Submitted by “This document was created to show non-KDE people what they’re missing – and if you haven’t used KDE a lot, you’re missing a lot of things and you may interested in reading this page to learn how many wonderful things you’ve been missing. I promise, this is a subjective analysis of why KDE rules. I was a GNOME user for a long time, one of those users who loved GNOME UI, and I didn’t know how much things I was missing with KDE until I tried it.”
Apparently the reason the author likes KDE is the reason I don’t. Writing software applications for the desktop is about designing a user experience.
It is not about how many GUI controls can mashed together within every pixel of an application. It is not about the 5 page features list. It is
not about “tweakability” and “configurability” either.
It is about creating a seamless, transparent and smooth experience for end users.
If you take a look at Amarok and go, “OMG! So shexy! Look at all those features!” Then you can move on to the next comment because you just won’t get what the GNOME developers are striving for and probably label me a troll.
KDE4 might impress me. It seems the KDE developers have done some soul seeking and they too are overwhelmed by their own complexity. Projects like Oxygen and Plasma is exactly what desktop development should be all about. I’d like to see similar projects for GNOME.
Today, however, KDE is not for me and non-geeks. I respect the works of the KDE developers and community and I do not think they are f–king Idiots.
You may also argue that a firefox-like search is better than showing a window, and I’d agree.
I would like to say that firefox like search is already implemented in konqueror. Just press / and type your search word. press F3 to find again.
I so can’t wait for this to come by.
I know there is some semi serious projects out there, but none have delivered an up-to-date distribution that I can run various parts of KDE on OS X.
I loved the file manager in KDE, much more powerful than OS X. Yes I know power sometimes lays in simplicity but I prefer my cards to be out on the table.
With QT 4 being released, various parts of the libraries have been segregated so I’m hoping that it means a viable distro for OS X in the very near future.
I hate desktop environments, they are always screwing with my settings and crashing etc.
Ratpoison is my weapon of choice. It’s simple and efficient. I bet even my grandmother could use it what out any trouble. I hides all the complexity from anyone who doesn’t understand it, without getting in the way of the people who do.
I <3 ratpoison for life!
– Jessta
it’s for *NIX OSes. I don’t want Linux nor FreeBSD. I need something better.
I too have k3b -v showing:
[melkor@melkor:~]$ k3b -v
Qt: 3.3.5
KDE: 3.5.0
K3b: 0.12.10
But I’m grabbing kde 3.5.0 from Scud (experimental). I believe the packages are slightly different from Alioth. k3b depends on dbus-qt-1c2, but it’s been removed and replaced by libdbus-qt-1-1c2 due to the abi stage 2 transitional updates in Sid. You don’t seem to be able to install kde 3.5 from Scud without removing dbus-qt-1c2 and installing libdbus-qt-1-1c2. My guess is k3b will need to be repackaged against libdbus-qt-1-1c2 and uploaded directly to Sid, or quite possibly even Scud. I’m also waiting for amsn 0.95 😉
I prefer not to grab packages from Alioth if I can avoid it, and Debian proper has been quite quick with incoming since the release of Sarge in April.
Thanks for you reply though 🙂
Dave
!!!!! Diego tu estabas “fumao”!!!!!
Diego tu estabas “fumao” cuando escribiste el articulo. En amgunos puntos tienes razon, pero cuando vi en la lista de Amarok que escuchas a “Porretas” y a “Rosendo”, me di cuenta de ello.
Joaquin Sabina pase, pero Porretas …??????
KDE es bueno en muchos aspectos , pero pesado y muy nya-nyam, y con demasiada tonteria…
Gnome con algunas mejoras supera de largo a KDE !!!
tas pasao!
> Gnome con algunas mejoras supera de largo a KDE !!!
I think you should clearly investigate into GNOME then. To have GNOME surpass KDE will be harder than freezing the sun.
“To have GNOME surpass KDE will be harder than freezing the sun”
eeeej…
Quieto, parao …!!!!
Un poco exageradito si que eres…
KDE tiene ahora mas utilidades… y muchas mas chorraditas y pinganillos que GNOME, pero esta “SATURADO”.
No es elegante simplemente, ni rapido. parece el “Rastro en dia de fiesta”
Mejor utilizar XFCE, o ENLIGHTMENT, que son finos, rapidos y finalmente haces lo mismo que con KDE solo que usando otros programas o la Terminal.
GNOME es mas lento que etos citados, pero un poquito mas rapido que KDE y no tan dulzon y pegajoso de tanto colorin y caramelo…
La base de estos 3 es mas solida y menos saturada y pueden incorporas nuevos aspectos y technologias a un menor precio y sobrecarga de datos y usabilidad !!!
Bueno, reconozco que yo tambien uso KDE a veces, despues de todo… No esta tan mal !!!!
I guess someone should provide a “why gnome rocks” document. I really hope someone will… But really:
dcop = dbus. Granted, dcop was there first, and has been there for a long time, but look at the present and (most importantly) the future.
kioslaves = gnome-vfs (yes, I can open something over an ftp, ssh, samba, etc… connection in gedit and just press “ctrl-s”)
kparts = uh… really, why? Isn’t it just an inflexible way of embedding controls? If I wanted to use gtkhtml (which I don’t, I’ll give you that…), I can do that right now. Sure, there’s no unified way for doing such a thing. Instead every ‘part’ that wants to be embedded provides it’s own specialised, optimised way of doing it.
And to all those people crying “DBUS, Cairo and GStreamer aren’t Gnome projects!!! No Fair!!!!”… Please, where’s the ‘Open Source’ in that argument. Isn’t it a good thing that the Gnome folks are collaborating, aggregating and integrating other great Open Source technologies? Isn’t it a big advantage over using Qt link solutions that can only be used by the KDE project? It’s scary seeing people using arguments like that AGAINST gnome…
dcop = dbus. Granted, dcop was there first, and has been there for a long time, but look at the present and (most importantly) the future.
Which is why I said that KDE is moving to dbus. By the way: The infrastructure is less important, what matters is how many apps are using such infraetructure. And KDE really rocks on that field – all KDE apps used dcop to some degree, but sadly not all gnome apps are using it extensively.
kparts = uh… really, why? Isn’t it just an inflexible way of embedding controls?
Not at all: Take a look at the amarok + wikipedia screenshot. The “<-” “->” buttons are there but in a different size, they could have even been removed. I don’t see why it’s “inflexible” or why it has not sense..
“Isn’t it a big advantage over using Qt link solutions that can only be used by the KDE project?
This is FUD. QT is licensed under the GPL license and you can build whatever you want as long as you don’t break the GPL license. You’ve to pay extra fees if you want a commercial license, right. I’m *shocked* that people sees this as a problem. Aren’t we supposed to build free software? What’s the point of having created the GNU project if you only seem to care about comercial apps being developed….?
Edited 2005-12-30 14:56
KParts is more than a simple UI control model, it is a centralized component model upon the whole kde system is built upon, you can see it more as a next step next generation, a system built up from ground as component model in mind. Yes there are user interface kparts, and it is easy to work with them one beauty of such systems is that the reusability is way higher than in a plain library approach. With three lines of code you have enmbedded a browser, with another line you have added vfs functionality etc…
Every application drops basically if done right core parts into the system which then can be reused in other applications.
That is one thing the Gnome people have been missing on and on, they were to busy to play catchup with Microsoft, that they overlooked that Microsoft has followed (and did until .Net because they utterly failed with OLE to play catchup with NeXT) they 20 year old parc/apple approach of designing a user interface system.
NeXT and other approaches revolutionized 10 years ago how such systems can be designed, and the perfect example of such systems now are basically OSX and KDE.
A perfect example of such a system within the office scope is KOffice and also OpenOffice, from which KDE was partially dervied (the kde people started with the same ideas but tried to avoid the mistakes Star Office back then made, some of the first core devs from kde came straight from the Star Division)
So saying KParts is just a broken way of defining controls is way off, it is an entirely different methodology of having components as application foundation instead of various libraries. That this approach works show applications like KOffice, OpenOffice, also OSX which is the current generation NextStep and KDE in itself.
Gnome still fights with various legacy lib, broken lib, wrong design problems and instead of trying to raise the usability of their applications they reduce the functionality more and more while core aspects of their system (like an office compound document model, interoperability into other systems) etc… are still wide open areas. The original argument of having a library based foundation being more tight and less mem intensive has not been proven to be true, instead kde nowadays is faster and the mem consumption are up to par in both systems (within the boundaries of such systems nowadays)
I showed a friend AmaroK and he was gob smacked, Now he is running SuSE 10.0 because of it. Only takes one killer application for people to switch or use Linux desktop and KDE.
I prefer to use Window Maker because it’s light, fast and it looks good. Check out some of these themes made for Window Maker: http://lonelymachines.org/wm_themes.html
And I can use any of the apps made for KDE or GNOME from Window Maker, although the only KDE app that I actually use is K3b. IMO, Quod Libet http://www.sacredchao.net/quodlibet is better than amaroK. But most of the apps I use (Firefox, OpenOffice, perlpanel, etc.) are not made for KDE or GNOME.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot: Window Maker is also much more popular than both KDE and GNOME put together. http://xwinman.org/vote.php So, there. 😛
Miguel will someday “tie” Gnome to mono, that’s the day that Gnome will die.
In KDE 3.5 you can drag’n’drop tabs in konqueror from different windows.
on the KDE side.
Linus can’t even seem to build a kernel that has a real driver model so I would dismiss anything he had to say about just about anything.
Why the hell do drivers need to be recompiled for every single kernel release?
Very unprofessional, and people wonder why companies don’t yet support Linux.
They would need 4x the number of staff their windows team needed to support the ever changing kernel code.
Example: recently the i386/arch directory went away and became linux/arch. Great idea, but not in a MINOR NUMBER KERNEL FOOLS!
I don’t need 100 checkboxes in a control panel to control my mouse.
People whine about GNOME’s “interface nazis” but at least they have a noble goal. KDE looks like a cludgy Windows wanna be.
No thanks.
I don’t need 100 checkboxes in a control panel to control my mouse.
By fabricating facts, and then drawing a conclusion from your own fabrication, you make yourself look like an idiot. It is your loss.
http://www.terra.es/personal/diegocg/kde/kdevelop.png
Every screenshot is the same, 1K more tabs and buttons than anyone will ever need.
It’s a wonder that anyone can use this crap.
How in the world do you make room for the work that needs to be done when it’s surrounded by all this kludge?!
This is a screenshot of kdevelop, an ide. Hardly an everyday application that an average user would be using.
you forgot to post the screenshot. kdevelop designer is one of kde’s least cluttered applications (just to give an indication of the level of clutter)
Vote it down, go ahead you know you want to. You can’t stand ANY critique at all.
I’ve seen you do it to your own on sites like kdelook, I bet you if I had said that about Windows it would become +5.
Elitist wanna-bes.
this interface is build for developers, not for morons (like gnome seems to be, according to linus). they can handle and customize something. they might want to see lots of information in one window, and Kdevelop lets them.
ok, how about this one?
http://www.terra.es/personal/diegocg/kde/kioslaves-ftp.png
That is just disgusting!
Even the TABS have TABS!
http://www.terra.es/personal/diegocg/kde/kcontrol.png
Gross.
Linus is a fool
Only a fool would put the phrase “module license ‘blah’ taints kernel” into code.
License incompatibility?
Childish at best.
Well Windows requires different drivers for Win98/NT/2000/XP. Why would companies want to recompile a kernel?, you seem to know nothing.
Companies supporting Windows build new drivers every 5 years, not every other week like they must when attempting to support Linux.
Obviously you are a complete fool as well, companies have to constantly chase kernel changes for example look at the fglrx code. If it’s this kernel, do this if it’s that one, do that.
It’s stupid, and only a complete idiot would accept it and think that’s the way it should be done.
well, he IS right on that – you can’t combine proprietary code with GPL code and re-distribute it legally. so he tells you about it, shouldn’t he?
i don’t really understand what’s wrong with that…
the KIOslaves example has been put togheter – this is not default. i’m sure i can make almost every DE look as bad as this – unless they can’t do shit at all…
but you’re righ on kcontrol, it sucks. there are even worse examples there, the kwin controls are so enormously huge – you should see the “window actions” tab in KDE 3.3… they improved on it in KDE 3.5, tough. and if you access this config through a right mouse click on the windowdecoration (> settings) it looks much much better – its so bad because it has to fit in Kcontrol so they gave it tabs-in-tabs.
and again, they ARE working on it – its just that it is hard to fit so much flexibility in an interface. but they’ve done it in other places, i’m sure the openusabillity guys have something to do with that
edit:typo
Edited 2005-12-30 14:09
btw i voted you up. i might not agree with you, but your comments aren’t unfair…
I’m not blasting it because I want to. Unfortunately, these are real problems for people I’m using myself as an example further in this comment. I’ve used Linux since the mid-90s and I started with KDE 0.9x. The reason I defected to GNOME was because of KDE’s look and feel. The reason I’ve been forced off of Linux all together is because of driver issues. Can’t use Linux if you can’t get drivers that work and companies can’t make drivers that work if the kernel constantly forces the drivers to change.
I want Linux back on my desktop *but* Linux is going to have to suck less. Linus really needs to forget about commenting on which desktop is better and focus on a Linux that sucks less.
I’m not alone, take the comment I made on tainting the kernel. I’ve seen literally hundreds of messages from innocent users thinking they had done something wrong because that appears on their screens.
So what if a driver taints the kernel, the kernel allows for it so don’t present it to the users in a way that makes them believe something is wrong when it’s just one man’s opinion.
“if the kernel constantly forces the drivers to change. ”
Well, I recommend you to buy Redhat Enterprise linux Desktop or Workstation because their OS lives for at least 1.5 years without breaking any drivers and kernel minorly change without breaking anything not drivers not applications.
“I want Linux back on my desktop *but* Linux is going to have to suck less.”
Well, my best comment for this is to try to buy a linux desktop or workstation (IBM, HP, Sun are the best who could sell you a preconfigured, highly stable, very powerful, fully supported linux machines).
If you have a windows box and you want to convert it to linux then my advice is to let a professional do it for you because he will be able to tell you which distro is compatible with your hardware (not all hardware accepts a certain distro).
RHEL 4 is pretty good, I haven’t tried it on this system though. FC4 gets much closer towards being functional than any other Linux that I’ve used recently, maybe I’ll give RHEL a shot.
What’s up with “let a professional do it”?
I hear this all the time, *I AM A PROFESSIONAL*!
LOL
My complaints are based on what I have learned about Linux in the last 10 years that I’ve used it professionally and at home.
I only buy hardware that’s said to be compatible (which I did in this case, however it only worked on a single kernel rev + 5 or so patches to fix more kernel bugs with the timer and AMD64 chips).
!!!! ALTO A LA BATALLA – HOLD ON the FLAMEWARE !!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
POEMA , Homenage a GNOME y a KDE… ( o a KDE y a GNOME…) y a todas las interfaces graficas de fuente de codigo abierto.
POEM, Hommage to GNOME and KDE… ( or to KDE y a GNOME… LOL) and other GUIs
GNOMEANDOME en VISTA y en XP,
Mirando con ternura a KDE…
Pasando con holgura de Bill Gates,
Usar la terminal…? y Yo que se?
No quiero otros programas manejar,
que estos de la Libre sociedad.
Que GNOME me encanta ya lo ves,
es limpio y facil; no es vulgar.
Binarios tienes que vender,
y yo los he de rechazar.
Hay algo en ellos que temer,
pues no son libres de verdad
Binarios tienes para dar,
ceros, unos… a miles, por doquier;
que sean en GNOME o KDE,
me aportaran mas libertad.
En mi escritorio, ya lo ves,
hay ahora ventanas de verdad,
con “Vista” hacia la libertad;
sin falsas rejas que temer.
La diatriba sobre cual utilizar,
hace que me escape la risa sin querer.
A los zaleotes voy sin duda asombrar
pues ultimamente vengo usando XFCE.
Cual sea tu escritorio de placer,
el gusto en la pantalla del PC,
el encanto, la ilusion en la interfaz,
que sepas, que es como es como el querer.
Que lo que hoy hoy gusta y da placer,
manana hastia y vas a odiar.
La importancia esta en juntar
inteligencia y fuerza para obrar.
Los que con esfuerzo se unen para hacer
de tanto cero un montana de verdad
tienen en mi triste corazon
una rafaga de fuerza sin igual.
La violencia y la falacia del ladron,
la desidia y dejadez del inmoral,
los binarios de programas del monton,
las montanas de dinero, la publicidad…
No basta esto para amedrentar
a los angeles del codigo y su fe,
su fuente, su riqueza, su expansion…
La libre programacion no parara.
Bien nacido, yo agradezco por igual
todas las interfaces que en mi escritorio son.
Todas las que ayudan a expandir,
en su codigo abierto de programacion,
las nuevas ideas, conocimientos, los nuevos vientos de libertad…
– Si te gusta este poema dedicado a GNOME, KDE y otras intefazes visuales, puedes publicarlo, con la condicion de citar al autor y comunicarmelo antes por correo
electronico.
– If you like this poem dedicated to GNOME, KDE and other GUIs you can publish it, with the conditions of: comunicating it first to the author and stating clearly the author of the poem.
[email protected]
its not an opinion the kernel is tainted, its a fact. it is just plain illegal to distribute it after tainting it, and that is what is told.
i agree it would be nice to have a stable kerneldriver abi, but on the other hand – i think linus is right: if you want your hardware supported, release the specs or send code.
to ensure quality, performance and compatibility he wants all drivers to be IN THE KERNEL itself, not seperate from it, released by some independend company. point is, if drivers are in the kernel, they can be supported as long as ANY user needs it. functions can be added, bugs fixed. a company can stop supporting hardware with closed drivers, and the users are busted. so drivers should be open. look at it this way, and you see its silly to even WANT a stable ABI – it makes closed drivers possible, and thats not a good thing (TM).
“he wants all drivers to be IN THE KERNEL itself, not seperate from it, released by some independend company”
In my opinion that is why Linux will always be second best. I know it’s not a popular opinion, but companies are not going to release their proprietary data to a bunch of developers and no one should expect them to. Sure, maybe at the end of a products lifecycle the drivers could be released to be implemented by OSS developers, but it’s wrong to expect a company to hand over it’s bread and butter just so one OS out of 3 (Windows, Linux, Mac) can work a little better.
Another sore spot, ACPI. How long before that works properly? Take this machine (and my last one) for example. Boot Linux and it rambles on about how ACPI is broken on this system because of a bad BIOS.
WTF? Windows supports ACPI on this same computer just fine, and no special drivers were loaded for it! It uses the standard ACPI.sys driver so how is it broken?
It’s not, just more excuses for bad code.
Linux in my opinion is in the worst state it’s ever been in, and this stuff needs to be fixed if it is to ever be used by non-geeks unlike ourselves or even some geeks that are tired of forcing it to half work and then trying to get work done.
Granted, there are a lot of areas where Linux shines unfortunately if you can’t get a GUI to display you can’t really take advantage of 50% of them.
Which drivers have stopped working after changing kernels? What version of Linux was this? Vague allegations like yours are useless…I haven’t had any problems using any of my hardware after upgrading a kernel since the early days of 2.6.X. Seems to me you’re just spreading FUD.
Oh, and the kernel being tainted is not a matter of one man’s opinion. It’s a legal issue, as someone has already pointed out. In other words, it’s illegal to redistribute the “tainted” kernel, and the kernel warning you is necessary to avoid potential litigation.
Please get a clue before polluting web forums with your nonsense. Thank you.
“Which drivers have stopped working after changing kernels?”
It’s in one of my comments, try reading them. The only one spreading FUD is you.
“Minimum System Requirements
Before attempting to install the ATI Proprietary Linux driver, the following software must be installed:
* POSIX Shared Memory (/dev/shm) support is required for 3D apps
* glibc version 2.2 or 2.3
* Linux kernel 2.4 or higher
* XFree86 version 4.1, 4.2, or 4.3”
– http://www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/linux_8.12.10.html
“Linux 2.6.12 Kernel Support
This release of the ATI Proprietary Linux driver introduces driver compatibly with Linux 2.6.12 kernel.”
– http://www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/linux_8.16.20.html#177818
“Note: If a Linux 2.6.11 or newer kernel was built with CONFIG_AGP enabled, the kernel AGP frontend is required to load the fglrx kernel module. To identify whether your kernel was built with CONFIG_AGP enabled, look for CONFIG_AGP=y in the kernel config file, or if the ‘agpgart’ module loaded.”
– http://www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/linux_8.19.10.html
Chew on this, glad you aren’t having problems that doesn’t mean the rest of the world isn’t.
“you are right in one way, and wrong in another when you say that the technogy on KDE is better. the architecture on GNOME is leaps and bounds ahead of KDE (eg gstreamer, dbus, cairo, etc), but KDE’s architecture is more complete at this time. GNOME is quite incomplete and broken at the moment, but i think that GNOME has the better future because of its more advanced architecture and its greater flexibility (everything in KDE is more or less limited to C++). however, this won’t be realised for some years yet.”
a note to the kde fanboys – mod this down and it gets reposted again and again until it remains and you’ve all run out of mod points. its perfectly valid and has obviously hit a raw nerve of truth.
The closed-source ATI drivers work just fine on my Linux laptop, even when I change kernels. Same thing with NVIDIA drivers on my Linux desktop.
ACPI works fine as well. Suspend, Hibernate, Resume…I know it doesn’t work for everyone, but things are improving, despite your nay-saying.
Ugh. Why am I arguing with Yet Another Anti-Linux Anonymous Poster?
“Ugh. Why am I arguing with Yet Another Anti-Linux Anonymous Poster?”
Because you can’t stand the truth.
Glad that ATI driver is working for you. Did you have to update drivers between kernels?
If claim you didn’t then you are a liar.
One major kernel change that I identified in this thread caused you to either update the driver or change kernel source.
There’s my point, have fun with it.
“ACPI works fine as well. Suspend, Hibernate, Resume…I know it doesn’t work for everyone, but things are improving, despite your nay-saying. ”
How long did it take? How many hacks and patches did it take to get there?
Do you think Microsoft implemented ifs for every different vendor out there? Do you think they saw into the future to 2005 and realized that HP or Dell would release a broken BIOS?
No, they followed the spec and implemented good code in the first place.
OMFG I can’t believe I just wrote that, unfortunately it’s true.
Keep your blinders on, you are no better than the pro-MS crowd claiming their OS is perfect.
How long did it take? How many hacks and patches did it take to get there?
Do you think Microsoft implemented ifs for every different vendor out there? Do you think they saw into the future to 2005 and realized that HP or Dell would release a broken BIOS?
*sigh* You really see the world through rose colored glasses, don’t you?
No, they followed the spec and implemented good code in the first place.
The spec was created by Intel. Intel created a compiler utility to create apci code to spec, if your code was out of spec or contained errors, it would not compile.
MS decided to create their own compiler, one that was much more forgiving and allowed vendors to create buggy DSDT’s and acpi code that wouldn’t have been able to compile under Intel’s compiler (you know, Intel who created the spec).
So once again, MS has taken a spec, applied their own interpretation of it, and thrust it upon the masses. Vendors wind up creating flaky ACPI implementations that don’t adhere to spec but work on Windows. This is hardly the first time it’s happened, just ask Sun how they felt about Microsoft’s original “interpretation” of Java.
Linux holds to the spec as written by Intel. If you take a couple of minutes with google, you’ll find resources to correct your vendors “buggy” ACPI implementation and correct it so that it meets the spec and works with linux. Since linux adheres to the spec. Or you can ask your system builder to fix their spec and implement it properly.
So linux expects vendors that state they support ACPI to properly support ACPI. Many of those vendors don’t. Linux is to blame for that? The vendors shouldn’t be claiming ACPI compliance if they can’t compile their DSDT’s to Intel’s spec instead of Microsoft’s.
OMFG I can’t believe I just wrote that, unfortunately it’s true.
Neither can I. Did you really believe it was that simple a problem and that the linux engineers were just too dense to figure it out? This is a debate that has been brought up time and time again.
Sounds like you know exactly how Microsoft made it work.
Wonder why it’s still broken then.
“what do you think the g in gstreamer stands for? its a gnome technology, and always has been.”
It takes 1 minute reading at gstreamer.org to proove you dead wrong.
“t takes 1 minute reading at gstreamer.org to proove you dead wrong.”
i’m right. i was referring to the original shorthand.
You obviously didn’t read the article. Hey! You didn’t even read the summary provided by OS news.
Let me quote it once again to you “I promise, this is a subjective analysis of why KDE rules.”
By the way, being a die hard fluxbox fag doesn’t make you cool.
As a Windows user, my first decision in considering a move to Linux is distro choice: KDE or GNOME. I’ve been working this issue for months now. Case closed, I find for KDE.
This poster’s links were very helpful:
http://www.osnews.com/web/KDE/reply.php?news_id=13118&comment_id=79…
I followed a few of them and they all consistently demonstrated why GNOME sucks so badly.
I also agree with the poster who joked that KDE rules because of “less offensive troll posts”. Over the months I have observed that this is in fact true. When GNOMErs try to hysterically make points it quickly turns out they have their facts wrong.
As to KDE having too many features/choices/etc., this is not a drawback. Given a choice of too few (can’t get things done) versus too many, we all would choose KDE. All that any of us want is a way to customize (i.e. be able to remove) those things we don’t want. And I assume KDE has this.
Note that the things removed would be from that one installation (i.e. user preference). It is way way way easier to remove a few icons than try to add back functionality in every installation one is responsible for.
XP’s strength is that it gives you most of what you need and if you don’t want a “Free AOL” icon on your desktop you just press shift-delete and it is gone for good.
In short we should never complain about too many choices or icons. And every time we start we should just repeat over and over “Better this than the GNOME way.”
But enough with the “My desktop” pix. That is so 90’s. From what I have seen of KDE it is NON DESCRIPT, BLAND and not overly Windows XP or anything else. No need to show off how groovy your icons are. Get over it and take your icon fetishes elsewhere.
Now on to the next combatant’s post… 😉
So the driver is available, I fail to see what the problem is.
Don’t forget that if new drivers are not available, there’s no one forcing you to upgrade your kernel in the first place – and switching to an earlier kernel is quite easy.
Yes, you could use an old kernel version. The problem is that new kernel versions are released for a reason.
Perhaps you can live without new features in later kernel versions, but security updates may be harder to do without.
It’s in one of my comments, try reading them.
I re-read them, and it’s not there. Try reading them yourself.
The only one spreading FUD is you.
Nice try, anonymous coward, but I am spreading neither Fear, Uncertainty, nor Doubt. You, on the other hand, are.
So you don’t use Linux anymore. Fine. That doesn’t mean you need to post anti-Linux messages on the web and call other people names. Unless you have no life, that is. Most anonymous posters don’t, so that wouldn’t be too much of a suprise.
Because you can’t stand the truth.
I can stand the truth just fine. It’s anonymous trolls that get under my skin.
Glad that ATI driver is working for you. Did you have to update drivers between kernels?
Not really, because I use Kubuntu and it updated “linux-restricted-modules” at the same time as the kernel. So all was done automagically. That said, I don’t obsessively update kernels when it’s not necessary.
One major kernel change that I identified in this thread caused you to either update the driver or change kernel source.
As I said, it occured automatically for me so I didn’t notice it. Of course, a single example does not a catastrophic problem make. Like all anti-Linux trolls, you are an expert at making a mountain out of a molehill – probably because the truth is so unspectacular that you have to exaggerate it to make a point…
How long did it take? How many hacks and patches did it take to get there?
Why should I care? It works now, who cares if it didn’t work as well last year?
Keep playing the prophet of doom, just don’t whine if you realize no one’s paying attention to you.
“you forgot to post the screenshot”
oops. i misinterpreted.
> XFCE doesn’t do anything!
Excellent! That’s the job of applications.
> > XFCE doesn’t do anything!
>
> Excellent! That’s the job of applications.
But it’s the job of the desktop libs to provide infrastructure, something KDE libs excel at.
Gaim looks better than kopete, gnomemeeting-opal seems kick ass. That’s about it, is X-chat somehow part of gnome? Guess it’s better than whatever qt-client. Oh, and I like the looks of the gnome bittorrentclient, I don’t like how it uses 27MB of ram + 5% of my 2ghz a64 cpu/download thought, and that’s at quite moderate speeds. Python not ftw.
That’s why i am NOT using kde/qt.
you know. these day, linus doesn’t own the linux kernel.
It has been developed by kernel-developers.
Without them, linux is nothing.
Whatever qt says it is GPL, it lies. it damn fu*king lies.
Actually, qt lies to survive. it’s license was just like MS’ EULA.
ms, kde, ms, kde
I hate c++ too, Dude! just use java.
Bug removed c++..
Please post in English.
Dave
Quote: “Linus really needs to forget about commenting on which desktop is better and focus on a Linux that sucks less.”
OK, I’m rather sick of your ill informed posts. Firstly, it’s not up to Linus or the Linux kernel development team to write drivers for lame assed, lazy, hardware manufacturers that ONLY want to support Microsoft Windows. Period. Don’t bitch to the Linux kernel developers, bitch to the lazy, good for nothing hardware manufacturer that is too lazy to write drivers for Linux. End of story.
Quote: “I’ve seen literally hundreds of messages from innocent users thinking they had done something wrong because that appears on their screens.”
And if the majority of them had gotten off their asses, and googled it, they’d have realised why the kernel comes up with that message, and realised that nothing was in fact harmed. If you can’t think, you shouldn’t be using a computer, that’s my honest opinion. For years now, Microsoft has pushed the “everyone can use computers” theme to everyone, and sadly, there are some users out there, that really shouldn’t be using a computer, at least without some serious training. I work in tech support, I’ve seen these sorts of customers. It isn’t pretty.
Quote: “So what if a driver taints the kernel, the kernel allows for it so don’t present it to the users in a way that makes them believe something is wrong when it’s just one man’s opinion.”
Linus has absolutely every right to introduce a message that says ‘taints the kernel’. Non GPL kernel based drivers are not abiding by the spirit of the GPL. End of story. If you don’t like it, go out and fork the entire Linux kernel and maintain it yourself.
Dave
Ok moron, lemme clue you in.
“OK, I’m rather sick of your ill informed posts. Firstly, it’s not up to Linus or the Linux kernel development team to write drivers for lame assed, lazy, hardware manufacturers that ONLY want to support Microsoft Windows. Period. Don’t bitch to the Linux kernel developers, bitch to the lazy, good for nothing hardware manufacturer that is too lazy to write drivers for Linux. End of story.”
Who asked for Linus to build drivers? Not I. I said they need a driver model that doesn’t change so vendors will write drivers.
Way to sound like a smart guy with your comment, huh?
“And if the majority of them had gotten off their asses, and googled it, they’d have realised why the kernel comes up with that message, and realised that nothing was in fact harmed.”
I guess I imagined reading posts from users that were trying to figure it out then. LOL
You really aren’t very smart.
“Linus has absolutely every right to introduce a message that says ‘taints the kernel’.”
There’s a place for everything, and every system startup is not the right place.
It rules because linus said so.
Well, we’re talking a lot about hypothetical scenarios here…in reality, security upgrades to the kernel don’t require updating commercial drivers as they keep the same version number (patches are applied by distro makers).
Quote: “Who asked for Linus to build drivers? Not I. I said they need a driver model that doesn’t change so vendors will write drivers.”
You were bitching about Linux’s poor driver support. And the fact that Linus has built the kernel to recognise a proprietary binary driver that inserts itself as a module into the running Linux kernel. Linux has far better hardware support than Windows can ever dream of. I’ve just had to rebuild a laptop for a girl, putting Windows 2000 back on. Let’s see – stuck at 640*480 16 bit. No sound. No modem. All listed as “unknown devices”. Tell me, how do I know exactly what model/version each piece of unknown hardware actually is (so that I can install the drivers)? Device manager doesn’t tell me the manufacturer, model or anything! Of course, you might argue that I should have the original image restore disks, etc, and I’d agree with you – except that your average user loses them etc.
Quote: “I guess I imagined reading posts from users that were trying to figure it out then. LOL”
Read my reply again. I didn’t say that there wasn’t people out there posting about it. What I did say was that if they googled a bit, they’d have very quickly, and easily found the answer to their question.
Quote: “You really aren’t very smart.”
Whatever.
Quote: “There’s a place for everything, and every system startup is not the right place”
Actually, it is, since it’s the kernel starting up! The job of the kernel is to load everything and tell you if something is going wrong.
Dave
I feel bad for those who take the time to write and post a thoughtful, informative comment, observation, or opinion and are drowned out by so many spiteful, divisive or uninformed statements. To me, reading through all of these comments seems to mirror the Linux situation in general; There is so much potential to share ideas, experiences, and learn from each other but this is lost to some human impulse to take sides, provoke and verbally abuse others, and share things that do nothing more than create hostility and resentment or at the very least confuse and waste a reader’s time.
I started using Linux in 1993 with the SLS distribution that fit onto 10 5 1/4″ HD floppies and required rawrite to make a bootable floppy. X was part of the distribution but there was no gnome or KDE yet. Back then to get X to work you had to manually calculate your Horiz/Vert sync frequencies and a number of other video settings based on your video card and monitor hardware which took hours and often had to be done repeatedly before working. TWM was the window manager available and getting XTERM to finally load and the mouse to work where the display fit properly inside the monitor was a cause for celebration and admiration.
I didn’t use or see Linux for a number of years until recently, when I needed to write a document and didn’t want to shell out the $400 for MS Office. I was attracted to Slackware because it was close to the SLS distro I had experience with and to my delight the installation hadn’t changed appearance or process much at all. But before I settled on a distribution I wanted to make sure I was choosing the one most suited to my needs. So I’d venture to say that in the past 8 months I have tried every English based distribution of consequence to more than a cursory glance, even taking the time to build a few LFS environments.
So I am and am not a newbie to Linux. The underlying system, kernel modification, and base configuration are all as familiar as the back of my hand but the incredible progress in the GUI, available applications, and drivers/modules was overwhelming. Just the availability of Live CD/DVDs which required no install and gave me a GUI that could be easily navigated to the word processing software I needed not to mention every thing else I could need or want astounded me.
The fact is that for what I believe most people need and use their computers for almost all of the fully featured distributions will work. Any of the base window managers from TWM and Fluxbox to those contained in Gnome and KDE do a good job and the fact that they’re developed by the community is almost unbelievable. On top of the base window manager I had been familiar with the Gnome and KDE desktops also provide an underlying framework and tools for building applications that integrate with the desktop and other similarly build applications.
I think that it is easy to forget that integrated desktops such as KDE and Gnome provide the look and feel of a window manager but additionally provide the unseen foundation that makes it possible to do so much that Windows users take for granted and most barebones WMs cannot.
I use KDE because I settled on Slackware and because it has a binary clock that makes me feel smart when I’m feeling down, but I know that if I had to switch to Gnome it wouldn’t be that hard because they both are relatively intuitive and provide access to the core desktop applications that I need. I’d go so far as to say that if I were helping a friend to load and learn Linux for the first time I would suggest they try both desktops and choose which they find has the most comfortable look and feel.
I am far from a KDE expert and learned quite a bit from this article. I know that there are many more technical and functional characteristics that set the two apart and would like to learn more from anyone who has any knowledge, insight, or experiences that would be constructive and objective.