"KDE 4 is coming. It's starting to look and behave in a mature enough manner to use it on a normal desktop. This article is a little introduction as to what you should expect from the brand new KDE that is due out later this year." Lots of screenshots too.
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Member since:2007-08-03
"Whats with the "Desktop toolbox"? Is this going to be there in the final release?"
It was actually replaced very, very recently with a slightly less ugly semi-circle with an icon in it in the top-right corner of the desktop, although I hope a better solution will be found eventually. You can see a picture in one of Fred's screenshots here.
http://files.fredemmott.co.uk/ss-20071014.jpg
"Too bad KDE seem to be a second-class citizen in many of the large distros like Fedora and (K)Ubuntu."
Indeed 
It's a crazy world, but whaddya gonna do? 
Member since:2007-07-25
"It was actually replaced very, very recently with a slightly less ugly semi-circle with an icon in it in the top-right corner of the desktop, although I hope a better solution will be found eventually. You can see a picture in one of Fred's screenshots here."
I would still prefer to not have it on the desktop at all, because in my opinion this feature should not be used very often. Perhaps on the context menu or something would be better. How often do you use this anyway? Once or twice to configure the look of your desktop and then never again?
Member since:2005-07-06
yes, there's a little circle area. it's still ugly, though, as i have done exactly nothing to style it. once it's all working nicely it'll have a nice translucent gradient (glassish) with a tasteful border edge for contrast.
first function (designed with style in mind, of course), and then style. finish carpentry is called that for a reason 
Member since:2006-12-18
Member since:2005-07-06
It actually has to do more with the licence of the widget kit - and the naive assumption that if they don't have a 'developer friendly licence' such as the LGPL, no developer will write applications for their said operating system. Given that no commercial application vendor has yet come to *NIX, I don't see the whole point of 'shunning KDE'.
For me, I'm excited about KDE 4 appearing on Solaris. I love GNOME to pieces but I much rather prefer running KDE with Amarok, Kopete and hopefully KOffice 2.0 will appear as well. Its a huge step forward in the world of open source desktop applications.
Within a few years I hope that we'll be saying, "Adobe who?" when it comes to applications - that open source applications will get to the point where people move to *NIX and don't actually care if their 'big names' aren't there, because the replacement applications are superior and at the right price - free :-)
Edited 2007-10-14 17:15
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-11-14
Other than that it is starting to look good. Too bad KDE seem to be a second-class citizen in many of the large distros like Fedora and (K)Ubuntu.
Ubuntu defaults to GNOME simply because it was created by people who prefer GNOME, and had the goal to create an operating system with the GNOME user interface.
Similar for Kubuntu; it was created by people who prefer KDE, so it defaults to KDE.
A lot of Fedora developers are not only GNOME users but GNOME developers as well, which is why you might get the impression that it favors it instead of KDE.
Another example is Debian. GNOME is installed by default simply because it's the most popular environment among its users, but GNOME and KDE related packages get all the attention their respective developers are willing to give them.
This comment generated a few theories, and some trolls even already chimed in, which is too bad. The answer is quite simply IMO, and has nothing to do with licenses or release management.
Member since:2007-02-17
Considering Mark has said that it had to do with release management, and has called for a release timetable similar to gnomes from the Kde devs, I'd say you are dead wrong.
http://www.abclinuxu.cz/clanky/rozhovory/mark-shuttleworth?page=1
Read the fourth and fifth questions and his answers after that. I think that says it all.
Edited 2007-10-15 02:43
Member since:2005-07-07
"Another example is Debian. GNOME is installed by default simply because it's the most popular environment among its users"
Umm, did you just pull that out of the air?
Gnome:
http://people.debian.org/~igloo/popcon-graphs/index.php?packages=gn...
KDE:
http://people.debian.org/~igloo/popcon-graphs/index.php?packages=kd...
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces."But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance."According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.
Member since:
2007-07-25
Whats with the "Desktop toolbox"? Is this going to be there in the final release?
Other than that it is starting to look good. Too bad KDE seem to be a second-class citizen in many of the large distros like Fedora and (K)Ubuntu.