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KDE GUI

KDE 3.2: A User's Perspective 632

Posted by CmdrTaco from the get-your-gui-on dept.
Karma Sucks writes "In KDE 3.2 - A User's Perspective (mirror), W. Kendrick gives an incredible visual overview of some of the lesser known features of KDE. Together with a recent article on GNOME, it's become clear that the Linux desktop has all but surpassed proprietary alternatives."
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KDE 3.2: A User's Perspective More

KDE 3.2: A User's Perspective

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  • Mirror (Score:5, Redundant)

    by Mr. Darl McBride ( 704524 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @12:05PM (#8830559)

    Thought you might appreciate a mirror [skittlebrau.org], as well as a downloadable copy [skittlebrau.org](about 3.6 meg).

    Mod up with 'underrated' instead of 'informative,' otherwise I'll use your karma points to troll at +1 later.

    ~Darl the Honest Troll

  • The article did what it was supposed to do (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gregwbrooks ( 512319 ) * <gregb AT west-third DOT net> on Sunday April 11, 2004 @12:08PM (#8830585)
    I had *no* idea about some of this functionality -- I haven't tried KDE since before 3.0. Time to set up a test box...

  • "all but surpassed" (Score:5, Funny)

    by Twid ( 67847 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @12:10PM (#8830594) Homepage

    It's become clear that the Linux desktop has all but surpassed proprietary alternatives.

    Now that's a phrase I'm sure even Microsoft can agree with. Let me rephrase it for you:

    "The Linux desktop has everything proprietary alternatives have, but the proprietary alternatives are better." :)

    • Re:"all but surpassed" (Score:4, Informative)

      by Daniel Dvorkin ( 106857 ) * on Sunday April 11, 2004 @12:17PM (#8830627) Homepage Journal
      I think you misunderstand how the phrase "all but" is used in everyday speech. Its literal meaning is different from its commonly understood meaning. As used here, it's an intensifier.

    • Re:"all but surpassed" (Score:5, Funny)

      by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @12:20PM (#8830643)
      "The Linux desktop has everything proprietary alternatives have, but the proprietary alternatives are better."

      Blasphemer !!!

      Have you not seen the miracle of the screenshots, the screenshots that prove that KDE is the best thing in the universe.
    • It's become clear that the Linux desktop has all but surpassed proprietary alternatives.

      Yeah, hehe, because of this I even thought that linked article containts some rant about KDE's supposedly poor usability. Talking 'bout someone using a phrase without having understood it...

      In related news: When I was a very little kid, I used the word "f*ck" sometimes because it seem to have an odd effect on the older kids. I really didn't know what it meant, though.
      • Yeah, hehe, because of this I even thought that linked article containts some rant about KDE's supposedly poor usability.

        When I saw that the second screenshot was about how you can cut and paste error message to submit your own bug reports, I still wasn't sure which way the story was going.

        But seriously, KDE is looking good, some of the nice features like viewing inside zip files and such will help win over windows users.

    • Re:"all but surpassed" (Score:4, Insightful)

      by IntlHarvester ( 11985 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @02:13PM (#8831440) Journal
      Looking at those KDE screenshots reminds me a lot of this old cartoon [adequacy.org].

      Showing off pictures like this [skittlebrau.org] or this [skittlebrau.org] just shows that people don't quite get it -- it like they just managed to reinvent Windows 95 plus a couple extra features.

      Meanwhile the modern Windows user is used to looking at stuff like this [theeldergeek.com]. Totally different user experience to what you see on 'last generation' desktops. (Of course, all the Windows users on slashdot turn off this fluff, but after watching a totally new user play around with XP a bit, you realize that "task-oriented" features are actually helpful.)

      I'm not saying that KDE isn't a good "power user" desktop, but the proprietary folks keep raising the bar, and having a "Start Menu" isn't enough to cut it anymore.
      • Not seen YaST [suse.com] then? Looks quite a bit like the WinXP screenshot you linked to, as in organised into major groups, then further divided.

        In fact, I'll go out on a limb here and say IHBT, as the KDE config stuff is very different to the screenshots you linked to.

  • All BUT surpassed? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zerocool^ ( 112121 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @12:11PM (#8830597) Homepage Journal

    has all but surpassed proprietary alternatives.

    Comment 1: Haven't we been here for years, now? "Linux is almost ready", "We've all but surpassed windows", etc.
    Comment 2: We won't have a desktop that can compete with windows until we still fix the stupid things that are inherent to x-windows WM's. All I want in life is to be able to cut-and-paste reliably between applications. Text, and pictures, mind you, and in a perfect world, spreadsheet data. You know what else would be nice? If it were faster - i.e. didn't have to go through unix sockets to do anything. Or if it didn't have to render all image files into bitmaps offscreen to display them.

    No, we've still got a long way to go. I do really like a good gnome desktop running ximian, it's true, and it's getting better. But, sorry, we're no where near the "it just works" of apple / winxp. //asbestos armor on.

    ~Will

    • Re:All BUT surpassed? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Martin Blank ( 154261 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @12:25PM (#8830672) Homepage Journal
      I don't think there's that far to go, really. The trouble is making that last bit of distance. However, Sisyphus says the same thing all the time (not that the Linux goal is quite as difficult as his).

      Windows has, really, only one real edge: Office. I was using Linux as my primary desktop at work for a couple of months, and doing just fine, until Exchange 2003 rolled out, along with Office 2003, which will be tied into a SharePoint server, so I need that functionality, which I don't believe has been tied into any of the Linux desktop suites. CodeWeavers hasn't yet gotten Office 2003 to even install, let alone run, and even the earlier Office incarnations are a bit flaky.

      Simply put, until such time as Office runs on Linux (preferably natively) or someone comes up with something better in terms of the high-end features, it just isn't going to be able to cover that last bit of distance.

      There is growing grass-roots interest in my organization over Fedora; we now have it running full-time on a few security servers, and several people are playing with it as a desktop OS. They're finding that it works beautifully on most of our systems (a few of the newest laptops are showing some minor faults, mostly as a lack of driver support, but that's about par for Linux).

      However, there's a very pro-Microsoft bent to the entire workplace, and I don't entirely blame them. They want to have the newest and most productive architecture in place as a demo to the rest of the entity, and that is turning into a Win2003 Active Directory domain with Exchange 2003, Sharepoint, SMS, and a host of other MS products. I was skeptical when I came on board that it would all work, but it actually does, and pretty well. It's almost scary.

      Now, if I can just keep them from dumping the phpBB forum...
      • Exchange -> opengroupware Active directory -> Samba 3 (with ldap on the backend) I understand the Office complaints though, but IIRC OOo is getting opengroupware support in it's next implimentation
      • I think that's true in the workplace environment, but the average home user has no use for the Office document servers and whatnot. For them, OpenOffice.org will do pretty much anything you can ask for. The problem is that not enough people know about OpenOffice.org. I feel that if it were more widely publicized as a free alternative to the $200-$600 suggested MSRP of MS Office, people would start to pay attention.
        • Except the workplace is what drives the suite. I remember when a lot of people were using WordPerfect at home simply because it was what they used at work, or they used MSWorks because they didn't have a computer at work. At school, we got a copy of Word 5.0 for the Mac, and I kind of liked it at the time, but I thought it was too bulky in comparison to the one I was using, which fit on a floppy disk (and for which I can't recall the name for the life of me... It was a Mac program, and had a logo of a sor

      • Re:All BUT surpassed? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by ajs318 ( 655362 ) <sd_resp2@earthsh ... .co.uk minus bsd> on Sunday April 11, 2004 @12:56PM (#8830883)
        I think the suoeriority of MS Office will be seriously undermined when somebody releases a set of MS Office macros for exporting perfect OpenOffice.org or KOffice files {MS would add their own OO.o export over Ballmer's dead body, though OO.o import would be good for persuading Open Source users back}. Right now, the main -- even the only -- stumbling block against wider-spread adoption of OpenOffice.org is the imperfect file import. So thinking laterally, we can fix it at the other end {the MS Office macro language is better-documented than the save formats, and the OpenOffice.org and KOffice formats are well-documented}. In fact, KOffice will be moving towards OpenOffice.org file format compatibility in a future release.

        On the server side, what I think is needed is for a few hardcore Linux-using organisations to release their own little in-house developed solutions to the wider community; where they will be mercilessly tweaked and improved, eventually to merge into something that will absolutely wipe the floor with Microsoft.

      • Re:All BUT surpassed? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Jadrano ( 641713 )
        I think with things like Sharepoint, this is similar to the situation with hardware support - it's not that MS Office is inherently better suited for collaborative systems and content management, but because it is used more widely, there are more such systems developped for it (e.g. Openshare). But I think it is already beginning to change, a smaller company I know that offers content management and intranet system has switched from Windows to platform-independent Java. When OpenOffice.org and StarOffice ar

    • Re:All BUT surpassed? (Score:4, Flamebait)

      by Ilan Volow ( 539597 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @12:43PM (#8830792) Homepage
      As the mods to the parent post illustrates, when people who have legitimate grievances and complaints with the usability of desktop linux get attacked by the linux faithful and get modded as flamebait, it's very easy to see why linux has been "almost ready" for nearly a decade.
      • I'll ignore the crack about "desktop linux", since I use KDE on FreeBSD instead, and assume that you mean "Free Software desktops for Unix and Unix like systems" instead.

        I understand that there are legitimate grievances and complaints about KDE, Gnome, XFCE, etc. But those projects do not have unlimited development resources. And even if they did have an infinite number of code monkeys bashing away at workstations, those legitimate grievances and complaints are often contradictory. Some complainer wants mo

    • Re:All BUT surpassed? (Score:5, Informative)

      by janoc ( 699997 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @12:46PM (#8830815)

      Pardon ? You are repeating the ancient FUD about X. When did you check the facts last time ?

      ad 1) - dumb trolling on a stupid typo by the article poster

      ad 2) cut&paste works fine, even with images and spreadsheets. Did you try OpenOffice or Koffice ? Probably not. If your Gnome has problems with it, that does not mean that *all* X-based UIs have problems with it. I guess that it works right even inside Gnome (although I do not use it myself), the standards for drag&drop are in place for very long time already. Interoperability between different applications could be better, but that holds for Windows and Mac as well. If you paste something from Excell into Photoshop, you are going to get less-than-stellar result too, because the application just does not expect that kind of data.

      The bull about unix sockets is so ancient FUD, that I am not sure, whether it is even worth commenting on. Yes, even local clients use unix sockets, because you know what ? It is equaly fast or faster than anything else available (even shared memory). That something runs over socket does not inherently mean that it is inefficient. Not to mention the advantage, when you really need to run something over a network. Windows nor Mac are unable to do that without a costly 3rd-party add-ons (OK, XP has RDP now, but that is hardly the same thing).

      Current X UIs are plenty fast, in many cases a lot faster than the Apple or Windows UIs, even though the latter run localy, direct on the hardware. How could that be true ? Could an application design be the issue ? No, let's just bash X instead, because it can do many things I do not use, so it has to be bloated and slow ...

      Actually, if you feel that the application is slow, in 99% it has nothing to do with X, it is a bug or sloppy coding in the application.

      And the remark about rendering images off-screen in order to display them - are you sure, you know what are you talking about ? Any graphic engine has to unpack the image into a buffer somewhere. And most (if not all) UIs have nice libraries, which do this for you without having to bother with X pixmaps. Windows and Mac just hide this one step from you, but it happens anyway.

      How the parent could have been moderated insightful is really beyond me :-( Mindless bashing of X seems to be really popular topic.

      Jan

      • Re:All BUT surpassed? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by mgkimsal2 ( 200677 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @12:52PM (#8830855) Homepage
        cut&paste works fine, even with images and spreadsheets. Did you try OpenOffice or Koffice ? Probably not. If your Gnome has problems with it, that does not mean that *all* X-based UIs have problems with it. I guess that it works right even inside Gnome (although I do not use it myself), the standards for drag&drop are in place for very long time already. Interoperability between different applications could be better, but that holds for Windows and Mac as well. If you paste something from Excell into Photoshop, you are going to get less-than-stellar result too, because the application just does not expect that kind of data.

        No, it does not 'work fine'. The Excel/Photoshop analogy is poor. Cut a number from a cell and I can paste it in anything in Photoshop which expects text. Consistently, between versions of Windows and versions of Excel and PS. The same is not true of Linux apps.

        So, you don't use Gnome - not even any GTK apps? But you're qualified to say that a cut/paste problem doesn't exist on the Linux desktop?

        I can consistently reproduce cut/paste problems all the time on various Linux distros and between various apps. There are still 2 major ways of cut/paste, and they don't interoperate with each other. That's all there is to it. When/if that'll get fixed, I don't know. To get something 'fixed' generally means people have to agree it's a 'problem' in the first place, which it seems a majority of people *don't* in the Linux/Unix world.
        • Huh? What are you talking about?

          1. Start gedit.
          2. Type in something. Select all and click Copy.
          3. Start kedit.
          4. Click Paste. It works.

          The standard is clearly defined here: http://www.freedesktop.org/Standards/clipboards-s p ec
          QT 3.0+, GTK 1.2+, Mozilla, OpenOffice, Motif, and probably a lot more other apps and toolkits out there all comply to this standard (though Mozilla has a few bugs). These apps and toolkits cover 99% of all apps that Linux users use today.

        • Re:All BUT surpassed? (Score:4, Informative)

          by spitzak ( 4019 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @04:00PM (#8832122) Homepage
          Your post is strange. The complaint about Linux is that stuff *OTHER* than text does not work. The numbers in your spreadsheet will cut and paste just fine. Try it. Cutting & pasting images does not work, and this is entirely on the brain-dead "pure" design the original ICCCM people did back when Unix design was being dictated by the OSF and other buracracies. (basically the problem is that although the design is almost identical to Windows, the ICCCM said "here is where you put the number identifying the type of data, but we won't say what the numbers should be because that is not our job", while at the same time Microsoft said "hey if you put a 14 in there it means a .BMP file" (note the number is not correct, but that is the idea).

          Also, I challenge you to find any modern program that does not use Ctrl+X and Ctrl+V for cut and paste (yes the middle-mouse stuff works as well, but that does not mean the Windows shortcuts don't work).

          If you say "Emacs" or anything like that, I would like to point out that cut & paste don't work in Emacs on Windows either. I mean MODERN programs, ie written after Windows 98 came out, which is when all the programs you are comparing to on Windows date from.

      • Re:All BUT surpassed? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Blakey Rat ( 99501 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @01:56PM (#8831353)
        ad 2) cut&paste works fine, even with images and spreadsheets. Did you try OpenOffice or Koffice ? Probably not. If your Gnome has problems with it, that does not mean that *all* X-based UIs have problems with it. I guess that it works right even inside Gnome (although I do not use it myself), the standards for drag&drop are in place for very long time already. Interoperability between different applications could be better, but that holds for Windows and Mac as well. If you paste something from Excell into Photoshop, you are going to get less-than-stellar result too, because the application just does not expect that kind of data.


        I just tried this (even though I can't think of any reason for anyone to possibly need this feature) on my copy of Excel 98 and Photoshop 5.5 for MacOS 9. Now, remember these pieces of software are both *old*, both purchased in 1999 I believe. Here's the result [schend.net] It does exactly what anyone would expect it to do! Since Excel data can't be formatted into data Photoshop can edit, it pastes it as a bitmapped image into the Photoshop image. If I paste the exact same cells into Word 98, it'll use the editable version and format it as a table.

        Note that Excel and Photoshop aren't made by the same company... this is all governed by the OS and I'd get the exact same results if I pasted into, say, Corel Painter or Aldus Superpaint 3.0 (released 1991.) (In fact, out of curiousity I did try Aldus Superpaint 3.0 and, indeed, it works exactly as expected again.)

        This is how copy and paste should work. When Linux can do this, I might consider it.

  • Looks nice but no anti-aliasing? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Stack_13 ( 619071 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @12:17PM (#8830623)
    KDE has clearly achieved a aesthetically pleasing GUI (especially new icons look really nice), but anti-aliasing for the screen fonts doesn't seem to be switched on in the article screenshots.

    Is AA still done by Xft?

  • Missing it again. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Twirlip of the Mists ( 615030 ) <twirlipofthemists@yahoo.com> on Sunday April 11, 2004 @12:21PM (#8830648)
    The second item on the first page of examples includes a note that you can copy-and-paste error text from alert boxes. The sample includes an alert that says
    Could not start process Unable to create io-slave:

    klauncher said: Error loading 'kio-audiocd'.
    A truly desktop-ready operating system would never display an error like that. I mean, hell; is it so much to ask that if an error has to be cryptic, it should at least be grammatically correct?

    • Re:Missing it again. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @12:36PM (#8830747) Homepage
      I disagree. This is an above average (but not perfect) error message. Error messages should state:

      1) That an error occurred. This part should be clean and readable to an end user.
      2) The program, process, or whatever caused it.
      3) The condition that caused the error.
      4) The target that was being operated upon.

      This error has #2 (klauncher) and #4 (kio-audiocd). It almost has #3 (Could not start process, unable to create io-slave). The only problem here is that it is not entirely helpful to say what you were not able to do, you must say what condition was not met. For example "Unable to open file foo.txt" is not helpful. But "File foo.txt does not exist" or "File foo.txt does not have write access" tells us exactly what we need to change to fix the problem. Similary, "Could not start process Unable to create io-slave" is not great. At least we know why the process could not start: it is because it could not create the io-slave kio-audiocd. Better might be "io-slave kio-audiocd reports access denied" or "kio-audiocd not found" or "signal 11 from kio-audiocd"

      Anyhow, the point of an error message isn't to be pretty or grammatically correct. It is to provide the information necessary to identify and solve the problem. Better to have a cryptic message with all the info you need, than a long wordy grammitcally correct message that doesn't tell you anything. With the above error message, someone can call a technician, or a geek, or post on a forum, and the message is unique enough that they can get a relevant response. That is what is most important.

      • Re:Missing it again. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by fzammett ( 255288 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @12:50PM (#8830844) Homepage
        And as the original poster stated, you people STILL don't get it...

        I shouldn't have to post on a forum for a bunch of geeks to solve my problem. The error message should give me enough information to solve the problem on my own, as previous responder correctly points out.

        Yes, there SHOULD be an Advanced button, or something akin to that, so that I CAN post on a forum for the geeks to solve the really sticky problems, much like Windows does.

        This is NOT a ringing endorsement of Windows error message by the way because they are usually severly lacking in any useful information too. My point however is that the Linux community as a whole generally does not get this concept, but Microsoft is at least attentive to it, even if they fail in the implementation. Linux is simply NEVER going to be any kind of significant threat to Windows until these types of things get through everyone's head.

      • Re:Missing it again. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Wavicle ( 181176 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @01:48PM (#8831289)
        I disagree, the error is well below average:
        Could not start process Unable to create io-slave:

        klauncher said: Error loading 'kio-audiocd'.
        What process was supposed to get started?
        What is an io-slave and why were you trying to create it?
        What is klauncher?
        What is 'kio-audiocd'?
        Why was there an error loading kio-audiocd?
        What are the likely causes of this error?

        I'm not sure what it was the error dialog was in response to (even the mirror is slashdotted now), but here's what I think would be a better error dialog for the average user:
        Could not play CD. There may be no CD inserted or the disc may be scratched.
        Then go ahead and add a small "debug info" button that has the previous information of use to developers. End users have a pretty fair chance of solving this one. The 5% of those who have some other problem can then use the extra information and google for it.
    • Also, this use of the word "slave" is unacceptable [cnn.com].
      We need to stop this offensive labeling NOW!
      Before someone are feeling hurt! :)

    • Re:Missing it again. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by noewun ( 591275 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @12:59PM (#8830908) Journal

      A truly desktop-ready operating system would never display an error like that. I mean, hell; is it so much to ask that if an error has to be cryptic, it should at least be grammatically correct?

      I noticed that. I also noticed the plethora of information on the screen describing the resolution/bit-depth of the display settings. What immediately went through my head was, "too much information!"

      One of the things I have done to make money in the past is provide tech support for Joe and Jane Computer User. Not power users. Not Photoshop geniuses. Not people who program for the fun of it or who have a favorite Linux distribution. The most important thing I learned from dealing with people like this is that they're not Slashdot readers. They're not MacNN or Windows site readers, either. They don't care about which OS is better than the other, or which graphics card gets the most FPS. They think of their computers as toys or tools, much in the same way they think about microwaves or TVs. And what they want, most of all, is for their machines to work, period. If they work - get email, surf the web, play games and display porn - interest ends.

      Concerns about usability and GUI design aside, the greatest barrier to wider acceptance I see in the Linux community I see is a sense of elitism to which some members of the community seem to be attached. Now, I want to make it clear I am not talking about the Linux community as a whole, nor am I attempting to start some silly OS flamewar. I have, however, seen a consistent trend of elitism and a defense of elitism in posts here and elsewhere. The elitism takes the form of an attachment of importance to certain technical and/or obscure areas of understanding and an assumption that the understanding of these metrics and their concomitant languages implies the speaker is part of the Linux community, as opposed to a member of another group.

      Fr'example, how many threads here evolve into minute discussions of thread scheduling, micro- versus monolithic-kernel structures, memory subsystems, etc.? And, more importantly, how many of these threads include comments which attach a larger importance to these topics - if you don't understand how much better the journaling capabilities of Linux are when compared to Windows or OS X then you're obviously an idiot and should go on using your stupid Windows box!

      I bring this up because, in my opinion, this is the exact wrong focus needed to help Linux gain widespread home usage. My experience with Joe and Jane Computer User is that they don't care about any of this shit. And, more importantly, they are right not to care about any of this shit. This is the crux, because it is here that the idea that superior technical knowledge means one is correct runs headlong into the reality of the marketplace, which is that superior technical ability isn't nearly as important as the ability to gets one's message across to people who see their computer as just another home appliance. Mention the name of Steve Jobs here and you're asking for a fight, but one thing he understands possibly better than anyone else in the industry is that you have to give average people reasons to use a computer which have nothing to do with better journaling and everything to do with fitting the machine into their lives. Dell has done this by making the computer another commidity. Apple has done this by elevating the computer above the status of beige-box-tool. The Linux community, as a whole, can't seem to decide on a way to do this.

      I know I am not describing the Linux community as a whole. I am describing a particular subset of the community, a subset which is extremely vocal. I also know that this zealot mentality exists the Mac and Windows world's as well. However, as both the Mac and Windows world's have significant market and mindshare penetration into the home market, the zealot communities are mediated by those who understand the need to present another front to the average user. I

      • Re:Missing it again. (Score:3, Insightful)

        by sploxx ( 622853 )
        IMHO, you're right. Partly. Partly, because there *ARE* still the power users, nerds and developers out there who want a functional desktop and like much information and like being able to tweak the desktop to their needs. Don't annoy these. That's really important. For example, do not remove dialog undo buttons from a widely used linux desktop environment because (it is assumed that) the avg. user is too stupid to use them!

        So, yes, I'd like to switch off many fancy things for my grandma/-pa. But I also wa

  • Even more gimmicks (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mcamen ( 21939 ) * <mcamen.web@de> on Sunday April 11, 2004 @12:34PM (#8830732) Homepage
    And there is even more.
    Or did you know that you can use emacs like keybindings in KDE?
    One can for example open documents with ctrl-x-o, save with ctrl-x-s or search with ctrl-x-f (of course with KDE 3.3 one can also use less-like find with '/'). And mouse gestures are also supported...

    • (of course with KDE 3.3 one can also use less-like find with '/')

      Is this serious? This is my only gripe with konqueror (that I'm putting up with for the moment): not being able to do less like searches in web pages....

  • Not so fast (Score:4, Interesting)

    by beforewisdom ( 729725 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @12:35PM (#8830737)
    Together with a recent article on GNOME, it's become clear that the Linux desktop has all but surpassed proprietary alternatives."
    I recently downloaded the latest, greatest of each.

    Both have improved

    Both all crashed and/or locked up on me frequently

    That could be my distro or the way I have my system set up.

    I hate to say it, but this does not happen to me with my win2K desktop at work.

    KDE and Gnome have both come a long way, but they both have work ( albeit a lot less )to do to catch up to M$, let alone surpass it.

    For now, I am going back to icewm

    No crashes, no lockups, faster, fewwer resources, and it does all I need.

    Steve

  • sizing (Score:4, Funny)

    by bricriu ( 184334 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @12:38PM (#8830768) Homepage
    Yeah, check out that great screenshot showing the user easily changing his desktop size from 800x600 to 1024x768 without mucking around with an XConfig file!

    • Re:sizing (Score:3, Funny)

      by mgkimsal2 ( 200677 )
      So, we're only about 6 years behind other major operating systems in something so basic. Yay!

      I'm still waiting for someone to point out that this isn't as good as the Ctrl/Alt/+ combination, which has been the standard reply of the clueless for years when people complained that they couldn't resize their desktop. Hopefully those stupid replies will be put to bed, but I've little faith that those people will 'get it' even now.

    • Re:sizing (Score:3, Informative)

      by The Master Control P ( 655590 )
      Ever since I started on Mandrake 8.2 I've been able to change the screen resolution to whatever was supported by simply using drakconf. Now if something breaks the GUI then editing the XF86Config-4 is still an option, but if your GUI is broken then you've got other things to worry about than resolution.

      I don't know if the same function was always present in Mandrake, but I know it's been there since 8.2.

  • error on kooka.ocr page (Score:5, Funny)

    by rokzy ( 687636 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @12:39PM (#8830769)
    >It successfully read the title of an O'Reilly book!

    um, except it seems to have got it wrong, unless the title really is "Programming Embedded Svstems..."

  • minor quibble (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 11, 2004 @12:40PM (#8830777)
    the gnome reviewer claims that iTunes displays everything in one big list...
    which can only mean the author did not find the 'browse' button in iTunes, which lets you browse the archive by artist, by album, by genre, and all at the same time, too - i am organizing and accessing 30G of music just fine using this interface - it's genius.

    i don't know the Gnome app and don't want to take anything away from it, but beating iTunes in usability would be a very tall order. similar to the iPod, there is not much that can be improved on the core-functionality side.

  • Getting there... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rjch ( 544288 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @12:54PM (#8830872) Homepage
    Whilst it's all well and good that the Linux desktop is very pretty, it's still not as intuitive and easily mass-managed as it needs to be in order for it to be ready for the masses.

    Whilst I haven't looked at KDE recently (for some reason, my current PC refuses to boot any version of Linux I've thrown at it so far. Annoying, to say the least) modifying desktop behaviour was a horrific settings search. I don't recall an easy method (ala Policies) for enforcing desktop and icon settings.

    In any case, the desktop isn't the most important part of any operating system. Before Linux will be 100% ready for prime time, we need a lot more well-integrated application programs - the killer ones of course being a decent database (frontend - myPHPAdmin doesn't qualify), office suite (certianly getting there with OpenOffice) and "groupware" application. Whilst there are a few nice web-based applications, these are not as easy to use and flexible as a native application is.

    Having said that, any time I need to find an application to recommend at work, my first point of call is and always will be Sourceforge. Even if the application doesn't do precisely what we need, the company I work for isn't adverse to a little "tuning" of an application. (this is not always a good thing - our current workflow application is an abortion that grew from it's original Excel spreadsheet)

  • Yikes! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by arvindn ( 542080 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @01:04PM (#8830945) Homepage Journal
    I wish reviewers would choose a nice theme before making screenshots. Antialiased fonts have been available for at least a couple of years! I know, I know, this review is for showing off the functionality, not the looks, but newbies looking at it might get the wrong idea... Its definitely difficult for new users to grasp the level of configurability of the UI. My LUG did a "linux demo day" a while back, and one of the questions a visitor asked me was "all these desktops seem look different. what does linux look like by default"? I didn't have much luck telling him there wasn't one, and that it was distro and even version specific. So again, it would be nice if reviewers paid attention to these little things.

  • Silly question... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by evanbd ( 210358 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @01:07PM (#8830971)
    Is there a way to make eveything default to Firefox instead of Konq? or at least the random web links I can click various places?

    • Re:Silly question... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Gorath99 ( 746654 )
      >Is there a way to make eveything default to Firefox instead of Konq? or at least the random web links I can click various places?

      Go to the Control Center (somewhere in your Start Menu), then Components, then File Associations and change the settings as you like.

  • All this functionality in KDE is nice, but... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MonoSynth ( 323007 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @01:12PM (#8831016) Homepage
    I don't like the way all this functionality is brought to the user. It's much too chaotic, with much-used items mixed up with never-used items, wasting much time and resources with searching through options you won't use anyway. I booted up KDE 3.2 yesterday, and after five minutes I was starting to get annoyed by the huge number of menu items in Konqueror, the filebrowser that tries to be virtually everything. I think we can learn a lot from the success Microsoft has had with a much less configurable interface. A desktop doesn't need to do everything. The missing functionality will be delivered by third parties anyway, and if there are tools virtually everybody uses, you can consider it as missing functionality, and try to build it into the desktop. I think GNOME is starting to work this way now, but with GNOME the gap between the kernel and the GUI is too large (it misses things like device management).

  • It's the apps, stupid (Score:5, Insightful)

    by simetra ( 155655 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @01:22PM (#8831093) Homepage Journal
    KDE is nice and cool, I like it. However, "REAL" users need apps. For geeks like us who just admin, play with graphics, etc., things are dandy. There are even nice games that come with KDE. But there's a long way to go before Linux will ever be a realistic replacement for Windows.

    Key points being...
    • Apps users want and need
    • Apps users can install and uninstall without tracking down every bloody dependency ad infinitum
    • Standard UI across apps
    • A printing system that works AS EASILY as Windows

    Until those things become standard across all distros, Linux taking over the desktop will be a sad joke.

  • Some really nice features you won't find on XP (Score:5, Informative)

    by bogie ( 31020 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @01:52PM (#8831323) Journal
    I just wanted to point out an area where KDE kicks the crap out of Microsoft's best OS. File management.
    Looks at the pictures here.
    http://static.kdenews.org/mirrors/www.lugod .org/pr esentations/kde-user-persp/thumbnails.html

    Look at the way the thumbnails pop up to a useable size. In XP you can still see what the thumbnail is but having it double in size on mouse-over allows you to get a much better look without having to launch a seperate application, namely Windows Picture and Fax viewer.
    Also look at what happens when you copy or move a picture file. Instead of "Do you want to overwrite xxx.jpg with xxx.jpg" you actually see what your doing. And people say Linux desktops don't innovate...

    The tools and applications that are now included with KDE by default are vastly superior to the ones that come on XP. When will Windows get such full featured scanning/ocr software by default? How about a decent cd burner app? Heck KDE even has XP beat on creating something as basic as desktop snapshots. For those people who are willing to make a go of it using Free software KDE makes for a nice upgrade from XP once you realize all the great features that come with it.
    • When will Windows get such full featured scanning/ocr software by default? How about a decent cd burner app?

      Er... isn't it true that when Microsoft included a full-featured browser by default, there was a terrible outcry? Isn't it true that when they included a full-featured A/V package, there was a terrible outcry? Ditto the hard drive defrag?

      I thought the big thing here was to decry Microsoft's tendency to put good software in the package with its OS!

  • KAppfinder (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Wolfier ( 94144 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @01:53PM (#8831333)
    KDE needs to stop calling non-KDE apps "legacy" applications. This word used to be an euphemism for "old" (thus, "worse") and due to overuse, the word itself has become derogatory.

    To this day I have not seen a KDE editor that is better than GVim.

    The word "legacy" embeds some negative attitudes you don't really want to associate yourself with - so grow up - just call them what they really are: "non-KDE" applications.

  • In my world... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Rick Zeman ( 15628 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @02:18PM (#8831473)
    ... of grammar and syntax, this statement it's become clear that the Linux desktop has all but surpassed proprietary alternatives says that KDE and Gnome hasn't surpassed the propriety alternatives. And since I use 3 out of the 4 daily (MacOS X, Windows and KDE), I really agree with that.

    That's not what he meant, of course, but I want to know what he's been smoking and how can I get some?

    The whole thrust is "we're not as dysfunctional as we used to be so we're better." Not. Delude yourself as you may, it ain't a Mac and not in the same league as The Mac Experience.

  • easy install still missing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rashan ( 546637 ) <rashan@hagan-net.nEULERet minus math_god> on Sunday April 11, 2004 @02:35PM (#8831597) Homepage
    When you can install an application with out spending hours or days tracking down various RPMs, wrestling with dependencies and conflicts, or having to update gtk2.0+-0.2.2.1 or some other "obscure" thing, then it'll be ready. It's fine for people who like to do this kind of thing, but all people in the "real world" want is to be able to install an application and have it work correctly the first time. When you can download a file and install it in one click... then linux will be ready for the average user's desktop. All the rest of this stuff is just eye candy. Pretty, but not what's really needed.

    • Re:easy install still missing (Score:4, Informative)

      by Jagasian ( 129329 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @06:59PM (#8833388)
      You do not know what you are talking about. On Redhat you have apt and yum, for managing, installing, updating, and removing software. For Debian you have apt and comprehensive standardized repositories. Manrake, Gentoo, and Suse also have similar standardized software package management utilities and repositories.

  • All but surpassed... grin (Score:3, Interesting)

    by zpok ( 604055 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @03:41PM (#8831995) Homepage
    I'm really grinning. Not out of spite, it's nice to see so much enthusiasm, it's cool that Linux users are really trying to go one better than closed source OS.

    And the amount of apps that are provided - for free no less - is growing both in numbers and in usability.

    But seriously, before you beat the standard set-up of a new Macintosh, you'll really have to pull together and pull through.

    I'm talking about standard installed: OS X, which is really very nice, iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto, iChat, iDVD, Garageband, Safari, Mail, AppleWorks, iSync, AddressBook, Preview, Texteditor and a host of other small apps.

    I'm also talking about unpack, unwrap, plug in computer, set up internet and be surfing in less than ten minutes.

    That's about the experience you have with virtually everything you hook up to your macintosh. It's pretty cool, and hardly ever goes wrong. That's why I'm sticking to it, not for the lick-able buttons, a common misconception, but the last twenty years I've never put my tongue close to the monitor nor met anyone who has. Really.

    A tip for reviewers: when you want to compare to XP or OS X, make sure you've spent some time with their latest and greatest and have tried doing what average users do with those machines. Then and only then you can pull out the superlatives. It's not helpful to compare sys-admin desktops and say "well, there's everything the average Joe will need".

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