KDE’s Aaron Seigo (who owes me a Martini) wrote about a few often-heard misconceptions and questions regarding KDE 4.0, which is supposed to be released January 11th. “Now that 4.0.0 is tagged and out and that bit of worry and concern is behind me for the moment, I wanted to take a moment to talk really bluntly about 4.0. In particular, I’m going to address some of the common memes in fairly random order that I see about kde 3.5 and 4.0. I’m going to speak bluntly (though not rudely) so prepare yourself.”
Performance and speed!!!
That’s all I got to say 🙂
Well no, one more thing
Less memory usage!!!!!
This was actually one of the topics brought up in aseigo’s TLLTS interview, which I highly recommend to people who want the 411 on KDE4.0 and the plans for the KDE4 series:
http://www.tllts.org/audio/tllts_226-01-02-08.ogg
Aaron’s answer was disarmingly honest. Basically, if you hear claims of “KDE4 is 30-40% lighter/ faster than KDE3!!”, take them with a pinch of salt: benchmarking is a surprisingly difficult and intricate business, and blanket claims like this (faster how? Faster in every conceivable way? What if KDE4 “does more” than KDE3 but takes slightly more time to do it – can it be called “faster” then?) are really quite naive.
Qt4’s memory usage is a good example of this, which he brought up: most of Qt4 operations/ structures do indeed take up less memory than their Qt3 counterparts due to the extensive optimisation carried out by Trolltech – however, Qt4 also double-buffers all widgets, which takes up a fair amount of pixmap memory but also basically eliminates tearing, shearing and artifacting. Is Qt4 more or less memory hungry than Qt3 in this instance? In some ways yes, in some ways no, and in some ways it’s apples-to-oranges, as Qt4 is doing a better job.
So don’t believe all the performance claims that you hear – good or bad
Edit:
We can at least be assured that even with an unoptimised 4.0.0, performance and memory usage aren’t completely diabolically awful, though
http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3137
http://www.jespersaur.com/drupal/node/36
Edited 2008-01-04 21:46
————and blanket claims like this (faster how? Faster in every conceivable way? What if KDE4 “does more” than KDE3 but takes slightly more time to do it – can it be called “faster” then?) are really quite naive.————
Faster how, I’m talking in terms of daily usage. Opening applications, windows, and such. Does it “feel” faster? Does it feel like it’s in your way, or feel more permissive and smooth?(and yes, I know that’s pretty subjective)
Actually, your own link is pretty indicitive of what I’m taking to mind. (KDE devel)
==========KDE 4 is going to be a serious contender for a high-performance, good looking interface on low resource machines like the Eee PC, and I can’t wait to try it out on one.==============
Now mind you, I don’t look at 3.5 as slouchy, slow, software. I like it, a lot. But 4 seems to be more slick and slippery from everything I’m reading, in all corners. 30-40%? I never believed the claims there. But all things considered, there seems to be universal agreement on it being fsaster.
And as far as memory usage:
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/12/14/kde-uses-les…
I don’t expect those numbers either, I expect the completed product to naturally use more. But this is worth noting:
======The old version(3.5) needed 348MB to work comfortably while the new one(4.0) sail through the same tests using only 228MB.========
My expectation is high 2xx. More features naturally and obviously means greater usage. But going from mid 3’s to high 2’s is a great accomplishment and well worth looking forward to in my book.
“And as far as memory usage:
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/12/14/kde-uses-les…..
I don’t expect those numbers either, I expect the completed product to naturally use more. But this is worth noting:
‘The old version(3.5) needed 348MB to work comfortably while the new one(4.0) sail through the same tests using only 228MB'”
Which really highlights my point about benchmarking being difficult: the results presented there, while in some ways flattering to KDE, are absolutely, wildly false. KDE3.5 does not take 348MB to work; I’ve run it easily on a 256MB computer on which I had forgotten to enable swap! The results were debunked here by Lubos and Thiago, who know a lot about profiling and memory usage:
http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3138
and withdrawn by the same guy who presented the figures originally:
http://www.jarzebski.pl/read/kde-3-5-vs-4-0-round-two.so
[in fact, his later figures suggest that KDE4 with compositing uses substantially *more* RAM than KDE3!]
It’s kind of weird: I’ve been combatting claims of KDE’s bloatedness compared to GNOME ad nauseum for ages now (
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=153631&highlight=kde+memor…, http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=2015680&postcount=1235 ) and now, because of one article that got re-posted all over the place without people bothering to check their facts, I’m having to do the opposite
How ironic!
Edited 2008-01-04 22:56
Haha, ok, fair enough. Let’s wait until a few days/weeks/months until after KDE4 is officially released, and see what will happen when someone compares finished products.
Also, in your posts I saw the free command I never knew that existed.
But with your arguments on u/forum in mind, there’s got to be a way to accurately gauge this thing.
Also, I agree with the notion that unused memory is wasted memory, but Gsysguard seems to do a better job of reporting than Ksysguard does.(by dividing the caches away from actual memory usage)
> but Gsysguard seems to do a better job of reporting
> than Ksysguard does
you need to check out ksysguard in kde4 then
I’ll be more than glad to Aaron 🙂 The sooner the better! lol
Thanks for the work you and the rest of the KDE team have done.
“Unused memory is wasted memory”
Well – only up to the point when you have to specify how much memory the FE-code is allowed to take.
Then you start to wonder, whether you need to leave 0.5 or 4 GB of memory to KDE
I like the way Ksysguard shows the cached memory. I then can see how much is really necessary for the apps, and how much is discardable to make room for my FE number crunching.
Which really highlights my point about benchmarking being difficult: the results presented there, while in some ways flattering to KDE, are absolutely, wildly false. KDE3.5 does not take 348MB to work
Even if you can get accurate memory measurements (which you can’t really), it’s made even more difficult by shared libraries and the fact that a desktop might consume more comparable memory on startup, but allow applications started thereafter to consume less comparable memory by reusing loaded components. How can you say that it uses more or less memory? You can’t, but KDE tends to do a lot of this stuff.
You could compare functional requirements and ask how much memory is consumed when you have a web browser open, but that is a much more complete analysis I have never seen anyone do yet. Even then, it’s still open to interpretation what comparable functionality is consuming all the memory.
It’s kind of weird: I’ve been combatting claims of KDE’s bloatedness compared to GNOME ad nauseum for ages now (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=153631&highlight=kde+memor…, http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=2015680&postcount=1235)
Ahhh, the Ubuntu forums. Full of exceptionally knowledgeable ejits who are ready, willing and able to hand out lots of accurate advice on what desktop eats all your memory to the unsuspecting newbie user, sending them right back to where they came from. Ubuntu may be number one on distrowatch, but it’s got little chance of going beyond that bubble.
It’s interesting to note that KDE 3.5.6 is installable *and* usable (that being a relative term, of course) on the Nokia N770 and N800 internet tablets, with 64/128MB memory. Including Konq etc. Not perfectly, but the fact that it was accomplished by users and not KDE devs, speaks volumes about the basic design of KDE. Would be even more interesting to see what could be done with some optimizations from the KDE team, or a port to Qtopia instead of QT/X11 etc.
I think it emphasizes the fact that KDE is dependent upon the underlying platform, something frequently overlooked. Most standard linux distros include generic configs that are not optimized for resource or performance efficiency. Contrast that to the Nokia platforms, which have been designed as optimized platforms, and the difference is striking.
Put another way, I suspect that when KDE4 apps start appearing on Vista, for instance, people will complain that KDE4 needs at least 2GB of RAM and a high-end video card to run properly.
Wow, people do love to bash KDE for any reasons they can find.
Let’s do an example:
Microsoft Windows and Office
Each version is supposedly faster, but each version becomes more and more bloated (and slower), requiring faster hardware to take advantage of it all and make it seem like it’s faster. Don’t believe me – try running MS Office 2007 on an Athlon 1ghz, then a AMD 3000 (barton core), then a dual core Intel, say E6600. Notice the speed difference.
Speed is relevant – it has long been known that software developers take advantage of newer, faster hardware, and use that to offset bloated code. This is the norm (unless you just use blackbox/fluxbox, which will forever stay unusable, because speed is more important to them than usability).
Don’t just go blasting KDE, you might want to have a look at a lot of other projects.
In fact, each release of KDE 3.x was slightly quicker than the previous one I might add.
I think you’ll find that people are using such powerful graphics cards today, that that’ll take a nice load off both the cpu core, and the memory. People want fancy, nice, cool looking desktop environments that fart, burp and shit themselves when you look at them, and the result is always going to be that it takes time to process the underlying code to achieve that “look”.
Dave
.
Unusable? They’re incredibly versatile, and Fluxbox is so scriptable I can do anything in Fluxbox that I can do in GNOME, faster and more easily. It’s really easy to set up too. Also Fluxbox is better for my RSI, as I can make sure there’s very little mouse needed.
Lack of clicky boxes (which you can have in Fluxbox if you want) != unusable.
Less memory usage!!!!!
I hear that is heavily debated since it is theoretically impossible to see how much memory is being used without using a patched kernel and even then its not exact.
Edited 2008-01-07 17:42
I am really looking forward to 4.1. Although I am a Gnome user, I have “always” felt that Gnome is more sluggish than KDE, and the RC2 of KDE4 I tried was no exception. When the time is right I may switch to KDE4 if they manage to get things right for me
So, when users complained aboud KDE 4.0 RC stability we were all cursed and even called ignorants, then Mr. Seigo told us to way till KDE 4.0 realease. Now KDE 4.0 is released and just confirmed our rants, and now he tell us to waith till 4.1.
Don’t you love how he eats his own words?
He would rather blame users for their misconceptions than accept that not everyone sees the KDE 4 project in the same way he does. At least that is the way he treated me. I don’t think however we should equate KDE with aseigo he is just one developer on the project, there are many others. He is just more vocal and the head developer of the cool but IMO useless plasma technology, so more people listen to him.
He would rather blame users for their misconceptions than accept that not everyone sees the KDE 4 project in the same way he does.
+1
Yes, there are a lot of cool developers in KDE, but Aseigo and the not developer Superstoned are just the black spot in KDE’s reputation.
Edited 2008-01-04 22:36
Did you realise he is the President of KDE e.V?
Yes I knew, so?
I don’t recall replying to your post. I replied to RIchard James13 post in particular,
he is just one developer on the project, there are many others. He is just more vocal and the head developer of the cool but IMO useless plasma technology
He is clearly not “just one developer on the project”.
Create your own entity and proclaim yourself Chairman. BFD.
As they love to proclaim, they are a bunch of code heads that aren’t a proprietary company.
Great! Now be professionals and surpass the professionalism [or lack thereof] of these proprietary companies and produce engineering results that meet or surpass these proprietary companies.
I’ve rarely met arrogant Mechanical Engineers proclaiming superiority over their peers, but in the field of Computer Science [my second degree] I see a bunch of hacks running around with an inkling of talent and one special project proclaiming to being Experts.
Give me professionals any damn day of the week and just produce quality work.
The same goes for GNOME.
It’s unfortunate the GNUstep project hasn’t advanced in user base/app base as GNOME/KDE. The developers in that project are extremely talented, seasoned and professional by comparison.
“Create your own entity and proclaim yourself Chairman. BFD. ”
while i agree my position as president of our non-prof is hardly interesting, i neither created the entity (it predates my involvement with kde) nor did i proclaim myself anything within it. i was actually very hesitant to take on the position i did due to the added work load.
“produce engineering results that meet or surpass these proprietary companies.”
well, that’s what kde has been doing and is continuing to do. so … i suppose we’ll all be happy in the end.
KDE ev is a registered non-profit organization, supported financially by commercial organizations, including Novell and Intel. Aaron didn’t proclaim himself chairman, he was appointed President by the board of directors and membership.
They are not a proprietary company, but proprietary companies still utilize their software, so they’re doing something right, so what’s your point again? Or was it just to show off that chip on your shoulder?
So basically you’re implying superiority over the hacks running around with an inkling of talent.
That aside, instead of bitching, why don’t you utilize that second degree of yours to help contribute? Or are you expecting to be spoonfed like everyone else?
Maybe instead of lamenting GNUstep and the talented and seasoned developers behind it, you should consider instead why it hasn’t advanced in user base/app as GNOME/KDE has, despite the talented, seasoned and professional developers. While you’re doing that, the rest of the world will be busy moving on.
A President of KDE E.v one of his roles is to speak for KDE. Since the contention was made that he was merely a KDE developer and project lead – which he is – it was countered that he is not just those which is why people pay attention to what he says.
Prior to his election as President of KDE E.v he was one of the more vocal and articulate KDE developers who represented KDE and the KDE developers well. Add his enthusiasm for OSS and KDE in paticular it was probably why he was elected to the position. KDE members were very happy with him being one of the more visible faces of KDE.
are in a different position.
Whenever someone finds out I am good at multi-body dynamic analysis, he wants to make me a project manager of a multi-body dynamic analysis project. For which what would be irrelevant? Yes – being great shakes at multi-body dynamic analysis. Managing skills would be much better (which I seem to lack, I can hardly manage myself).
On the other hand, if someone in the Computer Science field boasts about being great in sorting algorithms, he gets to code a super-interesting sorting algorithm.
If in the mechanical engineering field it only were so, I could satisfy my self-illuminating urges
.
Sigh…
“He would rather blame users for their misconceptions than accept that not everyone sees the KDE 4 project in the same way he does.”
the missing piece here is that these misconceptions are .. misconceptions. they simply aren’t correct, and i don’t think anyone is beholden to accept things that are manifestly wrong. you are free to continue to hold your misconceptions for as long as you wish, there’s not much anyone can do about that. but don’t expect me to buy into them just because you do.
“At least that is the way he treated me.”
i’ll admit this: i got very, very tired of the horrific attitudes some people showed in the last year. as a perceived leader i probably should have just ignored these insults, instead i replied with my own, at times emotion laden, thoughts. that was a failing on my part.
i’m sorry if i offended you.
if it’s any consolation, you and people like you have offended me repeatedly over the past year for no good reason after receiving the fruits of our work for years.
“I don’t think however we should equate KDE with aseigo he is just one developer on the project, there are many others.”
yep, that’s quite true.
I never treated you harshly you but you always insult me. This has nothing to do with KDE it is about my perception of the way you act. If you continue to insult me and ignore the fact that I have a right to my own opinion which may differ from yours. The opinion about the new K menu. Then I will continue to see you in the same ranks as other not nice people. Of course you can feel free to disregard my opinion of you but remember that many people will judge you based on the way you treat others.
Well, you still don’t think something like “IMHO, Plasma is all hype and very little substance.” is not a nice thing to say, so how can you see any of the things Aaron said to you as insults? Or do the standards differ between you and the rest of the world?
We should take the opportunity given by his participation to thank Aaron. It was an interesting set of comments, clear, frank and to the point. I’ve usually personally preferred the style of Gnome but have installed KDE for people who prefer it. Its a superb package. And there is no equivalent of some of the KDE apps. The nice thing about the remarks was that they showed a clear vision as well as being interesting and informative in detail.
The other thing of course is, we should be thanking the whole team of people. We users of this stuff do not need to be uncritical, but some of us should be a bit more gracious. KDE (like Gnome) is a massive undertaking from which we’re all getting an enormous amount. On a couple of occasions I’ve had to contact KDE people, and the response was always rapid and most helpful. When I told the client that the support we were getting was free and for a totally free package, jaws dropped.
So Aaron, nil carborundum! And thanks to you and everyone else at KDE.
So, when users complained aboud KDE 4.0 RC stability we were all cursed and even called ignorants
Because you don’t know how release candidates are being used here and because you don’t understand ‘release early and release often‘. Ergo, you’re stupid.
…then Mr. Seigo told us to way till KDE 4.0 realease.
Did he? What exactly did he tell us to wait for?
Now KDE 4.0 is released and just confirmed our rants, and now he tell us to waith till 4.1.
No one pretended that KDE 4.0 was going to be brilliant and some sort of finished article, by whatever definition you have of the ‘finished article’. More applications and features were then going to ported and developed through .1, .2, .3 etc. until we get something of really, really good quality that has been tested and used release through release and not through endless ‘betas’ and RCs that don’t do anything for anyone. That worked great for Microsoft in terms of quality, didn’t it? 😉
The only people who are looking at 4.0 as some sort of ‘big-bang’ release are people like you, even when you’ve been told consistently otherwise. Why? Because you’re stupid. There’s not an awful lot you can do when you’re living in a town full of stupid, other than to move out.
I’m not going to be using KDE 4.0 because I have lots of KDE 3.x desktops to look after, as he says. I didn’t use 3.0 either. When I test KDE 4.x at some point I might make a decision on moving to it. How is KDE 4.0 and its worrying lack of quality and stability, as you might put it, affect me and users? Oh, that’s right. It won’t.
Don’t you love how he eats his own words?
I’m glad you think so. Meanwhile back on planet Earth, a few people actually read the article. You’d think you had some kind of vested interest in it ;-).
“Because you don’t know how release candidates are being used here and because you don’t understand ‘release early and release often’. Ergo, you’re stupid.
”
I think stupid is someone who doesn’t know the meaning of RC and tells the world is wrong. Who may be that one?
“Did he? What exactly did he tell us to wait for? ”
It was a long discussion between a poster nad aseigo in one of the commits digests, here, enjoy your self.
User: > The Release candidates and daily builds are informative enougth. aren’t they?
aseigo: no, 4.0 will be.
“I’m glad you think so. Meanwhile back on planet Earth, a few people actually read the article. You’d think you had some kind of vested interest in it”
Oh, I forgot that aseigo is your idol, sorry, but hey sweetheart, he is just a human who happens to make misstakes too.
“4.0 will be informative” is the same as “4.0 will have mainstream quality”?
That discussion was about KDE 4.0 stability not about branding.
And what’s wrong with KDE 4.0’s *stability*? As I wrote in another comment: I didn’t encounter any stability problems in yesterday’s 4.0 SVN build.
That discussion was about KDE 4.0 stability…
What about it?
“4.0 will be informative” is the same as “4.0 will have mainstream quality”?
Uhm, no, it isn’t?
Especially when taking into account that for months now aseigo and others involved in kde4 told everyone who would listen in every interview, blogpost, etc. that kde 4.0 would be rough around the edges and would not be mainstream quality.
I think stupid is someone who doesn’t know the meaning of RC and tells the world is wrong.
How do we know when we have a Release Candidate sweetheart? At exactly what point do we know? Is it a point in time (this wasn’t a time-based release), or a set of requirements you have attached to the underside of your toilet seat that tells you?
Alphas, Betas and Release Candidates, and what constitutes a major release, are defined by actual requirements, or via time-based releases, and not by you. KDE 4.0 was designed and destined to be a target development desktop platform – and it is.
People who are coming up with definitions of Release Candidates and Betas haven’t got the faintest idea what they’re talking about, because what they are depends totally on what the end release is actually designed to be – not on what you think it should be.
aseigo: no, 4.0 will be.
What is KDE 4.0 designed to be, exactly, and what have people been telling you that it’s going to be for months? The poster in that comment thread (I Googled) is about your level – ergo, it’s you. Nice one:
http://dot.kde.org/1198130504/1198177658/1198191398/1198193468/1198…
Oh, I forgot that aseigo is your idol, sorry, but hey sweetheart, he is just a human who happens to make misstakes too.
Whatever hinny (nicking other peoples’ little phrases you find annoying, priceless. For everything else, there’s Mastercard).
How do we know when we have a Release Candidate sweetheart? At exactly what point do we know?
At the moment you tagg it as RC? sweetheart.
Alphas, Betas and Release Candidates, and what constitutes a major release, are defined by actual requirements, or via time-based releases, and not by you. KDE 4.0 was designed and destined to be a target development desktop platform – and it is.
more blah blah blah.
Whatever hinny (nicking other peoples’ little phrases you find annoying, priceless. For everything else, there’s Mastercard).
what? oh, just a pointless coment, I see. Typical.
Why are you so interested in KDE 4 anyway? You don’t seem to like it; then why do you spend so much time commenting on it?
“Why are you so interested in KDE 4 anyway?”
I was, till 4.0, I’ll give it a second try at 4.1, Maybe it was all the hype of the last 2 years and see a dissapointing realease of 4.0 (unstable and ridiculous incomplete) was the worse or maybe its own president calling us ignorants when we just pointed the obvios, but hey you are right, maybe Im more usefull for KDE if I ignore it, for the sake of the project and my own.
“maybe its own president calling us ignorants when we just pointed the obvios”
kde the software project and kde e.v. are related but separate entities. the commonality is the kde project, but the divergence is that one is about technology creation and other about the organizational and business details that go on to support that.
it would be good to keep those things separate in your mind because it’s really unfair to all the other developers in the technical project to imply that anyone, let alone me, is their president. that’s not how kde works as a technical project.
hell, being the president of the non-prof org isn’t even something i go around flaunting because i really don’t see the greatness behind it. it’s actually just a bunch of grunt work and additional communication due to being more visible. anyways…
as for calling you ignorant for pointing out the obvious: you’re right that i lost my cool on occasion. that’s not good, no matter who i am and no matter how many times people were rude and disrespectful to me, my associates or our work. i’m still finding my zen calmness
now, i apologized for that above, but apparently you either didn’t notice or are above accepting apologies.
that said, while my means of delivery may have annoyed you at times, the facts of the matter were correct: you weren’t stating the obvious, you were talking about things you don’t have a handle on. unfortunately, many people continued to insist they did know better. now, everyone has lots of things they don’t have the context to comment on; i accept that there are infinitely many more things that i don’t know than those which i do know. that is the nature of existence.
as for waiting for 4.1, that is probably the right choice for you. if kde4 matures into what you are hoping for (probably the same things we all are) then i hope you will reflect on this time period and consider that we got there by the very route you disclaimed.
“maybe Im more usefull for KDE if I ignore it, for the sake of the project and my own.”
honestly, if it isn’t the right fit for you and you can’t provide constructive input in the meantime then this is probably an accurate statement.
i look forward to seeing you again, hopefully in better spirits, in 4.1.
cheers…
don’t worry, you will get my constructive input.
If KDE 4.0 would be as unstable and bad as RC2 was (it won’t) then that still wouldn’t be a weird thing for a .0 release in Free Software. Compare it with Linux Kernel 2.6.0 (or even 2.0) or Gnome 2.0 or KDE 2.0 etcetera.
It ain’t even bad compared with the latest Vista and Mac OS X…
“The aim of the KDE project for the 4.0 release is to put the foundations in place for future innovations on the Free Desktop.”
That’s a straight quote from the RC2 release notes. Older release notes read similar. KDE 4.0 is and was never intended to be a mainstream release, but a foundation for later developments — just like basically every free software dot-oh release.
I have no problems with that, but they called 4.0 a stable realease and is not.
btw KDE 4.0 is also part of KDE4.
If KDE 4.1 happens to be a dissapointing release too what will KDE4 be? KDE 4.2+? or what is exactly KDE4? KDE 4.8, KDE 4.9? Is not clear and just used as an excuse.
It’s not the most functional desktop in the world, but it is stable. I downloaded yesterday’s SVN build via the openSUSE Build Service and played with it for a while yesterday and today. I didn’t encounter major bugs in the core applications. There are missing features, the over-use of sound notifications annoys me, but did anything crash? No.
Im glad for you.
Oh please. It has been clearly stated a number of times that KDE 4.0 is a ‘technology release’. It is designed to lay down the technology, that others will use to design applications that will integrate with the KDE desktop environment.
It is also a redesign of the look, and feel of the environment, with the eye to improvements in usability over older versions of KDE (you gotta keep the pro Gnome anti KDE UI whingers happy).
It’s a foundation release, with developers expected to add to it and improve it, in the actual spirit of open source development. I mean, if people took your attitude, then the Linux kernel would never have gotten anywhere!!! People would have been saying “oh, but it’s slow…”, “oh, but it doesn’t do X feature”, “oh, but X application won’t run on it, or run well on it”, or “I don’t like the way that looks/feels/works” and so on. All software projects grow, and improve over time, why not give the KDE team a chance and see how things are six months down the track?
I stopped using Gnome circa v1.4, as I no longer liked the look and feel etc. I didn’t start bagging it until version 2.4 or so, when it became obvious that a lot of Gnome users were simply bagging KDE (which I honestly prefer in terms of UI) for the sheer sake of self promotion (of Gnome).
Dave
KDE 4.0 indeed is a foundation release. “to put the foundations in place for future innovations”, I believe that was stated in the release announcements for the beta’s and RC’s quite a lot. Actually, I KNOW it was, as I wrote it. It is rather unfortunate people apparently have a hard time reading properly…
KDE4 existed before the RCs and betas. As far as I can recall, KDE 4.0 was not supposed to be a foundation release from day one – it only turned out to be that way later. Which is no problem (we live in a free world), but it does mean that what “KDE 4.0” was at the very early stages of KDE4 is quite different from what it actually turned out to be – and that discrepancy is noted by people.
Hence my solution of giving KDE 4.0 a different name, such as “KDE4 DR1” or something. That would have made it a lot clearer to people exactly what KDE 4.0 is.
Well, you are right about “KDE 4” having changed meaning over the years. I don’t think that’s strange – the KDE community didn’t have such a very clear picture about what KDE 4 was meant to be 2 years ago. And of course, we dreamed it to be more than it could possibly turn out to be 😉
I would’ve loved if KDE 4.0 would have been released a year ago, with all functionality KDE 3.5.8 has. But it didn’t, and it was unrealistic to think we could do that.
I’m sure Apple would’ve wanted Mac OS X to be more than it turned out to be. I’m really really sure MS wanted more from Longhorn than Vista did deliver. But in the end they created those products, they got to name it. Can we please name KDE 4.0 like we wish? It’s not like a .0 release which has less functionality in some areas than its predecessor is such a weird thing… Especially in FOSS. And did we under-deliver that badly? Considering there will most likely be a 4.1 release in 6 or 7 months, I’d say no.
I do get your point – maybe communication could’ve been better. 4.0 isn’t incredibly great for the users of KDE 3.5.x, I regret that. But calling it anything but KDE 4.0 wouldn’t help our cause either – I think Aaron (and others, including myself) made that pretty clear.
Anyway. What’s in a name 😉 KDE 4.0 points toward the future, and I think it’s a bright one. I believe that thanks to it, FOSS finally has a chance of really making a stand against the proprietary competition – I think I blogged about that a few times
BTW, Happy new year, Thom… Got all your 10 fingers still attached?
Hence my solution of giving KDE 4.0 a different name, such as “KDE4 DR1” or something. That would have made it a lot clearer to people exactly what KDE 4.0 is.
What you’re doing here is putting your own requirements on what KDE 4.0 is supposed to be in your mind – a complete desktop with your own unspecified functionality and ideas on stability.
In the open source world, and even in the proprietary world, a .0 release is not going to be as functionally complete, or even as stable, as .1, .2, .3, .4 or .5. Open source developers have to accept that fact. Release early release often, until we get to something of good quality that everyone is happy with.
Well, to some extent, 1.0 releases tend to be pretty darn stable, mostly because many projects seem to go through 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4… 0.11 releases to get to that point, before deciding “Hey, I guess it’s final!”
I guess KDE being so open and realistic about it is making things sound like KDE 4.0 isn’t intended to be complete and reasonably bug-free, when I imagine it’s more likely that KDE will be as bug-free as KDE.ev can make it, knowing deep down that it’s not gonna be perfect the first time around, nor will all the side-applications be finished and perfect.
Edited 2008-01-07 01:57
“now he tell us to waith till 4.1.”
i said no such thing. if you think otherwise, please find where i said that in the article and provide a quote here.
disagree with me all you want, but at least get what i say straight.
As you obviously are a recent blow in on the back of the Ubuntu bandwagon, just be told that you have NO IDEA how free software releases have traditionally worked.
I’m sure there is no shortage of people on this forum who can describe to you in more detail what the early releases of gnome 2 were like yet that rebuild was not of the scale of KDE4.
Yet you wouldn’t know that using gnome now.
Edited 2008-01-07 03:30
This only really confirms what everyone has been saying for months now, which is that KDE 4.0 isn’t really going to be ready for mass consumption, and is instead more targeted at enthusiasts.
Is this a big deal? No, not really. Unless you upgrade your distribution to find that the default setup is a flaky KDE 4.0 desktop, there’s not really any reason to complain. At this point, anyone who is using KDE 4 is either a developer, or someone who is deliberately seeking out an unfinished product. Constructive criticism and useful bug reports are good things, but pointless whinging is not, and I wish people would stop it. It is quite clear that progress is being made, so there’s not really so much for us users to worry about.
When will KDE 4 be ready? When mainstream Linux distributors start shipping it as one of the supported desktops on their platform. Until then, let’s just keep an open mind.
When will KDE 4 be ready? When mainstream Linux distributors start shipping it as one of the supported desktops on their platform. Until then, let’s just keep an open mind.
While everyone focused on the next version of Kubuntu NOT being a LTS release, conversely it’s good to remember that it’s because KDE 4.0 will be the desktop of choice. How good of a release it makes remains to be seen of course, but some distros are planning to jump ahead asap.
I am really looking forward to 4.0.0.0.0.0. Although I am a Gnome user, I have “always” felt that Gnome is more sluggish than KDE, and the RC2 of KDE4 I tried was no exception. When the time is right I may switch to KDE4 if they manage to get things right for me
i am just hoping that KDE 4.1 is out quick enough for inclusion in opensuse 11.0, and that the suse devs are wise enough to spot a killer opportunity with KDE 4.1 to go for it if the release schedules are compatible.
The good news is that many of the openSUSE devs are KDE devs. KDE 4.x will be in openSUSE 11.0, it has pretty much been established (remember, KDE 4.x apps were included with 10.3, even as snapshots), though questionable as to whether a default or optional desktop. Given that 11.0 is tentatively looking at a summer release, it could be that 4.1 and 11.0 will coincide favorably. KDE 3.x will naturally be included, since both environments can co-exist easily.
Regardless, the build-service will make each KDE4 release available to the recent versions of openSUSE with nothing more than a single-click update.
I doubt you’ll see it for a while – the vast majority of distributions seem to be avoiding KDE 4, thinking that it’s not ready for mass use. Remember, a lot of KDE based applications have not been ported to KDE 4/QT4 yet.
Furthermore, since probably 80% of Linux users use either Ubuntu or Fedora (rough guess here, could be wrong, there’s no hard way to prove an actual figure), and both are Gnome based environments that conveniently do their best to make it time consuming to get KDE onto the system (no, downloading it as a package is not what I consider time consuming, I’ll talk more about why I think that in a little bit). There is a strong distribution led movement to actively encourage and entice users to use Gnome. Even Suse, which once reliably used KDE has been moving more and more to Gnome.
I do not believe that is due to quality, but is due to low level machinations. Sometimes, I wish IBM would buy trolltech and then release all the QT code under the GPL as an act of good will. I wonder how many enterprises would then look at KDE/QT?
Now – same I’m on dialup (which I am). I get Ubuntu given to me, but I like KDE, rather than Gnome. Do you realise how LONG it will take for me to download and install KDE? Is this really user friendly? I do NOT think so. This is why I’ve been pushing a DVD release of Ubuntu that features both a Gnome and a KDE install base. And no, Kubuntu doesn’t cut it – it’s a pile of horse manure as far as I’m concerned – not because of KDE, but because of the way that it’s packaged, few developers, and lack of polish. It’s amazing how many people bash KDE based on an experience with Kubuntu, which is one of the worst implementations of KDE of any distribution that I’ve seen. Note the effort that Ubuntu places in polishing the Gnome desktop environment (and the number of paid developers making sure that it happens).
The fact that the next release of Kubuntu will not really support KDE 4, and they don’t intend to release a LTS Kubuntu as KDE 4 is considered too new and experimental, and KDE 3.5 is considered too old (wtf!!!) is baloney. Ubuntu – one word: communication. Get your developers communicating with the KDE developers and problems will be fixed, code will be maintained. If Ubuntu put in the same amount of effort with KDE, as it does with Gnome, things would be much better, and that is the real crux of the issue.
Sorry to go on an anti Ubuntu rant, but it’s a valid example of why KDE 4 will not make it into many distributions imho.
I have a real issue with a so called leading distribution that offers little choice. One of the core things of open source software is choice, is that an irony or what?
Dave
Ubuntu the leading distribution because users had put it there not because they say it. It means they are doing the things right.
Ubuntu the leading distribution because users had put it there not because they say it. It means they are doing the things right.
If that gives you some crumbs of comfort then that’s great. Unfortunately, ‘leading distribution’ means very little beyond some people who hang out on the Ubuntu forums and think they’re changing the world. Or something. It’s a sad state of mind to get yourself into when you look at the computing world beyond Linux and open source software.
Because that’s what even core KDE developers say.
The eeePC is a huge seller. It’s KDE-based.
SUSE Enterprise: yes. openSUSE: No.
Qt is already GPLed — since years.
https://shipit.kubuntu.org/
And how is downloading KDE from within Ubuntu any different than using Kubuntu directly? The packages are the same. There’s no difference.
And how is downloading KDE from within Ubuntu any different than using Kubuntu directly? The packages are the same. There’s no difference.
For the Feisty release, my experience was that a system installed from the Kubuntu LiveCD was fairly unstable, whereas a system installed from the Ubuntu LiveCD, and with the kubuntu-desktop package added, was rock solid.
I had no explanation then, nor do I offer one now, but my personal experience (and someone else who agreed with me, I think on this forum) was that Kubuntu != (Ubuntu + KDE).
Just a side observation.
I can’t explain your observations. I don’t think that you are hallucinating so there must be something right about your observations, but for me it worked OK.
It could be that you hit a bug in the installer. AFAIK there’s also a text-based installer on the CD.
Amen, that is my experience.
Dave
“…I wish IBM would buy trolltech and then release all the QT code under the GPL as an act of good will.
Qt is already GPLed — since years…. ”
Just to point out that,this would probably kill the project’s momentum. QT is good because it is a commercial tool kit. It’s one of the best ones out there. The commercial incentive ( coupled with the drive for putting good quality software out there ) drives this particular project forward.
“then release all the QT code under the GPL as an act of good will.”
i assume you meant “LGPL” because it already is GPL.
My bad, yes.
Dave
Ok, seriously, 80%? WTF?
I’ve seen some wild proclamations for Gnome marketshare, but that implication, particularly based solely on Ubuntu and Fedora, is pretty out there.
KDE has an established commercial and community footprint in Europe, for instance, something the Gnome org (if not the userbase) has grudgingly acknowledged in the past. And then there’s Asia, that little spot of the world where linux lives quite comfortably, and Gnome barely exists. Red Flag and Turbolinux, two of the predominant distributions in Asia, are KDE-based, yet they rarely receive mention, yet they very likely both exceed RH or Novell for desktop marketbase (servers are a different story).
Novell still has a predominantly KDE userbase, both with the community-based openSUSE and the commercial SLED product; though this is owing mostly to the SuSE heritage and legacy userbase, it’s evidence that Novell’s Gnome “focus” hasn’t really done much beyond incite the community.
Gnome has certainly earned a respectable marketshare, but I think any speculation that it has exceeded KDE is simply speculation. The only metrics we can potentially rely on require commercial sales numbers, and in that area, KDE dominates. Red Hat doesn’t have a significant desktop product, Novell is a fence-sitter, but the rest of the commercial distros are pretty much KDE exclusively. Linspire, Xandros (and the Asus Eee), the Asianuxes etc.
Yes, Ubuntu is popular. But even when Shuttleworth proclaims that 7 million people are using Ubuntu (the last figure I saw him state), it doesn’t break out the Kubuntu users, and it means nothing to the ISV’s anyways. They’ll be more interested in commercial sales than free-downloads, in terms of early-market opportunities.
I won’t argue your implication that agendas are involved with the distros that try and distance KDE, but people have been claiming Gnome dominance for some time now, yet strangely, nothing seems to have changed in the big picture.
edit: forgot this part of your quote
<<Sometimes, I wish IBM would buy trolltech and then release all the QT code under the GPL as an act of good will. I wonder how many enterprises would then look at KDE/QT?>>
How many enterprises are looking at Gnome/Gtk? In other words, how can you point to Gtk’s free-as-in-beer status as being proven to be better value?
The majority of Tt’s licenses come from Qt/Win32 customers. So if customers are willing to pay for a high-quality framework for Windows development, despite the “free” framework Microsoft already provides, why would the same equation not hold true for linux?
Gtk already exists as a free toolkit for price-conscious commercial developers, and Qt exists for developers that value a well-documented and well-supported cross-platform, feature-rich development framework. The armchair quarterbacks in the community should simply leave it up to the commercial companies to decide which way they want to go, but you can rest assured that they use a different set of ROI measurements than the general userbase does when it comes to expenditures.
Ok, just my 2c…
Edited 2008-01-05 09:18 UTC
To be fair, we also have reasonably large-scale polls like this:
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS8454912761.html
and so claims of GNOME (and Ubuntu) dominance aren’t completely without merit. Having said that, it hasn’t made one whit of difference to the development of KDE: it’s still a *hugely* active project and has a very bright future, IMO.
The problem is the poll lacks any form of statistical relevancy and by it’s nature targeted a relatively specific segment of the global userbase.
That’s kind of my point, though, that surveys like that are given more validity than merited, which fuels the perception that Gnome has somehow achieved an escape velocity to attract the mainstream market.
Heck, the mere fact the survey was Digg’d renders the results questionable, that’s a ferociously Ubuntu-biased userbase… I’m frankly surprised that the polling server didn’t bow out under a Digg-effect
There’s just one thing about such polls: they should rather ask which DE the users use. You can install KDE or GNOME on any of those distros so those numbers really prove nothing either way. And it seems like Ubuntu and Kubuntu are counted as being the same, SuSE and OpenSuSE are counted as being the same, Gentoo doesn’t even have any “default DE” to install etc..
So, that was an interesting poll but that can’t be used as an indicator about which DE is winning
Well, that poll only covers Linux. DesktopBSD and PC-BSD are both KDE-based.
And then the poll only reached a certain audience:
1.) By getting to the digg front page, probably more North American users participated than people from other regions of the world. At least due Mandrake/Mandriva and SUSE, KDE was more popular in Europe in the past (I don’t know about today).
2.) Only a certain audience was reached with this poll. You had to be a geek to even know about that poll.
Do you think that the average eeePC user will participate at 2008’s survey?
GNOME might be the most used free software desktop. The thing is, that we just can’t know for sure. It’s pretty clear that both KDE and GNOME have a huge share of that cake. But how huge? I have no idea.
Besides that, I’d like to add another point:
3.) As discussed in several places, it seems there has been some tampering with those results. Google if you wanna know more. The short of it is that a few times, huge spikes of submitted votes all favored the combination of OpenSuse, Gnome and Firefox – while we all know from many other polls most OpenSuse users (almost 80%) use KDE.
I’m not saying that QT isn’t any good, or that Trolltech doesn’t deserve to charge for QT for commercial usage, I think that they do deserve that. But – I think that many developers avoid QT because of the licence costs, and look at GTK instead since they are no fees involved. Personally, and I’m no developer by any means, but from what little I’ve read on the subject, QT is a dream to work with, whilst GTK is an absolute nightmare.
As to my comments on usage, nearly everyone that I know, that uses Linux uses Ubuntu. True, I don’t know everyone in the world 😉
In terms of desktop usage, Ubuntu has more users than any other distribution. Whilst I don’t have empiracal numerical proof of this, I feel very confident in making that statement.
Dave
There are more costs involved in developing software than just the costs of the toolkit. GTK might be free for proprietary software, but it is also less efficient as Qt to develop software with.
Isn’t KDE developers are friendly a user-friendly interface?
KDE developers are user oriented, they will listen to what users says. That’s why KDE is my favorest desktop.
It seems to me that this commotion comes down to the KDE guys thinking “4.0” means one thing and some of the public (rightfully) thinking it means something else.
I read a long time ago that 4.0 for KDE4 was just the beginning of a long journey, so I got the message. For a lot of people though, 4.0 means “finished” and 4.x means “small improvements”.
So you can see how different people have different expectations — what some people expect from “4.0” the KDE4 guys expect at a later 4.x! Different interpretations of those numbers has caused different expectations about the software releases, which has then caused internet finger typing arguments.
Some developers might take notice and avoid the same problem in the future by using more conventional version naming.
I get the point you’re trying to make, but honestly, from the days of MS-DOS and probably beyond, “.0” releases were never “finished”, and the .1 (or beyond) was where they applied the mostly-final polish. Software development is simply too complex to account for all of the various use-constraints and potential corner-cases to nail down all the bugs, particularly since beta testing groups generally represent narrow segments of the market that aren’t necessarily representative of the target market as a whole. As well, sometimes you need to draw the line between features and release, otherwise you wind up in an endless cycle of continual feature creep requiring testing that delays release. At some point you need to get the product out the door into the real-world to develop it further, pretty much all software houses small and large realize this, even if their marketing departments try and spin it.
Vista is hoping their .1 will be SP1, XP’s .1 really came with SP2, Windows 3.1 was the turning point for MS, OSX 10.0 was mostly reviled, and even now the most die-hard Mac user will generally say wait until the first ..1 for any new point release. Gnome 2.0 was lambasted. Linux 2.6.0 was a major refactoring that took some point-releases before mainstream acceptability. The list goes on..
Most of the complaining generally comes from people that don’t like breaking the status quo, but they’re generally happy enough to jump on board the bandwagon once everyone else fixes things well enough for them. It would be one thing if developers, whether community or commercial, forced new versions down customers throats, but they generally don’t. They continue to support older versions of software so users can adopt at their own pace. Doesn’t matter whether you’re MS or KDE. Changing naming conventions won’t work, at least unless you’re Google and can simply call everything a “beta” for as long as you don’t want to actually support it, users really need to adjust their expectations. Revolutions, even small ones, need time to build up momentum. A .0 release simply won’t do it.
> Most of the complaining generally comes from people that don’t like breaking the status quo
That was all you needed to say — we just disagree on why people are complaining
Hmm, well, wouldn’t calling it KDE4 0.1 create even more confusion?
They should’ve called it a developer preview or something, or a DRx release like BeOS used to do. Because that’s what it is: a foundation release with all the guts in order, but not used to their fullest potential.
In any case, they should’ve not yet used the 4.0 moniker. Not because the version number doesn’t fit (they’ve been pretty clear about what 4.0 would be) but because it created unnecessary confusion and agitation that could’ve been prevented easily. They should have seen this one coming, especially if they planned on making 4.0 a DR from the get-go – which I’m not sure of. I believe 4.0 was supposed to be feature-complete anyway, but due to time constraints, they made it to what it is now.
But I’m not sure about that last bit.
So how good exactly were Windows XP, OS X, etc. when they were first released? I think you’ll have to strain yourself to come up with anything other than garbage. It’ll be the same with KDE 4.0 but since I’m partial to them I’ll call it “laying the foundation” 🙂
You are confusing a few things. Windows XP is just the brand name of Windows NT 5.1. In turn WinXP was not the first release of a new era, but built on proven WinNT foundation.
Mac OS X is a better comparison. Mac OS X 10.0 was a new product. Mac OS X 10.0 sucked, 10.2 was quite good and 10.3 rocked.
He’s also confusing the fact that both XP and OS X are not just Desktop Environments. They are the entire package from kernel to the DE.
Regarding KDE 4.0 – people assuming “laying foundations for future release” means that its not ready for mainstream adoption. That isn’t the point of “laying the foundation”.
Yes, time for a car analogy. What KDE 4.0 does is rip out the chassey, and replace it; its the same car on top, but a new chassey. Then from there they build upon and tweak the top. Without a good sturdy base, you can’t build a stable future.
Replace parts, extend other parts, add new features. KDE 3.5 was such a great release because of the solid foundations that were done in 3.0, and future 4.x releases will be made possible because of good design decisions made in 4.0.
Anybody knows if there will be a backport of KDE 4.0 for Ubuntu 7.10?
Try to follow the instructions from http://kubuntu.org/announcements/kde4-rc2.php (that should apply to the final version once it’s released)
Tbh i didnt really know him well. ( Just that he is some KDE bigshot and that his plasma thing was very alpha 😛 )
But listening to that interview (see first post) and reading his blog changed my mind.
He seems to be a cool open source guy. Reminds me of Linus ( with a lot more respect, Linus does not have to care anymore ) and Mark ( without the marketing mumbo jumbo talk ).
I really hope their vision of KDE comes true.
That would be cool!
I wish the whole KDE community all the best!
BTW: Aaron, how is it being a president of a german “eingetragener Verein”
?? Do you have to deal the german bereaucray at all?
Hehe, yeah, Aaron is cool… And I guess he doesn’t have much trouble with the German bureaucracy, he’s not the only person on the Board. I think it is worthwhile saying Cornelius Schumacher deserves a huge amount of credit for the work he does in the area of paperwork, being treasurer and all.
kde4 is neat,wow,different,cool,strange….but I honestly still prefer 3.5 so far. Maybe if I play with it more? Of course I usually use a lite gnome install so I am not sure how much I will get around to messing with it.