http://www.osnews.com/story/704/Interview_with_Mandrake_s_KDE_s_David_Faure Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:09:01 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Nice article!

David, you rock!
To say it in your native language:

t'es une bête! Mon, 25 Feb 2002 19:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I had a back and forth with this guy over E-mail about some issues with Konq about a year ago. I discovered that this guy is one of the most arogant, 1337, jerks I have ever had the displeasure to encounter. Not only did he treat my question like I was a moron, but he went as far to say out right that "I think people should have to have intelegence before they can use a computer", that was of cource directed towards me.

I have since moved to Debian, Gnome, and Gallion. Mon, 25 Feb 2002 19:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Due in a large part to David Faure and the other KDE developers, we have the the gift of a great computing environment. I use KDE every single day, both at work and at home and I love it! David is also an incredibly nice person. I interacted with him briefly about a konqueror bug I reported and I was very surprised that somebody who must be incredibly busy with all his projects was so cordial!

Many thanks to David and the rest of the KDE folks! Mon, 25 Feb 2002 19:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I used KDE for my Linux Desktop for years. I love the application like konqueror, knotes, kmail, etc.

I think in the future KDE focus in groupware application like evolution o outlook, make kmail better than today (kmail is a good email client).

Go Head KDE Team.

Visit our Linux Puerto Rico Portal a http://www.vidalinux.com Mon, 25 Feb 2002 20:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I tested KDE 3.0, KDE 3.0 is the great system, made good performance on Linux.

The develop in KDE/QT is more easy than Gnome. Mon, 25 Feb 2002 20:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? David Faure: I do think that Linux will make it on the desktop. I think it has already made it to some desktops, and will continue to improve, thanks to user-friendly interfaces such as KDE, "konquering" (pun intended) JoeUser's desktop.

I think that KDE will only help linux succeed on the desktop when you can successfully use your computer without having to diddle around at a command prompt. If I want to set up a network and share it now I have to go through all kinds of hoops, for instance. This should be integrated 100% into KDE's interface. Mon, 25 Feb 2002 21:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? speed and cpu optimization is the greatest obstacles against linux and KDE. it works approximately 2-3times slower than MS Windows, has anyone tried to move windows when playing an mp3 file??
and one more thing to add, who would like to use a desktop without a mediaplayer??
there millions of software included and installed in linux, but u do get no movie player.. isn't that funny Mon, 25 Feb 2002 21:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? If I want to set up a network and share it now I have to go through all kinds of hoops, for instance. This should be integrated 100% into KDE's interface.

Oddly enough, that's exactly what David says he's working on, in the interview. You did read all of the interview, right?

there millions of software included and installed in linux, but u do get no movie player.. isn't that funny

That, I would (more than) venture to guess, is a problem with your ditribution, not KDE. Because *I* have a plethora of movie players available to me. Everything from xanim/aktion, to mplayer, aviplay, xine, noatun, crossover (for quicktime/sorenson), to various gnome apps (that I don't remember the name of). So, to sum up, if you don't get a single one of those shipped with your ditro, or at least no easy way to install them, then I suggest finding a different one (I personally like debian, but YMMV). Mon, 25 Feb 2002 22:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? KDE to OSX now! Mon, 25 Feb 2002 22:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The Win3.1 MDI interface, noooooooooo! Mon, 25 Feb 2002 23:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I'd like to see a good sysadmin tool in KDE/Qt for configuring and administring NFS clients, servers, and mountpoints. I was surprised when I tried to do this in Linux, how I had to use the command line tools. Ok to do that, but a GUI would be nice. Tue, 26 Feb 2002 00:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Nice interview! Tue, 26 Feb 2002 01:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? > speed and cpu optimization is the greatest obstacles against
> linux and KDE. it works approximately 2-3times slower than
> MS Windows, has anyone tried to move windows when playing an
> mp3 file??

It works fine for me. I can play MP3s in KDE and GNOME with all sorts of other processes running and I have no problems. I can web browse in Galeon while compressing MPEG video into DivX (with mplayer's mencoder), and my system will still be quite responsive. My system is hardly 'state-of-the-art', being a Pentium II 350MHz with 128MB of RAM. Conversely, Win2K and XP run like molasses on my system, and that's with only a few apps running.

> who would like to use a desktop without a mediaplayer??

KDE has noatun and kaboodle. There is also aviplay, mplayer (my favourite) and xine, not to mention countless others. Mplayer and xine can play more formats than Windows Media player, and they handle file errors much better. I have DivX, WMV and ASF files that Windows Media Player chokes on, but which mplayer and xine play gracefully. Most importantly, GNU/Linux media players don't spy on you. Tue, 26 Feb 2002 03:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? > Most importantly, GNU/Linux media players don't spy on you.

That's the most important!!! Yikes!!! Don't become part of the Borg. Tue, 26 Feb 2002 05:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? > KDE has noatun and kaboodle. There is also aviplay, mplayer (my >favourite) and xine, not to mention countless others. Mplayer and xine can >play more formats than Windows Media player, and they handle file errors >much better. I have DivX, WMV and ASF files that Windows Media Player >chokes on, but which mplayer and xine play gracefully. Most importantly, >GNU/Linux media players don't spy on you.

Yeah! Well said. No spyware on Linux's Media Player definitely. MS Media player is irrelevant. Tue, 26 Feb 2002 05:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? In the past few months, famous open source developers have been asked about their opinion on new technologies like Java, SOAP, .NET, ... As in most of those cases, their answers are completely wrong and suggest that they should first catch up with some documentation, specs and example applications.

It is obvious that they are experts in their respective area and David has proven that he knows what he is doing.

But please, do not comment on subjects that our outside of your expertise. Tue, 26 Feb 2002 07:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I think KDE is very user friendly, (I think if my 10 yr old daughter can use it how hard can it be & she loves it) but the only thing that stops me from going KDE all the way is Kword. Kword looks great, operates great, but at the end of the day I need to read MSoffice documents and send it back in the same format. So if I had only wish from KDE that would be it. In regard to speed if it takes an extra second to do something I think I can spare a second.

Keep up the great work
Cheers Jim Tue, 26 Feb 2002 07:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Pour une fois, je vais communiquer en français: Stategiquement, Linux , Mandrake et tous les utilisateurs qui ont besoin de GUI comme KDE ne peuvent que se demander pourquoi tant d'energie dispersée.
Pourquoi ne pas faire avancer openoffice? Je sais ce qu'est un engagementet donc come il peut être difficile d'interompre le dev. sur Kword mais quitte à faire avancer KDE c'est sur un clone d'Evolution que cela devrait peut-être être fait....
+ Xfree dont depend tant de choses,CUPS, ALSA, supermount; mais là c'est de la galaxie LINUX dont il s'agit.

Anyway thank you for all your job David. Tue, 26 Feb 2002 09:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? There is Webmin at http://www.webmin.com for local and _remote_ system administration with almost every browser. Usualy no need to go to the command line.

And if one wants to embed Webmin into kcontrol see WebConfig at
http://apps.kde.com/nf/2/info/vid/5246?br=true&sid=0e6dbe4cbd4d...

cu
ferdinand Tue, 26 Feb 2002 10:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I wish KDE would take a page from BeOS and work on something like the Translation Kit. I thought that it was one of the coolest things about BeOS - having OS-wide services to translate not only files but in principle any data stream for which an appropriate translation module exists. It wouldn't even have to be KDE-specitic - there could be a backend that could be accessed via the console or directly by applications, as well as GUI frontends for KDE and GNONE, Tue, 26 Feb 2002 13:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Wonderful idea, but easier said than done. Being the guy who wrote the PSD translator for BeOS, I know from experience a bit about the translation kit and all I can say is that it was fantastic for images, and not much else.

If I recall, Be had originally attempted to do audio/video conversions using the translation kit, back in r3 or 4, and had to drop it for the Media Kit later on with r4.5. This was because the system was too generic. And that's the trouble. Generic is almost always good. But too generic will bite you in the butt.

If you want generic stream translation services, you'll probably fail. On the other hand, you might want to make some variety of specialized translation. For example, specialized translation for images, text documents, etc. You could probably lump it by mime-type.

Anyway, just my 2 cents. Tue, 26 Feb 2002 14:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? What I meant was more in the way of document conversion rather than media-type stuff. My comment was in response to the post earlier where someone said he loved KDE but the inability to save KWord files in an MS Word format kept him from using. The point is that once reliable convertors get written, I would like to see tham be accessible by all applications so the wheel doesn't get reinvented over and over again. Tue, 26 Feb 2002 20:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Work has been done on implementing a malloc-replacement, as the glibc one has quite some hooks which make it slower than necessary.

If you configure kdelibs with --enable-fast-malloc=full
you get both startup and runtime improvements. Wed, 27 Feb 2002 12:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Those wishing to improving KDE should have a good look at the Corel OS. I don't use it because of lack of sound support, but it had a dynamite file manager, automatically detected the three windows machines on my home network and allowed me to access them directly all from file manager like a built in network neighborhood, all without having to configure arcane Samba commands. KWord cannot be considered by heavy duty, all day writers like myself until it is more Wordperfect like, can import and export WP files, has WP like (i.e. simple) macro language, has, like WP, ability to open window to see and correct formatting codes. Good luck, long way to go. Trying to look like or act like MS Word is the wrong direction. Wed, 06 Mar 2002 20:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Hi,
KDE has noatun and kaboodle. There is also aviplay, mplayer (my favourite) and xine, not to mention countless others. Mplayer and xine can play more formats than Windows Media player, and they handle file errors much better. I have DivX, WMV and ASF files that Windows Media Player chokes on, but which mplayer and xine play gracefully. Most importantly, GNU/Linux media players don't spy on you.

Not to start a flamewar or say Windows is perfect, by why do so many people from the Linux world associate Windows with Windows Media Player or with Internet Explorer or anything else that's built into the OS (and then usually say how bad it is compared to something in Linux)? For web surfing under Windows there also is e.g. Opera or Mozilla, for multimedia playback there is BSPlayer or Sasami2K or the upcoming WinAMP3, to mention the most popular.

In Windows there are also alternatives. If one doesn't like IE or WMP he can use something else. Don't say Windows is bad just because IE or WMP or the like are bad.
You can certainly think of better reasons. ;-)

Roman Thu, 07 Mar 2002 14:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? David talks about working on KWord. Part of KOffice is a spreadsheet. I've had to go to Windows so that I can use WordPerfect QuattroPro (It's not stable on Mandrake) because not one of the Linux Spreadsheets I have (StarOffice, Kspread, Gnumeric) can simultaneously split the screen and freeze titles! That is unbelievable! The very first significant spreadsheet that existed (Lotus123) could do that. Why would anyone design a spreadsheet without it??? If you're going to do anything significant you need that. Otherwise, use a calculator! What gripes me is that the Linux community didn't support the fabulous "wheel" of Corel instead of "re-inventing" a bunch of non-funcional substitues. There's no reason for me to buy any more Linux configurations until there's one with a decent spreadsheet. Fri, 08 Mar 2002 15:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? In the beginning I seemed to understand the emphasis which would be in Linux development, but now every time I read things about these well intentioned people and then read Lauren' article I understand also that these guys are just creatives, incoherent in resource management, spreading their expertise in N directions, and delivering vapourware. Lauren is right: all your spreadsheets are bullshit, the compatibility of word processors too. I tried to follow all the existing upgrades, reading that THE version of KOffice was coming (V.1.x)... And now I stopped. Stop disseminating, JUST concentrate! But you cannot…Can you ? Fri, 08 Mar 2002 20:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments