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KDE GUI Software

KDE 3.2-beta2 - Towards a Better KDE? 518

Posted by simoniker from the kurrah-durray-errah dept.
JigSaw writes "KDE 3.2-beta2 was released last week for general testing and OSNews offers a preview of what's expected from the 'popular X11 desktop environment' early next year upon its release. The article mentions KDE's new features (faster loading times, Konqueror's Service Menus, Kontact, KPDF, Plastik theme etc), the problems that still plague it (cluttered Kmenu and Konqueror menus, too many disorganized kontrol center modules) and some constructive suggestions on how to get over the bloat without losing the functionality."
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KDE 3.2-beta2 - Towards a Better KDE? More

KDE 3.2-beta2 - Towards a Better KDE?

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  • I think (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Pingular ( 670773 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @05:50PM (#7728566)
    constructive suggestions on how to get over the bloat without losing the functionality
    I think shortcuts are definetly the way forward, for example pressing ctrl+? opens fsck or whatever :)
    Much faster, easier, and makes desktops less clutered (as you don't need icons etc on desktop)

    • Re:I think (Score:3, Interesting)

      by sujan ( 464326 )
      To each his own.

      For some the options are a nifty thing. For others, a headache. I think KDE team should implement a beginner/advanced profile.

      • Re:I think (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        For some the options are a nifty thing. For others, a headache.

        Like how klipper insists on popping up a window everytime you copy a url or email. It pains me to watch people who don't know how to turn that off (should be off by default.)
      • That is a bad idea for this reason: Who will help the beginners? If the advanced people are used to a different interface how easy is it to tell others how to use a different one?
        • I don't think he is talking about the interface. He is probably repreing to the plethora of configuration options in things like control panel, KDE Menu, etc.

          Having two profiles (begineer/advanced) would if at all anything help begineer get used to KDE. The less options for them to configure , the more better.

          As for teaching begineers, it has to be a self learn excersize, this is not 1990, that people should need to be tought how to use a freaking UI. A little bit of common sense is all that it takes to us

          • I think that if people want to experement they should be able to (even if newbies need their .kde removed to fix it) find the option.
            KDE's Control Center (Not Kontrol Center) is organized well and people after being shown the Control Center seem to have little/no problems in my experence. I propose an alternative: when you start up kcontrol, you should have a "If you mess with these you may mess up the way it looks/works"... with an option to turn it off.

            • Re:I think (Score:3, Interesting)

              by wolrahnaes ( 632574 )
              IMO Xteq X-Setup has the config utility UI just right. There are wizards for the most common changes and full featured (and well grouped I might add...) panels for advanced tweaks. There is also a feature that warns you before entering any panels that may let you bork your system.

              I think that kcontrol is in the same place as many other parts critical to a Free (speech/beer) desktop, where it is very good and on the right track, but still has some problems. Someone mentioned the sheer number of tweakable

        • Re:I think (Score:5, Insightful)

          by molnarcs ( 675885 ) <csabamolnar AT gmail DOT com> on Monday December 15, 2003 @09:19PM (#7730517) Homepage Journal
          Besides, many linux newbies begin their adventure into linux-land by tweaking the hell out of the UI - for they know that its one thing that it is not 'dangerous' to experiment with.

          Seriously, it surprises me that no one mentions this, although I think this is not a negligible aspect - changing colors, widgets, icons, sounds, shortcuts, blah yields immediate and _visible_ results, and a sense of accomplishment (a very small sense, but it still feels like you did something, and it worked, and - gasp! - it was on linux!). I believe this is the reason why so many newbies prefer KDE: they can browse through kcontrol and try out things (and read a lot of excellent description) - and get somewhat confortable with the system.

          The main reason for so many people not trying out (or not staying with) linux is simply fear: what if I break something? But playing around the UI won't break any serious things for them. Now try to play around with GNOME: in a few hours you would have tried out everything that is possible in its 'simplified' menus, config tools, options, and then ... what? Switch to KDE of course ;) - that's how it happened with this one time noob (and I spoke to other people who had the same experience).

          So, are these options _really_ intimidating/confusing? That's bs. No noob who tentatively tries out 'the other' OS would go like: I want that up button out from the file-manager! The usual rant of Eugenia (it is getting rather old) displays a total incapability of understanding how a newbie might feel before an alien environment ... hence she was never able to explain how, for all its 'terrible' flaws KDE managed to harness the largest user base, despite corporate support for the other DE.

    • Re:I think (Score:2, Funny)

      by selfabuse ( 681350 )
      I think that commands are the way forward, for example, pressing 'fsck /dev/hda1' opens fsck oh wait..

  • The State Of KDE -- new, improved edition (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    NEW! Revised and updated!
    The State Of KDE

    We have seen a lot of important news regarding the KDE project over recent weeks, so it is worth pausing to consider the ramifications.

    Let us start with the recent acquisition of SUSE by Novell. SUSE was the biggest Linux distributor (though still dwarfed by Red Hat) to use KDE as its default desktop. SUSE has, for many years, neglected to package the GNOME desktop properly or even do basic Q&A... much to the delight of KDE fanatics. Now, however, Novell ha

    • Troll. A good one, but a troll nevertheless (Score:5, Insightful)

      by arevos ( 659374 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @09:24PM (#7730555) Homepage
      GNOME has always been the commerical desktop of choice. It has long been focussed on getting the basics right and building from there... as opposed to the KDE Project, which is entirely aimed at pleasing the slashdot peanut gallery with pointless eye-candy. KDE features are thrown into the mix with little or no regard for usability, or even good taste. The end result is disasterous, as can be seen by anyone unforunate enough to be forced into using it.

      The KDE architecture is a lot further on than GNOME. Whatever the eye-candy, the engine that drives KDE does appear to be more advanced and better put together than GNOME. KDE is very well put together, and like the article says, once you've got that down, it's not too hard to streamline. GNOME will have a harder job getting to KDE's standards then KDE would have imitating GNOME's ease of use. If it even wants to. It's not like there has to be only one desktop for everyone.

      KDE is extremely expensive to develop for, unless you intend to produce GPL software. TrollTech, the owners of KDE and Qt, license the X11 version of their Qt toolkit under the GPL. This forces anyone wanting to develop software built on top of it (including KDE), to be (L)GPL licensed -- or pay TrollTech $3000 for every developer you have working on the application to purchase a commercial license.

      As opposed to GTK, which is fully LGPL, with no proprietry license. What was your point again?

      TrollTech is also vulnerable to takeover by companies hostile to Free software and good corporate lawyers who can blow holes in the laughable FreeQt agreements.

      Huh? The current copy of Qt is GPLed. TrollTech cannot retract that, even if they wanted to. If TrollTech stopped developing GPL Qt, then the KDE project would just fork the codebase. As others have said, the GPL is very legally secure.

      As for all the other points, whilst I could argue that KDE has made headway into the business environment as well (Lindows, SuSE 9, and so forth), I don't see why I should bother. Open Source software does not need corperate funding to continue. If it did, Linux would never have gotten off the ground. Commercial backing can't hurt, but it's not necessary for a project, either.

      Nor does a project die if another overtakes it. KDE is technologically ahead of GNOME, and has been ever since GNOME's creation. Does that stop people working on GNOME? Nope. Because the Linux desktop is a varied thing. Just because Windows gained a monopoly, doesn't mean that there has to be a desktop monopoly. I'd like greater inter-compatability between the two systems, but I don't see a need for there to be only one.

    • Re:The State Of KDE -- new, improved edition (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 10Ghz ( 453478 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @03:28AM (#7732618)
      GNOME has always been the commerical desktop of choice.


      How so? Which distros are GNOME-centric? Well, there's Red Hat and.... That's about it. Sure, there's Fedora, but their KDE-support is alot better than Red Hat's was. Then there is Sun, but we'll have to see how that pans aout. They don't even call their desktop GNOME though.

      If we look at KDE, there's SUSE, Mandrake, Lycoris, Lindows, Xandros, Knoppix and Conectiva. I bet I missed few though. Rest (Debian, Gentoo, Slackware etc.) are more or less desktop-agnostic.

      To me it seems that KDE is the "desktop of choice"

      KDE is extremely expensive to develop for, unless you intend to produce GPL software.


      So, let me get this straight: Before, GNOME-fanboys whined because Qt was not 100% free (as in speech). Now that it is, they whine because Qt does not allow them to write closed and proprietary software for free? How's that for hypocrisy!? "I support open source and free software! I want others to give me free tools so I could write proprietary software for profit with them!"

      TrollTech, the owners of KDE and Qt


      Trolltech does not own KDE.

      Qt's/KDE lack of accessiblity


      Examples please?

      KDE has spent the time making *fake* translucent menus


      I have seen similar fake translucency on GNOME as well, so what's your point?

      thanks to the fine work of Sun engineers


      Those "Fine Sun engineers" that are now working on GNOME used to work on CDE. A ringing endorsement, don't you think?

      TrollTech is also vulnerable to takeover


      Over 60% of TT's shares are owned by the emplyees of TT. The shares are not publicly listed. So how exactly are they "vulnerable"? And even if they were taken over and GPL'ed Qt was eliminated, Qt would be automatically released under a BSD-style license. Do some research, OK?

      OpenOffice v2 -- the only open source desktop capable of satisfying business needs -- is already working on integration with the GNOME desktop


      And they are working on integraring it with KDE as well, so what's your point?
    • The letter itself is 90% P.R. puff, and says very little, other than SUSE will now be shipping GNOME is a reasonable condition, unlike its previous efforts.

      AFAIK, SUSE was shipping Gnome so far more less like the GNOME team released it, including application start menues that reflected the installed programs and maybe a background image with the SUSE logo. So I think GNOME was shipped in an as reasonable condition as it was released by the GNOME team. OK, maybe you think that the GNOME team doesn't make

  • Misspelling? (Score:5, Funny)

    by SeanTobin ( 138474 ) * <<byrdhuntr> <at> <hotmail.com>> on Monday December 15, 2003 @05:51PM (#7728571)
    I liked the review, but in the end they misspelled "Konclusion".

  • Heresy (Score:4, Interesting)

    by LittleLebowskiUrbanA ( 619114 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @05:52PM (#7728581) Homepage Journal
    KDE is (gulp) >faster> than Gnome? There goes one myth. Take away the Eugenia standard carping over the UI and you have a pretty good review.

    • Re:Heresy (Score:3, Insightful)

      by adrianbaugh ( 696007 )
      However, if you look at the screenshots she provides it's pretty obvious that she's carping with good reason. The extra spacing between gnome's menus, the soft lines between its toolbars DO make it easier to use. Now it's not a big thing but if it were fixed KDE would be better. Complexity of the configurator I don't care so much about, but again it does present a real problem for some users and ought to be improved.
      There's very little point in a reviewer not mentioning flaws they find, unless they're being

  • KDE 3.2 is going to rock (Score:4, Interesting)

    by qed123 ( 658353 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @05:53PM (#7728599)
    I installed KDE 3.2 last week, and while it's just a beta I give it two thumbs up easily. The tabs in Konqueror are fixed to more like what I'm used to in Firebird, and theres some nifty new features in the file browser mode. Not to mention there seems like a lot of new configuration options and everything seems even more solid and snappier than 3.1.4. The new theme, Plastik, has really grown on me as well.

  • Regarding the cluttered Kmenu (Score:3, Insightful)

    by suso ( 153703 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @06:01PM (#7728672) Journal
    Perhaps some kind of system that keeps track of how often you run certain programs and when you don't use one for X amount of time then it puts those programs into a submenu or something like that. I think that would be a good feature that Window currently doesn't have (at least as far as I know).

    I guess on open source systems, the tendancy is to install most of the software that is available, so you wind up with a lot available to you, meaning that your games menu is full of things like KFoulEggs. ;-)

    • Re:Regarding the cluttered Kmenu (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Abcd1234 ( 188840 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @06:18PM (#7728859) Homepage
      Actually, ideas like this have been tossed around in UI literature for as long as the area has existed. The problem with these kinds of adaptive UIs is that they can be confusing to a user.

      Example: Imagine, I'm Joe Sixpack and, three weeks ago, I fired up The GIMP. But now, I look in the menu, and it's missing... so I look around. Oooh, found it. So, he closes The GIMP. Oh, just one more thing... click on the menu. And it's moved again!

      The point is that users rely a great deal on UI consistency in order to remember where things are and how they work. As a result, things like dynamic menus go a long way to making the UI *less* useable, rather than more, since you can no longer rely on your memory. Now, yes, careful design can minimize some of these problems, but the fundamental point is the same: the user expects the UI to behave in a deterministic manner.
    • that sounds like the personalized menus in win2K, which are the first thing I turn off...
    • Windows has been using "personalized" menus for years now, since Windows 2000 and Office 2000 at least (possibly Office 97, I can't remember offhand). Any menu option you don't frequently use disappears after a while. To make it more fun, a fresh install hides quite a few options, so you may never even know they're there. And KDE or Gnome used to do this on RedHat 8 and/or 9 at least. Where you had your utils/apps/whatever in the main K/foot menu, PLUS another entry called "extras", which then cascaded into
      • And KDE or Gnome used to do this on RedHat 8 and/or 9 at least. Where you had your utils/apps/whatever in the main K/foot menu, PLUS another entry called "extras", which then cascaded into more utils/apps/whatever.

        the infamous Extras menu of RH 8. It was static, so applications were either in their logical program group if they were default RH apps (or if you put them there intentionally), or they were in their logical program group in Extras. but it did suck. In RH 9 they fanned it out to having a sub me

  • Wouldn't that be... (Score:2, Informative)

    by pcgamez ( 40751 )
    "...and some constructive suggestions on..."

    konstructiive?

  • Kan't stand it (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Saeger ( 456549 ) <farrellj@nosPAM.gmail.com> on Monday December 15, 2003 @06:04PM (#7728716) Homepage
    Konqueror ... Kontact, KPDF, Plastik ... Kmenu ... kontrol center

    If my brain was an eyeball it would be bleeding! Why do geeks think prefixing K (or G) to everything is witty? It's not; it's just annoying and confusing.

    --

    • I always thought it was pretty Kool.

    • Re:Kan't stand it (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Tyir ( 622669 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @06:10PM (#7728781) Journal
      Acutally that sort of naming scheme excellent, it gives which DE it is built for, and then what it actually does. KPDF is much more intuitive than say, Acrobat.
      • Bah. If you wanted clarity, you'd call it "KDE PDF Viewer". Moreover, reasonable tooltips in the menu make it very simple to understand what an application does (example, the menu item says "Acrobat" and the tooltip says "Adobe PDF Viewer").

        No, these ridiculous naming schemes are due to 1) lack of creativity and 2) some twisted belief that they're cool.
      • Why do I need to know what DE an app was built for?

    • Re:Kan't stand it (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Poeir ( 637508 ) <poeir@geo.yahoo@com> on Monday December 15, 2003 @06:11PM (#7728790) Journal
      Especially considering (konsidering?) that pressing the first letter of a menu option goes to that menu option, but when every one starts with the same letter, it makes the feature useless.

      • Re:Kan't stand it (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Minna Kirai ( 624281 )
        The same problem has occured on Microsoft(tm) Windows(r) computers. Prehaps it's fixed by the XP/2003 versions, but recently you'd see a menu full of "Microsoft Word" "Microsoft Excel" Microsoft Powerpoint"...

        That's actually much worse than how KDE does it, because instead of one meaningless extra letter there are 10 characters to read past before the name is disambiguated. (It looks horrible on the taskbar too)
      • Yes, but if you are using a shell with tab completion (i.e., just about any of them) you can quickly scan through all the k apps and the g apps...

    • Java App. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 15, 2003 @06:12PM (#7728804)
      Why do geeks think prefixing K (or G) to everything is witty? It's not; it's just annoying and confusing.

      I wrote an app in Java to change all the names because I hate that annoying style too. It's called Jrenamer.
    • and you will end up with names like:

      OpenKonqueror
      FreeKontact
      GNUKPDF
      FreePlastik
      etc.

      The only thing worse than an overused prefix is two overused prefixes.
    • What don't you understand? Don't you understand this, properly, as a letter "k" and "g" conspriracy?

      We have a choice, and it is either "K" or "G". In the furture everything will start with K or G. Get used to it, because you will be the letter "K" or "G"'s bitch, whether you like it or not.

      At least it's not everything being appended with "32" or "Enterprise Pro Edition" right?
    • :)

      One of KDE's goals is to provide an integrated framework. You can embed a KDE spreadsheet into a kword document with standard kparts, but you can't do it into abiword (well, you can convert it to a common format, import, etc, but that's not integration). What I'm trying to say is that KDE apps will (in most cases) work better with KDE apps than with Gnome apps.

      As a KDE user, I will choose, when possible, a kde app over an equivalent gnome one; the letter k speeds up the process :)

    • Re:Kan't stand it (Score:5, Insightful)

      by vadim_t ( 324782 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @06:36PM (#7729035) Homepage
      Weird, we have WinRAR, WinZIP, Winamp, WinMX, winhelp, winchat, winfax, winmine, winoldap, winsock, winspool, and nobody seems to complain much.
      • WinRAR, WinZIP, Winamp, WinMX, winhelp, winchat, winfax, winmine, winoldap, winsock, winspool
        Of those I use WinZip and WinAmp (winsock is basically invisible to the user). They are the only two win- prefixed programs of the dozens I use on Windows. It's nowhere near as bad.

        The "K" thing really annoys me because it reminds me of script-kiddy language. It is actually a major reason why I haven't seriously used KDE in a long time.

        • Re:Kan't stand it (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Wolfier ( 94144 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @02:19AM (#7732350)
          It's fundamentally different. The "K" apps are annoying because they *CHANGE* a legitimate English word, as opposed to, for example, "Winhelp", "WinAmp", which merely appends "win" in front of an intact English word.

          If WinAmp were "Wmp", Winhelp were "Welp", Winmine were "Wine", Winsock were "Wock", Winspool were "Wpool" then you might have a point.
    • I'd think the KDE team's time is better spent on koding than naming.

    • Re:Kan't stand it (Score:5, Funny)

      by MikeXpop ( 614167 ) <mike@noSPAM.redcrowbar.com> on Monday December 15, 2003 @06:52PM (#7729216) Journal
      iDunno, but iAgree. iThink it's iStupid.
    • When I see that type of phoentic misspelling, I infer stupitity. Maybe it's the bad haircut I got at Kathy's Kuts when I was a kid, but I find that sort of naming repulsive.

      Maybe that's why I've always gravitated towards GNOME. I used to think I just preferred the GNOME artwork, but over time I realized it's the KDE naming. And I know, GNOME does it too, but not to such a degree. Yeah, there's Gnumeric, but Nautilus could have easily been Gnautilus. The GNOME apps don't seem to have this compulsive de

  • I "emerged" it over the weekened. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I like the look, and it appears stable with Gentoo on the 2.6.0-test11 kernel. The only problem I've found (and it appears to be a known issue) is that "Find" just sits there and doesn't continue.

    All in all, I think it's a good upgrade.

  • KDE Control Center (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pantherace ( 165052 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @06:08PM (#7728755)
    Can Eugenia get it right? Dispite KDE apps' habit of C->K... it is not Kontrol Center.

    Not to mention... Kommander's Editor (kmdr-editor) is by no means a bloddy text editor.

    As someone on dot.kde.org pointed out (and I fully agree with) the ability to customize thing SHOULD not be messed with, because otherwise you go the GNOME/Windows way. KDE can act like almost any other DE if people want it to, and set it to do so.

    Eugenia has in my experence not done very good review, and assumes that less choice = better, which I find fundamentally flawed.

    Having used KDE since 1.x (and others for a long time) and currently KDE cvs (built every couple of days), KDE has been for some time in my opinion the best DE of all (including MacOS, CDE, Windows, and GNOME) And the 3.2 just got a big speed boost. (on a cable connection (~300KB/sec max) slashdot load in under 3 seconds, as does just about any webpage except /.ed ones, and el reg (that is throughout the cable company, so something is messed up there, and it has gotten better, so even that is .) Koffice is much better since the last time I used it, and it is faster than openoffice, and quite stable. Juk is just great. Kontact should import kopete as well if it wants to be complete, and the talked about kopete-address book integration... if that's what Eugenia calls integration (essentially a link) then no wonder everyone thinks windows and gnome are decent. (Kopete-address book integration is at this point substandard for KDE.) kgpg is also included.

    • Re:KDE Control Center (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pyros ( 61399 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @06:47PM (#7729162) Journal
      As someone on dot.kde.org pointed out (and I fully agree with) the ability to customize thing SHOULD not be messed with, because otherwise you go the GNOME/Windows way. KDE can act like almost any other DE if people want it to, and set it to do so.


      The configuration options don't need to be removed, just slightly hideen. You could have each Control Center applet have an advanced tab with 50K extra options that 90% of the users don't mess with. Then the options are still there, very accessible, and out of the way so as not to intimidate the new users. And it does intimidate the new users. I'm a seasoned user and I find it's mostly just clutter. They could even have that first-run config wizard ask 'would you like to see advanced options in Control Center applets?' and leave them all mixed in. One of the things I think Red Hat did that made a large step in useability was adding the "More Applications" menu on each menu group. You see a small set of the defaults, and have like 5 alternatives in the submenu.

  • No more Keramik! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 3Suns ( 250606 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @06:14PM (#7728820) Homepage
    Good riddance! Keramik was KDE's idea of "eye kandy" for 3.1, and looked like someone's poor first attempt at a GUI theme. About as streamlined as a yak. In a word: fugly!

    Now they've gone with an off-color ripoff of the Windows XP window decorations (just like Ximian's Industrial), and a QT theme that looks like one of the GTK Smooth variations. Certainly an improvement over Keramik, but not exactly an original look. It seems like they were really sick of people complaining how Gnome is prettier.

  • Linux on the desktop (Score:5, Interesting)

    by martinde ( 137088 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @06:14PM (#7728823) Homepage
    I have to say that if Linux isn't ready for the Desktop, that it is VERY close with KDE 3.x and OpenOffice. I can't speak for Gnome, I haven't used it in a long time.

    For office environments, I think Linux is pretty much there. The only real missing thing IMHO is the expectation that you can plug in random USB things and that they'll work. This is probably a problem for grandma and grandpa, but I don't think it's a problem for your average corporate secretary.

    I suppose Outlook calendars are another issue...

  • Former KDE user (Score:4, Informative)

    by Apreche ( 239272 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @06:15PM (#7728834) Homepage Journal
    I used KDE for many many years. It was my desktop of choice. It was the only environment which had all the features I wanted. I didn't even use konqueror or anything. I liked the KDE panel most of all, but I also really really like kwrite, kmail and the konsole. I still really like kmail and kwrite.

    Recently I got a new pc. I replace my Pentium 3 450 with my Athlon-XP 2500+. Now I knew that KDE was bloated, but I wanted the features and the programs that came in it. I did an XP/Gentoo dual boot on my new boxen and emerged kde. It worked, much faster than previous. But the response on a lot of things was still slow. Keep in mind this was whatever kde version was out a month or two ago.

    Every time I remember KDE getting updated they made major changes that were always for the better. The dramatic difference between KDE1 and 2 was outstanding. In the days of 2 I couldn't imagine better, but KDE3 lived up to everything it promised and 2 couldn't even compare. I'm sure KDE 3.2 will do just the same.

    Eventually though, the bloat got to me. I was running an optimized gentoo install and my desktop environment was slowing me down. And it was only because I wanted to use the mail client, panel and text editor that came with it. That's when I discovered XFCE-4. It didn't have all the features I needed, but XFCE4 works perfectly with all kinds of software. If I want screensavers I just emerge xscreensavers. If I want keybindings I emerge xbindkeys. If I want cpu monitoring I can get xfce-extras or gkrellm and bubblefishymon.

    What really sealed the deal was the fact that I replaced Kmail with thunderbird, konsole with xterm, and kwrite... I still haven't replaced that. But I sure as heck wasn't going to keep using the big slow desktop just for the text editor. If you absolutely need to get all the stuff KDE has to offer, stick with it. If you actually use all of that stuff then it is so worth it and nobody does it better. If you want to trim down and increase the performance, try out XFCE4. I see it becoming a serious competitor with Gnome and KDE in the near future.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Former KDE user (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mickwd ( 196449 )
      From a PIII 450 to an Athlon-XP 2500+ is a 4-5 fold increase in processor speed. Probably a 3-4 fold increase in memory speed (and more of it, too). Disk access maybe twice the speed.

      So KDE (your previous desktop of choice) was, say, 3-4 times as fast as before, but this wasn't good enough ?

      Oh, and I was forgetting the Gentoo install, so that might speed it up a bit further. If Gentoo optimises things, that includes KDE.

      Not to mention that KDE itself has been getting faster and faster since 3.0.

      Now you

  • Browser integration (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Karamchand ( 607798 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @06:17PM (#7728852)
    Just before we read that browser integration is bad [slashdot.org] (like MSIE into MS Windows) but now this article reports that KDE's Konqueror is integrated better into KDE. That seems strange to me.
    Admittedly KDE isn't an operating system as MS Windows is. But still it's a "system near" piece of software. So where to draw the border?
    • How much of the MSIE integration into Windows goes deeper than the user interface? Methinks it may not be as much as we are led to believe. Remember "shelling" out to the MS-DOS prompt? The whole GUI used to be 100% dispensable.

      Yes, KDE is 'system near' but it's not the OS. We really have no idea about Windows, because they ain't telling.

      (My bet is that the majority of Micro$oft employees no longer know what is really necessary in the Windows codebase & what isn't... ;-)

      • **Yes, KDE is 'system near' but it's not the OS. We really have no idea about Windows, because they ain't telling.**

        considering that it(ie) can be pulled out without it affecting any major programs(beyond which use it directly) it's not that tightly integrated at all in windows.

        konqueror isn't integrated to the OS, but just to the desktop environment(and so is ie, but even less, but ms's official position is of course that it would explode were it pulled out which simply isn't true).

        • considering that it(ie) can be pulled out without it affecting any major programs(beyond which use it directly) it's not that tightly integrated at all in windows.

          No it can't. You can get the big blue 'e' off the desktop, but the rendering engine, and other components are contained in essential OS DLLs. The file browser is actually just another shell on top of the core IE. If you were to truly remove all IE code, you would have a non-funcitonal Windows system.

      • MSIE is very much intergrated with the operating system. And that intergration is good. From a technical point of view anyway. Not from a competative point of view :-)

        Anyway, MSIE consists of a great number of libraries which are used by many applications, including msie-the-app.

        msie-the-lib consists of an http library, an html rendering engine, mime handlers, etc, etc. That library is being used by Outlook (Express) for example. Also the reason why that app is so very insecure.

        I don't know the exact

    • It's no where "system near" (Score:5, Informative)

      by Inoshiro ( 71693 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @06:37PM (#7729049) Homepage
      If I take my Slackware 9 CD and install it onto a box, I can install without Konquerer. If I take a Windows XP CD and install it onto a box, I can't choose to not install IE. It's welded in. Konquerer is only integrated into KDE. Windows has so such separation of window manager/session management/library environment and kernel/base install that Linux has.

      Plus, I have absolutely no problem using Thunderbird and Firebird for email and web stuff in Konquerer. It (KDE) respects my choice to use those applications as default, rather than forcing me to use KMail or Konquerer. I've yet to see such respect in Windows.
      • The installation procedure (and what question it asks you) is not the point. That doesn't mean it's welded in. (Comparison: You're installing Winamp. You can't chose not to install whatsnew.txt - does that mean whatsnew.txt is welded in into Winamp? Not really. Ok, Winamp searches for whatsnew.txt to display it in the what's new about box. but it certainly isn't needed.)
        • You can easily delete the "whatsnew.txt" from your Winamp directory, and Winamp will run just like it did before. You might lose some functionality specific to Winamp and how it talks with its "whatsnew.txt" file, but it will still run.

          Try deleting parts of IE from Windows. Go ahead, I dare ya :) You'll rapidly find the operating system no longer works.

          The argument way back when (a bit of a red herring IMHO, but nobody asked) was that Microsoft needlessly, and anti-competitively bound IE into Windows, in
    • Well, several points:

      I remember hearing that Konqueror allows using Gecko instead of KHTML. If that functionality is already in place then there can be a third rendering engine should anybody want it.

      Konqueror, AFAIK, is a container for plugins. KHTML is open, there shouldn't be any problem with creating a compatible replacement for it. Nothing is really stopping you from rewriting the file manager and all the other plugins Konqueror uses.

      It's Open Source. If you really want to rip Konqueror off KDE, you
      • It can, and many distributions seem to package it (if they do) as kdebindings-mozilla.

        Running 3.2, Konqueror is much faster than firebird (or any other browser I have used for that matter)

  • fewer features or saner defaults (Score:5, Interesting)

    by molnarcs ( 675885 ) <csabamolnar AT gmail DOT com> on Monday December 15, 2003 @06:17PM (#7728857) Homepage Journal
    There is one constant in the universe: Eugenia "I'm an UI expert" Loli-Queru" beating the same old "too many features" drum.

    Yes, she might be right on certain points (Cervisia in context menus by default?), but saying the KDE has no HIG and GNOME has one is just plain BS. Of course, we were witness to her flamefest fith mosfet over UI issues a while back... Anyhow, I just finished reading the comments when I saw the review posted on /. I was surprised to see how many people hated konqueror (well, all GNOME users of course) - IMHO konqi is the pinnacle of UI design and consistency. An application flamework, that comes as close to the power of CLI as gui-wise is possible. You can mold Konqueror into anything - and this seems to impress even OS X users: check out this review [e-scribe.com].

    Anyhow, I don't expect osnews to change its bias towards (but I was surprised at the review, it was more level headed than usually it is) - and I'm not going to point out every flaw in the criticism (well, I shall point out only two: 1) its the same old argument on part of eugenia 2) check out the screenshots - and tell me: how many of the applications in the menus were KDE specific? ... talking about clutter...) but I want to say this: Keep up the good work KDE developers! And listen to your users (as I know you do) not these so called UI "experts" who think GNOME (don't take me wrong, I like some aspects of GNOME) has the leading edge in usability, despite overwhelming odds (if it is more usable, why do more newbies stay with KDE???)

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @06:30PM (#7728970)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Your "bloat" are my features (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jopet ( 538074 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @06:44PM (#7729138) Journal
    It seems that accusing a software to be "bloated" is the best way to discredit it amont the /. crowd. But there are many out there, including me, that like the choice and freedom offered by KDE. I have used many other DMs/WMs (from TWM, Sun's CDE, MSWindwos, IceWM to KDE and Gnome) and I gradually ended up using KDE most of the time, because it lets me best do my work.

    What I really do not understand: why are so many people bitching about how terrible KDE is when they have a wonderful *choice* of alternatives? Most of them free? If you think KDE is bloated and Gnome is not, fine, use Gnome. Or use TWM. Whatever.

  • Is there any way to point yum at the Fedora RPMs so you don't have to manually download and install each RPM file?

  • This is a horrible review (Score:5, Informative)

    by brunes69 ( 86786 ) <[slashdot] [at] [keirstead.org]> on Monday December 15, 2003 @06:59PM (#7729306)
    ...And I don't mean horrible for KDE, I mean it is horribly done and poorly researched.

    For the mistakes under "The KDE Solution":

    - KDialog and Service Menus have been in KDE since 3.0, they are nowhere near a new feature. KRDC for connecting to windows machines has been around for a long time as well, since 3.1.

    Under "The KDE Problem"

    - She says "Konqueror's context menu is a mess, why would I want to zip a web page or use Cervicia with it, is beyond me". She obviously does not grasp that KDE is totally network transparent, and that indeed all these options can be used with any media on any device. There is no need to restrict their ability while browsing a web site (in fact who is to say that you wouldnt* ever want to, say, right click on a .doc link and zip and email it?)

    - She then goes on about how the KDE menu is too bloated, and posts a screenshot as an example. However, in the screenshot, which contains 32 applications, only 7 are KDE applications! You can't claim the KDE menu is too blated because of all the other junk on the system.

    - She then advocates putting all the "Configure" options under one menu entry under "Edit" instead of "Settings". Not onnly would this violate the KDE Style Guide which has been agreed upon by usability experts, it just seems foolish. In no OS does "Edit" imply "Settings". Edit is for Editing the active document.

    Namely this is one of the poorer reviews I have read on OSNews, and that is saying ALOT since they are normally quite bad.

  • Novell(Suse), UserLinux, RedHat, and god knows who else have all voiced their support for Gnome. I may like KDE but they've done nothing to become accepted in the standard and of course they have something about royalties which companies will not pay. Explains why most if not all have gone with Gnome.
  • Can't these desktops, like KDE and GNOME, stick to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) 3 tier architecture? Keep the application & system data represented in the desktop in the model tier. Keep the interaction features in the controller tier. And skins in the Controller layer. Then we can more easily have GNOME and KDE (and others) running "under the hood" together. We have to choose the presentation that actually gets rendered to the display (omitting the others), until someone comes up with some "meta" la

  • KDE Start menu headaches (Score:3, Informative)

    by Brian Kendig ( 1959 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @08:29AM (#7733450)
    The biggest problem I've had with KDE is that EVERYTHING has to be on the Start menu (or whatever it is that KDE calls it -- the K menu?). If I remove an app from the Start menu, then I have no way of knowing it's still installed and available on the system, unless I happen to remember how to start it some other way or I go into a package tool to see that it's still there.

    What KDE needs is an Applications directory like Mac OS X has -- show me a window with pretty icons and clear names for all the applications I have available on my computer, and let me customize the launcher (Mac OS X's Dock, Windows's Start menu, KDE's Startorwhateverit'scalled menu) to just list the apps I want to get at most often.

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