KDE 2.0 in Action 312
Stormie writes "KDE hacker Mosfet has just put up on his web page a section entitled KDE2.0 in action with a rundown of what is coming in version 2, along with a bunch of great screenshots. Exciting stuff!"
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KDE 2.0 in Action
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Thus spake the master programmer: "After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
Hmmm.. The themes (Score:2)
Eh, but what do I know.
Looking Good (Score:5)
I am not a linux hacker and have never claimed to be, I am used to windows98 and NT4 and while I dislike it's bugs, security issues and lack of source they are still useful operating systems.
Until KDE came along I have to admit I was scared of linux... the WMs that were around were very basic and I was addicted to the Ms way of doing things.
Now this is all changing,I have been using KDE for quite a while now and anticipate the release of v2 with baited breath, it takes something like KDE to convert all us MS users who like the idea of linux but are scared of it.
You can run it quite happily after install, or you can hack it to bits. It's themeable and it has all the software bits and LAF of windows, while at the same time being quite different.
What more could a windows user want?
What's more, here in the office we are considering putting all the admin monkeys on a locked down version of linux with StarOffice and KDE too!
The future is bright.
Re:Hmmm.. The themes (Score:1)
KDE Step, great NeXT-step style
Marble theme
Qt CDE style
Qt Motif
Qt Platinum (the default, and it's great)
Qt Windows
System the great Mosfet theme.
After KRASH, it's hoped will have more of these.
[ot] developer-friendly too (Score:3)
Re:Hmmm.. The themes (Score:2)
I hope they concentrate on defining and documenting the interfaces (and debugging them, of course!) so that others can ork on the eye-candy.
To my mind those are different development tasks and should probably (as you suggest) be done by different people with experience in graphics design, HCI, typesetting, and much more.
It is hard to make a good UI and I think the KDE team deserves great credit for what they have accomplished in this area. Let's stabilise the code and the interfaces a bit, then let people "play" and come up with various suggestions, and then let us decide on one or two themes that we all like (fat chance!) and all will support.
Congratulations to the KDE team! I look forward to the 2.0 release.
Re:Hmmm.. The themes (Score:1)
You could, of course, use the GUI theme creator to create your own KDE theme...
George Russell (russell@kde.org)
Switching allegiances (Score:3)
However, I have to conceded that 2.0 is shaping up to look very nice indeed. Konq is something that, as a web designer, particuarly catches my attention. If they get it doing CSS and HTML4 properly then they'll be my friend for life :)
Also, I reckon I'd be far happier letting a new user out on KDE2.0 than gnome in its current state... Though whether KDE lives up to expectations remains to be seen... I for one am looking forward to it :)
More Screenshots (Score:5)
Very Nice! (Score:1)
Deosyne
KDE? (Score:1)
The screenshots are too big (Score:1)
If I'm not browsing themes.org, I don't want to see background images, start panels or whatever, just the plain application window.
Furthermore they're in gif format - all the colors are dithered down to 8bpp. I think this increases file size because it's less compressable. PNG files would be smaller.
These screenshots aren't the only big one in last time. There seems to be a trend towards big all-in-one screenshots. The bigger the better.
Re:Not flamebait (Score:1)
For instance, it is cool being able to drop the URL of a
Then, once you are running all those KDE apps, you
will just use KDE. After all, the only "resident" parts in KDE 2 and kdesk and kicker, kicker being optional, and kdesk tiny.
Slashdotted? (Score:1)
I managed to load it once and then hit refresh for a reason which resulted in "reset connection with server".
Perhaps wait a little while until it is back up again?
Quite Impressive (Score:1)
64Mb memory with Matrox Millennium II vga board. It's too slow
to run Gnome or Enlightenment, and although KDE is relatively
faster than Gnome on my box but I disliked the monolithic theme
of KDE. So I use plain-vanilla Windowmaker with Korean language
patch included.
I always envy the fantastic desktop themes of a PII-350 box
of my friends. He's running Gnome with Enlightenment. Well,
from the desktop screenshot, I think that KDE 2.0 desktop is
quite beautiful at least as various themes of E.
Hope soon I get KDE 2.0.
If you want to try it yourself... (Score:5)
There will be a new snapshot today.
The packages install to
They're made for Red Hat Linux 6.1, but should run without problems on similar distributions.
Re:Too big ? Nope! (Score:1)
PNG is undeniably more sophisticated than GIF, as well as being free of royalty problems; however it still doesn't enjoy universal browser support. Webmasters have a choice between being trendy and being compatible.
Re:Not flamebait (Score:1)
The key here is to respect the view of others in this matter. If you want to edit text-files, please continue to do so. There will always be room for you, even though KDE and Gnome are more popular alternatives these days. They are big and ugly compared to more minimalistic WMs.
To put down Gnome a bit, I find it too buggy, too much CPU and memory intensitive, to enjoy using it. KDE is IMHO faster, cleaner and easier to use. Of course this may change as Gnome develops some more.
- Steeltoe
BIG FAT WARNING (Score:2)
Re:Not flamebait (Score:3)
> I use Star Office, Netscape, and Window Maker.
Star Office, Netscape, and AFAIK Window Maker are *not* "lean and mean" packages - why then complain about KDE ? Anyway, if you used the KDE equivalents of these packages, then they would share libraries and consume less memory [I'm not trying to claim KDE doesn't use a lot of resources BTW]
> I'm only interested in app's, not ugly, messy desktop simulations
KDE is more than just a desktop, there's lots of apps that work with it too, including
* KOffice [potential replacement for StarOffice/Office]
* Konqueror [potential Netscape challenger]
> Why would I want a Windows-clone (KDE or Gnome)?
KDE has a lot of options built in - you don't have to make it look like Windows. It can provide a Mac interface, or you can even remove the MS-like "Start Panel" altogether if you wish.
Re:Not flamebait (Score:1)
They aren't for everyone - I admit preferring just the console myself.
But let's not forget about newbies who are used to Windoze - it's much easier for them to switch over if there's a beginner-friendly desktop to start with.
And KDE has some nice features that are useful even for people who know their way around Linux already. Most things are faster to do from a shell - others are faster in a GUI...
improved COM (openparts / KOM) (Score:1)
lets face it Desktop will not run well on a 486 let alone a P90
stick to the command line boys and girls anddont moan you can do everything there that you want to (vi rules
THemes can you drag KDE to GTK ?
(or the other way around)
vector surport I saw Koffice had some vector surport in it GNOME lacks this
PDF reading KDE has a pants one GNOME is good @ this (thanks !!)
pilot stuff hope thats improved !
overall I like what KDE is doing
KEEP GOING !!
peace
john
out
a poor student @ bournemouth uni in the UK (a deltic so please dont moan about spelling but the content)
Re:Not flamebait (Score:2)
WMPrefs comes with the default Windowmaker installation and is setup the moment you run it for the first time.
wmakerconf [linuxbox.com] is a GTK+ app that does much the same thing, but with a bit of a nicer (IMHO) interface.
Try them out..i think you'll find that you like them both.
Re:KDE? (Score:2)
However, on the off chance that you're serious, try looking at Linux.com's Page of Window Manager Choices [linux.com].
Re:improved COM (openparts / KOM) (Score:1)
Most CORBA stuff has been replaced with either DCOP (for IPC, much faster) or kanossa (embedding one application within another, again much faster).
Right now, this is at the cost of some compatibility - but CorbaDCOP bridges are being worked on.
While it may be nice there is still an issue (Score:1)
It still leaves the problem of the QT licensing. I know, I know... But last week I was at SD EAST and asked when they would be decreasing their licensing fees for commercial software. Their answer was "We need to live too!" (In a very snooty voice). Well excuse me!
I like Linux, even gave some Linux talks at SD. And I had the chance to talk to a few people about Linux. For Linux to attract the widest array of developers for the desktop they need to attract all developers. And the ones who cannot afford 2K USD are the shareware developers or small company.
And to be honest I find it disgusting considering companies like them charge so much, when companies like Cygnus charge only 199 USD for a development environment.
I have ranted and raved and until the commercial license changes I will not even look at KDE.
Right click menu? (Score:1)
mirror here (Score:1)
I'm not making this a hyperlink on purpose. If you've seen this site at all, please don't visit this page. PLEASE, PLEASE be very gentle.
Re:Right click menu? (Score:2)
Re:BIG FAT WARNING -- not quite so pre-alpha (Score:2)
Of course some applications are incomplete, etc. But I am using it for daily work from July and I had weeks of uptime.
The big letter warnings are more of a legalese kind of stuff, and what day really say is "please do not put it as default in the distribution (yet)".
L.
NO CORBA !!! what where they thinking (Score:2)
IPC done whithout a standard corba is a nightmare yes you can do it and yes you can make programing easyer wich is why they are doing it I surpose
BUT its incompatable nightmare and the only thing that would save it would be Koffice and the fact its open source (easy to change the whole thing write bridges and such)
IPC is for people who are speed freaks (im talking Cray people money to burn on development)
WHY NO CORBA ??
this is what Corba was designed to do and very well to it makes runing services easy and abstract ie you may run it where you like a server in hong kong or on your laptop and you dont have to worry because it was a standard thats why they where useing Mico
there where lots of flames and I read them and they seemed to say DCOP would be complemtry and you need an ORB DCOP would help speed things up relieing on the X way of doing things
am I wrong ?
regards
john
a poor student @ bournemouth uni in the UK (a deltic so please dont moan about spelling but the content)
request (Score:1)
Re:Not flamebait (Score:2)
Not enough "eye candy" Was: Re:Not flamebait (Score:1)
KDE is alright, but there should be something better. Screw system performance. What most people are interested in is "eye candy". The jump from DOS to Macintosh in 1984 was proof of that. The same goes with the eventual mass migration of the genpub to Window 9x from 3.1. I know a whole lot of folks who made the move from Win9x to Linux just to use Enlightenment. One thing a lot of "techies" seem to forget (and I am one) is that the ONLY thing that draws crowds is the "cool factor". I keep hoping that someone will add cinematic MPEG window animations to a window manager so that you can have a window "blow away" like grains of sand rather than just close. Or minimize into the background in a pseudo 3D environment. Does it help system performance? No. Does it improve the functionality of the OS and apps? No. But, frankly, who cares? If you are going to run a GUI on a Linux box, make it cool, easy to use and fun. Those are concepts that appear to be ignored too often. If you don't like these ideas, then pick another GUI, but don't think you will ever convince anyone that your choice of GUI is better than theirs. They picked theirs for a reason and so did you.
Peace Out
D.B.
Re:NO CORBA !!! what where they thinking (Score:1)
release On 15 dec (Score:1)
kdebase and koffice is feature frozen. This means that you should try to concentrate on bugfixing and getting the basic functionality to work correctly.
On 15 dec we will release. Make sure the important things work by then. It's up to you to decide what is important. "
quote from KDE news [kde.org]
Koffice looking good how about porting the functions to a GTK front end ? (GTK is nier the QT because I like to give windows(the microkernel one) a chance to use my apps QT makes you pay to use under windows
full respect to the KDE team !
regards
john
a poor student @ bournemouth uni in the UK (a deltic so please dont moan about spelling but the content)
KDE doomed to repeat Windows's mistakes (Score:1)
From the KDE FAQ:
It looks to me as though some of other OSes' (namely, Windows 95) worst features were also gleaned. For example:
While I have no doubt that the designers of KDE did not intentionally make parts of their interface bug-for-bug compatible with Windows, it is obvious that they have, at times, been trapped in the Microsoft paradigm. I can only hope that KDE 2 will have addressed these misfeatures. If not, I recommend the designers pick up a copy of Windows 9[5|8] Annoyances [annoyances.org] lest they repeat more of Microsoft's mistakes. If I were looking to "glean features" from an OS GUI, Windows 95 would not be high on my list of interfaces to emulate.
Regards,
Re:KDE doomed to repeat Windows's mistakes (Score:1)
Re:request (Score:1)
Re:NO CORBA !!! what where they thinking (Score:2)
-Statistically, most of the program interaction on the computer is between local programs (I would say 99%). So this is the case we have to optimize for.
-Unfortunately, if you are running your services in Hong Kong and accessing it from your laptop there are more things to worry about then just interoperability, and this is not a problem of CORBA or DCOP.
-During the last several years, CORBA became a horribly large standard, and ended up by claiming territory for which it was not designed for. The one-year KDE experience with CORBA as a local object model shows that it fails to provide a fast and reliable service for this case.
-On the other hand, yes, Linux users are speed freaks. Look on the comments in this thread: there are complaints that KDE is not faster then twm and it eats more memory.
Lotzi
Who cares (Score:1)
In the real world, people make money and buy food clothing and shelter. Free software doesn't pay the bills.
OK what about non X windowing (Score:1)
so am I right in thinking if you wanted to port KDE to a non X based windowing system you would need to port a chunk of X the libICE and so on ??
this seems mad to me !
(of course mad things go down well sometimes, ugly shaped blue machines sell who would have thought that ! buy an SGI and see colour)
linux and hurd and Mach and
I like X but what happens when we slowly convert to X12 ? or berlin takes off ? or want to write apps for MAC OS 10 (knowen as macosX now)
confused
john
a poor student @ bournemouth uni in the UK (a deltic so please dont moan about spelling but the content)
ummm.... (Score:1)
Re:Hmmm.. The themes (Score:1)
I installed one called win95 on a lark. I was not amused when all the icons changed to little windows. I quickly changed back to the "default" theme, and deleted win95, but those darn little windows were still there. Instead of a K menu, it was still a windows thing.
The horror! My KDE desktop was infected by Win95 icons.
It took me an hour or more to find and delete the icons that were causing this. I needed to restart kde to really fix things though. [tip: examine the text files in the
I didn't try the star trek theme, but a version of the moscow theme does this too.
Re:Ummm perhaps you should read the docs (Score:1)
Window manager properties config screen.
You can change your window placement policy to one
of several different schemes in the same place.
It would be nice if KWM remembered window postions but presumably you can launch xemacs with "-geometry" specified.
Also, real programmers do not "copy con: file.exe" they go "dd if=/dev/tty of=/usr/bin/myfile"
Regards
Kdevelop is THE SHIT! (Score:1)
Re:OK what about non X windowing (Score:1)
libICE exists on your system. No need to use X in order to use it. You can even write text-based DCOP clients !
BUT : if you want to port Qt and KDE to something else than X, good luck. If we convert one day, well we'll have to convert a lot of things in all X-based programs out there, and that's not only Qt and KDE !!! Whatever other project takes off, I hope they keep an X-compatible API.
Nothing's mad here. Open the source code of any GUI program, you'll see that currently it uses X. It has, we all run X.
Re:NO CORBA !!! what where they thinking (Score:3)
local procedure calls and local inter-application
communication. The KDE 2 team had a version
of KDE 2 which was using Corba for everything and
it was dog slow. They decided to build an
alternate version which did not use Corba, but
used shared objects and direct procedure calls
instead and they found that it was more stable
and much, much faster.
So in KDE 2 you can still use Corba if you want
to, but KDE 2 does not do this by default and
you do not have to, either, if you want speed.
Corba is an IPC protocol, which means that for
each procedure call there is a message being
sent. Doing this involves a lot of syscalls and
context switches, which basically makes things
slow. The method KDE 2 uses now makes foreign code
local to your applications and you can do local
subroutine calls - talk about saved overhead
and speed increase.
© Copyright 1999 Kristian Köhntopp
Re:Hmmm.. The themes (Score:2)
After looking at the code that does themes (its actually quite simple), the fix to this could be
a little tricky to implement. A theme can contain any number of icons that get installed to your local
One solution would be to have a list of "core" icons that always get reverted back to the defaults before a new theme is applied. Another solution would be to just remove (actually, just rename) _all_ user icons, but thats not very elegant either. If you have a better solution, let Mosfet hear it.
Whiners (Score:1)
New Mirror - old disabled (Score:1)
Random musings (Score:2)
Frankly, -ALL- the window managers (yes, even including twm) have their strengths and weaknesses. Most of them, I've not used in a while, but I have the knowledge that if I need to do something for which some old, half-forgotten window manager is absolutely ideal and everything else is just blah, it's there.
People can complain about (insert name of WM or desktop environment hee) being too slow, too bloated or too cheesy, but I think they're missing the point. The point, to me, is that X allows choice, in a useful sense, in a way that almost no other windowing system ever created does.
Actually, even the complaints are good, IMHO, in that they show that people -expect- choice, and are picky about what works for them, not letting someone else tell them what they -should- want, and why they're wrong if they don't agree.
Summary: Long Live REAL Freedom Of Choice!
Re:Not flamebait (Score:2)
However, I also question where the GUI areas of Linux have been heading. When I started using Linux, it was touted as being an entire OS that could live in 40 megs of HD space and 16 megs of RAM on a 286 , and yet be fully functional. I'm using right now a 486, running X-Windows and a generic window manager with xterms and Netscape, along with a rather high load web server among other things. I tried KDE 1.x and GNOME and both slowed my system to a crawl; sure, they're nice and convinent, but speed is much more important than looks.
(And yes, I know I can get a faster system for dirt cheap nowadays but that's not the point :-)
Basically, while I strongly believe both KDE and Gnome need to move forward to make Linux a viable desktop system, we still need to consider the true power users that don't need the intergration of all GUI parts and can deal with the simple window manager and inconsistancies across apps. And while KDE and GNOME apps can be run without having the main core package loaded (that is, you need the core library files), they still tend to be slower than those that access the original X libs directly.
I would... (Score:1)
If only anonymous cowards would do it themselves! (Score:1)
Re:I would... (Score:1)
Thanks, though.
Re:Looking Good "baited breath?" (Score:1)
Re:I would... (Score:1)
European mirror (Score:1)
Re:Not flamebait (Score:1)
The possibilities are nearly infinite, in regards to the customizations you can make. That is the real beauty of it. Yes the "stock" KDE is a lot like Windoze, and I am sure that was intentional. Why? So the new users aren't scared off. Your basic user expects a computer to look like windoze, with a similiar feel and features.
So if ya dont like it... change it. At least you have that option.
Re:It will always be free (Score:1)
In fact, I am much more confident about TT not screwing free software developers than I am about some free software fanatics screwing people who don't agree with their views on free software.
Server's Down! (Score:1)
Gnome has no window manager... (Score:1)
I suggest you look at the config for whatever window manager you are running. I believe both Enlightenment and WindowMaker (the two Gnome-aware WM I've used) allow you to set policies like this.
On thoughts and I/O and such... (Score:1)
Just to let you know, most humans have a linguistic preprocessor, a sort of Pretty Print if you will, that allows them to arrange random thoughts into linear, formatted output compatible with most other people's I/O standards. USE IT!
Looks nice, but... (Score:1)
KDE just eats up too much memory and is way too slow. I tried on a 300MHz machine with 192MB of Ram, and it didn't feel "snappy" enough for me.
Now I am back to plain Windowmaker.
Hmmm... (Score:1)
int main()
{
system("/usr/bin/netscape");
return 0;
}
I am not sure how that proves developer-friendliness, but apparently it does...
Re:Hmmm.. The themes (Score:2)
But first and foremost it must work. My experience with gnome/E was so bad with the version that shipped with RH6.0 that, even though I loved the way it looked, I probably won't try it again for quite a while. At this point in my life I don't don't want to spend hours tweaking my desktop or cleaning up core dumps that are spewed all over the place. I want a desktop that works. period. I want it to look good too, but functionality comes first.
After all, that's what drove me to Linux in the first place, functionality.
Re:Switching allegiances (Score:1)
Don't jusge KDE on the Redhat 6.0/ 6.1 default install of it. They've somehow managed to really screw it up. NIH syndrome, I suspect, trying to "encourage" people to use GNOME...
If you want a lovely default KDE installation, try Mandrake 6.1. It handles GNOME well too.
Re:Ummm perhaps you should read the docs (Score:1)
Regards,
K for Killer application? (Score:1)
Re:Hmmm... (Score:2)
Don't confuse HTML widget and web browser.
The point here is that you can very easily use an HTML widget in your application, be it a mail reader, a text file (help files, man pages,....) viewer, or whatever else.
A stupid example : want to add a 'credits' page to your app written in HTML ? Use KHTMLWidget.
How can you do that with netscape ?
Porting KOffice to use Gtk+ (Score:1)
1) The KDE class hierarchy derives off of the Qt hierarchy, and KOffice naturally uses the KDE libraries. So, porting KOffice means porting all of the KDE libraries first.
2) There's already much to do for finishing KOffice and KDE2, so I think it's not very likely that the KOffice or KDE developers are going to take the time to port to Gtk+.
However, there is a bright side. If you'd really be interested in it, I should think it would be possible to port it yourself, or put together a group of porters yourself, because all of the KDE code is GPL.
Oh, random thought before I go... I suppose it might be possible just to make a modified version of the widget classes, to make kdeui, khtml, and the rest of the libraries use the Gtk+ widgets, while still keeping the Qt programming interface.
KWM (Score:1)
Second, If you hate KWM, and its window placements, that much, do this to your startkde file:
- sleep 2 ; exec kwm
+ sleep 2 ; exec wmaker
And, whamo! No more KDE window manager. (Note: you obviously have to have Windowmaker installed for that to work.)
Re:Switching allegiances (Score:1)
KDE and Windowmaker (Score:1)
Just substitute wmaker for kwm in your startkde script.
bad example (Score:2)
>interested in is "eye candy". The jump from DOS
>to Macintosh in 1984 was proof of that.
Nope. They were competeing with 4.7 (?)mhz 8088s (though you could get 8mhz 8086's at the time, which were about twice as fast).
The mac was *significantly* faster than the dos machines, even after spending most of its power on the graphical system.
We put my 128k mac next to an 8088, running the same number crunching operation (numerical integrations, iirc) in microsoft basic. The mac was graphing the solutions it calculated faster than the 8088 could do the calculations--and aside from the plotting, the code was identical (we typed my code into tony's machine. He was shocked; he had been convincedhis machine was much faster).
Hmm, I think i just dated myself
Re:Whiners (Score:3)
I was under the impression that free software was about choice, not belittling others for the choices they have made -- and about doing the best with what one has, rather than "solving" a problem by throwing money at it.
Easy solution (Score:2)
Here's how you remove the offensive theme. Just rm everything from ~/.kde/share/apps/kwm, and restart kde / kwm.
If you backup your kwm folder, you can freely experiment with themes without fear of losing your original settings.
Re:KDE & Gnome are slow (Score:2)
I've come to the conclusion that all desktop environments are memory hogs, whether they're KDE, GNOME, or Windows 98 :-(. If you have a low-memory machine, you're much better off sticking with something like fvwm or blackbox that doesn't use much RAM.
-E
GPL (QPL) is fine (Score:3)
Ongoing royalties are what kills me as a software developer. I don't want to have to send 2% of my revenue stream to every #%%@ vendor library that's linked into my code. All those percents adds up too quickly, and they're all volume-oriented so I have to tell them "I'm going to sell 50,000 copies so you charge me the 1.5% instead of the 2% rate for 20,000 copies". The problem there of course is how the hell do I know how many copies I'm going to sell?! This is the computer business, folks! Great programs fail to sell all the time because the projected market for it dried up and moved on to other things, or because the market isn't there yet... per-copy volume based royalties are the utter PITS.
Remember, if you're an independent developer writing programs with QT, you can still develop the program with the QPL version. It's just when you actually sell it (get some money for it!) that you must send your $2k to the Trolls. If you can't make $2k off of a piece of software, you shouldn't be trying to release it as "shareware" anyhow, you should just GPL it and toss it onto the pile of Open Source code that already exists!
-E
Re:OK what about non X windowing (Score:2)
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux [gnu.org] to you mister!
Re:KDE doomed to repeat Windows's mistakes (Score:2)
Where you can list open bugs that haven't been closed in over a year (maybe fixed, but the ticket is left to
And where you find that you cannot submit bugs from any kind of web form, but have to send some kind of specially-formatted email.
Windows, meanwhile, now comes with a bug submit program -- they just bury it real deep.
My thoughts on KDE 2.x (Score:2)
Recently, I've had to edit the makefile for kdelibs again because it compiles them out of order and several dependencies don't work. It would seem not one of the developers ever recompiles this system from scratch, because there is no dependency checking.
Anyhow, when I got it working, I was impressed by the speed and looks (a bit crashy, but this was EARLY stuff and I didn't have everything installed either). The wizard was incomplete, but the art was good, but "My name is Kandalf"??? OH PLEASE. The wizard doesn't need a name, much less such a god-AWFUL corny (Korny?) one. Just a nitpick, but I just about gagged. Really.
Anyhow, slightly less trivial notes: I certainly hope it's not the default QT 2.0 look that I saw there. There *is* too much of a thing as "too much 3d". The buttons had these ultra-rounded edges, and the radio buttons looked not only way too bumpy, but
Kicker wasn't terribly impressive. I do not like having my taskbar crunched into a little, or even large applet space. I like to smack my mouse to the top of the screen (yeah i keep it at the top) and have the whole edge to select my app. yes, the idea of the "K" menu is also awful, I guess it's a necessary concession to people used to the equally awful "start" button. This is a gripe I had with gnome, and now KDE replicates it.
BTW, what the heck is krootwm called now? It was really crashy when I was using it, and I would have liked to be able to restart it.
Re:Not flamebait (Score:3)
Then don't install KDE. Sheesh! It's not like your perfectly-configured-for-your-needs OS will suddenly become less perfect because some newbie somewhere else on the planet installs a GUI over the top of his or her installation.
Free software is about choice. Why do you want to deny other people a choice just because you personally wouldn't choose it?
--
GNOME has gotten better (Score:2)
Yah, even the GNOME people admit that the version that shipped with Red Hat 6.0 had way too many bugs. But I can say that the October GNOME release, which I am currently running, is very stable, and works quite well.
I do think GNOME needs to drop Enlightenment in favor of another window manager. I mean, E! has some great eye candy and is very feature-filled, but it really isn't designed to integrate with GNOME the way kwm integrates with KDE.
A bug submit program for Windows? (Score:2)
A bug submit program for Windows? Wow, that's kind of like a windshield wiper on a submarine. Run it all you want, and things still aren't going to get any better.
Freedom and choice continue to solve that problem (Score:2)
They are aiming for the sorts of features Microsoft claims's windows has: Integration, easy-to-learn, drag-and-drop, object embedding, that sort of thing. Generally, power users are only minorly interested in these sorts of things, which is why, up until recently, Unix programs often did not have them. This explains why an bare-bones Xlib program is faster: Because it is a bare-bones Xlib program. TANSTAAFL, and you're not going to get all of those new features for free, either. Fortunately, power users are generally quite content to continue to use their bare-bones Xlib programs, while "home users" get their pretty icons and such.
Fotunately, Linux is still about freedom and choice as much as it is about performance and stability.
When I started using Linux, it was touted as being an entire OS that could live in 40 megs of HD space and 16 megs of RAM on a 286.
Minor nit-pick: Linux requires protected, virtual memory, something the i286 cannot do. So an i386 is the minimum processor Linux runs on. (While there are other projects based on Linux that are targeting the 286, they are not Linux.) Additionally, no one ever claimed you could run Enlightenment on a 386.
Lots of Konqueror shots here (Score:2)
--
"Some people say that I proved if you get a C average, you can end up being successful in life."
Re:OK what about non X windowing (Score:2)
Berlin is not as far but has the superior design. Once it gets started I think you will see development speed up.
What do you mean by wasted effort? Are you saying we should only have one windowing enviroment forever? If there was a project I was interested in developing I would work on it and I wouldn't give a damn about production value or how well it competes with Microsoft or how much it furthers the movement. I think Berlin is wholly remarkable in design. I am looking forward to a more usable release.
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux [gnu.org] to you mister!
Re: Whine... See my Ompages-Debian software select (Score:3)
Please see this document on Ompages [ompages.com] that describes how to set up a very functional graphical desktop based on Debian and Windowmaker specifically for use with low end hardware. If you are running debian you can 'apt-get install package1 package2 ...' these packages and you will have a nice fast desktop for your 486. I wrote this as part of the the Ompages Project [ompages.com] it is my contribution to the project to put together a software selection that people with low end and legacy hardware can participate in modern computer culture. Let me know what you all think.
Needless to say, I'm a huge proponent of retaining feature parity between legacy and modern desktops. It is essential to proliferation of computers throughout the world. It is also quite feasible. You sacrifice no functionality, but you will sacrifice some ease of use and look and feel qualities in some applications. But that is not such a bad thing, people who are forced for financial reasons to use older hardware are getting the added benefit of an opportunity to learn about computers in a much more thorough way than his/her counterpart with KDE, W2K. I greatly admire how far KDE has come. But we must remember who they cater to. KDE is to woo people away from W95/NT in the corporate/business setting. What about the rest of the world with an old computer? If you read and apply the above document you will have a very useful desktop that gives away *no* functionality and is based _mostly_ on free software. I have a fairly powerful desktop but love the speed and stablity my system has after applying what is in that document. I have applied it to my girlfriend's 486 and it is not all that much slower. I enjoy it; I hope you all do too.
Oh, I understand... (Score:3)
Linux offers me things that I CANNOT get from MacOS or Windows, in a million years, not in Jobs and Gates' wildest dreams. At this time, mostly what it offers me is an escape hatch. I am typing this in MacOS, from which I've been reading interesting news such as the fact that newer MacOSes are bringing in auto-update behaviors that are the antithesis of what I can tolerate on my computer.
I don't think either KDE or Gnome are remotely comparable to MacOS for usability. I don't _ask_ Linux to be as usable as what I pay for with MacOS. Instead I ask different things of Linux: first, I ask that it be there if I need it, and second, I ask it to be something I can completely control and audit, the power to reconfigure the system being in _my_ hands- lastly, I ask it to not forget this, but I am thankful that the nature of Linux is to preserve areas of difference and iconoclasm where I'd be able to settle.
I dispute that a desktop environment adds functionality. I _totally_ dispute that. I use one every day in MacOS and I still dispute that claim... what's happening is that the desktop environment is _attempting_ to provide _other_ _interfaces_ to data and ideas that might otherwise have to be jotted down as notes or interacted with by words and sentences.
This is a far cry from providing _added_ functionality. Particularly with the Windows paradigm, it's actually a loss of functionality in many ways- the attempts at other interfaces end up so strange and convoluted that the 'visual' environment has more unwritten rules than the old CLI environments had. This all must be memorized, just as CLI rules were: another nasty gotcha is the tendency to assume that the GUI approach is inherently so 'intuitive' that controls and objects can be strewn around and reshuffled arbitrarily.
These new desktop environments are not remotely new- they are simply implementations of 'the other paradigm' in computer interaction. First there was language-based interaction, and 'talking' to the computer with words, commands, and remembering what it said in reply. Then there was the graphic-based interaction, which was originally intended to convey the sense of a logical, consistent environment like a physical object such as a desk, 'mapping' to direct physical manipulation of realworld objects, and operating on specific rules worked out in advance.
What more could a Unix user want? (Score:3)
But I have a question that might stand a chance of being answered here. It is this: What more could a Unix user want? Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that KDE suffices to mollify those vendors and users who are really just interested in Winix. But what about the real hackers? What do they want?
Obviously, it's not Winix. But what is it?
Re:Switching allegiances (Score:2)
If having only one desktop would make it anything like CDE I would say THANK GOD we have a bunch of competing ones.
Drag and drop is nice, but it is not a must have feature. A desktop looking slightly more modern than Windows 2.11 (yes, I meant 2) sort of is...
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Re:'Desktop Environments' (Score:2)
they have large amounts of code hidden inside which radically simplify tasks which used to be extremely complex
Like what? I use 'plain old WindowMaker.' I'm a law student and computer enthusiast and tend to deal with mostly all documents, html, ps, pdf, etc.
My ideal 'desktop environment' needs an emailer (mutt)(non-kde/gnome), a browser (netscape/soon to be mozilla)(non-kde/gnome), a text editor/word processor (nedit/wordperfect)(non-kde/gnome), a file manager (mc)(non-kde/gnome), a presentation tool (mgp)(non-kde/gnome), and a figure drawer (xfig/gimp) (non-kde/gnome).
What is KDE making easier in my life? I've used it, and found that it is pretty nice, but after about 12 hrs of use, my memory is is really bogged down at 144MEG of RAM.
I believe in spartan simplicity. In WMaker with the combination of keybindings and edited menus, I can move around my desktop and my most frequently used applications in eye blinks. Clicking around is such a waste of time and energy, I think it actually raises my stress level to have to click my mouse more than twice. I prever hitting F12, have my menu pop up, use arrows to find my app and launch it. This takes about two seconds.
To be really fast, I have my terminal, editor, browser and file manager in a custom menu that I have attached key bindings to. So alt n starts netscape, alt t starts terminal (wterm -tr -wm) (for a beautiful transparent term for wmaker that takes only 1K of RAM), ctrl alt m start midnight commander (gmc is no where near the functionality, kfm is closer but what a mem hog at 11K, gmc is only 6K. MC is 1.5K and in wterm there are clickable areas for everything. It's so fast.
The only functionality I miss is being able to drag files to a trash can before I decide to permanently delete them. But I use the OffiX-files and OffiX-trash applications to get that functionality.
What I would love to see is GNUstep get a lot more attention. Applications based on GNUstep and WINGs are fast, light and pretty. Linux should be optimized for stablity and speed first and ease of use second. Feature parity with Win is a waste of time. We need feature parity with NEXT and Apple.
Re:What more could a Unix user want? (Score:2)
Right now, the environment I most like is SGI Irix. Buy a used SGI Indigo2, plug it in, turn it on and there it is: Once installed, everything works. Fonts work. Cut and paste works. Netscape works (well, it crashes too, but less than on other platforms). Xemacs works. The fonts work; I can read most of them without eyestrain. The user interface looks nothing like Windows95, so I can immediately get the feeling I'm not a Microsoft drone. The system is reliable; other than running out of disk space, I've had exactly zero problems with it.
I'm not going to say my SGI machine is perfect - the 2GB system disk is a travesty, to tell the truth, and their upgrade prices are a comedy routine in and of themselves. But you can buy an old SGI for about the same as a similarly equipped PC, and if you upgrade it using off-the-shelf memory and disk, it's not expensive to feed.
So, what would make me want to move on from Irix? Probably something like Enlightenment, something where the creator rethought everything from the start and produced a truly unique brainchild. Enlightenment also looks pretty, and I doubt that I'd have a SGI box if I didn't like pretty.
But I'm not in a big hurry. If commercial software wasn't so expensive on the platform, I'd have no complaints whatsoever about SGI (other than the fact that SGI the company appears to be deserting loyal users such as myself).
To get closer to an answer to the original poster's question, I think what "real" hackers want is a user interface that's not difficult to use, but which doesn't remind them of Windows. I think that to many, a different system should look, well, different. I miss the colourful world of operating systems of the past, from LISP machines to TENEX to ITS, where every machine was an intriguing new challenge.
Now, it's more or less to Unix and Windows, and I daresay few hackers appreciate the latter. So we're left with just one OS to call our own. Depressing.
(But Be's looking interesting. And I think that if you read the above, you can see Be's appeal quite clearly).
D
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*g* agh! I've been Robertoed! ;) (Score:3)
It _is_ a matter of thinking. And yes, I _have_ tried both KDE and Gnome. KDE let me log onto the net using kppp before I'd even sorted out pppd. I owe KDE lasting thanks for being an important part of my Linux adoption process.
That said, you're completely, stubbornly wrong about your assumption that it's all just a matter of habits. That's a crock: it's also both uneducated and insulting that you're claiming I hated KDE simply because it was unfamiliar- if that is the case, why did I enjoy bash? My objections to _BOTH_ KDE and Gnome are simply that they attempt to do desktop interface _badly_. They bring nothing new and make little or no effort to actually present a consistent, predictable visual 'picture' of the computer.
In fairness, I will point out one of the major points that always leads me to this conclusion- I have never seen _any_ file manager, other than the MacOS Finder, that behaves as though the user's placement of an icon or object is in any way significant or worthy of notice. It's always 'and now we sort everything and line it up in neat rows, because we can'. I _realise_ that's what everybody but MacOS does, but can't you see that it screws up people's orientation? That's not how a desk behaves. On a desk, you put stuff down and it stays where you put it- witness the cluttered workbenches of a thousand techies all over the world. If someone came in and organised everything alphabetically, they would be _lost_. Why do you and just about every other GUI maker insist on taking control of the graphical objects and reshuffling them?
To add to this, you may well do better than most X developers (particularly singling out the GNU developers, who should know better!) at providing keyboard shortcuts to operations. However, you seem to not have a clue as to how prevalent and consistent this is in the environment I'm talking about- it really loses you credibility to claim that my switching to KDE and doing everything that way is merely a matter of habit. You don't seem to know what you're talking about... so you insist, repeatedly, that it's just a matter of my being personally prejudiced against your way of doing things, which you maintain is not merely comparable but equal. Do you have _any_ _idea_ of how many millions of dollars a company like Apple spent on human interface design? On how many hundreds of hours designers like Bruce 'Tog' Tognazzini spent designing and testing and working to make these things sensible and usable? Have you actually read the work of others in this area? Hell, you could read _Microsoft_ Human Interface Guidelines- they don't obey their own rules, but they too have put the effort into this area, and that's for just one reason: it's not just a matter of what people are used to, there are actual rights and wrongs involved.
I don't care if you say 'I personally believe your mac is probably better in usability'. I am saying this: as somebody who is concerned with human interface design, I would like to see you making less assumptions. Yes, the world is heavily biased (polluted?) due to the vast numbers of people who have been extensively taught Windows HI rules. Yes, I personally am out in left field using a Mac but espousing purely CLI human interface guidelines, something I haven't even really begun to properly develop on a large scale. Still, every time (and it's been several times, hasn't it?) I see you come back at a critisism with 'That's just your habits speaking, there's no difference so just try it and lose your other habits', I cringe. You CAN'T learn anything if you deny there's anything to learn. KDE is ill served by those assumptions. Keep them if you must- I choose to challenge them.
Re:*g* agh! I've been Robertoed! ;) (Score:2)
"It _is_ a matter of thinking." Nonsense. You can't judge without experiencing.
People hate unfamiliar interfaces. If you feel insulted by having that generalization applied to you, then I'd say you are too easily insulted to be worth arguing with.
You are finding fault on KDE and GNOME at the same time for not being original and for not being identical to MACos. That's schizocriticism.
KDE does make an effort to present a coherent representation of the computer. If you find the effort a failure, that's a whole different thing.
"I have never seen _any_ file manager, other than the MacOS Finder, that behaves as though the
user's placement of an icon or object is in any
way significant or worthy of notice. It's always
'and now we sort everything and line it up in neat
rows, because we can'. I _realise_ that's what everybody but MacOS does, but can't you see that
it screws up people's orientation? That's not how a desk behaves. "
This paragraph by itself shows how prejudiced you are. Face it: your computer is not a desktop. You are not finding here that KDE or windows doesn't present a coherent representation of the computer, you are finding that they are not coherent to what you expect, because you expect them to behave like a MAC!. It's habit, TRAINING. Feel insulted already?
If you think you are presenting a real problem a real windows user ever had, I challenge you to find me ONE reference to this that is not from a MAC user. Go ahead. My email is available.
"your way of doing things, which you maintain is not merely comparable but equal"
Go reread my post. Now understand it. Let it enter your pedantic brain. Now reread the part where I specifically say MACos is superior from a usability point of view. Now apologize.
"You CAN'T learn anything if you deny there's anything to learn"
Where the HELL did I say that? I suggest that, if you want to argue with voices in your head, you do it in a private place. All I am saying is that for most practical purposes, most people can adapt to one thing or the other without giving a damn, as soon as they had time to adapt.
That's why there are 300 million windows users who would hate using a mac if it was placed in front of them tomorrow, but wouldn't care in 3 months.
Now, reread your post. If you felt insulted by mine, how the fuck should I feel about yours?
BTW: I don't know why, considering the pedantic ass you are, I always end helping you. Did you read my response to you on Usenet about your mail server thing from yesterday?
Re:Actually... (Score:2)
Re:Read the license. (Score:2)
A form that is separate from the Software? So yes, a CVS server is allowed, but this prevents you from making tarballs for people who don't want to use CVS. My original argument stands unmodified. Source tarballs are the standard distribution method for free software. I can see no reason for trolltech to disallow that other than to prevent independant development forks.
Re:Gnumeric vs. Kspread (Score:2)
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux [gnu.org] to you mister!
Some Answers to What a Unix User Wants (Score:2)
- Make sure that in optimizing the program interface for the two-minute beginner, you haven't pessimized it for the two-year daily-user.
- Keep it touch-typist friendly.
- Let me keep my eyes on the screen at all times, not on the input peripherals.
- Mimimize the context switches between mouse and keyboard. It slows me down. I can type much, much faster than I can mouse around.
- Minimize all required mouse use, because it causes RSI. Let me keep my hands on the homerow as much as possible, not dancing around the funny keys that require me to look down to find, like HOME, END, PAGEUP, etc. Put those on real keys.
- No prior Windows knowledge expected, required, nor in fact, even beneficial.
- All programs, configurations, library functions, and interfaces must be completely documented.
- Never make me do anything tedious and repetitive, like holding some an arrow key or a mouse for a long time just to move a large distance.
- I shouldn't have to read the library code to figure out how Gtk works, nor existing themes to figure out how to make a new one
- nor should I have to click on happycons to get some dribbled out set of web pages for how to run or configure a program
- The documentation should searchable, indexable, typesettable, and printable.
- Follow POSIX 1003.2 requirements that all commands have a minimal manpage.
- Scriptability. Automatability. All the knobs need to be exposed either via raw text files or else normal CLI programs.
- Respect for the user's existing preferences where applicable.
- X defaults -- If I have *visualBell: on, then that should suffice for all applications.
- stty settings -- If I think ^H is what I want to erase a character, don't make me use DEL or ^?, or worse still, the BACKSPACE key (which sends a ^H anyway) yet not Control-H). And if I have my werase set to ^W, pay attention to that, too.
- Preferred editor -- if I have an editor setting in my environment, don't make me learn a new one just for your program. Most toolkits' text widgets have insultingly idiotic editing abilities -- pop up my preferred editor instead, or at least, give me that option. Perhaps prefered newsreader, shell, mailer, etc should come into play as well, but the sorry excuse for an editor is the most annoying thing.
- A way to leverage existing knowledge of words. This may sound bizarre, but nothing is more frustrating to this Unix user than to have a program pop up a set of seventeen tiny graphical stickpin icons. Don't make me guess what your cutes idea of a neat bitmap for an exit or reload or search button is. Allow me the option of using real words, not happycons. And allow for keyboard shortcuts on all functionality.
- Don't make me suffer through a tedious manual search through scads of cascading menus each time I want to find something. There is no way to search, analyse, or print a cascading menu system. This is insane. A common mechanism provided by the low-level toolkit and managed by the desktop or window manager must be invented. Life is too short for hunt and peck. For example, the window manager could provide a way to search the menus of the current focussed program for a particular text string. That way you never have waste your life on an idiotic recursive but linear visual search.
That's enough for now. I'm sure it's far too late to expect almost anyone to read this. You might want to check out the short Unix as Literature [performancecomputing.com] or the longer In The Beginning [cryptonomicon.com] for more background on Unix culture.