![KDE KDE](http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topickde.gif)
![GUI GUI](http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/gui_64.png)
![Software Software](http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/software_64.png)
Review: KDE 3.2 577
Anonymous writes "Today I installed KDE 3.2, third major release of the award winning KDE3 desktop platform, on my Fedora box. I have been using KDE 3.2 RC for the past few days and the final version from today. My first impression is 'wow.'"
Slashdoted? (Score:3, Funny)
Philip
Re:Slashdoted? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Slashdoted? (Score:2, Funny)
Let me guess... (Score:5, Funny)
Even better! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Even better! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well Duh! (Score:4, Funny)
Well Duh!
That way the user doesn't have to download two sets of images!
Re:Even better! (Score:4, Insightful)
Traditionally a lot of X11/Unix desktops were high resolution but only 1-bit colour; that's a bit extreme these days but 4-bit colour should be enough for a good screenshot that doesn't eat bandwidth. I fear it would get in the way of all the kewl graduated shading though.
Mirror anyone? (Score:2, Informative)
Mirror of article, other peoples impressions, would be most welcome.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Mirror anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
So far, tabbed browsing in konq and kwallet are my favorite features, but I haven't had much time to dig around looking for KDE easter eggs. I'll bet there's more neat stuff in there!
Re:Mirror anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mirror anyone? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Mirror anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
Favourite new features:
- the new macos style menubar + panel
- Speed - much faster than 3.1
- virtual folders in kmail - a folder that holds the contents of a search, but behaves like a normal mail folder
- the polish - so many little annoyances from 3.1 are gone.
The compilation on gentoo really doesn't take that long. Leave it running overnight and it'll be done in the morning (well, it was on my athlon-xp 1800). kdetoys and kdeaddons wouldn't compile for me, but someone on the forums probably has a fix.
Re:"Microsoft Violates Human Rights in China" (Score:4, Interesting)
The Microsoft accusation is also, nonsensical, BTW.
Re:"Microsoft Violates Human Rights in China" (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Mirror anyone? (Score:4, Interesting)
Frameworks and blah blah programming stuff aside, I find myself more at home at a KDE desktop then a Gnome one. It seems to just have more ways to customize your desktop then a Gnome setup. And, it's got a lot more applicaitons included, many of which I use and like a lot.
It's 100% user preference, and if you're really into Gnome, then by all means use it. KDE just seems to tie things together better, it's got more features, and it's got a much more agressive release schedule.
Wooooohoooo! (Score:2, Insightful)
Not that KDE 3.2 isn't distributed in other formats besides RPMs. But, man, I love new desktop environments. Gnome is nice and stable, but KDE is quite configurable.
Re:Wooooohoooo! (Score:3, Informative)
Not that KDE 3.2 isn't distributed in other formats besides RPMs.
Oh yes, it is. See http://www.kde.org/info/3.2.php [kde.org].
I've been running Debian binaries [kde.org] for a couple of days now and I'm quite impressed of the increased speed & sugar of the new desktop layout. There has been couple of crashes, though.
Fetch the Debian binaries by adding the following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list:
deb http://download.kde.org/stable/3.2/Debian stable main
FYI (Score:5, Informative)
Really? Infamous? (Score:4, Insightful)
I like KDE much better than Gnome, personally, but that's because I like have a well-designed API. When it comes to window programming, object-oriented is the way to go. QT gets this, so does anyone using wxwindows (a good rewrite of MFC/OWL). But the Gnome folks stick to their procedural programming style APIs which are fine for simple programs, but for larger programs it just means that the programmer has to reimplement the OO overhead.
Re:Really? Infamous? (Score:5, Informative)
I didn't know you had to win awards to be infamous. Anyway, here you go:
Re:Really? Infamous? (Score:5, Funny)
The Three Amigos! (Score:4, Funny)
To Anyone else who wants to correct the poster: before you hit "submit", sit down and watch The Three Amigos.
Re:The Three Amigos! (Score:5, Funny)
There were three movies we'd watch endlessly as kids: The Three Amigos, The Princess Bride, and Willow. I could probably still do any one of those movies line for line. Labyrinth fit in occasionally, but even back then we knew there was just something wrong with David Bowie's pants.
Re:Really? Infamous? (Score:3, Funny)
I'd say that KDE has a plethora of Options.
Re:Really? Infamous? (Score:2, Flamebait)
The most important one : My Very Own Award Given To Whatever Is Useful To Me(TM)
Re:Really? Infamous? (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, the elegance of the result is still debatable, but fortunately, there are lots of language bindings available.
Re:Really? Infamous? (Score:5, Informative)
Several reasons:
- At the time of gnome's creation C++ was slow (wrt compiled code) and unstandardised (wrt source). Well, there were standards, but the popular compilers didn't pay all that much attention to them, and in fact, the MS compilers still don't pay much attention to them. As a result, a C++-based project had an immediate speed and portability hit.
- There was and still is no C++ binary abi. When you upgrade to a new compiler, you have to recompile all your libraries just to compile a new app with it. This is ugly.
And finally and most importantly:
- The gnome programmers were all C fanboys. They didn't know C++, and didn't want to learn it. Better to go with the devil you know than the devil you don't.
It doesn't really matter nowadays. GNOME uses hacks to implement OO in C, KDE/Qt uses hacks (the metacompiler) to implement signalling in C++. Both are a bit of a kludge. And both work well. Though generally I find KDE's architectural design cleaner and easier to get into. But then clearly either can be learnt and learnt well.
Re:Really? Infamous? (Score:5, Informative)
Their most recent compiler (VS.net 2003) is much more standards compliant than you give it credit. Besides compiler limits, there are only five noncompliant aspects [microsoft.com] of their compiler. Most complaints that people had with the lack of compliance in VisualC++ were fixed [microsoft.com] in the 2003 release.
GCC 3.3 isn't fully standards compliant either. Reading through the 3.4 changes [gnu.org] it looks like they've been working on some of the same issues. C++ in general is a very complicated language. There are very few compilers that implement every aspect of the language. It's generally more important to fix the compiler bugs that affect real code than to implement the aspects of the language that are very rarely encountered.
Re:Really? Infamous? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Really? Infamous? (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't know what you're on about.
1. Gnome and GTK are both object oriented APIs.
2. C is for Compatability
3.
4.
Gnome developers chose C because it works. Everywhere.
And don't forget stepping up to C++ leaves C developers out in the cold - especially if you make any sort of use of templates. That goes for moc too.
Even wxWindows has a GTK port. Where's the KDE/QT port?
So stop laying shit on the "Gnome folks".
Re:Really? Infamous? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't care if the OS and Kernel stuff is written in C for speed, whatever, but don't force an obviously OO concept (UIs) to be implemented in a procedural language...
Re:Really? Infamous? (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the major reasons the GNOME guys chose C was to make it as easy as possible to use other languages to write GNOME apps. It's pretty easy to write language bindings for a C API, and much harder for C++. With C, it's easy to know what symbols the linker will see when you export things from your API. With C++, the compiler does "name mangling" and
Re:Really? Infamous? (Score:5, Informative)
So do that. www.gtkmm.org
Just because gnome is written in C, doesn't mean there aren't C++ wrappers for it.
Re:Really? Infamous? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's oxymoronic. You cannot get a good rewrite of something so lacking as the MFC, and OWL is hardly better.
Don't believe me? Then why don't MS use the MFC themselves? For they don't - for all practical purposes they've shunned it all along, and with good reason.
I don't really believe the KDE people patterned their work after Microsoft's anyway; and as for 'procedural programming' in Gnome needing C constructs to achieve object orientation - well, if Linus himself says it can be done and done efficiently, then that's two voices who say so - at least.
I am not touting Gnome - on the contrary. And I am not touting KDE by any means - I've seen the code and it gives me vertigo. For you cannot achieve OO with C++ anyway. It's far better to use straight C, and then you don't have the overhead.
Whatever - if you want OO, use Objective-C. It's based on Smalltalk, and that's the only viable paradigm we've ever had (Simula/C++ just don't cut the muster, not by a long shot), and there I'll quote Alan Kay himself, thank you.
Finally, there is never any 'overhead' in OO any programmer has to 'reimplement'. OO is a way of looking at programming assignments - 'organisms' as Alan Kay saw it. It has nothing to do with orientation, or reimplementation, or any of that.
All of which might be too 'developer oriented' for this discussion, but you brought the topic up (and clumsily), not I.
Re:Really? Infamous? (Score:3, Informative)
And there are Qt bindings for it. Plus you can code for OSX.
--
Evan
Re:Really? Infamous? (Score:4, Informative)
Gnome/Gtk apps are not procedural. They are event-driven and object-oriented, just like QT. There are many apps written in the C++ bindings of Gnome. The idea that Gnome is fine for small programs but not large programs is false, if not stupid. Please do your research before posting such an obviously unresearched opinion.
As for overhead, C++ is, in many ways, simply syntactic sugar. As I said, there are awesome C++ bindings for Gnome and the Gnome object model (implemented in C) is very good. Programming overhead to do objects in C is minimal and there are great tools for generating objects. Also the switch to using XML primary to describe the guis makes Gnome GUI generation very easy and in just a few lines of code. In my experience your argument about reimplementing the OO is largely moot.
Also wxWindows is hardly a great example of an OO gui api. It's very much like MFC, which uses a event message mapping system, unlike QT and GTK which use signals and callbacks that can be dynamically created and conneccted together. I've never liked MFC, and I don't like wxWindows. I do like QT and GTK, though, particulary GTKMM.
Re:Really? Infamous? (Score:3, Interesting)
But even so, I feel more at home using QT, but that is perhaps just me.
Anyway, I wish that the KDE people could get their act together on usability. As they
clearly have a technical edge over Gnome this is
really sad they they
Re:Really? Infamous? (Score:5, Insightful)
clearly have a technical edge over Gnome this is
really sad they they doesn't do better in this area.
II keep hearing this complaint, but I just don't see it. KDE has
Reading the rest of your post, I think I see the problem: You and GNOME people seem to equate "Useable" with "Feature-starved". Just because GNOME's epiphany can't be configureed does NOT mean it's more useable! I don't know who first introduced this "No options is inherently superior" doctrine, but I don't like it, and it is just plain wrong.
I used to
This "Too many small icons" arguement doesn't hold water. Maybe there are for YOU, so right click and change them! For GNOME, they've decided being able to suit your environmnt to your needs is BAD, so they give me what is acceptable to the LOWEST common user skillset. That's fine! But since they've also decided that users shouldn't be given options, I CAN'T CHANGE IT!
I really prefer C to C++ for a lot of reasons. Some things about KDE annoy me. But GNOME
Functionality != hard to use! Get it right, people!
If the toolbars are crowded, the context menus are even worse. E.g. in the right menu button menu of the konquerer file manager you have both a "Move to trash" and a "Delete" item. Wouldn't it have bin better to just have a "Move to trash" item, and then configure the trash to perform the correct action this would have bin more in line with the desktop metaphor. On the your normal desktop you put things you don't want in the waste basket, and then you decide when to empty it.
No. On SOME people's desktops "trash, then delete" is the norm. Most people, however, when they want to delete something, they want it GONE, not hanging around and taking up disk space. Thus the very-clear, understandable, and
And, incidentally, being "in line with the desktop metaphor" is NOT a valid reason to configure a GUI one way or another. The desktop metaphor is merely a minor convenience, I practically guarantee that it is not how most people actually think of their computers. The technical people think differently because they know better, the nontechnical people don't think about it enough for it to make much difference whate metaphor s being used. If the goal is being easier to use, then the GUI should make things easier, not conform to a model which might, maybe, we HOPE, be easy to understand and relate to for some office workers.
The menu still have a dominating red cancel button. That button is probably the first thing the user sees when he drops a file over a folder, and the menu pops up. To me its somewhat unclear why this menu needs a cancel button in the first place, all other menus seam to be able to do without it. And second why does it have to be that eye catching. After all in most of the cases "Cancel" is not what the user is most likely to do.
The reason that the Cancel is in big and red is not that it is the most LIKELY thing the us
Re:Really? Infamous? (Score:5, Informative)
PerlQT [sourceforge.net]
Sorry not in your language of choice.
Re:Really? Infamous? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes it is.
(I'm not sure that that's a canon link. Ruby bindings are now in official KDE CVS, I've noticed. This may be a project predating that).
--
Evan
Re:Really? Infamous? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not usually a licence zealot, and I've never actually bothered to comment about these sorts of comments before, but there is something I just don't understand. I'm sorry if you think this is a troll or flamebait - it's not, I just get frustrated when I see uninformed opinions of this nature.
The above complaint also applies to the Linux kernel and we are all perfectly happy to call that free (as in speech and beer). The same applies to QT - free speech and beer if you abide by the terms of the GPL. In fact, a large amount of open source software is exactly the same, but apparently some people have redefined "free" to mean something different.
So you can't use the free version of QT to make proprietary software. Big deal. Get over it.
Rant over.
Wow (Score:5, Funny)
His second impression was, 'Noooo... my poor server, what have they done to you...'
This is a good sign (Score:5, Funny)
Now, will you stop lurking and tell us something about the site, you bastards!?
Re:This is a good sign (Score:5, Funny)
Mirror (Score:5, Informative)
Even the mirror is Slashdotted. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Even the mirror is Slashdotted. (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, some history here, the quote comes from the 1960's when the US Government was busy pushing the (absurd) "Domino Theory" and sending slave soldiers out to die for no apparent gain. The ironic thing is that quite a few of the people chanting that slogan participated in some majorly non-peaceful protests. Always interesting to see irony in action like that.
Article Text (Score:5, Informative)
KDE 3.2
by Krishnan Subramanian
Today I installed KDE 3.2, third major release of award winning KDE3 desktop platform, on my Fedora box. I have been using KDE 3.2 RC for the past few days and the final version from today. My first impression is "wow".
KDE 3.2 provides an integrated desktop along with various applications to carry out common desktop tasks such as web browsing, email, instant messaging, multimedia, graphics, etc. Some of the impressive features which you will notice include
* Increase in speed evident from faster application startup time
* Improvements in usability and performance
* Better appearance through interface refinement
* Browser performance boost evident through better webpage rendering
Upgrading to KDE 3.2 is a breeze. If you are a newbie and want to learn how to do it, you can refer to my HOWTO. I started my installation and within few minutes I am logged into my new KDE 3.2 desktop.
The desktop is very polished and you can configure it in any way you want by right clicking on the desktop. You can setup your desktop background as a slide show so that the background picture changes at predetermined intervals. The style and window decorations are very refined increasing the overall appearance. I love plastik for style and window decoration. A better icon set is also available. Now that you can find a wide array of themes and icon sets in www.kde-look.org, you can customize your KDE desktop in any way you want. In fact, you can even select the KDE splash screen (which appears when you login) from the available choices.
The K Menu is better organized now. It is grouped into "Most Used Application", "All Applications" and "Actions". Even the applications are grouped in a much better way compared to earlier version.
The new KHotkey feature is really hot. You can create keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures for various tasks. This comes very handy. People used to such features in Microsoft Windows environment will love this feature. It is really cool to press the "Windows" key in your keyboard and see KMenu pop up in your screen.
The control center is well spruced up and better structured in KDE 3.2. Some of the tabs like background, window decoration, style etc. are redesigned.
Some of the welcome addtions to control center are
* Splash Screen - where you can select a KDE splash screen of your choice
* Wireless Network - where you can configure your wireless network. You can save upto four different configurations.
* Vim Component Configuration - where you can configure Vim to use inside KDE
* KHotkeys - where you can specify keyboard shortkeys and mouse gestures to lauch applications in KDE
* KDE Wallet - where you can configure KDE Wallet to store your internet and local passwords
* Sony Vaio Laptop - where you can configure the hardware for this laptop
KDE 3.2 has more countries under Country/Region. Also these countries are better organized. This is a very positive step in the internationalization efforts of KDE.
Another welcome feature in the control panel is the "Font installer". With this, installation of new fonts is a breeze. This is very useful for people who want to install their regional fonts and other extra fonts (many fonts are available in kde-look.org). The best aspect of the font installer is the instant preview available with it. I feel this is one of the greatest additions to KDE.
Many new applications are added and some of the existing applications have been upgraded. It is quite impossible to discuss all the applications available in KDE 3.2. I will just discuss some of the applications based on my preferences.
Konqueror: This is the central part of KDE environment. it is a web browser, file manager, network browser and so on. Konqueror has finally matured as a web browser. I feel, though many would disagree with me, that rendering of sites is somet
check on the news story on internetnews.com (Score:5, Informative)
Before the trolls come out. (Score:4, Informative)
This is about the state of SuSE and their kde strategy [kde.org]
This is about Qt and its licence. [kde.org]
This is about the G word [slashdot.org]
Mod the gnome/anti-qt trolls down before suckers bite!
that's it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Damn, there goes my already diminishing karma.
Re:that's it? (Score:2)
It's the summary of most reviews that usually are pages upon pages with many sentences with almost no content. All of this is liberally sprinkled with ads, of course.
kde-redhat project (Score:5, Informative)
I always get my KDE for Red Hat (and Fedora) from the kde-redhat project [sourceforge.net]. The project's lead Rex Dieter is doing an awesome job of keeping the latest KDE packaged as rpms that are available via apt-get with all dependencies worked out. Upgrade is as easy as
It's nice to know (Score:4, Funny)
Desktop Slide Show (Score:5, Funny)
"You can setup your desktop background as a slide show so that the background picture changes at predetermined intervals."
Yes! This was the one missing feature I was waiting for! Finally, I can switch to KDE!
Urgs...
Re:Desktop Slide Show (Score:2)
Re:Desktop Slide Show (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Desktop Slide Show (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Desktop Slide Show (Score:4, Informative)
Ah, well... be free, little guy! I hope you have a nice life! happy happy lameness filter. i want the lameness filter not to eat my post, dangit. knock it off, filter. for a site that is *coded* in perl, you would think they would be nicer about letting you post code samples. this is getting ridiculous, you know.
Note:
Unix represents the current directory with a period (.) and the parent
directory with two periods (..), and it includes these in the list of files.
Since these are directories, not images, we use this function to strip them
out of our array of files. Cool, huh?
I've currently set this to change the background at random every time I log
into my Linux box, plus every night at midnight. I like to keep things
interesting!
Re:Desktop Slide Show (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Desktop Slide Show (Score:5, Insightful)
don't bother reading (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Konsole slow? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, I could turn off anti-aliasing. But I've used it in Konsole since pretty much always and have never seen this problem.
Re:Konsole slow? (Score:5, Informative)
You should try to:
1) Fiddle with the conf (font family and size -- I use Andale Mono 8pt here, excellent readability/size ratio; transparency; bidi text...) to see if something in particular seems to trigger the slowness;
2) Submit a bug. Random slowness in some configurations is NOT normal. If it's a regression since KDE 3.1, do indicate so.
Hmm, you may want to make sure that your Konsole got compiled with the right font support, now that I think of it. Does the command 'ldd `which konsole`' yield links to libXrender.so, libfreetype.so and libXft.so.2 (not sure about that list, but that's already a start)?
Konsole blows.. (Score:3, Informative)
From the article: (Score:3, Funny)
That's what KDE has the Gnome doesn't. More appearance, please. I just can't get enough.
I use KDE from Time to Time (Score:4, Interesting)
Features (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not bad as such, but it didn't help me much either.
Dont forget to check the Window Manager. (Score:3, Interesting)
You will find oozes of new features and fun in the new Window manager, such as kool keys, fat borders, Window below others, and much much more. My favourite one is the abillity to have borderless Windows. But don't worry, you can get them back by pressing alt+f3.
So give it a whirl if you like managing your windows by right clicking any window title bar in KDE 3.2.
Update on Novell/Ximian/SUSE situation (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Update on Novell/Ximian/SUSE situation (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to appear as a troll, but wasn't it about time that someone noticed that SuSE had a product which is very well received in a lot of environments (read companies), and Ximian have a few (admittedly) "killer" apps? If SuSE's got a system that works for their clients, why break it? Enhance it, by all means, but if you're buying a KDE-centric distribution, why would you like to throw all the work done in it away?
Personal Thoughts (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, my thoughts on the latest iteration of my chosen desktop. Let's just say that KDE 3.2 should raise eyebrows in Cupertino and soil pants in Redmond. There are numerous small eyecandy improvements, plus tons of little usability-enhancing features in common areas of the system (for example, Konqueror has a vastly improved file-manager sidebar that gives idiot-proof access to local partitions, printers, and even network shares). Some of the new applications debuting in this release are truly excellent, as well (like the slick iTunes-clone JuK or the lovely multiproticol IM client Kopete). Finally, some rather extensive optimizations seem to have taken place throughout the system, as KDE now seems more responsive than in the past (true, some of these optimizations are "cheating", like the option to keep an instance of Konqueror preloaded, but it's still a nice option to have).
Anyway, congrats to the KDE team on an excellent release, and thank you for proving once again that UNIX on the desktop isn't just a wild fantasy, it's a real-life joy.
Re:Personal Thoughts (Score:5, Insightful)
Ultimately, the KDE folks (as well as pretty much every other group of designers) have learned a lot from the Mac, and meanwhile the Mac has benefitted from the interface innovations of others (HUGELY from NeXT, Jobs' other company, and also from KDE re: Safari). All I'm saying is that the Mac engineers might be impressed by a few things in KDE 3.2 (the Windows UI designers, on the other hand, need to come to grips with the fact that KDE is now and has been a better GUI than Windows).
Re:Personal Thoughts (Score:3, Informative)
1. KDE uses freetype to render fonts. You can use any truetype font you like, and they're beautifully anti-aliased. And, if you'd RTFA, you might notice that KDE 3.2 includes a new font manager to make font configuration even easier.
2. About X being 20 years old... yes, the framework is. UNIX is 34. GCC itself dates back to 1987. But you know what, I'm not running the original iteration of the X window system (nor are you, I hope, running Windows 1.0). Xft renders my fonts beautifully, and I'v
Slashdotted because ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I was kind of shocked to see what they were doing with the screenshots though
That having been said, I didn't find the screencaps even particularly flattering; not that I dislike KDE (though I don't use it), but
At least (Score:3, Insightful)
Installing from source (Score:3, Informative)
Next time I wait for the RPMs.
"oh, by the way, if you want a UI, don't forget to also download such and such at website t46."
WRT Debian + KDE (Score:3, Informative)
Well, I've been running it on SuSE 9 for 3 days... (Score:5, Interesting)
This must be a world record? (Score:3, Insightful)
A piece of advice for future reviewers: Being fastest isn't the point with reviews -- thouroughness and being informative on behalf of the customers is.
Mirror (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a mirror, folks. [jhu.edu]
People, when you mirror things for Slashdot, your home cable modem probably won't work very well....
I still cant help but be a little disappointed.. (Score:3, Troll)
The work the KDE team has done is great, but... (*deep breath*)
Before you go off and mod this a troll, stop and think about the idea. Why are we mimicking Windows? Or anything, for that matter? By mimicking Windows, aren't we simply reinforcing bad habits that Redmond introduced 10 years ago? If we all agree that Windows' GUI is sub-optimal, why are we expending so much time and energy attempting to replicate it, point for point?
I'd be sort of interested to see the point in KDE's history where this debate took place, if it ever did.. It certainly should have.
It's just frustrating to see so much work go into being the desktop equivalent of an Elvis impersonator, when we could easilly challenge (or even trump!) the real Elvis.. We've built an enterprise-class OS from scratch...You'd think that a good GUI would be trivial.
Anyway, as far as I know, neither GNOME nor KDE's team offer a skunk-works forum to discuss and develop new and different ideas. Quite the contrary. New ideas tend to be ridiculed and quickly dismissed. It's sort of odd, given how many truly creative people there are working on these respective projects.
Re:I still cant help but be a little disappointed. (Score:3, Insightful)
* First, Windows has become ubiquitous in the past ten years. Everyone knows Windows. That's how they expect computers to operate. This has produced a barrier to entry for anyone that chooses a different method.
* Second, the approach is pretty good. Remember that Microsoft themselves chose to use Apple's design. It isn't perfect, but there *have* been significant improvements made i
Re:I still cant help but be a little disappointed. (Score:3, Interesting)
"You'd think that a good GUI would be trivial."
When in fact, it's not. Very rarely are UI engineers actually have any background in human factors, when they should be experts. UI engineers are more often software engineers, and may or may not have any knowledge of human factors or user interface design.
I assume that you do know that by mimicking Windows, these projects can get more traction with existing Windows users ? I r
Re:I still cant help but be a little disappointed. (Score:3, Insightful)
(I try not to feed the trolls these days, but the odor eminating from that one was overwhelming. Infact, I passed out at least 3 times before I managed to get to the last line, and hit Reply.)
Troll,
I've done a number of things besides Propaganda, all of which are free for guys like you to use, and enjoy. I'm glad you at least remember some of it. Considering it's been like 2 years since i've made any concerted effort to make more "pretty backgrounds", the fact you remember them makes me think you like th
Eyecandy for old and new KDE (Score:4, Informative)
Good even if you don't use KDE, they have lots of Linux related wallpapers for instance.
One app I have fallen in love with is
SuperKaramba [sourceforge.net], a clone of Windows XP Samurize. It enabels easy Python scripting of widgets on the desktop, enabling such things as weather forecasts [kde-look.org], system information [kde-look.org], Mac OS X style dockers [kde-look.org] on your desktop, or even some very beautiful themes [kde-look.org] complete with new toolbars, XMMS skins etc.
KDE + Non-GCC compiler == No-go. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm forced to compile the whole thing with the highly sub-optimal (for SPARC) gcc/g++.
I wish that programmers wouldn't depend upon the lax syntax of the world's favourite compiler and optimise their code specifically for systems which are already fast enough not to make much difference when it degrades performance on those which absolutely need the greatest acceleration to make them usable.
Sorry for the rant.
My compile of KDE 3.2.0 at work on the Sun Ultra 10 has been going for a day already and I've just got QT, arts and kdelibs compiled. I should have a working system by the middle of next week, assuming I don't find any show stopping Linuxisms (which I usually do during KDE builds).
My experience (Score:4, Informative)
It is very fast.
I managed to crash Ktouch (Typing tutor program) once, but couldn't reproduce the crash. I haven't found other bugs.
Konqueror now seems to offer integrated spell checking when writing on forums such as slashdot, which is nice, since English is not my native language. I think A-spell is used, so many languages are availably.
The "kde-wallet" is a very nice, and seemingly secure way to store on-line passwords and forms.
All in all, I like it a lot.
Re:Debian RPMs? (Score:2, Funny)
You should go to a debian rehab clinic...
Re:Debian RPMs? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Debian RPMs? (Score:5, Informative)
deb http://people.debian.org/~ccheney/kde-3.1.95
deb http://people.debian.org/~bab/kde-3.2
These packages currently conflict with openoffice and koffice, I would uninstall them first.
GPL free vs BSD free (Score:5, Informative)
Now however if you're talking about BSD free, then no QT is not free. But then again under this definition neither is Linux (the kernel), gcc, etc. either. So if you're going to dump QT for not being "free" to be fair you have to dump on practically all of Linux as well.
Re:Oh, please. (Score:5, Insightful)
I see. Seems to me there's a whole lotta Microsoft shills that got modpoints, today (parent was modded '5 Insightful' at time of reading).
As a matter of fact, KDE has won numerous awards, year after year. And I wouldn't call it "astroturfing" to express celebration over a release of a new KDE version in an article announcing the release of a new KDE version.
Re:The only feature which is better in Windows... (Score:3, Interesting)
God, I hate that about Windows. If I ask my computer to open two windows of the same folder then it should do it! Windows assumes what I want and tries to second guess me (oh, you don't really want to open that folder again, do you?). KDE does what
Re:Usability Questions (Score:4, Informative)
I would say so based on the questions, but..
1) KDE (for as long as I can remember) has had a kappfinder that locates programs on your disk. You can run it then check off the apps you wanted added to the KMenu.
2) Just drag a file and drop it somewhere, a context menu will appear and ask if you want a "copy,move, or shortcut (link)."
4) Depends if the app was written correctly. UT2003, Savage, etc. all do this then put a link in ~/.kde/share/applink/* which is your KMenu entries.
5) You can create links (shortcuts) that way. KMenueditor (right click the K menu icon, kde start button) and then do all your editing.
6) Not that I'm aware of, but you can drag-drop a folder on the panel then either add shortcut URL to that dir OR a quick browse tray like you described.
7) You can use ANYTHING you want. But what's wrong with konqueror? Hate to tell you but Windows does the SAME thing with ie. You're viewing your files in a webpage locally.
8) Of course, this is dependant on your OS. But Linux or UNIX clone has all files by default in
9) Yes, KDE has had "LISA" for a long time. It's a samba network browser for KDE.
10) I don't use Mac so can't say anything about it, but you need to look at the KDE "Control Center" and the GUI tools.
Not sure, but you almost sound like a troll. I mean KDE isn't TRYING to emulate Windows/Mac/etc. They are out to just be a great desktop environment. KDE 3.2 goes a long way towards this. I suggest you try it and spend some time using it before you pass judgement on it because it doesn't have feature 'X' or 'Y'.
Re:Somethings faster, somethings slower - oh well (Score:3, Informative)