“The next-generation of the KDE open source project, version 4.0, has been touted as the beginning of a new era in desktop computing, but only two months from the first release some users are wondering if it’s just all hype. KDE 4.0 will bring a collection of new technologies to the Linux and Unix desktop, but there are uncertainties around how much of it will be included in the initial release. KDE user Andreas Pakulat expressed doubt about how the release will take shape in a blog post titled ‘Where’s the KDE4 desktop?’.” KDE’s Aaron Seigo also shares his thoughts on this.
Can we choose option 3: Evolution?
You can’t get all the way with only evolution. Sometimes, you get stuck somewhere, and you need to shake things up. We discussed this, btw:
http://troy-at-kde.livejournal.com/5647.html?view=34575#t34575
Why not? It worked for the human race (though some may disagree with this xD).
I dunno i’ve always found well thought out, gradual additions to software a ‘better’ approach. Admittedly you do need to break away from legacy code sometimes but if you dont need to you just end up causing a huge amount of work, bug creation yet more frameworks doing things that have already been solved. I’m not saying if that applies to KDE4 though, because I simply don’t know much about the upcoming release (i’ve not had time to look at it yet).
The demos and such I have seen look promising though. It looks like a lot of new ideas(and old ideas, implemented well) are coming out of the next revision.
The question is, what will stick and what will fall by the wayside? I think that will answer the revolution vs hype vs evolution question. Right now it seems a mixture of all of them.
Edited 2007-08-29 15:49
Have a good look at your biology. There are several words for the concept (‘adaptive radiation’, jump-wise evolution etc) but scientists haven’t thought evolution to go all gradually for a long time.
And sure, it’s a mix of evolution and revolution. As I said somewhere else in this page, you need both. It’s about exploring new possibilities while exploiting current capabilities.
Sorry but to me tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of years (if not millions) IS gradual.
Adaptive radiation hasn’t applied to humans for millions upon millions of years and even then there has only been one “recorded” case of it – This also has no effect on the speed of our evolution. It has always been a gradual processs.
You seem to forget we share over 90% of our genetic code with mice – sure we’ve changed a lot. But this gives the real big picture when it comes to evolution – extremely gradual, always has been. Millions of years is certainly not “quick” to me.
You can call hands (as an example) revolutionary but really the difference (physically) from what they evolved from is very minor and yet it still took millions of years, absurdly gradual. The only change I can thnk of in the last hm? 2000 years is a height increase, other than that we’re pretty much exactly the same we were 2000 years ago.
Edited 2007-08-30 13:31
The point is that over the course of millions of years, species barely change. And then, probably due to external pressure, they change rapidly. This explains partly why so many ‘missing links’ can’t be found. And those are the jumps I’m talking about. Again, if you read up on it, you’ll see this is a pretty accepted fact in biology.
And yes, jump is relative – we’re still talking a long time. But you know, Computers do everything faster than biology does 😉
And of course, this analogy doesn’t have any real value, it’s just a way to explain stuff, I guess 😉
The point is that over the course of millions of years, species barely change. And then, probably due to external pressure, they change rapidly.
_My_ point was it _doesn’t_ happen rapidly. It’s a widely accepted _fact_ that evolution is gradual, the only reason we have missing links in our ancient history is simply because they haven’t existed for such a long time that there’s no physical evidence that has survived. _That_ is how gradual evolution is. There’s absolutely _Zero_ evidence to the contrary.
The only reason we evolve at all to any _major_ degree is external pressure ie monkeys > humans but again its all gradual. Sure it might seem big if you compare how little a monkey today differs from one a few million years ago but it’s still gradual. To use the word “rapid” is quite silly.
That said, _some_ previously “missing” links have been found in recent years frozen in glaciers. Trying to tell me evolution is anything but gradual is quite frankly, ridiculous
Back to the topic of software:
My original point with this seemingly unrelated analogy was that nature doesn’t replace things that don’t need replacing. Developers do. There is very little code-reuse. I’m not saying KDE4 didn’t need to make the changes it did, because it likely did(especially with QT4). What i’m saying is the whole approach of rewriting everything every couple of years is massively flawed, slower and bug ridden.
I’m sure a lot of you remember the <=2.4/2.5 linux kernel series with a stable and development branch. That approach wasn’t a good one – and it showed. The huge number of bugs, the massive development time required to make huge rewrites work (vista anyone?) is just not worth it in a lot of cases.
The 2.6 kernel thankfully provided a framework good enough to break away from that flawed development model and I think the massive improvements in the kernel since 2.6’s release compared with previous releases speak for themselves. Hopefully QT4 and KDE4 will end up like the 2.6 kernel series and not just another framework rewrite / rewrite of which there are millions. Maybe i’m just old and bitter but this endless rewriting trend really ticks me off sometimes.
Don’t get me wrong, I have high hopes for QT4/KDE4 I just don’t want to see another rewrite a year or two down the line. I’ve seen it happen to so many projects, so many times. Heh writing this makes me wonder if one of my favourite WM of old (enlightenment) will ever see a new release. It’s starting to become the duke nukem forever of window managers. Surely there has to be a limit to how many times you can rewrite the same thing?
“There is very little code-reuse.”
Do you mean in KDE? If so, there is *massive* code re-use – it’s one of the hallmarks of the KDE project.
“I’m not saying KDE4 didn’t need to make the changes it did, because it likely did(especially with QT4). What i’m saying is the whole approach of rewriting everything every couple of years is massively flawed, slower and bug ridden.”
KDE4 isn’t a re-write of KDE3, though – it’s mainly a port to Qt4, along with legacy stuff being retired and approaches that turned out to be sub-optimal removed or fixed, plus the addition of a few new frameworks made from whole cloth, most of which had no direct suitable analogue in KDE3. Bear in mind that KDE is largely a volunteer project and that its SVN contains somewhere in the region of *5 million* lines of code – a re-write would be a practical impossibility!
Plus, the difference in release dates of KDE3.0 and KDE4.0 is approx 5.5 years – rather a lot more than “every couple of years!”
KDE4 itself is expected to last at least another 5 years.
I think having a large break with old code is massively beneficial psychologically, too – programmers seem to get more and more worn down when they get stuck working on the same code that is expected to continue functioning in the next point release – there’s a tendency to become more and more conservative and resistant to change in case something breaks and people whinge, and development becomes a chore. Giving them a chance at a clean break like this is tremendously liberating – they can tear down all of the cruft and poor design choices they inevitably accumulate and take their time doing it – it feels like you’re being given a fresh new start with a clean slate, and you can finally go nuts! The introduction of better and more powerful APIs (for which retiring old and, with hindsight, ill-conceived ones is often a pre-requisite) makes the process of going nuts even easier! In a nutshell, I think these massive shake-ups are very healthy and desirable indeed as long as they are paced correctly, and having one every 5 years feels like a pretty good tempo.
Indeed. In the IT business, you have to stay fresh. Companies understand (understood) that too – Microsoft used to almost rebuild the company every 18 months. Everyone lost his position, it was all re-done. It kept them competitive. (now, of course, they don’t need to be competitive anymore, they just need lawyers to keep their monopoly).
Do you mean in KDE? If so, there is *massive* code re-use – it’s one of the hallmarks of the KDE project.
Not KDE specifically, just the theme in large projects in recent years.
KDE4 isn’t a re-write of KDE3, though – it’s mainly a port to Qt4, along with legacy stuff being retired and approaches that turned out to be sub-optimal removed or fixed, plus the addition of a few new frameworks made from whole cloth
I never said it was. What i’m saying is the general approach of massive changes after years of development is flawed in most cases.
Plus, the difference in release dates of KDE3.0 and KDE4.0 is approx 5.5 years – rather a lot more than “every couple of years!”
QT4 wasn’t even available 5.5 years ago the first release was on June 28, 2005 – 2 years ago, which by definition _IS_ “a couple”. KDE3 was both the stable and development release before then.
[/i]Giving them a chance at a clean break like this is tremendously liberating – they can tear down all of the cruft and poor design choices they inevitably accumulate and take their time doing it – it feels like you’re being given a fresh new start with a clean slate, and you can finally go nuts! [/i]
The point it’s far more effective to make an extensible framework, gradually improve it where there are limitations. Rather than powering through and creating yet more poor design choices in haste. This is much less to do with KDE4(which as you said is a port to QT4) and much more to do with QT4 but the theme remains the same in many projects. Taking a clean break every 2-3 years is not always the good thing you paint it to be. Having a base that doesn’t NEED to make a clean break is far better.
If KDE3.0 was 5.5 years ago, and KDE4 is happening now, then that means there is a clean break ‘every’ 5.5 years. That’s not every couple of years.
The date that Qt4 came out has nothing to do with it.
The point is that over the course of millions of years, species barely change. And then, probably due to external pressure, they change rapidly. This explains partly why so many ‘missing links’ can’t be found. And those are the jumps I’m talking about. Again, if you read up on it, you’ll see this is a pretty accepted fact in biology.
And yes, jump is relative – we’re still talking a long time. But you know, Computers do everything faster than biology does 😉
And of course, this analogy doesn’t have any real value, it’s just a way to explain stuff, I guess 😉
I thought Evolution was a Gnome product 😉
(I’m kidding!)
Duh.
They KDE 4.2 release might be where the action is. IIRC, QT4.4, promising flicker-free resizing of windows, won’t be included in KDE 4.0 so the initial release is clearly not of the same interest as subsequent releases.
Wait. Is it 4.2 or 4.1? KDE4 is not 4.0?
Why does it have to be so confusing?
LOL! Had to vote you up on that one.
The big confusion is that QT, the underlying framework used by KDE, is on a separate version number. As the development of KDE4 is closely tied to QT4, the KDE devs had to wait for QT4 to be released before they could start KDE4.
As Trolltech develops QT4, it’s a few revisions ahead of KDE4. That’s why, although QT4.4 will have flicker free window resizing, we wont see it until KDE4.2 or so.
Hope that helps :-}
Edit: Whoops, it seems I misunderstood your post. Oh well, my bad.
Edited 2007-08-29 13:22 UTC
I believe that Qt is not “included” in KDE, but is rather used and extended by it. Although KDE 4.0 will require at least Qt 4.3, nothing prevents anyone from building KDE 4.0 against Qt 4.4 when it’s out – even if it’s before the release of KDE 4.1; And unless the flicker-free feature of Qt 4.4 requires the use of some new API for it to work, it will benefit it just as well.
Semantics aside, the KDE 4.0 will most likely not be built against the QT 4.4 toolkit unlike (hopefully) KDE 4.1 or 4.2.
On the subject of flicker-free-ness, it looks like the branch has now gone mainline:
http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2007/08/30/say-goodbye-to-flicker-a…
It also seems to be configurable via an environment variable, which is good as it is hypothesised that the approach taken here may have an adverse effect on X/ FreeNX bandwidth consumption when running a remote session.
Even the developers acknowledge that KDE 4.1 will be the feature complete version. Don’t keep your expectations so high for 4.0 or you will be disappointed.
That said, KDE4 promises to be a great DE. Good work, guys!
Amen. We’ve been hearing since, well, day one:
KDE 4.0 will look just like 3.5.X only based on QT4 with some enhancements and improvements.
4.1 will begin to include the fancy stuff.
Reading Aaron’s blog post it looks like most end-users should consider 4.0 as some kind of ‘public beta’.
I guess that a lot of this really is due to impatience… a lot of people want to play with it as soon as possible. KDE 4 looks like a lot of work so I think it is natural it will take a while.
I remember I had to wait for 1-2 years until my USB devices stopped ‘freezing’ my desktop (Mandriva and all other distros I tried at the time), but in the end it got solved and now I do not have any other problems.
In the meantime, there is nothing wrong with KDE 3.5.x .
Good things come to those who wait… or how did that saying go.
Edited 2007-08-29 12:43
“In the meantime, there is nothing wrong with KDE 3.5.x . ”
A contradiction don’t you think, there is a lot of things wrong with 3.x which is what 4.x suppose to solve and address.
“A contradiction don’t you think, there is a lot of things wrong with 3.x which is what 4.x suppose to solve and address.”
Well, it is only a figure of speech, and it basically means that kde 3.5.x is perfectly *usable* for a desktop. For me it’s more than good enough in the meantime at least. YMMV.
“A contradiction don’t you think, there is a lot of things wrong with 3.x which is what 4.x suppose to solve and address.”
What is wrong with 3.x then?
I know of at least one problem that has affected me at work:
Windows refusing to be resizable/movable. I’m sure there’s other things I could point out if I bothered to look more closely, but that bug (which may not manifest itself on all machines in a repeatable manner, so perhaps you’ve never seen it) definitely screams “Not ready for mere mortals” because that’s just a silly bug at best.
I’d hope they fix all the known bugs and not introduce new and improved bugs with 4.x on release, but sadly, it seems any time there’s a new release of something of any complexity, you almost never solve all bugs and add new features without adding new and improved bugs.
As far as the _internals_ are concerned, KDE 4.0 (yes, dot-zero) is a real revolution.
However, now that we’ve broken everything, it takes some time to build a solid _user interface_ around this.
So just bear with us. Or join us and offer your help — this community is awesome and you will be glad you’ve joined.
There’s some misperception that KDE is essentially a user interface, hence people find it confusing when we say “everything in KDE 4.0 is rock solid except the user interface which is not quite there yet”.
The truth is that KDE has evolved a lot. Initially it was only a user interface — a window manager plus a few desktop features and a core set of apps. No longer. Currently, KDE is a meta-project of Free-Software. Think of it as an alliance of free-software projects (KOffice, Konqueror, Kontact, Amarok, etc…) which have decided that they wanted to share as much as possible with one another.
“There’s some misperception that KDE is essentially a user interface, hence people find it confusing when we say “everything in KDE 4.0 is rock solid except the user interface which is not quite there yet.”
Besides, isn’t that also a task of the distributions (if they choose to go that route)? Maybe I’m wrong, but I consider KDE to be more of a ‘building kit’ and if you use it you can sort of choose what to do with it and what areas to use/replace/polish.
Of course you can take a vanilla KDE and stuff it in a distro, but IMhO that is not really a good way to go, for most distributions.
Edited 2007-08-29 13:02
I’m a Gnome user personally, but this blog seems to be nothing but a big whinge tbh. He’s saying that some pre-release software has bugs? Oh no!!
Must have been a slow news day for ComputerWorld.
The problem he explain is that there is to much to do still and the release day is in two months.
Hype. From a mere copycat of Windows to … I just don’t know. But evolution with a dinosaur? I don’t think so.
Well, indeed, no evolution, Revolution. KDE 4 is about laying the foundation for innovation and renewal. Real innovation and really new things are always born out of revolutions, not out of gradual improvements (no matter how important those are in their own right).
KDE might be the oldest and largest Linux Desktop, but it’s also the most vital. We have a vibrant, active, enthusiastic community of volunteers. Not a bunch of paid ppl who have to work out the vision of their respective employers. And we took the time to work on the foundations. It’ll pay off, I’m sure – the competition is still catching up, we’re already close to starting the Next level
I hope this gets publicised more as I have been worried for some time about the PR impact of a disappointing KDE4.0 after all the hype that has grown up around KDE4. Granted, much of the hype has come from an over-enthusiastic userbase, but there was also a lot of hype from some of the devs in the early (~2005) days, often about projects that had barely begun to be written.
I’ve read loads and loads of forum posts on the subject, and I’ve noticed the following broad trends around users/ users-to-be:
1) Many do in fact consider that KDE4 will be utterly, breathtakingly amazing, even when they have not been following its development in any great detail. Since they haven’t been following the project, their sentiments are likely the result of hype.
2) *Very* few recognise the difference between KDE4 and KDE4.0 – people are apparently expecting KDE4.0 to appear fully-formed on October 23rd, with all pieces present and perfectly integrated, and to be at least as good as KDE3.5 in every department (i.e. application presence/ functionality, bug-free-ness, etc).
3) As what I guess is a corollary to 2), there seems to be an unspoken assumption that KDE4 will then not really improve until the Next Great Revolution come KDE5. [Since this one is never explicitly articulated as far as I have seen, it might well just be my imagination – take it with a pinch of salt :p]
Putting all these together, it strikes me that many feel that KDE4.0 will be a “make or break” for KDE4.0, and that if it doesn’t deliver on every single promise, then KDE will be left with a hugely tarnished reputation and (according to some of the more overtly anti-KDE members – Ubuntu Cafe readers will probably know who I’m talking about
) the swing from KDE to GNOME as observed in the recent DesktopLinux poll will become even more pronounced – perhaps unrecoverably so. I know from my own experience with my initial forays into Linux (which many assured me was – literally – better in every single way than the Windows I was fleeing from) that nothing leads to a backlash like falsely-raised expectations.
Personally, though, I feel that instead of irreparably damaging KDE’s prospects forever, a lacklustre 4.0 release will lead to more of a PR “black eye” than anything else: if someone defects away from KDE forever based on their disappointment with the 4.0 release and never comes back no matter how much it improves, then they were likely just looking for a reason – any reason – to switch away in the first place. Even so, though, I’m glad to see articles like this that educate people on the 3 issues I’ve mentioned above and that will make sure that any black eye the project may receive (and who knows – maybe KDE4.0 will indeed be a great release!) isn’t likely to be terminal
I hope this gets publicised more as I have been worried for some time about the PR impact of a disappointing KDE4.0 after all the hype that has grown up around KDE4.
Well, in all honesty, it never stopped some of the Gnome, Ximian and Novell folks from hyping the Linux desktop, this, that and the other, stuff that was never there and buzzphrases such as 10×10 – and they never had anything written to achieve what they said.
*Very* few recognise the difference between KDE4 and KDE4.0 – people are apparently expecting KDE4.0 to appear fully-formed on October 23rd…
Some will, but like everything, it will pass. Just ask Microsoft about that one, and they will always tell you that the first version of Vista or any previous product is ready.
As what I guess is a corollary to 2), there seems to be an unspoken assumption that KDE4 will then not really improve until the Next Great Revolution come KDE5.
Pardon? That just strikes me as a wish, rather than a statement you believe ;-).
…the swing from KDE to GNOME as observed in the recent DesktopLinux poll will become even more pronounced – perhaps unrecoverably so.
After years of KDE dominating that poll, I think there was enough this year to suggest that something irregular had happened with the voting just as had happened with a certain distribution last year or the year before that got struck off. I highly doubt that most people are using Gnome with OpenSuse judging from the OpenSuse forums and mailing lists.
if someone defects away from KDE forever based on their disappointment with the 4.0 release and never comes back no matter how much it improves
I’m afraid that’s just extremely wishful thinking on your part, and you’re not all that subtle about it.
If they go the Vista route, it will be a huge disappointment, and even more people will leave KDE and adopt Gnome.
The wow is now?
I fail to see the big analogy with Vista…
I fail to see the big analogy with Vista…
Obvious to me: Big hype, many promises, and in the end, an average product. Dissapointment among customers.
With vista, its not “wow” as in “wow, this is great”..
Its “wow” as in “wow, this is really really bad”.
I’m sorry, I may have missed something here, but from those linked articles I’m wondering what question is being asked here.
For some reason that I can’t really fathom, quite a few people are feeling the need to portray KDE 4 as some vapourware, hype project – despite the fact that the underlying toolkit to do all the stuff required is there and being improved, there is code there, infrastructure is there and things are being written on top of it. Are these people now feeling that they backed the wrong horse, so to speak?
some vapourware
No
hype project
Yes
What’s This About?
KDE4 has gotten little press lately so some random dude is tapping into people’s abstinence and expectations… so there is really nothing to see here.
That “Random dude” is a KDE developer you know.
Who is?
That may be true but it doesn’t fit the narrative that it’s some kind of KDE hating person.
Delay it if you need to, there is nothing wrong with it, if KDE 4.0 is not better than KDE 3.5 then it will be dissapointing, is better to waith another 3 or 4 months than waith for another 14 to 18 months for KDE 4.2.
Now, the problem I see with all this dalays is that the technology that suposed to be superb it won’t be get that “wow”, for example, a technology like plasma was first announced more than 2 years ago, when there was a hype for OSX dash board, but now, dash board is old news and vista have gadgets too like Opera and Yahoo who will port those to linux even compiz and moonlight have those, now, multiplatform? Qt4 was released as GPL for windows almost 3 years ago, how many multiplatform Qt4 or KDE programs we have now? near to zero, why so much waith?, the fact that they depend to much of KDE libs have advantages but clearly also have disadvantages especially in the releasy times.
Oh, btw, I was having my hopes in Dolphin but now I see it as kluttered as konqueror, views that you won’t need, a Console? wtf?. I thought the advanced settings would be keep it in konqueror not in dolphin.
Edited 2007-08-29 13:36
i dont think qt4 has been released 3 years ago under windows as gpl, more like one year ago. and the reason you see no kde apps in windows is because the current ones need qt3. many applications are already ported to windows and mac os x from kde4, but not yet released because kde4 is not out.
It was released almost 3 years ago even before kde libs port started. the port begon more than to years ago.
Qt4 was released on June 28th, 2005 – 2 years, 2 months and 2 days ago. Not quite “almost 3 years”
Plasma is not only about widgets, go do some reading.
I hope this time KDE enables me to do something simple as changing the icon of the content preview. As far as i know gnome is the only one who offers right click properties and click to change the icon.
Edited 2007-08-29 14:01
Can you explain what the heck you want? “changing the icon of the content preview”?
I mean, the development has not finished. From what I’ve seen, KDE 4 is improving quickly and looks like it will not be “Hype”
I’m happy with the DE’s the way they are now so it can only be positive actually:P
Most of the comments are premature nitpicking if you ask me.
KDE4 is obsolete because it depends on the obsolete XWindow.
Bull, it doesn’t. For example, KDE apps run on windows, Mac OS X and embedded stuff.
Yeah, but it’ll use X on a *nix desktop.
Ergo, it’s crap.
KDE4 does not depend on X on a *nix desktop
Ergo, you are an idiot.
You should go see a shrink.
Qt Applications run mostly native within OS X.
KDE runs within the Xorg/Xfree86 implementation of X Windows.
I run it and FINK has made some large progress, not to mention Xorg releasing dmgs for Xorg.
To make the claim it runs on OS X as if it were using OS X’s Drawing Model, Window Server messaging model and more is plainly incorrect.
There is nothing wrong with it running in Xorg.
The advances of Xorg are making it easier for it to co-exist within OS X 10.5.
Trolltech recognizes the need to be first citizen in OS X and is making it easier to deploy:
http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2007/08/23/deploying-mac-applicatio…
He was most likely referring to KDE4 based applications because he also had Windows in the list.
http://www.racoonfink.com/archives/000700.html
that’s one of the most retarded things i ever read in osnews, Xorg is a great technology out there and they are making it even better, just because you can’t configure it or the protocol is old doesn’t mean is bad, they can go from X11 to X12 when they want
Xorg rocks!
Besides, what alternative is there on linux??? And BSD? And Sun Solaris?
I really doubt KDE 4 (someone please explain this 4 vs 4.0 thing, please), even if it is disappointing, is unlikely to drive KDE users away.
I am running 3.5.7 and I still uncover little surprises on a weekly basis. I find it extremely usable, and I can’t think of any single thing that KDE lacks to be a usable – even enjoyable desktop. I wonder how much of this concern is a result of people really heavily steeped in the day to day message boards and mailing lists about KDE, where things are much more under a microscope.
Of course, I find the latest Gnome to be entirely usable too; I just like KDE a little more. If KDE 4 looks and feels just like 3.5.7, I’ll probably still be happy.
I’m really not convinced that the desktop Window manager/environments are the thing keeping “the world” from “switching to Linux” or delaying the perennial wish of “the year of desktop Linux.”
As for the suggestion that if KDE 4 disappoints, it will mean a mass exodus to Gnome, I find that beyond ridiculous. I think people probably try both KDE and Gnome out at some point, have a preference for one or the other (or neither), and stick with their choices.
It’s a pretty big pain in the ass to switch if switching means you’re also ditching all of the attendant applications you’re used to (Evolution or Kmail, etc.)
I hope it knocks everyone’s socks off, but if it’s even “just as good” as 3.5.x, I’m not going to be switching.
(I used Gnome for several years, exclusively, before switching, btw. I didn’t leave because I was unhappy with Gnome but because I was sufficiently impressed with KDE. This was a little over a year ago. It was a bit of a pain.)
someone please explain this 4 vs 4.0 thing, please
KDE 4.0 is only the first release of KDE 4. While KDE 4 will be 4.0.1, 4.1, 4.2 etc. All the 4.x.x releases are KDE 4.
Development of KDE 4 vill not stop with 4.0.
When developers and enthusiasts talk about “KDE4 will do this and this” they should use specific versions then.
It would almost be like Steve Jobs talking about OSX before it was released (10.0) and saying “OSX will have real time searching, coreimage, coreanimation” etc but not saying those things wouldn’t come until a later release.
It’s kind of deceiving. Not intentionally or maliciously deceiving though.
+1, you are so right.
It would almost be like Steve Jobs talking about OSX before it was released (10.0) and saying “OSX will have real time searching, coreimage, coreanimation” etc but not saying those things wouldn’t come until a later release.
KDE 4.0.0 will have Plasma, Phonon, Solid, Decibel, Kross, Sonnet, etc. All of these subsystems will be ready to go by the January public launch. It may take a year or two before they are widely adopted by application developers, however.
So it would be more like saying MacOS 10.0 will have Cocoa, only to find that many applications use Carbon or Classic.
Yeah I guess that’s kind of a better comparison. But at least with OSX when it was released, the apps that came with it were using Cocoa, whereas it looks like nothing in KDE4.0 has the new UI.
Depends on what you mean by new UI, if you talk about the capabilities of Qt, EVERY app will have them. If you talk about the new style, colorschemes and icons – again, EVERY app will use them. And KWIN will provide the shadows and other effects. So what are you referring to?
So the new style, colorscheme and icons (oxygen is it called?) will be in place for 4.0?! But.. what’s all this talk about 4.1 or 4.2?
Yeah, the new look will be in 4.0, it’s already (but unfinished) in Beta2 (tagged today, out in a week, I’m working on the announcement).
Some of the larger new ‘Pillars’ have been postponed, most notably Decibel and Akonadi. They will be in 4.1 (which is planned to be released in a relatively short schedule of 6 months).
And the second reason you hear about 4.1 and 4.2 is that the real integration of all new technologies won’t really be done for 4.0, so there is still a lot ‘low hanging fruit’ to be done for 4.1. This goes especially for the nice stuff in Qt 4, which needs some getting used to, I think.
And last, the application developers have spend relatively little work on features (though over a period of 2 years), and they can do that for 4.1!
It would be better if they released a serie of betas,than prematurely release 4.0 and later release 4.1. Say release one beta each month, public is much more forgiving with bugs in betas and only idiots would install a beta on a critical machine.
That’s exactly what is happening. A beta or release candidate every 2 weeks until December.
people will expect a dramatic improvement.
Unfortunately, from a user perspective, what they are getting feels more like a Gnome point release.
I’m quite disappointed with that myself. They really shouldn’t release a stable “KDE4” until they do some major UI work.
come on, check it out… Many parts of KDE have been so thoroughly changed you won’t even recognise them. Eg KPDF hasn’t been renamed to Okular just because they added one or 2 things…
That’s a pretty bad example. There’s a big difference between kpdf and Okular.
KPDF only support pdf and ps. Okular support those plus djvu (a biggie for me – it’s quickly becoming popular for ebooks), ODT, CHM (_the_ comic book format), plucker, fictionbook, dvi, tiff, images (for things like fax documents), XPS, and so on.
It supports now supports annotations, page rotations, files embedded in files, proper bookmarking, multi-column view etc.
I’m not associated with the Okular guys at all, but it’s one of the apps that I’m most looking forward to in KDE 4.
… CHM (_the_ comic book format)…
CHM is the old Windows Help file format, and although I have seen some comic books released in that format, these are rare. I think that you’re confusing it with CBR/CBZ which are basically a bunch of JPEG pictures compressed on a RAR/ZIP file. I have gigs of comic books in these formats!
Windows users can use the venerable CDisplay to read them while on Unix I recommend the not-less-impressive QComicBook. But Okular will support these formats as well, if memory serves me right.
If it has so thoroughly improved, as you say, why is it a bad example 😉
My point was that many KDE apps have seen a huge amount of improvements, from Konsole, Kwin, Kwrite and Okular to even the print dialogs, color picker and Ksnapshot! And I’m not even talking about Amarok, Digikam and KOffice here. Or the games and educational applications…
Well, if it does much more than pdf, then it makes sense to rename it away from kpdf.
I just realised that I misread your post, and read the exact opposite meaning.
There is lots of UI work too. Some of it is in reworking the applications to have better designed interfaces and in many places use scalable SVG graphics for added prettiness. Kwin has been reworked to make use of GL-accelerated compositing where available. Plasma adds various eye candy widgets (and the task bar / dock etc is being reworked to be plasma-based).
There’s a pretty new icon set, which might already be enabled in the betas. The window decorations and the widget set are also being revamped, but I don’t think they’re currently enabled in the betas so that’s not visible in screenshots.
January public launch?, I don’t remember anything like it, I thought the release day was october 23.
Can you provide a link for such statement?
Edited 2007-08-29 16:19
The launch is still officially in October, although whether it will be hit or not is still up in the air. However, they’ve created a launch event to which press, etc. will be invited in January – which gives them a little buffer in case the release date slips. They want it to be a new yearly meeting in the Americas, so they timed it to be 6 months away from Akademy (in Europe). I think it’s sponsored by Google.
Why did KDE go the “lets-change-everything” way?
They could have chosen to implement Solid, then Phonon, then Plasma etc.
This way, they would, like the kernel and Gnome releases, have got more user testing, and less frustrating time for both developers and users.
Because clearly they had no choice, Qt4 is not binary compatible with Qt3 so they needed to change it all, that’s the problem you have when you use a toolkit you can’t control because is developed for some one else.
Edited 2007-08-29 17:04
It’s not like they couldn’t have stuck with Qt3 if they wanted to. They decided that the benefits of breaking compatibility to go to Qt4 outweighed the negatives, and once they decided to break compatibility they figured they might as well go all the way and really improve the api as much as possible so that another break won’t be necessary for a long time.
That’s just flamebait.
A binary incompatible change in your toolkit will always be binary incompatible, no matter if you are the entity controlling its development.
If I remember correctly the change from GTK 1 to GTK 2 happend as well, despite not “…developed for some one else.”
That’s correct, It was a bad example.
Well, yes, they could.
BUt then, not implementing certain things does not get other things magically implemented faster, developers can not be re-allocated at will.
Application developers which would be users of the delayed frameworks would probably not understand why they have to port twice.
And having them developed simultaniously allows to refine each others API and implementation by knowing the others’ requirements.
Sure, working with a framework which does not fully match your needs is possible as well, but why waste the opportunity?
A break is needed every so often.
Seriously, KDE 3.x.x is OLD. A lot has evolved!
I’ve been feeling that KDE was stale since 3.4 was released, and I do believe a revolution is in order.
And if KDE ends up pushing the rest of Desktop Computing forward, even in it’s own tiny way, then I’ll be overjoyed. If it ‘fails’, well, at least it tried
What do all these have in common? Their initial releases sucked. Now?
I tried KDE 4.0 beta 1, and it was still alpha quality.
KDE 4.0 is a very important and long awaited release, so its quality is very important. If the release is not good, one might as well not release it–interested people can use the beta releases.
KDE Release Team appears to think the same way, see
http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/release-team/2007-August/000610.html
and is considering releasing beta 3 and beta 4 of KDE 4.0 and moving the release date to December 20.
Just Hype… Just an Minor Update… no Major Upgrade, no Evolution, no Revolution
What new technologies does KDE bring to this UNIX Community that hasn’t been or is being delivered by OS X 10.5?
FYI: I run KDE 3.5.7 and OS X 10.4.10. From what I see with Qt 4.3/4.4 there is nothing in their APIs that isn’t covered in Cocoa. In KDE 4 there is nothing they are doing that an OS X implementation is presently or soon-released being done.
Making such claims are pointless unless your goal is just to take potshots at GNOME.
I have all three environments. They all have their merits.
What new technologies does KDE bring to this UNIX Community that hasn’t been or is being delivered by OS X 10.5?
You’re stretching things an awful long way be implying that OS X is a part of the Unix community.
When people can take OS X as a desktop, as well as the code, and run it on Linux, Solaris, AIX and BSD, give us a call.
Edited 2007-08-29 20:33
If you can’t port 10.5 POSIX compliant code to your platform the issue is with you, not whether or not you have a bad taste in your mouth that OS X is UNIX certified.
If you can’t port 10.5 POSIX compliant code to your platform the issue is with you, not whether or not you have a bad taste in your mouth that OS X is UNIX certified.
When I can take the OS X desktop and run it on Solaris, Linux, AIX and BSD and run it, give me a call. Then OS X might be a part of the ‘Unix community’. That after all, is what was written.
Edited 2007-08-30 11:44
Plasma is way beyond what Apple ever did. Just to name one thing. and what KOffice is becoming is also way out of Apple, and Microsoft’s (let alone OO.o’s) leage.
KDE builds upon Qt, and Qt might only have cross-platform stuff over Cocoa, but KDElibs add some nifty stuff. But yeah, you got a point – KDE is ahead, compared to Gnome and Windows, but much less (if at all) compared to Mac OS X. Yet it is still Free Software, a pretty big thing
I would think that with KDE4 that they would finally grow up and get rid of that whole K naming convention, it’s just silly at this point.
Way back when it was founded, KDE stood for the Kool Desktop Environment.
It is already happening to some extent: take a look at the new framework names, for starters.
However, this has been debated to death in the past. It is just a matter of branding. GNOME used to do that as well and still does in a few cases (Glipper anyone?).
Whenever I hear these complaints I think that they are just a cheap jab at the KDE project though since I have yet to see anyone calling Apple “silly” when they release a new iProduct every once in a while and some do appear to dislike something being called “Ubuntu” whilst they don’t have any problem at all with an spreadsheet application being called “Excel” (Now that’s a suggestive name, right?)
Please, let it go…
I have no issues with the KDE project. I just think that it been over done and its childish. The mascot is childish, I can’t take it seriously because it looks and acts like a child’s toy. Yes gnome uses g for certain things (like gedit) but they have toned this down considerably. One of the biggest complaints about kde is its cluttered unprofessional look, I think a good start would be for the community to realize that KDE has outgrown childish names and kiddy mascots. They have a decent art team and should work on something a little more sexy and grown up that will attract users who want something more sophisticated. The only real branding gnome has is a foot and most distros replace the logo every chance they get. A clean attractive interface can go a long way, just look at gnome. Technically i consider gnome inferior to KDE, but the interface is appealing and simple, there isn’t a whole lot of branding, the about menu is simple to look at and to the point. It’s little thing tliek that that go a long way. My only real issue with KDE has been its noisy interface, other than that I think its great and I’m hoping that KDE4 succeeds.
Lovely, all this, but you should’ve said it when KDE 3.2 was released, not now. We are doing all that.
For real? If something was done, I haven’t noticed and how many versions have come out since? Hell even KDE4 has the same problem, maybe you can elaborate as to what has been done. Besides that didn’t this silly over-glossifying happen around the 3.2 series when every one was complaining it wasn’t pretty enough and they just threw some shellac on that bitch? Is this your idea of professionalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Konqi-klogo-official-400x500_b.p…
What are they selling cereal? It has little to do with the product and its just plain silly and might I add obtrusive. I’m also sorry to say as a 3d artist that its just plain embarrassing. Doesn’t that kind of remind you of that silly ass dog that Microsoft uses all over the damn place. Yeah, they’ve gotten rid of that thing in vista.
I don’t think we agree about the image of KDE. You consider it not professionally, and maybe you’re right. But fun is important, we’re not a company, we’re a free software project. So allow us to make a bit fun, please.
The other things you mention like usability and a tighter look have been worked on. Plastik is a lot better than Keramik was, I think you agree with that one… Further, since 3.3 a lot of usability work has been done. Many applications and dialogs haven been redesigned and simplified. Those changes aren’t very apparent, I know, but they do count. After all, the difference in usability between KDE and Gnome is in those details – and we’re catching up. KDE 4 will be a nice step in the right direction, and 4.1 and later will do even better, partly due to the new HIG.
They can have as much fun as they want, but they have to realize that having fun at the expense of their image is detrimental. KDE4 is supposed to be a departure from KDE3 the best way to do that is to show that the project has matured and the best way to convey that is through the included artwork. Konqi has to go, replace him with a nice vector based KDE logo and you pretty much all set. I don’t happen to like the new icons all thay mcuh they should be simpler, but hey are better than the previous set so I won’t complain much. I love the tango icon set and the current icons in gutsy are freaking beautiful.
Well, I do think KDE got a little more professional with 4.0, but it won’t become boring and corporate any time soon, sorry. BTW many companies get away with a lighter attitude, so I don’t think it’s too bad.
And KDE IS about fun. If we don’t have fun, we have no developers. And KDE will die. Currently, the KDE community is thriving, and we’d like to keep it that way…
I said grown-up, not boring. The two are non-exclusive. Apple is generally aimed at users and there stuff is sexy and fun to look at yet they don’t resort to mascots to get that across, the same for gnome. Besides its the art team that is producing the stuff not the devs. The devs probably have more fun creating software than using it. What I’m saying is that the less technical aspect of the project (the art and application names) might want to rethink what direction they want to take KDE’s image. There’s plenty of examples of fun yet simple, clean interfaces. Music applications like Live have a great interface and yet they are fun to use. Hopefully plasma will be a great start for a more sophisticated interface. I’m just saying Konqi should go find a cave somewhere and never come out again.
yeah, having a huge apple or foot on your home page is much more professional than a letter K. Come on, you must agree the new Oxygen style is much more professional than the old look KDE had. We ARE taking a more professional direction. Why would we send Konqi to a cave, if apple gets away with an apple and Gnome with big foot. We have mascot, if you like it or not. And it’s generally liked by children and woman – and those make the decisions in life, not those geeky guys who want things professionally 😉
Seriously, I get you, but I think you really overestimate the bad effect of a stuffed dragon as mascot.
I like the dragon. Better than a foot or a flying window.
I just think that it been over done and its childish. The mascot is childish, I can’t take it seriously because it looks and acts like a child’s toy.
Do you really think the wider world is going to use a desktop called Gnome, or an image program called GIMP?
Yes gnome uses g for certain things (like gedit) but they have toned this down considerably.
It’s called branding, and no one complains when Apple dies it. iPod, iPhone, iWorks, iMac………..
ipple …
(sorry, I had to say it…)
Yes. because other than the names the programs are professional looking and take themselves seriously. Besides gnome stands for GNU Network Object Model Environment, the k in KDE stands for “Kool”, yeah.
Apple can be very silly too, but they more than make up for it by taking themselves seriously and by taking their gui seriously.
Sillier than putting an ‘i’ in front of every product?
I think too much people are trying to find excuses for the lack of progress in KDE 4.0 development. Let’s face the truth: it’s NOT ready. In fact, it’s FAR from being ready. Yes, the developers did an amazing job already. The backend of KDE4 is really interesting. Unfortunately, the frontend development is barely started now. I believe they better admit it and push back the release or KDE 4.0 (6-8 months?) rather than release something broken and less functionnal than KDE 3.5. If they do the latter, it will take them ~5 releases to recover from that. However, I too believe that they should release many betas in the meantime.
Honestly, KDE4 is an ambitious project and I think it has great potentioal. It just needs more time and people should understand that. The same people will complain on October 23 anyway if KDE 4.0 isn’t what they expected it to be. They better wait another 6-8 months to get something they will be pleased with.
Unfortunately, the frontend development is barely started now. I believe they better admit it and push back the release or KDE 4.0 (6-8 months?)
That won’t be done, because this is public open source development.
Were you around when GNOME 2.0 and OS X 10.0 were released in the wild?
From what I’ve seen for KOffice 2.0 this rewrite will definitely be worth the efforts of the devs.
The work for all the apps and their reuse of parts within each other is going to make KOffice 2.0 be a very nice solution for any small to mid-size office. With the plugin architecture in place and the work on Krita, Kspread, KWord I just hope the same detail gets put to the rest of the suite.
I’ve used KDE 3.1 since it was released along-side OS X and I find both invaluable to my work and both make me a very productive person.
On a side note, I’m really looking forward to Kile 2 to eventually move to KDE 4 and make that phenomenal LaTeX/XeTeX editor indispensable for anyone who has to write something as long as The Arabian Nights or as technical as Particle Physics.
We live in a time when Software Development will be that added tool all fields of Engineering must have and will only aide in our getting off this f***’in rock and see something for a change other than video from NASA.
From slashdot, Feb 21/02:
“Gnome 2.0 Beta”
http://slashdot.org/articles/02/02/21/1744244.shtml
Read the comments then, and read the comments in this thread. Many parallels.
Gnome 2.0 is regarded as a somewhat pivotal moment in defining and driving Gnome’s evolution to this point. So it’s easy to forget that it took a major tear-down /rebuild leading to many incremental updates and upgrades along the way to bring it to the point it is now. People can coo and gush today about Gnome’s elegance and HIGiness because of the framework that was laid 5+ years ago and the fixes and improvements that followed. People can coo and gush about Gnome’s alleged superiority today while forgetting about the broken applications, the need for parallel libraries for compatibility, the lost features, the performance issues and all of the other various things people complained about.
The KDE devs know what they’re doing. There has been a substantial amount of planning covering everything from libraries and frameworks to usability guidelines, testing, marketing and documentation. It’s sad that most of that work is dismissed by many people because they can’t see screenshots of anything interesting.
When KDE 4.0 hits release, people will complain, just as people will praise. There will be self-righteous proclamation of demise for KDE at the same time there will be oh-so-confident proclamations of the Year of the Linux Desktop(tm). The forums and blogosphere will be abuzz with millions of unsolicited opinions on just what the devs “need to do”. And I suspect that despite this, the sun will continue to rise in the east and set in the west, and life will go on.
KDE 4.0 is the foundation for KDE4, and it is shaping up to be a very solid foundation and a very forward-thinking one. That was all the devs ever committed to, and on that they will very likely deliver. The hooks and the frameworks need to be in place if there are to be applications using them.
Is it possible to have KDE4 beta and KDE3.5 running on the same desktop?
I want to beta test KDE but don’t want to go through a messy process of downgrading KDE4 if and when things may go wrong
depends on the packages of your distribution, but most likely the answer is yes. KDE tries to ensure you can mix’n’match KDE 3 and KDE 4 apps (you will need to, not everything has been ported yet anyway).