Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 13th Oct 2011 21:33 UTC, submitted by mahmudinashar
Ah, it's that time of the year again. We already had this up on the sidebar, but I figured we'd turn it into a proper front page item - mostly because I want to discuss the move by the Ubuntu team to no longer install GNOME 2 as the 'classic' desktop option - which pretty much ends any and all involvement for me with Ubuntu (KDE 4 here I come). There's more to this than just that, of course, so those of you who do like Unity still have enough reason to upgrade.
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RE[2]: Xfce is the right place to go
by dylansmrjones on Thu 13th Oct 2011 22:50
in reply to "RE: Xfce is the right place to go"
Member since:2005-10-02
Partially true.
KDE doesn't have better integration of Gnome/GTK+ apps than Gnome has of KDE/Qt apps. But they are surely difficult to tell apart. Cross desktop integration has improved greatly in the last couple of years. When in Gnome I often mistake Qt4 applications for being GTK+ and GTK+ for being Qt when in KDE (when it was installed).
Visually KDE4 is much nicer looking than Gnome 2.x. If just that silly nepomuk-semantic-desktop-stuff would stop crashing and start being actually useful.
RE[2]: Xfce is the right place to go
by Jason Bourne on Thu 13th Oct 2011 23:42
in reply to "RE: Xfce is the right place to go"
Member since:2007-06-02
The KDE desktop itself is not a problem. The problem is Dolphin & Co, and the way KDE wants to be integrated tightly towards these K* apps.
KDE itself alone is a blasting desktop. But dude, using Dolphin for 5 minutes can give you a headache. Not to mention other useless K* apps. I mostly use GTK apps which are the preferred and used by millions.
The only K* app I admire is K3B. But Amarok, KSCD, and other King-kong names... I just don't choose them. Let's be sincere. Who is the one who uses KOffice here? Two people on earth?
RE[3]: Xfce is the right place to go
by lemur2 on Fri 14th Oct 2011 00:13
in reply to "RE[2]: Xfce is the right place to go"
Member since:2007-02-17
The KDE desktop itself is not a problem. The problem is Dolphin & Co, and the way KDE wants to be integrated tightly towards these K* apps. KDE itself alone is a blasting desktop. But dude, using Dolphin for 5 minutes can give you a headache. Not to mention other useless K* apps. I mostly use GTK apps which are the preferred and used by millions. The only K* app I admire is K3B. But Amarok, KSCD, and other King-kong names... I just don't choose them. Let's be sincere. Who is the one who uses KOffice here? Two people on earth?
Dolphin is a very good file manager. It can be easily configured
http://dolphin.kde.org/features.html
from a single-pane bare minimum keep-out-of-your way file manager as simplistic as Windows explorer:
http://dolphin.kde.org/images/view_mode_1.png
all the way through to a split-window, tabbed, full-featured, all-the-bling-you want mode:
http://dolphin.kde.org/images/all_features.png
As for the application names, users don't see them. On the menus, you run Dolphin by clicking on the menu entry labelled "File Manager" which comes under the "Utilities" section.
KOffice is about to be replaced, BTW, with Calligra Office 2.4 for KDE4, which is now in beta:
http://www.calligra-suite.org/
Have a look around, you might be surprised by what this new about-to-be-released Office suite can do. Calligra Office suite, BTW, is split into a core an a series of front-end UIs. Also about to be released is Calligra Active, designed to run on touchscreen tablets under Plasma Active. AFAIK this is the only free Office suite designed to run on tablets.
You don't need to run KSCD to play CDs, there are many other music player apps which you can use instead. Amarok will happily play CDs. If you don't like Amarok, run Clementine. If even Clementine is too much for you, run Bangarang.
http://www.clementine-player.org/
http://bangarangkde.wordpress.com/
If you just want a media player rather than a music collection browser, run VLC.
NOTE: many of these apps do not have a "k" in their name.
Edited 2011-10-14 00:26 UTC
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:25 UTC
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:45 UTC
"I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:32 UTC, submitted by poundsmack
A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)".
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:58 UTC
"The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:52 UTC
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 21:03 UTC
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 20:46 UTC
"And so it is with Dell's Alienware X51 R2, a small form factor gaming PC in console digs. It's shaped similar to Microsoft's Xbox 360 Slim, and though it's slightly larger than either a 360 or PlayStation 3, the X51 R2 would be right at home in a living room setting nestled next to a large screen TV. Indeed, it's adept at running Steam's Big Picture mode, and if your primary objective is to play games in the living room, go ahead and consider the X51 R2 a hybrid game console." This is obviously not the only machine like this - still, these are very valid console alternatives even for those that don't like being hunched over with a cramped WASD-claw. Also, PC gamers among us: could you get away with the $699 model for gaming?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 17:32 UTC
From Bloomberg: "Microsoft, the world's largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes." The lid has officially been blown off.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 11:39 UTC
"The key takeaway we've reached (after two less than 24 hours playing with the iOS 7 Beta release) is this - every App must consider even basic updates to its UI to survive in a post-iOS 6 world." Great. Telling developers to update their entire application - user interface and behaviour alike - to target a look and behaviour that isn't final yet. Seems like potential for a lot of wasted work here.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 11:32 UTC
"Overall the app is really basic, and designed for on the go editing. Microsoft says it's not planning to create an iPad version, noting that tablet users can utilize the Office Web Apps instead. We'd like to see some additional options for editing, including more clear options for text formatting and the ability to insert and change images, but it's a solid attempt for something you're only really going to use for editing in emergencies." A resounding meh can be heard from all over the world.More News »
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Member since:
2007-02-17
KDE4 has great support for GTK applications. The look and feel GTK applications under KDE4 is such that they are indistinguishable from Qt and KDE applications at first glance.
I'll do a screenshot as proof when I get home if you like, but really, you are very much out of date, this has been fixed on KDE for ages. The only problem these days is that KDE applications look terrible under GNOME ...
KDE4 has far, far better support for and integration of GTK applications than GNOME has support for KDE/Qt applications.
As for GNOME applications (as opposed to GTK applications) such as Nautilis and Evolution ... just drop them as they bring in a whole heap of GNOME dependencies. Use Dolphin for the File Manager and Kontact or Thunderbird as your email/calendar/PIM application and you will be sweet.