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KDE 2.0 in Action
Posted by
Roblimo
on Thu Nov 18, 1999 06:17 AM
from the lookin'-good dept.
from the lookin'-good dept.
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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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.
[ot] developer-friendly too (Score:3)
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)
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: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: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: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.
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: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?
--
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?
*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.