The article yesterday on KDE4 triggered both Sebastian Kuegler and Aaron Seigo to respond via their blogs. Kuegler writes: "The Free Desktop and KDE have come a long way during the last years. There have been various huge changes in KDE's social structure, in it's infrastructure and of course in the sourcecode itself. I've split this into three different areas where I think a shift in paradigm has taken place." Seigo writes: "Mark my words: KDE4 is a revolution unfolding and you're getting to watch it all happen from the very beginning."
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Member since:2005-07-07
Sure Mac OS X has some nice stuff the FOSS world doesn't have (yet). On the other hand, the linux kernel is far more capable than what they have, and Amarok is much better than Itunes. We each have stuff the other doesn't have, though overall Mac might be better. It's not free software, though. And we expect to become much more innovative, starting with the 4.0 release. That was the target of KDE 4, you know, enable innovation. It's why we did focus so much on underlying technology. So 4.0 isn't that innovative in itself, but it will be - at least, that's what we hope and expect.
Member since:2005-07-22
Sure Mac OS X has some nice stuff the FOSS world doesn't have (yet). On the other hand, the linux kernel is far more capable than what they have
Huh? Mac OS X is based on BSD 4.4 with a Mach 3.0 micro-kernel. It is certainly different to Linux, and maybe Unix system calls are slower to call because of the architecture. But 'far more capable' is stretching it a bit. KDE 4 will certainly run very well on Mac OS X with no loss of functionality, and it will use a technically superior window manager than X is on Linux.
You can program Cocoa applications in Objective-C with Interface Builder to construct the UI, and as far as I'm concerned that is still better than KDE application programming in C++. Writing KDE applications in Ruby or Python might be a different matter, but we need to push that and get more adoption with lots of python and ruby apps before we can really claim KDE 4 is as good a RAD environment.
Member since:2005-07-06
Why are you shifting the discussion towards the kernel? KDE is a DE that runs on many OSes/kernels and which kernel is used below KDE doesn't matter. Aseigo asked a question and I gave a set of answers that I think are important and none of them have anything to do with kernels.
If your only remaining argument against my answers is "Amarok is better than iTunes" then you should know which ares are left to build a compelling ecosystem for casual users.
Member since:
2005-07-06
IMHO there are two areas about that comment:
Objective and subjective.
The objective area is the one where KDE actually lacks features.
The subjective area is the one where KDE has that features, but lacks marketing.
While not every aspect of OS X is great, the overall package is pretty awesome.
Compare Kopete to iChat for example. Yeah, Kopete supports more protocols, but that's about it. iChat is easy and fun. iChat sends h.264/AVC-encoded video chat streams over Jabber for ages and does crazy things with it. Both are open standards with free implementations. You can't tell me that for a somewhat skilled developer it's that hard to add.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/ichat/
http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/features/ichat.html
Another things that's missing is iLife. It's technically not a part of Mac OS X, but every Mac ships with it, so the general reception is that iLife is part of OS X. Maybe I missed something, but I can't remember seeing something like iMovie for KDE.
I hadn't the chance to try Freecycle yet, but it looks like a promising GarageBand alternative.
KDE is also missing some sort of creative suite. I know about Krita, Karbon, and Scribus. Marketing Krita and Karbon as a part of KOffice is a bit hard. And I'm not talking about developing a separate creative suite or splitting Krita and Karbon from KOffice source code. Just do separate marketing and include Scribus is that virtual package.