like a cunt. On the question of anti-aliased fonts he said "if you want your fonts dragged through mud".
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At least KDE doesn't force you to use some damn tablet mode if you don't want to.
And that's coming from someone who has preferred Gnome over KDE since the days Gnome became mature enough to be an alternate option.
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As opposed to this part of the desktop conveniently labelled with the path it links to? See, some of us like to be able to drag stuff to where we want the files to be (no, not the _stupid_ "Download folder"). And some of these locations might be remote! You might be living in the nineties, but some of us have this amazing thing called Internet (not, "the web") and we use it.
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There are no good reason to drag an icon from the start menu to the desktop. Which, BTW, works. If you want a launcher, you want it accessible, thus on the panel. I never understood why windows installers seemed all adamant that I absolutely put their icon on my destop.
The deal is that the folder views of KDE 4 are massively better than the desktop of KDE3 or GNOME2. They make complete sense: the desktop is this very useful scrapbook of files currently worked on. But it makes sense to have them organised in
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Plus, you are full of crap. I just did that: dragged an icon from the menu to the desktop (not the folderview, the desktop) and it created the link. And in fact, there wasn't even a box.
The box thing, I remember from KDE 4.0-4.1. Two years ago. So there you are, insulting people spending countless hours of their lives to give a better desktop to the world, and you can't even fact-check.
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This is the most insightful of all the comments here and I would mod you +100 if I could. The KDE4 desktop that is not a desktop was a WTF moment from the instant I first saw it. And it is the ONLY thing wrong with KDE4. If only they would just let you TURN IT THE FUCK OFF.
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none of the new offerings can even provide you with a working desktop
Gnome 3 provides me with a desktop that works just as well as any other desktop i've used on linux systems over the last 15 years. It took a day or two to get used to it, but maybe i'm more adaptable than some.
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It doesn't need an explanation to the rest of us. Consider that.
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Good, stick with your mid-90s and earlier window manager. The rest of us will enjoy the capabilities afforded us by our hardware.
Re:Where are the GUI designers going to realise... (Score:4, Insightful)
> Good, stick with your mid-90s and earlier window manager.
Why changing something that works, for the worse?
> The rest of us will enjoy the capabilities afforded us by our hardware.
I wouldnt mind if all those fabulos capabilities you allegedly "enjoy", were for the better, but they arent. They are mostly a superficial, never ending designer circlejerkoff in fight for winning the useless "oh shiny, now wheres my starbucks app" crowd. But you cant win that crowd for more than a year, because they change trends faster then you change underwear. You fool yourself by thinking that every time you completely jettison the old, working configuration, for a completely new design, you are improving something, but you arent. Youve just entered the fashion zone, without realizing it.
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You can manage applications from the command line. Why do you even need a GUI? :)
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GUIs are overhead in a lot of areas. Graphics can be done via framebuffers, for example, and if you're simply wanting to flip through a photo album you're far better off doing it that way than to have the overheads of X in there. On the other hand, I'd hate to do video editing in a console app.
It's like arguing whether axes are better than arrows. Even with a 170 lb. longbow, it'll take time to cut down a tree, but an archer will still beat an axe-wielding maniac.
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If you can really draw a bow with 170 lbs of pull, then it doesn't really matter if you miss once or twice, unless the opponent is starting out at much less than your normal working ranges for a bow.:
1. Even a limb hit will probably result in instant crippling at that pull. Bows like that will shoot through cinderblocks. At ranges of less than 100 yards, you aren't really doing archery any more, because the arrow doesn't perceptibly arch, it's as straight a shot as with a rifle.
2. You can always rip the man
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twm works for fine me.
What's wrong with bash?
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bring a different, but no less valid point of view to the discussion ?
i'm still on windowmaker, another mid-90s WM. it's clean, fast, practical and allows me to do some tricks at work that makes me much more productive than the guys who use gnome/unity/kde.
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Actually, it's a less valid point of view. He just doesn't get it. He doesn't get what a GUI is, what an application is, what a desktop environment is.
Windowmaker is fine, but it doesn't make you more productive than others who are as proficient with their preferred desktop. You're just arrogant and stupid, like the GGP.
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i'm still on windowmaker, another mid-90s WM. it's clean, fast, practical and allows me to do some tricks at work that makes me much more productive than the guys who use gnome/unity/kde.
I hope they pay you more for that!
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the KDE devs should spend more time on polish
That has been the KDE4 story since the very first release. The KDE team shot themselves in the foot by focusing too much on new features and not enough on fixing bugs and making old features better.
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But if they did add the padding, some other guy _will_ squeal like a pig that the EVIL KDE DEVELOPERS are stealing his precious pixels... They can't win.