http://www.osnews.com/story/14927/What_Sucks_About_DEs_pt_III_Kubuntu_s_KDE Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Tue, 21 May 2013 18:55:09 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://www.osnews.com/thread?134724 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134724 > Last but not least: get a decent naming scheme.
> Seriously. K this, K that; just... Don't. Really. I
> suggest a global renaming of KDE applications into
> normal, k-less names.

Come on, the K-names are history in KDE4 and I guess you know that already. None of the new parts (e.g. Plasma, Phonon) start with a k. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 14:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Ascay) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134726 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134726 About that software install window? I use (and like) Ubuntu, and I'm looking at that gobbley gook nightmare and all I can think is:

1) WTF is a tag?
2) How the hell do I tell the program what software I want to add? Sun, 18 Jun 2006 14:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kadymae) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134727 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134727 I was under the impression that those were just code names? Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sappyvcv) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134728 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134728 I don't agree with all points of critique from Thom, but I have to admit that he hits several sore spots.

The lack of coherence is why I chose Gnome over KDE. Not because Gnome is all that (it's really not), but because so many things work so closely together.

The idea of every part working to enhance the whole part is essentiel to a good UI for the user.

In many ways you have to look at the alternative OS'es to find this taken to the extreme, even though Mac OS tend to get it more correct than Gnome/KDE and Windows. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dylansmrjones) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134729 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134729 Whilst I admit the dialog box you use as an example does need some love it does tell you which password to enter in the title bar.

It is easy to overlook - but it is present. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (skx2) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134730 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134730 The K names annoy me the most because it doesn't mean anything -
When I booted SuSE 9 for the first time, I got a tip of the day that read "The K in KDE doesn't actually stand for anything. The letter K is next to the letter 'L' in the Roman alphabet, which stands for our favourite thing - Linux!"

I mean seriously; how can you take an OS with any salt when that's the first thing you see? SuSE 9 was a hemouraging Absorbalorf of a system. SuSE 10 is far cleaner thankfully, and even Kubuntu is a massively cleaner KDE distro compared to what KDE can really be.

Update
An actual screenshot here: http://www.deviantart.com/view/13892068/
(and here's a shot of Adobe being similarly stupid: http://www.deviantart.com/view/32789616/ )Edited 2006-06-18 15:04 Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kroc) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134731 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134731 I tend to agree in general.

Right now I am 'cutting my teeth' on GNOME with Ubuntu (which is working fairly well) for the 4th time. I don't have any constraints holding me to Windows (such as school and no time to commit to trying to make it work) and it is working fairly well.

I have used KDE in the past and in general it works well. The problems are hard to really explain. Suffice it to say that the plethora of options and every dialog being really separate (must apply each setting dialog at once and will even warn you if you switch dialogs) make for the greatest annoyance I have.

That said, I feel that Linux is really coming along as a desktop. With this growth efforts to fix the problems Thom is pointing out are being made.

- Jeff Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jdrake) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134732 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134732 There is an introduction to Debian Package tags here: http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/192 Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (skx2) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134733 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134733 You forgot to add this extremely annoying bug where desktop icons REFUSE to align to grid on the desktop. And also, why the hell can't I configure if i want one or three rows of icons in kicker and task bar...
There is NO %variable to use when selecting a file in media:// for use in a service-menu commands. mplayer can't open media://media/sdb1/movies/whatever.avi . (about service-menu commands, gui editor please - like nautilus actions, or custom command in thunar)
Oh, and last but not least, deleting files in fat32 disks often copies them to trash, as in COPY all info to new loctaion (trash)- not change location to trash.
disclaimer - I am a kde user - but i am sick and tired of these little annoyances...Edited 2006-06-18 15:06 Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ple_mono) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134734 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134734 it does tell you which password to enter in the title bar.

No, it does not. Root means nothing to normal people. It should have a clear-cut explanation of which password is needed, why, and what the launching program will do.

All of those lack in this dialog. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134737 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134737 You forgot the annoyanse of the vertical text everywhere, even the kmixer, It is hard already try to read something in the middle of all the klutter to have to read vertical text too.Edited 2006-06-18 15:18 Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Mitarai) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134738 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134738 KDE was first called Cool Desktop Environment but that conflicted with CDE sooo they went on with Kool Desktop Environment etc Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (czubin) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134740 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134740 1) Coherence is indeed a problem in KDE, although they are working on it for KDE4.

2) The second one isn't completely fair since it's Kubuntu you're working on and hence the dialog is completely correct. There IS NO ROOT password, all you have is your own password if you're an administrator, a non sudo-user won't be able to pass past this dialog box.

3) I don't know about klaptop, since I never used it, but I don't use KDE on my laptop, because I can't find suspend to ram and hybernate in Kubuntu, Xubuntu has it (probably ripped it from the Ubuntu stuff).

4) Adept is to me a way better package manager than Synaptic, the tags stuff, ok, I don't know what it is, but for the rest it's way more usefull, I prefer the adept tools above the synaptic-add/remove stuff... but that's personal probably.

5) well, I dislike icons on my desktop (it must be the single stupiest idea ever to place stuff there, superkaramba stuff, ok, but files??? :s. (but again, it's my idea of how it should be, so icons are disabled on the desktop on my pc).

6)Lock toolbar is available in Kubuntu, richt click on kicker and there's an option: lock the toolbar, difficult to find he :s. But well could be because I used KDE 3.5.3 from the kubuntu.org repos, perhaps it's not there in KDE 3.5.2 that ships nativ with dapper drake.

7)Every project decides for itself its naming scheme, but if you look at Amarok that used to be amaroK, and plasma, phonon... (which are the real future names btw), they're dealing with it. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Terracotta) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134741 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134741 With the notable exception of plasma, all other names are for library or subsystem which won't be that visible for the user.

As for the k-scheme, I note that tom didn't complained about the i-scheme of MacOSX. And I personaly see no problem in this, it's a like a brand. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (cyrilleberger) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134742 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134742 The vertical text has its advantage: look at Amarok: because the put: context, collection, playlists, files... vertical you just have a small bar. Otherwise they'd have to have big bar with just four options, so a loooooot of space lost. Besides when it's just four options it's ok, it used to be six and that was a problem so they adressed it.Edited 2006-06-18 15:34 Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Terracotta) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134743 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134743 I agree KDE has become a mess; a total pile of K apps piled one on top of another. A deafult install of KDE must have over 50 K apps installed. It boggles my mind. There is need a lite version of KDE. Don't get me wrong, KDE is was my first DE in Linux (in the 1.x days of KDE) and it still has a place in my heart but KDE 3.x is just needs serious love. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (zizban) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134744 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134744 1. I don't know how MacOS X handle this, but I don't have Prblems with KDE and lacking coherence. After all, KDE is much more coherent as the average Windows Desktop, and thats all I can compare it with.

2. Yeah, that has confused me, too. It should be easyly fixable.

3. Never needed that bevore, so I can't say anything about it.

4. Yeah, that's a bit crapy. But who dose it right? Is RedHats minimalistic Packagemanager a good thing? Not for power users (which don't want to use the shell). Or is SuSEs Packagemanager better? Not for n00bs.

5. Never needed that. I use 'detaild view' in konqueror.

6. NEVER needed that! NEVER accidentally draged the toolbar.

7. I like KDE's naming scheme. It help's you to identify KDE-applications. The same with the 'g' or 'gnome-' for GNOME apps or 'x' for pure X11-apps. I like it. After all, because of this naming scheme it is possible to have both 'gvim' and 'kvim' installed. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (panzi) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134745 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134745 6)Lock toolbar is available in Kubuntu, richt click on kicker and there's an option: lock the toolbar, difficult to find he :s.

That option is placed in Kicker because it, well, only applies to Kicker. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134747 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134747 It may feed well in amarok, but not in Konqueror, kmixer, [insert kluttered app. here], etc. is to over abused. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Mitarai) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134749 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134749 Maybe "root" means nothing to normal people - but somebody installing Linux isn't a normal person.

You asked a couple of questions:

"Which password? My personal account password? My administrator password? My god-mode password? Why is there no explanation which password, and why exactly you need to enter it?"

I suggested that the title bar informed you that it was the "root" password which was being prompted for - something you actually acknowleged by calling it the root password dialog in the first place!

Saying that root means nothing to users is different from claiming to not understand which password is being saught.

I'd easily agree that the dialog is not good, as you say it doesn't explain why you need it. It doesn't give enough details at all.

But it does do what you claim it did not. It tells you which account the password is being requested for.

So whilst I agreed with the points raised in the article I'm not going to watch you change the question afterwards. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (skx2) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134750 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134750 > 4) Adept is to me a way better package manager than
> Synaptic, the tags stuff, ok, I don't know what it is,
> but for the rest it's way more usefull, I prefer the
> adept tools above the synaptic-add/remove stuff... but
> that's personal probably.

I guess he just meant the extremely cluttered interface that doesn't even remember that I hid the options I never use (e.g. the tags). I prefer Synaptic on KDE too.

> 6)Lock toolbar is available in Kubuntu, richt click
> on kicker and there's an option: lock the toolbar,

But that locks everything. You can't even add a new icon to the toolbar. :/ Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Ascay) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134751 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134751 IN OS-X the sheme is at least in an understandab le order:

iThis, iThat, iFoo, iBar.

With KDE you have:

Kthis, thisK, Khis, thiK.

A total mess. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Mitarai) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134752 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134752 tags are a very powerfull method to find new programs, you select what you want to do (be a game or an office application, and scientific application). Unfortunately I tend to agree that there is still work to do for adept to be intuitive with tags, I often feel a little bit lost when looking for the right tag to add.

Oh, and in kubuntu, adept has an other UI which is accessible right from the "start" (or k call it however you want) menu which allow to select application from a much reduce list of applications (see http://i.turboimagehost.com/p/33774/adept-addremove.png.html ). Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (cyrilleberger) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134753 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134753 about coherence:
does this have something to do with integration (I think is the word)?

I mean, KDE has DCOP (KDE4 has D-BUS), and almos every application uses it! It's so wonderfull scriptable! I love it. This is something, which lets a lot of kde apps talk to each other, in almost any programming/scripting language. What else has that (and uses it widely)? Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (panzi) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134754 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134754 There is an introduction to Debian Package tags here: http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/192

ARRRGGHHHHHHH!

I can see how that would be useful to some really super detailed anal people.

But damn'd if it should be collapsed in the standard view, and even then there should be a link to explain to the noobs what tags are and why they might want them.

Because as is, that interface just confused the hell out of me, and without your link, if I used KDE, I might have just added things willy nilly. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kadymae) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134755 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134755 Maybe "root" means nothing to normal people - but somebody installing Linux isn't a normal person.

So what's grandma/grandpa do to when they're using the box that their grandkid set up for them?

And you're also missing the point behind the whole Ubuntu movement -- Linux is for normal people.

More and more linux is being used by "normal" people who are sick of windows and it's confusing and frustrating (easily fixable) stuff like that that makes the Linux learning curve needlessly steep. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kadymae) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134757 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134757 I've setup Linux for "grandma" before and I'd say that either a) they would have been given a tour and had the basics explained to them, or b) they'd never need to use root for the email checking + websurfing.

I know Ubuntu/KUbuntu is aimed at normal people, its not there yet, but getting closer each release.

I'm certainly not saying that shouldn't continue - I just that that the password dialog argument was really draining the barrel. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (skx2) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134760 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134760 But in Kubuntu you only have one password: your password, so it is correct. If you're no sudo-user you'll get a dialog box which states that you might not have the necesary permissions. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Terracotta) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134761 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134761 But in Kubuntu you only have one password: your password, so it is correct.

What are you talking about? If there is only ONE user, THEN there is only one password, but as soon as you add another account-- there will be two. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134762 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134762 Suffice it to say that the plethora of options and every dialog being really separate (must apply each setting dialog at once and will even warn you if you switch dialogs) make for the greatest annoyance I have.


I think the problem with KDE is that they try to make everything simple to do. A better approach would be to try to make common tasks simple while making sure that the rest is not impossible.

I dont think there is so much problems with the KDE control center anymore. It have been rearranged, and cleaned up numerous times. I doubt going over it again would improve it much. Hopefully most people spend much more time in their applications than configuring the system, so this is where the developers need to focus.

My favorite example on how, this make everything simple complicates life for an ordinary user is how drag&drop in the file manager. If you drag a file and drops it in a folder, you get a popup menu asking you to "Move here", "Copy here", "Link here" or "Cancel". Why not just move the file, no questions asked. That is what most users would want to do. It is the operation that best fits the desktop methaphore. It is how it works in most other desktop environments.

Let's look at this a little closer. The "Cancel" item. The only reason that is needed is that you have a pop up menu in the first place.

The "Link here" item is very rarely used. I would guess that on the average Unix system the share of links is less than 1/1000 of all files in the file system. Many of thes links are created by intall scripts, and not by drag and drop in KDE. I would also guess that it is far more common that sysadmins make links than ordinary users.

So essentially there are two choices in that menu is almost never used, that is there just to make it simple to do everything.

A much better aproach would have been to just move the file, and handle the other options with "Copy", and "Paste" just like in all other applications. The link option could then appear as "Paste as link" in the "Edit" menu".

KDE developers need to identify what ordinary users (not sysadmins) do most frequently and make sure that they works smoothly. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 16:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (unoengborg) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134763 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134763 ...there's a solution: KPowersave. It's out of SuSE's lab AFAIK, but I hope it will replace KLaptop in vanilla KDE4 (probabely too much of a change for a bugfix release like 3.5.4).

http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=29295 Sun, 18 Jun 2006 16:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (piquadrat) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134765 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134765 1)

I'm not sure where I stand on this. On one hand, GNOME feels much more 'one'. Then again, the applications I use most (Kate, Konqueror, Kmail, Akregtor) feel very coherent with KDE. At the very least they all work great with kioslaves. I never could find a good editor that worked with GnomeVFS. (not even gedit, but that back with GNOME 2.8, I haven't tried lately.)

About Amarok, it's not part of KDE. It's more of a music player that just happens to use KDE.

2) Agreed, although I haven't seen this since I started using arch.

3) Much agreed. But I'm pretty sure klaptop is going to be replaced by something else.

4) I've never seen this program, but this is hardly a problem with KDE, but with kubuntu. But yeah, it looks like it could use some maturing

5) I like having the configuration options (Although KControl could use some work. I'm surprised you didn't mention that.)

About the desktop icons, I just disable them. My REAL desktop is cluttered enough, why should virtual desktop be cluttered as well?

6) It's been there since 3.5. I think they are even locked by default.

7) If this makes your list of seven, I think KDE is doing pretty well I'm honestly not sure what to think of it.


I'm really surprised that you didn't mention arts. That is probably the biggest complaint I have with KDE. Hopefully Phonon will be better.

MWM Sun, 18 Jun 2006 16:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mmarshall) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134766 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134766 What are you talking about? If there is only ONE user, THEN there is only one password, but as soon as you add another account-- there will be two.

However, that account won't have sudo rights as default, so it won't see the dialog.

I really do not see the problem. It seems obvious that when the dialog asks for "your" password, it is in fact your password, not some other account's, it wants. Granted, had there been a root account there could be confusion about whether it wants "your user password" or "your root password" -- but there isn't.

What do you think it should say? Sun, 18 Jun 2006 16:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Bjoern) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134767 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134767 5) I like having the configuration options (Although KControl could use some work. I'm surprised you didn't mention that.)

Kubuntu uses that slimmed-down version of Kcontrol.

6) It's been there since 3.5. I think they are even locked by default.

Then tell me where it is.

7) If this makes your list of seven, I think KDE is doing pretty well I'm honestly not sure what to think of it.

Application names are important, they lend recognisability. So yes, having some well-thought out names makes more sense than just dump 'k' in front of everything.

I'm really surprised that you didn't mention arts.

I have an expensive hi-fi set. I don't use my computer for music. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 16:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134768 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134768 The points picked out are fairly minor so I take it that KDE scores fairly high marks on the Holwerda scale? Some of the criticisms are distro-specific, too. I don't have the kdesu or adept issues here on SuSE, for example.

The point about "coherence" has a lot more weight. I've always been a little annoyed at KDE's failure to stick to a strict "best of breed" app install and really ensure that those apps are well intregated, polished and bug-free. Too often, you get a pile of small apps higgle-piggle plus kitchen sink as well. Rightly or wrongly, the impression given is that Gnome has a much better grip on Q&A these days.

OTOH, it is possible to take "coherence" too far. I don't really use KDE. I use Kmail/Kontact, Amarok, Digikam, Kate, Konqueror, Kopete, etc. I have found each of those apps distinctly superior to their Gnome equivalents. So I use KDE because of its apps; I don't use the apps because of KDE. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 16:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (moleskine) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134769 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134769 BTW. It is actually spelled Absorbaloff according it it's inventor.

Stephen Sun, 18 Jun 2006 16:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (stestagg) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134770 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134770 I'm a kde user and I agree 200% with all points the author mentionned.

Hopefully KDE4 will change all that for good. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 16:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (quenturi) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134771 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134771 lol... klutter. That's the only reason I haven't tried KDE yet, every screenshot I've seen of it looks really cluttered, it seems that the buttons/widgets/bars take up like 70% of the screen space leaving no room for any acutal work. I'm sure that it's just because everyone seems to use that 'candy' theme but it's put me off. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 16:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (stestagg) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134773 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134773 When I booted SuSE 9 for the first time, I got a tip of the day that read "The K in KDE doesn't actually stand for anything. The letter K is next to the letter 'L' in the Roman alphabet, which stands for our favourite thing - Linux!"

That's only one of many hints you get while starting KDE or its apps for the first time. I've used every version of SUSE since 8.1 and I've never seen that particular tip. But I agree it is lame. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 16:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (IndigoJo) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134775 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134775 You say KDE lacks coherence. You say to take Kopete as an example but you don't mention a single thing why Kopete is not integrated with the rest of the KDE system. Well, I can send a file to a contact just dragging and dropping it on the chat window, or by right-clicking in Konqueror. You can even see a contact's status on Kontact, or start a chat with him.

And speaking of Amarok, you can even send a message to your contact on Kopete telling him which song are you listening to. Not that it is that incredibily useful, but it illustrates my point. You can also tell Amarok to burn a CD using K3B. You can add audio files to the playlist dropping them from Konqueror on the Amarok's icon on the tray. You can even use Amarok as a sidebar in Konqueror!

These are examples just on the top of my head... every resonably mature KDE program uses KDE's common facilities: for opening files, for printing, for checking spelling, for communication and scripting(DCOP)... It's not perfect of course but I really think if KDE has succedeed in something has been in creating the feel of a true desktop. I could not disagree more with you on this point. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 16:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jbauer) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134776 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134776 I'm no expert but it sounds a like Apple's ActionScript to me. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 16:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (stestagg) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134777 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134777 You just don't get it. You equate 'coherence' with 'integration', and while integration is a part of coherence, it is not the same. Just use the Mac or BeOS/Zeta for a while, and see what coherence actually means. It is very difficult to explain (as mentioned in the column). Sun, 18 Jun 2006 16:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134778 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134778 Or how about we just let it remain complicated. If the people who don't know how to use a computer want to use Linux, they can use GNOME where there are no options. For those of us who like the flexibility and extra complexity, please let us use KDE. Don't turn it into another pile of shit like GNOME. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 16:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (siride) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134780 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134780 I aggree, if you use the computer to work use GNOME if you use it to waste the time use KDE. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 17:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Mitarai) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134782 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134782 Please elaborate. Every time I've tried to use GNOME, I've spent more time fighting with its "user-friendliness" to get basic things done. In KDE, things just work and I can do the things I want to do without running into another arbitrary wall put up for "user-friendliness". Even though there's more to configure in KDE, I spend less time configuring because all the options are easily accessible and make sense unlike GNOME where if I want to do anything beyond the basic prescribed course of action, I find myself in gconf-editor or some configuration file and even then it's probably not possible to actually do what I want. So I spend all my time frustrated. In KDE, I get to use programs and forget about the DE. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 17:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (siride) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134783 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134783 I'm no expert but it sounds a like Apple's ActionScript to me.
And I'm no expert at that matter, but isn't Apples ActionScript using KJS (KDEs JavaScript Implementation)?
Wait, isn't ActionScript a Flash thing? It's JavaScriptCore what I mean. Whatever, Apple is using a lot of KDEs code. (KHTML, KJS) Sun, 18 Jun 2006 17:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (panzi) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134784 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134784 I'll elaborate if you elaborate why GNOME is "a pile of shit" according to your post. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 17:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Mitarai) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134786 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134786 No KDE vs. GNOME war, please. This is about KDE. Posts have been modded down to -5 accordingly. Don't reply to this post, it will get modded down too.

Go on, discuss KDE. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 17:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134788 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134788 I read you're article and KDE is, by your definition, still coherent. I think you are getting thrown off by the larger more stand-alone apps like Amarok. Amarok isn't meant to be part of the KDE core. It's not even distributed in one of the standard KDE packages like kdemultimedia. You need to be looking at the more basic apps: the file-manager, the control center, the pdf viewer, image viewers, etc. These are part of the desktop proper. They are also coherent and integrated. They make sense. I don't even think about them because they just work and they do what they should. I click on a picture in konqueror and I see a picture. Sure it's a separate app, but it's hard to tell. It just makes sense. So I don't really see your problem with coherence. I think it's just fashionable call KDE incoherent because it's more mature than GNOME (yes, I suppose you can get a better handle on GNOME than KDE, but GNOME has so much less, so it's really an illusion of simplicity). Sun, 18 Jun 2006 17:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (siride) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134789 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134789 KDE, as in what the KDE project itself provides, is as complex and full-featured (or bloated if you prefer) or as light as the distributor that's compiling it for you chooses to make it. One of the really nice things about it, is how they provide there source tarballs in easily understandable divisions, with clear instructions on how to compile. The bare minimum is really just qt, kdelibs and kdebase. Add to that, the really nice feature of DO_NOT_COMPILE=foo,bar argument that you can prefix your configure with do enable to you to trim each of them to your liking, good stuff.

No, it isn't and likely never will be as light and thin as something like fluxbox or wmii, but that's not what it's meant to be. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 17:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (macisaac) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134790 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134790 ...if the most people can complain about is a vague impression of a lack of "coherency" and the namin scheme of applications.

Seriously, I was expecting a lot worse from Thom on this one. I guess KDE is an excellent DE.

I do agree that Adept (hey, no "K" here...) is an usability mess. That's why I continue to use Synaptic on my Kubuntu laptop.

As far as klaptop goes, there's also kpowersave which has a (marginally) better interface. Although if you use it make sure that it handles your laptop fan properly.

Here's hoping that the (few) criticisms made by Thom are picked up by the KDE developers! Sun, 18 Jun 2006 17:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (archiesteel) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134791 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134791 You obviously haven't tried Kubuntu: a default install gets you relatively few applications installed, and the selection is quite well thought out.

Do yourself a favor and try the Kubuntu Desktop (Live) CD. You'll be pleasantly surprised and realize that there's no need for SimpleKDE. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 17:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (archiesteel) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134792 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134792 While I agree with just about everything Thom said in this little rant, hey I can't stand KDE as much as the next guy, there is one little issue that pisses me off. If you'll notice, one of the screenshots is now not available because it was linked from imageshack. Thom, if you're going to use needlessly large images in your articles, at least have the decency to put it on your own server and pay for your own bandwidth. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 17:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kernelpanicked) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134793 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134793 Thom, if you're going to use needlessly large images in your articles, at least have the decency to put it on your own server and pay for your own bandwidth.

That was a temporary solution as KDE's/Konqueror ftp support was being a major bitch (so I guess I need to add a point to the article). I did not have the time to fix it until a minute ago (no, I don't sit in front of my computer all day to work on OSNews).Edited 2006-06-18 17:31 Sun, 18 Jun 2006 17:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134794 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134794 But MacOS does not have:
iSafari
iUpdate
iConsole
iDashboard
iSearch
iDock
iTerminal
iSystem Preferences
iFinder
iPages
iKeynote
iSherlock
itexteditor
iProgram environment, ibattery statusetc...
Annoying, isn't it?
Its not just most KDE programs that have that noming scheme, its all of them + plus every Komponent that is a piece of the system. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 17:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Jesuspower) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134795 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134795 Before you add ftp support as a negative point, perhaps you should make sure that the problem is with Konqueror. I use the ftp kio_slave extensively, and I've never had a problem which wasn't ISP (or firewall) related...Edited 2006-06-18 17:31 Sun, 18 Jun 2006 17:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (archiesteel) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134797 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134797 I don't like the "K" names either. Should be more creative. Koffice, Ksnapshot, KFreeSpace, etc... It doesn't cut it. You should rename all of those. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 17:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Joe User) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134798 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134798 In KDE, icons and toolbars are always too big and use too much screen space. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 17:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Joe User) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134800 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134800 Why? Apps doesn't have to be named after a certain scheme.

KDE naming is a mess. Sometimes a letter is replaced with a K (konsole), sometimes a K is appended before (kcontrol), sometimes a K in the name is just written in upper-case (amaroK). KDE devs should really name their apps better instead of just desperatly trying to get a K in their names.

Apple apps usually have good names; finder (find files), iTunes (play tunes), iPhoto (manage photos).

KDE apps usually doesn't; Konqueror, K3B, Kopete etc. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 17:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (NxStY) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134801 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134801 I think tthat he was reffering to the way things are slapped together in KDE more often than other DE's.
Example: some programs dont respect global settings for button placements. There are some items that always appear in different locations.
Weird things happen when you place the menubar at the top of the screen sometimes: many apps position themselves there, underneath it. Change your homepage in Konqueror. Try to make konqueror behave nicely while opening files in a new window by default (MacOS X has that problem also). The desktop feels seperate from the rest of the DE.

With gnome and xfce, i find myself spending less time getting items where I want them, and more time working.
Speaking of which, i am doing an fschk off a live cd while typing this, and the dumb taskbar in gnome is changing sizes. hehe. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 17:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Jesuspower) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134802 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134802 The question is: would you refrain from using a program just because of its name? If so, think about what that means... Sun, 18 Jun 2006 17:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (archiesteel) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134803 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134803 You do know you can make them smaller, right? Sun, 18 Jun 2006 17:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (archiesteel) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134804 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134804 I'm not sure, but I hope they don't are just code names. This K this K that thing also really annoys me. It was perhaps funny in the beginning of KDE, but KDE has nore and more apps, and now it's just odd. Sometimes things like "Kontact" make both an English speaker and a German think that it's just a spelling mistake ("contact" in english and "kontakt" in german) :-(

Tom Sun, 18 Jun 2006 17:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (el3ktro) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134805 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134805 haha, i remeber that! It was when i started doing web development that i switched away from KDE. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 17:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Jesuspower) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134807 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134807 I wish KDE were every-app-for-itself. Can you install Kopete without those monsters kdelibs and kdebase, or even just outside of the kdeapps package? Maybe it's just Portage, but whenever I've tried to install one KDE app, it wanted to bring all its friends. The reverse has also been a problem. I don't want every program that comes with a KDE desktop. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 17:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (atsureki) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134808 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134808 I agree - it's the exact same reason why I switched to Gnome a while ago. It's much better in this part, although far away from being perfect. KDE just confused me too much at some point with all it's options & configurability.

Tom Sun, 18 Jun 2006 17:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (el3ktro) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134809 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134809 no, but a very good reason to stop using an environment is when it beats you over the head so much, telling you that you are using KDE, even when you know that you are using KDE.
Its annoying, and distracting. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 17:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Jesuspower) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134810 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134810 Apple apps usually have good names; finder (find files), iTunes (play tunes), iPhoto (manage photos).

KDE apps usually doesn't; Konqueror, K3B, Kopete etc.

Wow. Way to pick and choose examples to support your argument!

What about: kedit, kstars, kcalc, kalarm, kfilereplace, knetworkmanager, kwifimanager, kword, konversation...

Seriously, though...who cares about what an app is named? The only thing that matters is whether it helps me do what I want to do. Everything else is cosmetic.

The more people harp on this, the more I realize that KDE3 has very few real issues. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 17:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (archiesteel) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134811 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134811 no, but a very good reason to stop using an environment is when it beats you over the head so much, telling you that you are using KDE, even when you know that you are using KDE.

So it does not matter if apps are good, they have to have names that please you as well? That makes absolutely no sense. Basically you're saying that style is more important than substance.

Its annoying, and distracting.

Whaaaa? How much time do you spend looking at an app name? Also, if it really irritates you, change the menu so it displays short descriptions instead of app names (it's in the Kicker options). Sun, 18 Jun 2006 17:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (archiesteel) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134812 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134812 Seriously, though...who cares about what an app is named? The only thing that matters is whether it helps me do what I want to do. Everything else is cosmetic.

Because an app's name is what you use to identify taskbar entries, menu launchers, etc. etc. etc. I guess you'd name your kids One, Two, Three? Because hey, that's functional, and even though it looks stupid, who cares? It's all cosmetics!

Indeed, it is all cosmetics. Cosmetics might not matter to you, as a geek, but to me, it does matter. And seeing the stupid 'k' EVERWHERE in KDE can really, and then I mean REALLY, piss me off. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 17:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134814 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134814 That's more of a distro issue (though I imagine you DO need kdelibs). Kubuntu lets you install individual KDE apps without adding everything plus the kitchen sink (which has to "Ks" in it, incidentally... :-) Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (archiesteel) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134815 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134815 The problem is, almost _every_ application for KDE has a K somewhere, while these iApps on Mac OS X are just a small set of multimedia-related applications, iTunes, iPhoto etc. It's not that all of Mac OS uses this "i".

Tom Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (el3ktro) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134816 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134816 How on earth can so many people get "annoyed" by the name of some applications?

I mean, really, it's just not a big deal. I'm too occupied actually using applications to give a toss what they are called. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mserms) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134817 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134817 I find the tone of your post a bit insulting, Thom. I don't like how you casually call me a geek. And for your information, as a video game designer, I have spent a LOT more time designing UIs, attending focus group tests and worrying about user perception and comprehension than you seem to be giving me credit for.

Meanwhile, comparing the naming of human beings to programs is, well, not a very smart analogy to make. In fact, it's bordering on the ridiculous.

It IS cosmetics, which means that after using it for a short time you don't notice it anymore. If something like this pisses you off that much, then maybe it's time for a little introspection.

Anyway, it confirms to me that your criticism of KDE was indeed limited to a few precise issues, and the rest was vague and/or cosmetic. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (archiesteel) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134819 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134819 Meanwhile, comparing the naming of human beings to programs is, well, not a very smart analogy to make. In fact, it's bordering on the ridiculous.

As is your dismissal of a problem solely because you do not experience the problem. It reminds me a lot of that classic remark in the movie "Kids", in which a carachter says he does not believe AIDS exists, simply because he does not know anyone who has AIDS.

It IS cosmetics, which means that after using it for a short time you don't notice it anymore. If something like this pisses you off that much, then maybe it's time for a little introspection.

Please, do not order me to introspect. Me, including many others, find the silly naming of applications a huge annoyance. Accept it. Disagree with it all you want, that's fine; but don't deny the existance of problems just because you do not experience the same problem.

Anyway, it confirms to me that your criticism of KDE was indeed limited to a few precise issues, and the rest was vague and/or cosmetic.

*sigh*. Why do I even bother. I'll await the reply of more eloquent folks like Aaron Seigo (see Aaron, I spelt your name right in one go!). Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134820 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134820 Then just use a smaller size in the settings. Where's the problem? Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Ascay) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134821 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134821 What about all those "G" named Gnome applications? Or how about all those "X" named X applications? Don't forget, its not Linux, but its GNU/Linux.

KDE (and then GNOME) was simply going on the X tradition of naming applications with an 'X' so you could instantly tell that is was not a console application. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (lpotter) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134822 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134822 What about all those "G" named Gnome applications? Or how about all those "X" named X applications?

Irrelevant. We are discussing KDE, not GNOME. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134823 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134823 Can you install Kopete without those monsters kdelibs and kdebase

No. Look, either you want integration or you want light and small. Code reuse and integration with other apps doesn't come for free.

or even just outside of the kdeapps package?

This is a problem with how it was packaged. I can install kopete on its own just fine in Debian/Ubuntu. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (leos) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134824 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134824 > > 6) It's been there since 3.5. I think they are even locked by default.

> Then tell me where it is.

In the panel context menu. Right click somewhere in the panel where you don't have an applet (like to the right of the taskbar) and choose 'Lock Panels'. (Or click on that little arrow button that's on all of those annoying applet handles.) But perhaps Kubuntu removed it?

> I have an expensive hi-fi set. I don't use my computer for music.

I don't either, but I do use sound for video clips and VoIP. The best fix I have found for arts is to Kill it and Keep it Killed!

Anyway, I did enjoy article. You hit on things that are a concern for many people.

At first I thought it was about just KDE, so I didn't like seeing so much kubuntu stuff, but I see now you explicitly said "Kubuntu's KDE". Heh

MWM Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mmarshall) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134826 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134826 > without adding everything plus the kitchen sink
> (which has to "Ks" in it, incidentally... :-)

No, only one:

http://www.opensync.org/wiki/kitchensync

;) Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Ascay) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134827 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134827 Well, I also find it pretty ridiculous how worked up people get about the stupid k names. Why does anyone care about this?

But, since it always seems to come up I suppose I'd support changing them. It's not like I see any pressing need to keep them the same either.

Am I right that the problem here is that everything has a k in it? So it would be better if only half the apps had one, like the i in OSX? It seems less consistent to me, but then the k never bothered me either. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (smitty) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134828 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134828 "Please, do not order me to introspect."

You weren't ordered to introspect. It was suggested that if you're bothered by the naming scheme, then it may be time to introspect.

I order you to read posts properly!

Edit: forgot emphasis.Edited 2006-06-18 18:27 Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mserms) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134829 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134829 As is your dismissal of a problem solely because you do not experience the problem.

I did not dismiss the problem, I said it was a cosmetic issue, which means it is a minor issue.

It reminds me a lot of that classic remark in the movie "Kids", in which a carachter says he does not believe AIDS exists, simply because he does not know anyone who has AIDS.

That's another poor analogy, Thom (and slightly offensive to people who have lost someone they know to AIDS...which is pretty much everyone these days.) You're comparing not caring about a naming scheme, something that has an infinitesimal impact on someone's life, with being oblivious to a disease that kills millions. For shame.

Please, do not order me to introspect.

Where did I order you to do anything? Oh, right, nowhere. I merely suggested that if cosmetic issues can drive you mad, then maybe a little anger management is in order, that's all.

Me, including many others, find the silly naming of applications a huge annoyance. Accept it. Disagree with it all you want, that's fine; but don't deny the existance of problems just because you do not experience the same problem.

I don't deny that some people are apparently very annoyed by this. Again, I don't deny that the issue exist, despite what you're trying to make me say. At the same time, I am free to express my opinion that this is a ridiculous issue to get upset about.

As I said earlier, if it irks you that much, just change the menu to "Description" instead of "Name".

*sigh*. Why do I even bother. I'll await the reply of more eloquent folks like Aaron Seigo (see Aaron, I spelt your name right in one go!).

Again, nice to see how you manage to squeeze in one last swipe at me before giving up trying to disprove what I said, i.e. that your criticism (which I thought was valid) contained few critical issues, but mostly vague (coherency) and cosmetic (naming scheme) problems.

Before you go and attack me again, please realize that I'm not saying these issues should not be fixed; of course they should be fixed! But the fact that they are relatively minor and/or cosmetic annoyances is testimony to the overall quality of KDE version 3. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (archiesteel) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134830 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134830 100% ack Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (el3ktro) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134831 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134831 Since my user id is Jesuspower, I will accordingly reply in such a manner (Which may be a good post, but it may not be read):
Jgood Jpoint. Jas Ja Jmatter Jof Jfact, Jall JI Jreally Jneed Jto Jdo Jis Jignore Jthe J'K', Jbecause Jit Jis Juseless Jin Jthe Japplication Jname. Jin Jthe Jgrand Jshceme Jof Jthings, Janyone Jwhining Jabout Jit Jis Jpushing Jit. Jits Jso Jsimple. Jjust Jrun Jthis Jthrough Ja Jscript, Jand Jremove Jall Jthe J's. Jso Jif Jyou Jwant Jto Jread Jthis Jpost Jwithout Jbeing Jannoyed, Just Jremove Jthe Js. Jand, no, Jnot Jevery Jword Jin Jthis Jreply Jdoes Jnot Jstart Jwith J.
JEnd. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Jesuspower) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134832 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134832 Well, I guess that's *one* app for which they shouldn't change the name... :-) Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (archiesteel) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134833 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134833 I agree with some of the posts that implied all these complaints are cosmestic. I think that's an important point.

Sure, things like kcontrol are a bit of a monster when it comes to finding configuration settings (which Kubuntu attempted to address with System Settings). Everything is configurable to the nth degree, which can make things confusing.

Of course the counter to that is that it is by design, since Kiosk allows you to configure and lockdown a desktop right to the point of determining which menu options a user has available. Over kill for a single user, but valuable for people deploying KDE particularly in net cafe or POS/Retail type settings.

The naming scheme, come on. Yes, it's lame but it has it's roots in a different time. But it's ridiculous to say that it impedes useability because the name != function of the app. Nautilus? Safari? Firefox? GIMP? Epiphany? Banshee? How do those help a user understand what the application does?

Desktop clutter? Taskbar settings? Those are default settings. If they're an issue, they're easy enough to change. A valid criticism, maybe, but it's stretching.

The "useability" issues are being addressed by the KDE team. There are groups designated specifically for interface design and maintaining a level of consistency. From naming to configuration to default settings, KDE4 is taking a tear-down/rebuild approach.

But I think what's really important is that none of this really addressed functionality deficiencies. Because that's where KDE shines IMHO. The modular approach is a strength.

People like to complain Konqueror is bloated. Konqueror isn't bloated. It's an empty wrapper for kparts and kio-slaves. Konqueror can be a web browser, it can be a file browser, it can be a control panel, it can be a document viewer, it can do ftp etc. And that kio-slave functionality extends to the filepicker, so that virtually *any* KDE app can open or save files to unmounted shares, ftp/fish sites, a beagle search list etc.

Core components are accessible to other applications. Kopete pulling from the Address Book for contacts. Kontact building a meta application by simply integrating components from mail, organizer, addressbook etc.

It's a very cool architecture. Yes, maybe it flies in the face of one-app/one-function but I expect integration from a DE, otherwise I'd stick to command line or a light-weight window manager.

I think what's really important to point out is that the complaints about KDE are interface related, and while not invalid, it's certainly a hell of a lot easier to address interface problems than it is to add cohesiveness and integration to a DE that is lacking it. KDE4 will be very interesting. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (elsewhere) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134834 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134834 Check out this page: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/kde-split-ebuilds.xml

Basically, you need to uninstall your old kde packages, and then reinstall using the newer split ebuilds. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (smitty) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134835 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134835 No he didn't say that. You don't only look at an apps name when you launch it, you also look at it in the taskbar, in the titlebar etc. And especially for new users it's important to have app names which actually tell you what this app is doing.

I would't mind about this K so much if it at least had a consistent naming scheme. Why for example is the contact application called "Kontact", but the control center is called "Kcontrol" instead of "Kontrol". This just makes no sense and looks stupid, sorry.

Tom Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (el3ktro) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134836 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134836 I agree with a lot of the stuff in there, particularly about the Adept front-end and the awful ever present root password dialogue, but not others. It just looks as if some space needed to be filled in:

And that is what I miss when using KDE. It has more of a "each project for itself" mentality, which are then bolted together before release date to form the K Desktop Environment.

I get the exact opposite impression more than any other Unix desktop environment I've ever used. You can see that a KDE application is built on top of kdebase, kdelibs etc. You can see from the UI layout, the settings, the way Kopete works with Kontact and everything about it that there is a common base being inherited from. In something like Gnome you always feel that applications, particular like GAIM, are pushed to you as Gnome applications when it's pretty clear that they are not when you use them. Integration is bunged on as an afterthought through some 'bindings' that end up barely working.

It does not feel as if it is part of a greater whole; whereas Gaim integrates much better with the rest of GNOME

Hmmmm. Kopete and Kontact integration? GAIM tries to integrate with the rest of what is called Gnome, but it falls pretty short. Pretty bad example I think. The problem is something like Gnome has no real infrastructure for making this happen in a universal and predictable way, in the way KDE apps use DCOP and now DBUS for communication, and it shows. The underlying framework is something users never see directly, but it does come out.

The climax of this is Amarok; it even has its own live CD.

Hmmmm. We're talking about the coherency of Amarok as an application within KDE, not that there is an Amarok live cd you can try out.

KDE's root password dialog needs some love.

It's always looked pretty awful.

KDE features a very confusing and incomprehensible power management configuration screen (klaptop).

The laptop modules were an absolute disaster. You got modules in there even if you weren't running a particular kind of laptop, and the UIs were awful. It does seem that the penny has dropped with this and something will be done about it.

Kubuntu's front-end to apt, adept, is another one of those graphical disasters.

Indeed it is. I first started using the Adept front-end a few weeks ago, and even though I am presented with awful UIs almost daily I had to ask myself the question "What do I do here and where on Earth do I start" about ten times before I could work out how to even remotely use it.

It's damn awful, but it really didn't need to be. A bit of UI thought is the easy bit. They could even have just lifted YaST's front end, or even ported YaST to Kubuntu. Not that YaST is great from a UI point of view, but it's much better than that.

Last but not least: get a decent naming scheme. Seriously. K this, K that; just... Don't. Really. I suggest a global renaming of KDE applications into normal, k-less names.

Yer, I mean who'd get anywhere with a naming scheme like that? iChat, iTunes, iPhoto.... I mean, OS X should be called iOS or iX shouldn't it? And what does that 'i' stand for anyway? And Evolution. Is that a Gnome application, or is it some application for teaching Darwin's theory? Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (segedunum) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134838 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134838 Who cares? What difference does it really make? People go on and on about the naming but I have yet to see one single valid reason. Inconsistency is not a valid reason. The names are spelled with K's to make them distinctive and interesting. The K doesn't impart any extra information about the program except that it belongs to KDE. So it doesn't really matter if sometimes you replace a letter, and sometimes you prefix a K, etc. The pattern is based entirely on aesthetics. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (siride) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134840 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134840 You've got to be kidding me. I can only hope you're not a GNOME user, otherwise this would be the biggest piece of hypocrisy in this whole debate. Only GNOME has huge toolbars and poor layout (to the point that I feel like I'm using 800x600 again, even though my screen has a resolution of 1400x1050). KDE and its themes make much better use of screen real estate. I doubt it'll ever be fixed in GNOME given that users supposedly can't handle reasonable layout...or features. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (siride) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134841 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134841 Please, do not order me to introspect. Me, including many others, find the silly naming of applications a huge annoyance. Accept it.

Ok, done.

Disagree with it all you want

Also done.

Now, more importantly, in your opinion, what is a good name for an application? And I don't want some wishy washy explanation about something which subtly conveys the use of the application while still being memorable and easy to pronounce. I want a real example. Which open source project out there has a good name?

Here're a few that I think are good (biased towards KDE because those are the apps I use more often):
kwrite, kmix, kword, kpowersave, gnumeric, gnomemeeting (oops!), inkscape, ktorrent etc

With all of those apps, you immediately know which toolkit/desktop they were written for (except for inkscape), and you have a pretty good idea of what they do. kwrite? Must be for writing something, probably a text editor.

The next group of names are bad but acceptable. These are the easy to pronounce ones that have no meaning. In my opinion these names should only be used for big flagship applications so the user doesn't have to memorize a weird name for every app on the system. For example:
Ekiga - this is the new name for gnomemeeting. They went from something completely clear to something completely obtuse. Ekiga means nothing to anyone.

Consider kpdf vs evince. Now I don't think of a PDF viewer as a major app, so why bother with a stupid name like that? Just make it clear from the name what the app is good for. Yes I realize that evince will also display other formats than pdf so it's not entirely accurate to call it gpdf, but most people don't ever view PS or DVI files so it's a moot point. You could always call it gview.

Now the horrible names. I can only think of one at the moment, and that is k3b. Not only is it not a word that a normal person can speak, it also doesn't mean anything that I can tell, and it's hard to type!
k3b, the KDE 3 Burner? Who knows, it's not intuitive in any case.

Why not just call it KBurner or KBurn or BurnIt or whatever. Anything is better than k3b.

/rant over. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (leos) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134842 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134842 The pattern is based entirely on aesthetics.

Yes, but it is ANNOYING. I start up my compuer to KDE. I wait for the Kicker to come to live. I fire up Kontact's Kmail module to check my mail. I launch Konqueror to read OSNews, while at the same time waiting for Amarok to come up. After that, I load Kopete to start chatting with friends.

Etc. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134844 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134844 How about you buy a computer that was made after 1998 so that you have enough hard-drive space to install 100 megabytes of basic KDE? Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (siride) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134845 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134845 Besides, even if you know what root is, the titlebar still doesn't tell you what password you need to enter. You don't always enter the root password to run an app as root. Consider sudo. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (AdamW) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134846 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134846 Good open-source application names? Mmmm, I find the names the various KDE4 projects are adopting quite good.

However, one of the best, if not THE best application name EVER, is of course Apple's GarageBand. That name so perfectly entails the program's intended purpose, without it sounding annoying or pedantic. It is perfect. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134847 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134847 That's not really an argument, at all. Please give a better argument than "I can list a bunch of apps that start with K". Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (siride) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134848 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134848 The "iApps" in OS X are used by Apple ... well only for there "iLife" applications. It's a bundled suite of apps, so it makes perfect sense. iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iTunes, iChat, and... well Garage Band, which is a perfect name IMO. It also went with Apple's marketing of the iMacs and iBooks.

The KApps, or rather AppsK or ApKs seem to just been as part of the name.. just because its KDE. It's not necessary. It doesn't follow any type of pattern at all.Edited 2006-06-18 18:53 Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (D3M0N) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134849 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134849 Moreover, even if you are another account, and you have sudo rights, it is still your password.
Really, I can't get what's the point of Thom here. I feel he doesn't understand how does Ubuntu work. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (devurandom) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134850 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134850 I agree on everything except the K-names.
I don't use KDE cuz it seems like it has like 2-3 different configuration sets for everything, and they all do it differently, and the main K ones don't always work when others do... it was just frustrating to me.

But I think primarily my issue w/ KDE is, how static the main menu is. Yes you can probably make it whatever you please, but really how? I mean taking headings off, rearranging EVERYthing in the main menu, how? Maybe I want it to look like a Gnome menu, but be in the K environment, that'd be great, but the ultimately configurable DE doesn't have a thorough enough user-configurable menu. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (joesnow) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134851 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134851 There is no "root" in Ubuntu. Everything is done by using sudo.
So, normal people don't need understanding what root means. The password is *your* password, really. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (devurandom) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134852 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134852 but the ultimately configurable DE doesn't have a thorough enough user-configurable menu.

Huh? I find the KDE menu editor (I'd hazard a guess... Kmenu-editor?) to be really, really powerful. Ok, it's just as much a mess as adept or the power control panels, but still.Edited 2006-06-18 18:56 Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134853 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134853 You equate 'coherence' with 'integration', and while integration is a part of coherence, it is not the same.

I guess I don't get it. Someone must know what exactly constitutes coherence. I think it's the combination of consistency, integration, and simplicity, but you seem to disagree. I think KDE has better consistency and integration that any other environment I've used. The simplicity is lacking a bit, perhaps that is where it fails on the coherence front. Who knows, it doesn't bother me in the slightest.

I have used Mac OS X (extensively) and BeOS (shortly). I found OS X was ok but frustrating because of its "one size fits all" policy. It just didn't work optimally for me. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (leos) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134854 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134854 Funny enough, I choose KDE over Gnome for the very same reason you're choosing Gnome over KDE.

Maybe it's me being unable to appreciate Gnome, but I really feel KDE as an integrated, coherent thing, while Gnome looks like just a bunch of GTK apps. Gaim or Gnumeric or Abiword are not GNOME apps: they're GTK apps that happen to have some Gnome integration. KDE apps are really KDE apps (think or KParts integration in Konqueror, for example). I guess my world looks like a Bizarro world to Thom (and vice-versa)... Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (devurandom) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134855 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134855 Again, I'd like somebody to explain why these names have to follow a pattern. This whole anti-K-name argument seems to me to be a fake argument produced by people who just don't like KDE to begin with and will find anything they can against it. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 19:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (siride) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134856 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134856 "You just don't get it."

No, you didn't explain it very well. You indicate in your article that what you were trying to illustrate (under the term "coherency," which is vague) was hard to put into words. Don't insult others to cover up for your deficient writing skills. You misrepresent OSNews as a publication to be taken seriously. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 19:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Nathan O.) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134857 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134857 Why not just move the file, no questions asked. That is what most users would want to do. It is the operation that best fits the desktop methaphore. It is how it works in most other desktop environments.

NO. NO. NO. NO.
That's exactly something I *hate* of other DEs and a part of why, even if not using KDE as a whole DE (I'm on XFCE now) I like Konqueror so much (I love to say it's my own Linux "killer app").

Saying that moving is "what most users want to do" is a senseless sentence to be polite. Users do actions on files according to what they need to do. Sometimes it's copying. Sometimes it's moving. It depends. It's not that "moving" is more trendy. I really love the fact Konqueror gives me each time the chance to choose what I want to do. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 19:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (devurandom) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134858 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134858 Yeah, that's a bit crapy. But who dose it right?

Synaptic. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 19:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (devurandom) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134861 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134861 Don't insult others to cover up for your deficient writing skills.

Where in that post is the insult? Please don't go making up insults I did not make in order to discredit me. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 19:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134862 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134862 I guess you'd name your kids One, Two, Three? Because hey, that's functional, and even though it looks stupid, who cares? It's all cosmetics!

Quite OT... but, in rural Italy, it was commonplace.
There were many families with brothers named Primo, Secondo,Terzo (that is First, Second, Third...) and so on. I remember of an old man called Settimo (Seventh) who was my neighbour.

And seeing the stupid 'k' EVERWHERE in KDE can really, and then I mean REALLY, piss me off.

Well,it's your taste. I hate the brown colour of Ubuntu's Gnome, but hey, it's not Ubuntu's fault. It's just me that happens to dislike brown. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 19:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (devurandom) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134863 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134863 Quite OT... but, in rural Italy, it was commonplace.

Stems from the Roman times. Romans did it too.

Well,it's your taste.

Yes, as is every complaint in this series . Sun, 18 Jun 2006 19:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134865 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134865 "What about all those "G" named Gnome applications? Or how about all those "X" named X applications?

Irrelevant. We are discussing KDE, not GNOME."

---

"Fascism is better than democracy since in democracy there's poverty.

There's poverty in fascist system also!

Irrelevant, we are discussing democracy." Sun, 18 Jun 2006 19:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kolmyo) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134866 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134866 Fedora 4 version: "The action you requested needs root privileges. Please enter root's password below or click Ignore to continue with your current privileges."

Under the motto: 'no one reads help messages, so why include them', the Kubuntu team must have removed most of the explanation that comes with the root password dialog (or the somebody @ Redhat added some more text).

And 'ignore' does just what it says, continue with current privileges, showing (in this case) the dialog to change the time and date, without being able to change anything. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 19:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (wohim) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134867 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134867 The insult is in the first sentence where you say

You just don't get it


That is an insult to the poster; it comes with an implicit sigh, hands thrown in the air and an muttered 'idiot' with it. If you removed the 'just' it is marginally better, however what you should have written was something like: as I said, (my definition of) coherence is hard to define precisely, and there is some quality (whatever it was) that I evidently didn't stress enough that needs to be there that you've not allowed for.

Once more your editorial skills are less than tacful, indeed much of your editorial posting seems to be a personal crusade against those that disagree with you. The meaning of moderation seems to have slipped you by.Edited 2006-06-18 19:24 Sun, 18 Jun 2006 19:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (maxmg) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134868 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134868 FreeDesktop.org does work on a desktop-neutral virtual file system: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software_2fdvfs Sun, 18 Jun 2006 19:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (IgorKH) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134869 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134869 Actually is an argument. One which makes his point quite well.

Or do you mean to say you disagree--that [*]K[*] isn't everywhere? Sun, 18 Jun 2006 19:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Alex Forster) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134870 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134870 Nailed that one. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 19:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Sphinx) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134871 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134871 I never thought I would end up defending Thom but... Being insulted by a relatively polite (for the web) "You just don't get it" then turning around and attacking him with such vitriol?

I really think you might want to take a step back and consider whether his opinion matters this much to you.

I am not a KDE user, so really can't comment too much on this rant. The K thing does bug me I must confess, but I can not explain why. the X for X11 apps does not, nor does the occasional G for Gnome apps. I guess it is the quantity of it. It gets old. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 19:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kokopelli) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134872 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134872 Well said Thom! But you only sratched the surface! I use KDE (prefer it to Gnome), but that doesn't blind me to its faults.

KDE, like all GUI-linux, lacks coherency in a big way - actually its AWFUL.

"...the advantage that Windows has over Linux is that Windows development pays much greater attention to users than Linux development does. (Note, I'm not saying it's driven by users' needs; it obviously isn't.) For example, Microsoft gave a Vista version to a couple of thousand users and had somebody watch them getting used to it. This tells Microsoft, not what people say they find hard to get used to in Vista, but what people actually find hard to get used to in Vista. It's very tough for Free Software to do something like that."

Until KDE gets an ubermeister who really knows something about interface design (and MS have improved immeasurably - Vista apart) and insists people code to a coherent interface its always going to look like a amateur random asssemblage and be only quasi-usable.

When folks going to understand this!Edited 2006-06-18 19:32 Sun, 18 Jun 2006 19:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Cutterman) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134875 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134875 I felt the same way about Rendezvous. Unfortunately, France sued apple. Or something. Regardless, it's not Rendezvous anymore. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 19:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Alex Forster) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134876 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134876 > It IS cosmetics, which means that after using it for a
> short time you don't notice it anymore.

This only happens if you use said feature all the time. As a counter-example, I have a Mac and I use Cyberduck for FTP. More than once I tried to remember that damn name because it says less than nothing about the application. It's a minor annoyance (exactly since I'm not using it often), but when I do use it then it completely distracts me from anything else I was really doing. On top of that, it does so for no good reason. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 19:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Morin) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134877 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134877 And what is the argument exactly? He said two things
1) K-names are annoying
2) [long list of K-name programs]

He didn't say why it was annoying. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 19:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (siride) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134878 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134878 50k apps, please.

On Gentoo with split ebuilds your lucky if a minimal install actually has 100 apps.

Just because a app is write for KDE, doesn't mean it is a "KDE" app.

This thread is full of outdated info from both sides.
Too many of you have no clue what you are talking about. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 19:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Headrush) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134879 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134879 People need to understand the difference between what is KDE does by default, and what a Linux distro does to KDE by default.

Its no difference then people equate the problems with any DE and Linux. Linux is not the DE you use. It is something that runs on top of it. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 19:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Headrush) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134880 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134880 Well,it's your taste.

Yes, as is every complaint in this series .

Well, I like your "rants", but I suggest you could do a better work if you split things that are purely aesthetic (like K-names) from things that are meaningful functional/usability issues (Adept interface, for example). You're welcome to rant on both, but you could split them just to make things clear and to make people say "ok, that's Thom taste, let's talk about real issues".
:) Sun, 18 Jun 2006 19:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (devurandom) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134881 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134881 If you drag a file and drops it in a folder, you get a popup menu asking you to "Move here", "Copy here", "Link here" or "Cancel". Why not just move the file, no questions asked. That is what most users would want to do. It is the operation that best fits the desktop methaphore. It is how it works in most other desktop environments.

That's what I like best about Konqueror. On other environments if I drag and drop I don't know if it has been moved or copied (it's most likely been moved), and if I specifically want to copy it I have to go through the utter tediousness of right-clicking, selecting copy...... This way I can do either really easy. It's a major advantage of Konqueror in my eyes, and those of many others and it isn't hard to figure out at all. It makes file management much, much, much easier. It's one of those nice surprises, where you expect Konqueror to work in one way and it turns out to be much easier than you thought.

Let's look at this a little closer. The "Cancel" item. The only reason that is needed is that you have a pop up menu in the first place.

The cancel button is there because otherwise, you'd have to click on something else to get rid of the pop up. That's not hard to figure out either. They could just make the pop up disappear when you took your mouse out of its area though.

The "Link here" item is very rarely used. I would guess that on the average Unix system the share of links is less than 1/1000 of all files in the file system.

The equivalent on Windows is the 'Create Shortcut', and few people seem to complain about that. Maybe it needs a better description.

I would also guess that it is far more common that sysadmins make links than ordinary users.

Sys admins are users as well, and I see no reason why you can't make it straightforward and easy for both sets of users.

A much better aproach would have been to just move the file, and handle the other options with "Copy", and "Paste" just like in all other applications. The link option could then appear as "Paste as link" in the "Edit" menu".

It's tedious and it's slow and it's a right pain in the backside when it comes to file management.Edited 2006-06-18 20:09 Sun, 18 Jun 2006 19:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (segedunum) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134884 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134884 "Whilst I admit the dialog box you use as an example does need some love it does tell you which password to enter in the title bar."

So what does the ignore button do? Sun, 18 Jun 2006 19:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Ronald Vos) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134886 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134886 *Sigh* How many times does it need explanation: THERE IS NO ROOT PASSWORD in Kubuntu/Ubuntu/Xubuntu, Your password actually IS "YOUR" password.
And yes, no one reads help messages, a lot of people come from an os that prefered "ease of use" above safety and took it a lot of steps too far. Now everyone just wants to press enter.

So Thom, wouldn't it be better to remove that line, it's the way ubuntu works (sudo) and not KDE's fault at all, the sentence is completely correct and means what it seems to mean. There must be other mistakes to put up than a box that really does and explains what it is for. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Terracotta) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134887 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134887 *sigh*. Why do I even bother. I'll await the reply of more eloquent folks like Aaron Seigo (see Aaron, I spelt your name right in one go!).

You were just itching to fit that name in somewhere, eh? Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Alex Forster) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134888 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134888 I guess I'm not explaining this quite right. I like integration, and I like code and lib reuse. The latter is what makes Linux Linux. But with KDE, libs for any given KDE app only seem to be of any use for other KDE apps. I don't mind that KDE is physically large, but I hate how it seems to act like its own operating system. It has its own network config, its own power management, and other things that should really be system-wide, or are even taken care of by an already superior program (xscreensaver-demo vs. kscreensaver), and the fact that it provides these things leads to its apps depending on them (think aRts.) KDE has accomplished great things for the Linux desktop, so I don't want to come off as completely unappreciative, but I'd be much more appreciative if they'd done it in a way that allows more apps completely outside of KDE to take advantage of their technology.

Piping stdout to stdin never required massive libraries or the use or even presence of a specific shell. It's a system-wide function that anyone can use. Similar concepts in DEs should not be exclusive to the realm of radical, highly experimental alpha projects. It should be standard operational procedure. If a feature is too quick, it's also too dirty. That's a tradeoff I don't want. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (atsureki) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134889 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134889 You just don't get it. You equate 'coherence' with 'integration', and while integration is a part of coherence, it is not the same.

Hmmmm. Integration is a very important, and tangible, part of coherence. The other parts of coherence can be about naming, being part of the same suite (Office suite etc). All apps lack coherence in some way with their underlying desktop environment, some more than others, and certainly far worse than KDE applications. I mean, how can anyone think that Microsoft Office is coherent when its user interface is completely different from other Windows applications and the interfaces are sometimes different even between the apps? You said it yourself last week. How can OS X's applications be coherent and look as if they are part of something greater when they all use different themes?

You also equate coherence directly with integration as an example:

The MacOS, for instance, has a high level of coherency because all the applications integrate very well with the operating system as a whole.

iTunes, iPhoto, the Finder, Address Book, Mail.app; they are all intertwined with one another, they relate to eachother, as well as to the operating system itself

KDE has a whole damn, clearly defined, framework and layer for making this happen in kdelibs and the services it provides, and more so than a Mac. It's pretty trivial to make a KDE app part of a larger whole through DCOP and KParts and they are extremely well used throughout KDE. Every time you look at something it almost certainly inherits from the same place and you get the feeling "Ah, I've seen this before".

Integration doesn't mean coherence, but it's a good 90% of it, and it certainly is from your definition. There are certainly, far, far, far better examples of a lack of coherence than KDE applications. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (segedunum) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134890 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134890 Well, it should probably be renamed to "Skip", but I don't think it that confusing if you stop and think about it - just annoying and badly designed.

By the way, the default box comes with a more descriptive message which explains the Ignore button saying:

The action you requested needs root privileges. Please enter root's password below or click Ignore to continue with your current priveleges.

Kubuntu clearly tried to modify this dialog box to fit in with their "root doesn't exist" approach, and completely screwed up user-friendlyness in the process.Edited 2006-06-18 20:12 Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (smitty) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134891 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134891 Use ThinKeramik and derivatives, appropriate font sizes and smaller toolbar icons and you will find that KDE can do just fine in terms of screen real estate.

It's impossible to do the same with GNOME because the applications are designed from the start to be inefficient in terms of screen real-estate and not a single GTK+ theme is compact (they are all varying degrees of oversized widgets). Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (siride) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134892 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134892 >I already proclaimed it a personal success.

Yay.

Well, I suppose your "nit picks" aren't too bad. They are rather nit-picky. KDE is a good DE. I like it. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Tuishimi) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134894 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134894 indeed. and at least, you can change it globally in KDE. for Gnome, you have to change it in every individual application by hand... Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (superstoned) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134895 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134895 I really think you might want to take a step back and consider his opinion matters this much to you

His opinion does matter, more than almost anyone else on these boards, because he is one of the editors, one of those responsible for moderating this board and keeping up some semblance of standards (to whit his instruction not to start a KDE Gnome flamewar. And praise where praise is due on that.) His posts cannot be moderated down (or up), they are there, untouchable and distinctly set apart from those of us in the cheap seats. It is reasonable to expect any posts in that privileged position to be held to a different standard. It is hard to tell where Thom ends and osnews begins sometimes, and that is worrying. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (maxmg) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134896 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134896 Typical Apple zealot response to criticism: "You just don't get it"; then failling to give any logical explanation about why we "don't get it"

AFAIK You're the one who "just don't get it" Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (JohnX) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134897 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134897 Yes, with split ebuilds the minimal kde install doesn't even include kicker, let alone 50k apps. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (smitty) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134898 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134898 His posts cannot be moderated down (or up)

They can.

http://www.osnews.com/meta/read.php/1147896425/you_asked_for_it:_mo... Edited 2006-06-18 20:39 Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134899 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134899 Typical Apple zealot response to criticism.

And now I'm an Apple zealot?

*sigh* Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134900 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134900 Names of apps are important for the simple reason that they´re a part of the experience. How would you feel for a DE where everything had names like "E-mail application", "file browser application", "image viewer application" etc.?

Sure you can´t give a technical reason why it's important, just like you can't give a technical reason why eye candy is important. Yet a lot of people would agree that it's. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (NxStY) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134901 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134901 A deafult install of KDE must have over 50 K apps installed. It boggles my mind

You are quite likely using one of the old style commercial distributions that dump everything they can onto your harddrive in fear a competing distribution might have something more than they do. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (anda_skoa) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134902 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134902 Odd, I like KDE over Gnome for almost the same things you choose Gnome over KDE.
Maybe I have been driving around in it for so long I just know it well, but every time I try Gname, I get lost, and things do not work or have funky quirks.

I have tried Gnome on almost a dozen PC's (Home built clones and propriety systems) and never found it reliable. KDE on the other hand has always done me right.

But I do know of others who had the opposite results with Gnome working for them, but KDE giving issues.

My opinion..... 6 of 1 @ half a doven of the other... Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (LinuxHawk) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134903 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134903 indeed. and at least, you can change it globally in KDE. for Gnome, you have to change it in every individual application by hand...

Aha! That wouldn't be an example of a lack of integration and coherence would it? :-) Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (segedunum) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134904 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134904 If this isn't the most perfect example of a bikeshed issue that I've ever seen.

Names are labels. They have no inherent meaning other than to identify an object. If you really want to have everything named as descriptive statements rather than proper nouns, be prepared to eat your own dog food. I for one do not want everything named TextEditorForDummiesAndOtherPeopleThatCantBeBotheredToRTFM rather than vim (not meant to be analogous). If somebody uses a noun you don't know, you look in the dictionary. One does not demand that the author reduce his vocabulary.

As for whether the names contain k, g or any other arbitrary glyph from an alphabet just goes to further demonstrate the level of bikeshedding going on around here.Edited 2006-06-18 21:01 Sun, 18 Jun 2006 21:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (rajj) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134905 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134905 Yeah, I chose KDE for that same reason. KDE applications are tightly integrated together, but I can see where both environments are incoherent.

KDE has a number of applications ranging from amateur to excellent that use only the Qt toolkit, they are made this way for portability beyond the realm of X11 and Xorg bound operating systems; however, it means that they don't share the same icons as all the other KDE applications, and they frequently use the rather unattractive and impractical generic Qt open and save dialogs. The key-bindings are also sometimes quite inconsistent.

Gnome on the other hand shares many of its non-core applications with a few other GTK based desktop environments. Those applications can very literally be transplanted from one into another and seem to fit in indestinguishably to the untrained eye. The thing is that those applications were designed with GTK in mind, but not necessarily Gnome, so they are much more independent from their fellow applications and have some subtle inconsistencies from the norm which many end users wouldn't notice.

Ultimately though, KDE does have some UI problems in its third party applications. One look at Adept is all the proof someone needs, it has a unique and very aggravating UI design. I'm surprised that Kubuntu uses it instead of Kynaptic which is much simpler, after all, the Ubuntu family of distributions aims to keep things easy. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 21:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Celerate) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134906 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134906 A problem in KDE isn't less of a problem just because gnome shares it. So yes, the names of gnome apps are irrelevant as we're discussing KDE. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 21:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (NxStY) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134907 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134907 My mistake, then, Thom. I was referring to the fact that the -/+ buttons are not enabled on your posts (for me: I certainly cannot mod up or down your posts, and nor can 93% of people according the information in that link).


And, to emphasize, your opinon does matter; that was even one of the things highlighted in the piece which rated previous articles as a great/personal success because people at Apple and Evolution had been in touch to talk about it (one unofficial contact)Edited 2006-06-18 21:08 Sun, 18 Jun 2006 21:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (maxmg) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134908 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134908 Sometimes a letter is replaced with a K (konsole)

Actually that is the proper spelling for the executable of a program called "Konsole".

But maybe you are mistakingly assuming that it is the English word "console". Sun, 18 Jun 2006 21:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (anda_skoa) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134909 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134909 Actually, thom, it does tell you clearly which password you need to enter: your password.

Which user were you logged in with? That user's password is the one you need to enter.

There's no root password on kubuntu.

-- edit --

Granted, it could be made better, by for instance spelling the name of the user, perhaps like this: "thom, please enter your password", where "thom" would be that user's login.Edited 2006-06-18 21:42 Sun, 18 Jun 2006 21:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (falemagn) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134910 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134910 The icons on the desktop now align to the grid in KDE 3.5.3 - at long last. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 21:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (skuttler) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134911 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134911 Don't you see that it's terribly annoying when you open a menu and ALL (or well almost all) entries start with K ? It makes it a lot harder to quickly select the right app... As someone who is so experienced with UI's you should see the problem I mean, no? Sun, 18 Jun 2006 21:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (progster) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134912 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134912 > > Typical Apple zealot response to criticism.

> And now I'm an Apple zealot?

> *sigh*

Thom? Apple zealot? He must be new here.

MWM Sun, 18 Jun 2006 21:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mmarshall) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134913 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134913 My favorite example on how, this make everything simple complicates life for an ordinary user is how drag&drop in the file manager. If you drag a file and drops it in a folder, you get a popup menu asking you to "Move here", "Copy here", "Link here" or "Cancel". Why not just move the file, no questions asked. That is what most users would want to do. It is the operation that best fits the desktop methaphore. It is how it works in most other desktop environments.

Microsoft spent millions to find the actions people most likely want to do when dnd'ing a file.
The result? I use right-click dnd to get the menu and most non-computer experts I know use copy&paste exclusively to get around Windows' "I know what you want" attitude.

Thom:
Take Kopete, for instance. I think it is miles ahead of Gaim 1.x and even Gaim 2.x in terms of functionality, and I really like it-- however, it is just Kopete. It does not feel as if it is part of a greater whole; whereas Gaim integrates much better with the rest of GNOME (still not as good as i.e. iChat integrates with the MacOS, but still). The climax of this is Amarok; it even has its own live CD.

It looks like other KDE apps, behaves like other KDE apps and uses kio and that stuff, so what should they do differently? Note: I use neither Kopete nor Gaim so I have no idea what you're talking about and it would have been nice if, instead of 3 paragraphs about what is not coherence but consistency, you could have spelled out what in this special case coherence should be.

2. The password dialog:
You're on Kubuntu, there is no root password.
btw. the non-Kubuntu dialog goes like this:
The action you requested needs root privileges. Please enter root's password below or click Ignore to continue with your current privileges
Which is better imho. It makes clear that root is a user.

3. Don't forget the config dialogs of the panel clock

4. Kubuntu has a different, much simpler dialog for (un)installing software in its control center

5.However, something as elementary as setting icon size for desktop icons independently from the rest of the file manager is impossible!
It's not. Konqueror->View->Icon Size
Btw. you can set the number of lines Konqueror should use for filenames in the filemanager config.

6. They solved the problem of getting toolbars back into position in KDE 3.4. As long as you drop it in the right region it ends up where it should. At least I haven't had any problems with toolbars since 3.3

7. Set the KMenu to "descriptions only" (panel configuration->menus).

Out of your complaints 3. is the only good one. 1. needs more explaining, 2., 6. and 7. is just grasping for something to criticize, 4. is not really valid and 5. is wrong. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 21:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (nutshell42) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134914 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134914 The dialog is clear. Maybe you should know that (K)ubuntu implements sudo to run privileged commands.

It says "Please enter *your* password" and yes, it means your personal password. Otherwise, the dialog says, enter administrator or root password etc. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 21:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kanwar.plaha) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134915 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134915 It's not really a problem because all the apps have the application icon next to it.

In any case, human beings do not read words letter by letter. Instead, they usually recognize words as a whole, so there's very little confusion (if any at all) when seeing, say "Konversation" next to "Kwifimanager". Sun, 18 Jun 2006 21:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (archiesteel) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134916 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134916 Overall, I agree with your main points about KDE (always agreed with the Gnome ones). I generally bounce between KDE and Gnome, depending upon my mood of the week and have been for about the past 8 months. I know it sounds like I wouldn't get much done, but I've configured both to exactly I want each side. Considering I regularly flirt between Windows and Linux cmdline at work, OSX, Windows, and Linux at home, I'm at home with all.

1.) I think I find what you're referring to here. KDE has very nice integration among its core apps, whether its Kopete to Konqurer with files, or Kmail with contacts, the core apps are integrated very nicely.

However, even in the core apps, dialogues are not always the same, menus vary, and it gets far, far worse when you delve out into other apps. KDE might have a general guideline for apps, but it doesn't seem as indepth, or as utilized as Gnomes. Now, thats from my experience, I could be completely wrong.

2.) I've noticed this mainly to be a problem with Kubuntu. It seems like they customized the dialogue too much to "fit" with the "root"-less accounts, but forgot to fill it out. Considering Kubuntu is still fairly new, and is an adaptation of Ubuntu's human interface, I think it should probably get a slide here for this release.

3.) Don't use it, so cant really mention here. I've only ever tried to use Ubuntu on my iBook and that was a disastor with the PPC.

4.) Same. I use apt-get from the commandline, or else synaptic. I know adept had alot of problems in breezy, hence why I avoid it.

5.) This is really my major beef with KDE. There's a million and one customizations possible, but there's no real central "location" for them. Yes, Gnome's dialogues might be simple but atleast I can go into gconf and edit them there, with just about every editable option in that location.

KDE though, requires going through a million and one .files or else trying to find it...everywhere. Some settings also dont seem to apply globally (like locktasbar) as you assume they would. I think its more just a lack of polish (again, maybe HIG isnt quite as adhered to?)

7.) Naming scheme. Yes, KDE's is terrible. But, then so is most opensource apps. Hopefully this'll be fixed soon in KDE4/Gnome3 Sun, 18 Jun 2006 21:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (anduril) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134918 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134918 You say one have to make sure that it handles the fan properly. What do you mean by that?

I have the impression that my fan is running longer than neccessary. Do you have any references on how to solve the problem? Sun, 18 Jun 2006 22:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Ponto) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134919 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134919 Yes, the "Run as root" dialogue needs to be explicit, even if there has to be some kind of extra work done to work out whether the system wants the actual root password or the user's own password. The ambiguity compounded an issue I had with sudo not being set up on previous Kubuntu releases: which password did it want? Initially I assumed it wanted the root password, but only after digging deeper did I realise that it wanted my own password... and a working sudo configuration, of course. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 22:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (TheBadger) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134920 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134920 On my Kubuntu Hoary menu: "Package Manager (kynaptic)", "Audio Player (amaroK)", "Instant Messenger (kopete)". Sure the actual application names are quirky, but they're not all you have to go on. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 22:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (TheBadger) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134921 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134921 No he didn't say that. You don't only look at an apps name when you launch it, you also look at it in the taskbar, in the titlebar etc. And especially for new users it's important to have app names which actually tell you what this app is doing.

For a lot of applications you do not see the name in the taskbar and titlebar because the names are the last part of the title. As far as I know this holds for most document oriented applications.

Konsole starts with the current prompt then the name of the current session and finally its name.

Kate starts with the document and finishes with its name. Same for kword and other koffice applications.

Konqueror starts with the current path or the title of the visied webpage and finishes with its name. BTW, lonqueror is the only browser I know that has no inferiority complex and uses the favicon of the website instead of its own in the title and taskbar.

Kmail starts with the current folder that is followed by the apps name. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 22:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Ponto) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134923 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134923 "One look at Adept is all the proof someone needs, it has a unique and very aggravating UI design. I'm surprised that Kubuntu uses it instead of Kynaptic which is much simpler, after all, the Ubuntu family of distributions aims to keep things easy."

I was shocked when seeing Adept in Kubuntu Breezy that they'd made it too complicated: scrolling console stuff, lots of buttons. Kynaptic is a fairly nice, simple package manager that they really should have worked on, especially since it would just pump critical errors to standard error, but then I guess they went completely the other way and threw in every complicating aspect of package management, instead of giving a nice way of looking under the surface once in a while to resolve such errors. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 22:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (TheBadger) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134926 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134926 There's nothing scientific about this, but I had the impression that my fan kicked in too late with powersaved instead of powernowd (it's not really a KDE issue, since klaptop and kpowersave are really frontend for the aforementioned programs). This meant that my CPU was running too hot, which may have caused one of my memory chips to fail prematurely (fortunately it had a lifetime warranty).

So, in fact, my problem was the opposite of what you have...but as I said, there's nothing scientific about it, I haven't checked out the Ubuntu boards about it. I'm not sure where fan control settings are kept... Sun, 18 Jun 2006 22:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (archiesteel) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134931 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134931 For all intent and purpose, no, Thom, you can not be modded. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 22:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Alex Forster) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134933 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134933 ...i was thinking, is when you look for to change the "click" behaviour of the desktop (let's say from the UNIX one-click way to the Windows two-click way). On Kubuntu (I don't remember about other KDE environments,), it's filed under "Regional & Accessibility" --> "Mouse". This makes no sense to me - IMHO such a setting should be in desktop settings, and surely not under "accessibility". Sun, 18 Jun 2006 22:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (devurandom) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134941 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134941 There is "root" in other distro's, and this is a critique of KDE *not* Ubuntu, so point still valid..... Sun, 18 Jun 2006 23:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Innova) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134943 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134943 How can we possibly have 50 posts here about how much the k-names sucks. Get over it. They are just names. Its not the apps are shouting the name at you constantly.
Also, i find the names useful, they tell you that its a kde app. And of all people i would had though that the osnews crowd would know to appreciate usefullness over "cool name".
Is it really better how GnomeMeeting was renamed to ekiga? It went from telling you it was a gnome program and that it had something to do with meetings, to telling you absolutely NOTHING.

Also, i dont see how kde is not coherent? How do you want kopete to interface it self with the rest of the system? I find dcop, kio and kparts to be techs. that tear down the border between the apps.

The settings "mess" is also subjective. Some say its over the top, i say its perfect. I like being able to set keyboard shortcuts to everything, change where the buttons on the wm should be, change how mplayer should behave (window specific behavior) and so on.
If you are scared by the options, dont go there!
When i tried MacOSX i felt like my hands were tied behind my back. I didnt like how it forced it specific behavior on you with no options on how to alter it. (my way or the highway) Sun, 18 Jun 2006 23:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mariux) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134944 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134944 To sum up you post:
prepending i - good
prepending K - bad


Apple and GNOME fans are so predictable. Sun, 18 Jun 2006 23:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Carewolf) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134947 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134947 > There is "root" in other distro's, and this is a
> critique of KDE *not* Ubuntu, so point still valid.....

No, it's not valid. This dialog version _is_ specific to Ubuntu, and Thom is aware of the fact that he is not reviewing KDE proper but what Kubuntu has made of it: "this column is based on the KDE as shipped in the latest Kubuntu release."

On Debian for example kdesu asks you explicitely to enter the password of the _root_ user. That's the normal non-patched version of the kdesu dialog. Mon, 19 Jun 2006 00:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (cm__) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134951 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134951 > For all intent and purpose, no, Thom, you can not be modded.

Well, it seems I could. But why should I?

I may disagree with a lot in his article / comments (and I'm so fed up with some of the old arguments that I even refuse to discuss them (e.g. the K* naming)) but I don't see any reason to mod him down (and I'm pretty sure you're only talking about modding down, not up).

I haven't seen him making personal attacks, using offensive language, being off-topic, spamming or advertising. Those are the criteria.Edited 2006-06-19 00:19 Mon, 19 Jun 2006 00:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (cm__) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134952 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134952 I seems that the the-broken-OSNews-HTML-makes-Konqi-forget-the-reference-bug is back. :-(

Threading on OSNews is broken again for Konqi users.Edited 2006-06-19 00:26 Mon, 19 Jun 2006 00:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (cm__) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134953 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134953 I realy "like" "half loaded ui" feature of kde.
For example when open an archive with ark, while ark is reading the archive the ui is "half loaded",when ark finished reading the archive the iu finishes loading. The is true for all kde apps. When start konqueror to open your home dir the ui is "half loaded" until it read whole content of the dir.

This is annoying not k-names.

I hope this will be fixed in KDE4/QT4 Mon, 19 Jun 2006 00:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (iskren) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134962 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134962 No, we are discussing the 3rd installment of a 3 part article, the first of which is about Gnome, which never mentions the "G" naming convention in Gnome as something that "sucks", but it does mention the "K" naming convention of Kde. Mon, 19 Jun 2006 01:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (lpotter) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134963 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134963 about coherence:
does this have something to do with integration (I think is the word)?

I mean, KDE has DCOP (KDE4 has D-BUS), and almos every application uses it! It's so wonderfull scriptable! I love it. This is something, which lets a lot of kde apps talk to each other, in almost any programming/scripting language. What else has that (and uses it widely)?
- I'm no expert but it sounds a like Apple's ActionScript to me.
And I'm no expert at that matter, but isn't Apples ActionScript using KJS (KDEs JavaScript Implementation)?
Wait, isn't ActionScript a Flash thing? It's JavaScriptCore what I mean. Whatever, Apple is using a lot of KDEs code. (KHTML, KJS)

Neither of you are experts.
It's called AppleScript and has nothing to do with JavaScript: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppleScript

As for the "Apple is using a lot of KDEs code (KTHML, KJS)" comment, why yes, for their (X)HTML core: WebCore/WebKit, which is under LGPL and publicly accessible (SVN & nightly builds) at: http://webkit.opendarwin.org/ ("The WebKit Open Source Project") where they clearly acknowledge KDE origins.

Now, back to the original topic DCOP vs. AppleScript: judging from KDE's page on the subject, at http://developer.kde.org/documentation/other/dcop.html
it seems that it is lower level, more of a interprocess communication protocol, in that case I think it would be better to compare it to Apple Events, not AppleScript: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_events Mon, 19 Jun 2006 01:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (PowerMacX) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134965 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134965 It seems I can, too, but try it. You'll receive something to the tune of "for security purposes, you can not mod this user." Mon, 19 Jun 2006 01:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Alex Forster) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134978 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134978 "It is hard to tell where Thom ends and osnews begins sometimes, and that is worrying."

it was much the same criticism when eugenia was at the helm. one can understand when folk like them are doing this work solely as a work of (unpaid) love that some level of emotional involvement will occur, sometimes for the better and sometimes otherwise. still, it would be to everyone's benifit (including their own) if they could it down a little sometimes, and practice a bit more of the more unattached diplomacy a moderator should perhaps be known for. Mon, 19 Jun 2006 03:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (macisaac) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134980 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134980 that was supposed to say "tone it down a little" Mon, 19 Jun 2006 03:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (macisaac) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134985 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134985 I have few gripes with KDE, and find it 99.9% there on the joy-to-use scale.

Here are my few gripes:

1) Konqueror handles file-types the same whether you're trying to use it as a file browser or as a web browser. It would be handy to have an HTML file open in Kate when clicked from the file-browser mode, and rendered in a browser when clicked in 'web browser' mode. [Note, if there's a way to set this behaviour then I'll be as happy as Larry]

2) Items saved to the Desktop don't align neatly. You have to explicitly align the desktop items to tidy them up. [another setting I've missed?]

3) There is no 3. KDE Rocks.

Some other random points:

* As stated by others, KDE is only as 'bloated' as the distribution chooses to make it. Take Gentoo's startkde for example. IIRC it doesn't even include Kicker.

* It's worth distinguishing between core parts of KDE, and apps that run on KDE/QT. The latter shouldn't reflect on the quality of KDE.

* I'll gladly give up some coherence (not that I'm convinced on this point) for best-of-breed apps. Mon, 19 Jun 2006 03:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ohbrilliance) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134990 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134990 It's annoying because of the long list of K-name programs.

Not that difficult to figure out, now is it? Mon, 19 Jun 2006 04:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dylansmrjones) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134991 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134991 I'm not sure if if coherence is the word you're looking for, more of a problem of a lack of cohesion. But I must agree when using KDE is doesn't feel like you're using any part oif of a cohesive whole. It feels like you're using a jumble of application which is is the exact opposite of why I want to use a DE, because everything intergrates and works togther as a whole. KDE is definately not the Kohesive Desktop Enviroment (excuse the pun). Mon, 19 Jun 2006 04:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (atezun) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134993 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134993 "Moreover, even if you are another account, and you have sudo rights, it is still your password."

Bingo. "Your" is a deictic term, which means that (in this case) the possessor changes depending on who is referred to.

In the case of *buntu, it's essentially expected that each person using the computer has their own user account, and it's explicitly expected in the dialogues that each person uses only his or her account, none other.

Thus, the password requested in the box and "your" password should always, always be the same.

I agree with you on the buttons, and I do agree a reworking of the text would be good WRT the command.

But "Please enter your password to run this program" or whatever the Ubuntu admin rights dialogue says would work very well for the prompt. Mon, 19 Jun 2006 04:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dodongo) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134998 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134998 by the way, everybody complains about K3B, but i like that name. it means Kde Burn Baby Burn, well, that's just cool, isn't it? Mon, 19 Jun 2006 04:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (superstoned) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?134999 http://www.osnews.com/thread?134999 Amen. Mon, 19 Jun 2006 05:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (superstoned) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135000 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135000 What is wrong with program names starting with k? Infact it helps me know that which apps are specifically designed for KDE. Mon, 19 Jun 2006 05:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (TusharG) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135003 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135003 Well, he is looking at it from a usability point of view; if you showed that to an average user, will he know what he is about to do? lets say its a trojan, and it requesting the password, why does it ask the password? well, joe user is unsure about computers, and he assumes that the computer knows best, so be puts in his password, and voila, rooted system.

Firstly, the dialogue needs to be headed up with "Application [name] requests Super User Privilages", then in the dialogue box, a small repeat of that, and a preamble as to what it actually means, such as, "[application[ is requesting, what is known as, super user privilages - to allow this to happen, you need to put in your password, BUT, by putting in your password, you are granting access to the whole system to the application, this is very risky as the application could be a virus!"

Its about notifying, educating and providing options; the dialogue box included gobbly goop like su, and so forth, which the average user would find completely over their head. Mon, 19 Jun 2006 05:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kaiwai) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135005 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135005 I think I get it...

I was about to disagree, but now I do.

When I think of coherence, glue comes to mind. When I think of integration, hooks and eyes come to mind.

KDE is well integrated - just look at KIO slaves to see how well. The thing is, KDE is integrated like stitching - you can see the threads binding the two together. Easily [note: this is why I love KDE]. When two pieces are glue together, you can see the physical borders of the pieces, but trying to see the glue is an exercise in frustration. In a simple way of thinking, the tighter the stitching, for more like glue it becomes. The looser, the easier to replace pieces. Additionally, the stitches in KDE aren't always on the borders. Sometimes a stitch goes right into the center of another piece, creating the sensation that it is "invading" the domain of another piece of software to do it's thing, when it should really just be touching at the border [this is mainly due to the design of DCOP].

IMO, Kontact is a perfect example - Kontact/KDEPIM is a fantastic piece of engineering, and you can see [or at least get the sense you can] the beams that hold it together, which is great for programmers. It isn't so great for non-programmers, who seeing the beams ask "why isn't it plastered and wallpapered?" For example, KAddressBook is well integrated into Kopete and KMail, but it isn't coherent since both Kopete and KMail have a central use for it, but it has no use them. Now, say, assume that in the pane to the right describing you contact there was a text-field that you just typed a message to them, and it sent them an email if they were offline, or IM'd them if they were online. THAT would provide coherence to the programs. And blur the lines between the programs.

Any comments anyone? Mon, 19 Jun 2006 05:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (orbitrus) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135009 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135009 "I guess you'd name your kids One, Two, Three?"
In some parts of the world that is not uncommon.

"Because hey, that's functional, and even though it looks stupid, who cares?"
You mean it looks stupid to *you*. Fortunately you haven't been appointed ruler of what is universally stupid or not.

"And seeing the stupid 'k' EVERWHERE in KDE can really, and then I mean REALLY, piss me off."

You need to get a hobby. Really. Getting so upset over such minor details isn't healthy.
Btw, don't use Windows. I hear MS prefixes all their apps with "MS" and if a "K" upset you so much the two-letter "MS" will push you over the limit. Mon, 19 Jun 2006 06:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Soulbender) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135010 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135010 As for why the names should follow a pattern? Consistency. Consistency is key in an interface. It is *just* an application name, but you don't see Apple just randomly throwing in an "i" where they can. As someone pointed out there isn't an iSafari, iAddressBook. Why can't you just call an application "Address Book"? KAddressBook, KCalc. This isn't just related to KDE - but Gnome and X apps too. For me at least. Just come up with something more discriptive and creative! It looks amateurish in my opinion have XCalc... KCalc, GCalc... Mon, 19 Jun 2006 06:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (D3M0N) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135016 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135016 > so be puts in his password, and voila, rooted system.

That could never happen in that case, since only kdesu, by using sudo, has the ability to let you act as if you were "root" by using the password of the normal user you're logged in with. No trojan could be able to do the same. Mon, 19 Jun 2006 06:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (falemagn) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135018 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135018 > It seems I can, too, but try it. You'll receive
> something to the tune of "for security purposes, you can
> not mod this user."


Oh yeah, you're right. I picked one of Thom's comments for testing, one that comes close to being a personal attack.

"To prevent abuse...". Only after you picked the reason for the moderation. Strange behaviour. I'd call that a usability problem. First offering links to a two step process and then telling the user "Fsck off, you're not allowed to!" is a big no-no. Funny to have such surprising behaviour on a site that complains so often about software usability in their editorials.Edited 2006-06-19 07:15 Mon, 19 Jun 2006 07:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (cm__) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135031 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135031 Well of course it wasn't mentioned because it's not such a problem in gnome. Gnome apps are usually named in three ways.

System apps are usually named gnome-foo or gnome-foo-bar. (gnome-terminal, gnome-power-manager etc.)

User apps are usually have ordinary names. (nautilus, evolution, epiphany)

Some other apps, like the games, have a g, gn or gno in the beginning, though they still form valid words.

It's nothing like the K-mess of KDE. Mon, 19 Jun 2006 08:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (NxStY) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135032 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135032 I think you are right. Mon, 19 Jun 2006 08:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Carewolf) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135037 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135037 I reopened http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=116790

The strange thing is that the test cases from last time still work, but osnews doesn't.


I'd still prefer it if osnews.com fixed their HTML but they completely ignored my emails and forum posts from around fall 2005.Edited 2006-06-19 09:02 Mon, 19 Jun 2006 08:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (cm__) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135046 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135046 Well. They are proud of their broken HTML Mon, 19 Jun 2006 10:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Carewolf) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135047 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135047 Thom, I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish with these editorial rants but they make me miss Eugenia's OSNews more and more... Mon, 19 Jun 2006 10:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (DevL) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135048 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135048 1. ==KSysGuard needs application title support==
It lists application binaries instead of applications like Microsoft does.
So when I am running several Java programs, for instance, I don't know which one to shut down. Open Office is listed as soffice. Huh?
3. ==Better graphics for Kasbar==
4. ==No more bouncy cursor as default== It's too busy. Try something more subtle like a slight morph and the option to choose different images.
5. ==System Notifications== especially for error messages. I know I think I can have the program run in kouncil too at the same time which spits out decent errors but too cryptic for some and maybe I don't want that to popup for security reasons. I dunno. Also I think programs should start up with mouse click as default and spit out an error by default, without having to start konsole.
6 ==Easier access to meta information in Folder menu== I don't want to have to click all these buttons to access some of the more basic things. it should be more intuative. Amarok intigration still feels raw to me, unlike ITunes. Maybe because it's early on in dev. Also it seems special effects need to be done better with a border around it, but am not sure if it has been tweaked since I dont use Amarok anymore.
7. ==Better and more innovative Start Menu support and the ability to move icons around anywhere easily== KDE is still 'raw bones' with the start menu..
8. ==Better widget incorporation==
9. ==The plasitc theme still seems to thin looking to me, maybe not== Maybe spice it up a little to move away from the XPish look a little more.

Functionality is good but design and ease of use are just as important.

One thing that KDE has done very well is their Buffer Redraw from QT (Which GTK doesn't do so it's a smeary flappy mess, xgl might fix this since it buffers)

One thing I love about Linux and these programs is their uncluttered feel and usefullness.
I am a proud owner of KDE and really appreciate all the work the community and owners of the operation (the KDE) team have put in. Hope to see you all at a live event soon so you can hear me complain live. Mon, 19 Jun 2006 10:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Bonus) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135049 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135049 Yeah that's a number one feature for me too!

I would mod you up if you weren't already at +5. Mon, 19 Jun 2006 10:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Knuckles) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135052 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135052 Only people with high enough trust levels can moderate us editors. Mon, 19 Jun 2006 11:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135064 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135064 > Only people with high enough trust levels can moderate us editors.

I had already understood that from the announcement and *now* (but only after having tried!) I know that this does not include me. Not that I'm very interested in modding you.

But offering people a link to a two-step process and telling them at the end that they are not allowed to do that is a usability blunder. Same for modding the same comment twice or modding one's own comments. The site just shouldn't suggest it's possible. Mon, 19 Jun 2006 12:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (cm__) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135066 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135066 I am a KDE user for about 4 years now, 3 of which exclusive (Mandrake before, Fedora now primary OS) and agree with most of the points in this article, and then some (all comments apply to FC5, it could be distro specific):

- when using smb:// KIO, you can't open a file without copying it to your disk internally or I must be missing something major, smb4k work MUST be integrated in KDE

- compress/decompress is very slow on my machine, that dialog is the one in need of love, you just have a "progress" bar that goes left - right, no percentage, no nothing, at least print out file names as compressing/decompressing. I tend to use tar from console, even if it isn't faster, it feels faster

- helper applications should be where people expect it and should integrate most common tasks. For example, when a new user wants to setup his/hers display adapter, it should be possible to do this in Display (with administrator mode). Those setup tools shouldn't be distro specific either, KDE should just implement a front - end part

- smart defaults is another thing, you should have something like a network traffic indicator by default (KNemo?) in your tray, feature rich apps like Kaffeine or Amarok should be default file association, Noatun and such should be dropped (who even uses them?)

- eye candy exists, why not make it available? All that work on kde-look.org is beeing unoticed, that's sad. Stuff 30 or so best rated wallpapers, 15 window themes, 15 mouse themes and so on. If you put it along side KDE, distro vendors wouldn't go out of their way to pull it out.

- what pisses me off is that most of the stuff which is needed already exists, but is not easily accessible. For example, you have to rip an audio CD, KAudioCreator seems to feature poor, but it shouldn't be! The only major feature is the actual ripping which is already outsourced. Why not take a great example (Exact Audio Copy) and try to implement roughly the same features? Same goes for DVD encoding and other tasks, k3b is a great example of this, you can burn without it, but it's a non - trivial operation.

All in all, this is just from the top of my head. I'm sure I could make much more these cry - baby observations if I compiled them. Mon, 19 Jun 2006 12:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dado) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135080 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135080 I mean, KDE has DCOP (KDE4 has D-BUS), and almos every application uses it! It's so wonderfull scriptable! I love it. This is something, which lets a lot of kde apps talk to each other, in almost any programming/scripting language. What else has that (and uses it widely)?

DBUS has been around for a little bit now and is actually an option in many GNOME applications. Before that GNOME had (and to some extent still has) bonobo. DBUS was meant to be a lightweight desktop agnostic replacement for bonobo/DCOP. Mon, 19 Jun 2006 14:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (abraxas) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135095 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135095 " I hear MS prefixes all their apps with "MS" and if a "K" upset you so much the two-letter "MS" will push you over the limit."

Clicks on Start, Programs, Accessories, and takes a look. All I see is Paint, Calculator, NotePad, WordPad, etc... Nowhere do I see MSPaint, MSCalculator, MSNotePad, MSWordPad, MSetc..

The whole thing with K being displayed so prominently in the apps in KDE, to me, just takes away from the professionalism in the DE, IMHO. Mon, 19 Jun 2006 15:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (OMRebel) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135099 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135099 While this is a relevant gripe it is a Kubuntu issue NOT a KDE issue.

Kubuntu is not KDE and this does not happen with (for instance) Suse. The dialogue box in Suse clearly asks for the root password where you want to see it. Mon, 19 Jun 2006 16:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (warpengi) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135101 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135101 Kubuntu is not KDE and this does not happen with (for instance) Suse. The dialogue box in Suse clearly asks for the root password where you want to see it.

Yes. And guess what this article was CLEARLY about? Mon, 19 Jun 2006 16:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135110 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135110 The article was CLEARLY part of a series about Desktop Environments. I understand you have a hard time with Linux compared to MSWindows and Mac because you only have to deal with one distro for the last two.

The 1st sentence in the article
"This is the 3rd installment in my series on deficiencies in common desktop environments. After GNOME and the Mac/MacOS, it is now KDE's turn"

You don't mention which distro you used for GNOME there. Can I assume that your next commentary on a DE will obscure this fact about KDE as well? This is not a series of articles about DE's, then, so much as it is about different distros'. From your title I was expecting a comparison of DE's not distros. Mon, 19 Jun 2006 17:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (warpengi) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135113 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135113 Oh?

"What Sucks About DEs, pt. III: Kubuntu's KDE

And, first line of the body of the column:

"this column is based on the KDE as shipped in the latest Kubuntu release."

I cannot make it any clearer than that. I'm sorry. Next time I will use the marquee tag, ok? Mon, 19 Jun 2006 17:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135114 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135114 OK, thanks. Mon, 19 Jun 2006 17:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (warpengi) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135119 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135119 You have to understand the real point of this site. Thom and Eugenia both have blogs, but don't get enough hits on them to satisfy them (and get tired of simply visiting each other's blogs). So they use this as their blog. They blast you with their opinions (often presenting it as fact)and expect you to agree. If you don't, Eugenia resorts to personal attacks (after a whole bunch of capital letters and exclamation marks) and Thom resorts to either a sharp comment or modding -5. Basically criticism directed at either one of them is fightin' words. Mon, 19 Jun 2006 17:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (vitae) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135145 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135145 Keep on topic. One minute its Kununtu's KDE and then the next, its KDE itself.
Programs names wth a K - all the gripes about this so childish and a desparate attempt at finding something to criticise. KDE is a highly configurable desktop, you change those names in the menu to suit yourself and once you've configured it to your liking, strap it down via Kiosk mode.
If you can't get on with your work because a DE is configurable, that says more about you than the desktop environment i.e. you are easily distracted. Mon, 19 Jun 2006 18:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (rtfa) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135206 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135206 http://dot.kde.org/1150660194/ Mon, 19 Jun 2006 21:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (rtfa) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135209 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135209 I agree. Sometimes he has interesting things to say, but often the basis for his comments totally eludes me.

The more I read of his editorials, the less I think OSNews and I have in common... Mon, 19 Jun 2006 21:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (rcsteiner) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135264 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135264 That could never happen in that case, since only kdesu, by using sudo, has the ability to let you act as if you were "root" by using the password of the normal user you're logged in with. No trojan could be able to do the same.

Geeze, simple things do need explaining:

Clueless user downloads application, clueless user installs said application, clueless user loads application, he is presented with said dialogue box, said user assumes this is part of the 'normal' process of running an application, what said user doesn't know is his system is about to become rooted. Tue, 20 Jun 2006 04:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kaiwai) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135297 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135297 It's not clear at all since you mix plain KDE criticism with Kubuntu criticism. In fact, the only Kubuntu specific issues you talk about is Adept (wich I agree is utter shite) and the kdesu dialog. Everything else is generic KDE criticism and not specific for Kubuntu or how Kubuntu ships KDE. Tue, 20 Jun 2006 10:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Soulbender) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135329 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135329 After I had already read the previous parts of this "rant-series" I was quite surprised with the KDE review: Not only has the number of critizised items been smaller than for the other desktops so far. Even better: many of the issues mentioned have already been fixed weeks ago and/or are related to Kubuntu.
Thanks for the input anyways :-) Tue, 20 Jun 2006 12:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Torsten Rahn) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135335 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135335 The KDE mega-packaging scheme is what always bothers me. Although I really love KDE and use it exclusively (Never liked Gnome although I really want to ), I just dont like the fact that
a> You need almost all of the KDE packages to install any one package especially with KDE multimedia
b> Even with KDE 3.5.3 on Fedora, Noatun is set as the default multimedia program. I mean who really uses Noatun nowadays..? More than that everytime I install KDE I have to go through the control center and set each and every multimedia file type to open in Mplayer or Kaffeine which is always the last option in the file association settings.

For a DE that prizes configurability, I find this type of setting quite strange.

Hopefully this will be taken care of in KDE4. Tue, 20 Jun 2006 12:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Protoflux) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135387 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135387 Clueless user downloads application, clueless user installs said application, clueless user loads application, he is presented with said dialogue box, said user assumes this is part of the 'normal' process of running an application, what said user doesn't know is his system is about to become rooted.

...which is a great argument in favor of software repositories, which alert you when a downloaded package's digital signature does not match the official one. Tue, 20 Jun 2006 16:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (archiesteel) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135388 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135388 It's up to distributions to package KDE differently. Kubuntu does not require you to install unnecessary packages if you don't want to. Tue, 20 Jun 2006 16:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (archiesteel) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135637 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135637 1) I think that kde meets your definition of coherence quite well. For instance I like the way that Kopete integrates into my Address book - admittedly this is a fairly new feature that took a little bit of time to set up. I think that this form of coherence really helped me migrate away from gome a few years back. However I still sort of know what you are talking about. (as a user who has used KDE for quite a long time It can be quite difficult to see) I think has to do with the way that KDE doesn't integrate with what runs under it that well. It is also quite busy compared to what Gnome and OSX offer.

2) This has been explaind quite a few times... a Kubuntu user only has to know 1 password (well two if you count kwallet). A user uses there own password to allow changes to the system. However that dialog still needs some loving.

3)No comment Dont own a laptop.

4)Yeah Adept is ugly/ hard to understand and buggy. what you are looking for is the add/remove apps option in the main menu. However the actual KDE packing app (forgotten name needs some serious loving also)...

5) fair comment.

6) Yes the toolbar can be locked.

7)KDE 3.5 will be the last version of the KDE with the k naming scheme. some apps may keep the k moniker but this will be the exception rather than the rule. I think that people like iThings and don't like kThings is because k is quite a harsh sounding letter and I beeing a vowel is more readable at the beginning of a word. Wed, 21 Jun 2006 06:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kayosiii) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?135663 http://www.osnews.com/thread?135663 yea what i wrote merits a good "huh?" from myself even lol

what i mean is, some elements of the menu I'm not able to get rid of.. I haven't used KDE in about 4 months so I can't refer to the exact names of the entries at the moment, but it's mostly to do with the main menu that pops up when u first click on it, I want streamlined. And with all of KDE's configurability I'm suprised that I'm not able to go as far as destroy/replace every single element on the menu if i the user chose to.

and given a choice between gnome's menu and K's, I pick Gnome's for that reason, it's more what i'm used to now as well.

I think that's a little clearer :-) Wed, 21 Jun 2006 09:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (joesnow) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?137043 http://www.osnews.com/thread?137043 That's the problem with a lot of his comments. They get a negative point, because it's a problem for him, but that does not necessarily mean that it's a problem for the majority of users. Sun, 25 Jun 2006 15:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (rubber) Comments