Submitted by “I have managed to find some time to cover the recent changes in the development version of KDE 4.4. The number of changes is not impressive but they are interesting enough to write an article.”
“I have managed to find some time to cover the recent changes in the development version of KDE 4.4. The number of changes is not impressive but they are interesting enough to write an article.”
Hi
A lot more has been done on 4.4, here is some I remember:
Virtuoso based backend for Nepomuk. It was based moslty on Sesame backend which was java based and lots of distro’s and users disabled nepomuk because of it.
timeline:/ for viewing files by timeline
Pulsueaudio support
Netbook interface
Version control intergration in dolphin (svn)
Better [Auto]mounting plasmoid and features
Audioplayer, Firefox bookmarks and windowmanagement runners
Improved notifications
3 new games (kigo, palapeli and grantier)
At least one new KDE-Educational application (dont remember more details)
html5’s <video> and <audio> support for khtml
Policykit-1 support
New addressbook for kdepim, based on Akonadi technology
Networkmanager frontend
While these are only the ones i remembered and found on 4.4’s release plan, i have to say that this release includes a huge amount of polishing and performance improvements.
The user interface also looks hell more natural by proper usage of animations.
Also, there is a lot of work going on PIM suite of kde. In this release, it includes lots of UI improvements in kmail and new addressbook, but the most of the work is being done on branches, on porting kdepim to Akonadi technology.
By KDE SC 4.4 you will only ‘start’ to see two of KDE SC 4.x pillars: Nepomuk and Akonadi. Hopefully by 4.5 and 4.6 more applications will use these technologies.
(Im not saying that ‘wait, next KDE will be awesome.’ KDE is already awesome)
In my non-fanboy opinion, KDE4 crossed the ‘good enough for a beta’ line as late as 4.3. I would say that it already is a bit better than Gnome, and the distance can only increase, having seen Gnome 3 prototypes, it just isn’t awesome yet.
That said, 4.0 deserved all the criticism. Many people who suffered through that won’t even look at KDE again. Everything wasn’t negative, though, because I think the outrage helped the devs to move away from their original Gnome 3 style vision. They can retcon that that’s what they intended in the first place, but that would be a lie.
GNOME 2.0 was likewise criticised.
http://www.osnews.com/story/1280
People are using GNOME 2.28 now quite happily.
Why would you assume that one rule applies to KDE and another rule entirely applied to GNOME?
The actual story is this: don’t use a *.0 release of a FOSS desktop. Because FOSS development is “release early, release often”, the *.0 version of the desktop will simply not be suitable for normal use. This applies to ANY FOSS desktop. It will soon apply to GNOME 3.0. To imply that it applied to KDE 4.0 only is frankly dishonest. It is part of the “Internet KDE 4 bagging meme”.
Edited 2009-12-01 02:32 UTC
Gnome did not release KDE4.0. KDE did.
Release early, release often refers to the source code and to fellow developers, it doesn’t mean push it unto users by making it a “release”.
Still, the alpha code quality was not my main problem with 4.0.
4.0 with current code quality would still suck and 4.0 was what KDE4 was to look like in the devs’ vision.
In 4.3, many of the original misfeatures are gone, shrunk or reborn to be actually useful, but that wasn’t the original plan. The original plan was 4.0 with 4.4+ code inside.
Of course the code had to be contributed but KDE was against it.
GNOME released GNOME 2.0, which was every bit as flaky as KDE 4.0 was.
Sorry, but release means release. Give to the public to try.
Nope. KDE 4.0 was mostly the underlying layers reaching usability, with a very very basic Plasma on top.
WTF?
Plasma was the very last part of KDE 4 written. Plasma is the visible bit that you see. In KDE 4.0, you saw they very rawest form of Plasma.
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS5100346312.html
Nothing like what it was eventually going to become.
And that supports your statements how exactly? I would expect a KDE hater to post that link or at least I would expect a redefinition of “general use” and “distros are going to ship it soon” to mean “pre-alpha” and “we hope distros can wait until we are actually stable”.
The only part of plasma that was said to be reduced but not removed in the future since the beginning is the top right swirly whatever. Other “features” were strongly defended, but nowhere to be seen now. I would Google for the quotes, but I see that common words have a different meaning to KDE believers.
Distributions started packaging it because they had no option. Either do that or release, for what two years?, an obsolete version with no improvements. KDE thought 3.5 was unfixable and distros were expected to mantain it instead?
Linux users don’t ever install a Linux kernel from Linus. Linus releases(gits) to developers and then, when he has something good enough, a working version is fed to distros, they don’t ship experimental code to little old ladies – *this* is the standard practice in open source.
OpenBSD releases are snapshots of an always working system, no reason not to update.
FreeBSD keeps a branch of the next major version for developers and testers and a *mantained* branch for users. They didn’t dump 7.0 and its users as soon as the first experimental 8.0 build was installable, even though most devs would rather just code for 8.0.
I am sure there are thousands of open source projects that would be a better example to follow than Gnome and your beloved 2.0 version.
Edited 2009-12-02 00:19 UTC
The “final bits of Plasma” were only completed when KDE 4.0 was at RC stage. The “usable” statements in the verbiage all refer to the underlying framework (i.e. things like Phonon and Solid). Plasma wasn’t even alpha yet, at that stage.
The KDE 4.0 release was a “check out the framewrok, don’t mind the lack of Plasma GUI quality, feel the width” type of release. All of the release statements from KDE said so.
Similar to the GNOME 2.0 release, except that with GNOME 2.0, the GUI was better but the underlying framework was worse. Audio didn’t work at all, for example, in GNOME 2.0.
Not to worry, though, it is all moot now. KDE 4.3.4 Software Compilation is out:
http://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-4.3.4.php
Sweet. All polished and bug-fixed for you. Enjoy.
PS: KDE SC 4.3.4 is a bugfix, translation and polish minor release. The next round of KDE improvements will be in KDE SC 4.4.0, incorporating the just-released Qt 4.6, and hence bringing those performance gains to the KDE Software Compilation.
http://www.osnews.com/story/22561
Even sweeter.
Edited 2009-12-02 01:04 UTC
I’m sorry, but you’re missing lemur2’s point.
Plus KDE dev’s never pushed 4.0 into their users. In fact quite the opposite – they frequently stated that it was for developers and beta testers only.
Then some distro’s got on board and gave pre-packaged KDE4 ISOs away to make it easier for users to beta test. However at that point desktop users missed KDEs frequent warnings and then instantly cried about the beta quality of the software.
As far as I could see, the KDE team were damned if they do and damned if they don’t:
* develop publicly and get criticized for beta quality software (well durrr)
* or develop in private and get slammed for not living the FOSS ideals.
But then these days it seems many Linux users prefer to moan loudly on message boards rather than contribute constructively to the FOSS movement.
On a personal note, I’ve tried GNOME, I’ve tried Xfce. I’ve even tried half a dozen of the smaller (and sometimes more elitist) DMs – all of which have their own merits and behaviours that complimented said environment.
However, every time I end up coming back to KDE4.x and every time I breath the same sigh my grandad did when sliding into his favourite chair with his comfiest slippers on.
Personally, KDE4 ticks all the boxes.
Can you people please stop your whining, or go use OS X 10.0 if you think that’s any better.
Sort of silly, really. When is any FOSS Linux util ready for prime time? When most distros ship. The biggest benefit of having distros, is that you get that polished group of software that is meant to work together. Having multiple distros include specific versions of software, gives you a consensus that its verifiabily ok.
I’m not excusing the KDE project for releasing something that was not ready, but adopting something major that is not being shipped with distros is asking for problems. Of course there are always exceptions to this rule, but they’d better be good ones.
My favorite feature is being able to group different application windows as tabs in one single window.
Very useful!
Too bad that it will be a while before OpenSuse or Mandriva actually offer a supported version with KDE 4.4.
I tried Mandriva a few days ago. I don’t understand the buzz surrounding it. It’s not a really good distro:
No KDE integration for Firefox and OpenOffice.
Weird network management app.
Incomplete translations of Mandriva’s own tools.
openSUSE 11.3 will have a hard time as well, considering that it’ll miss KDE SC 4.5.
openSUSE won’t officially support post-release versions of KDE, but I think you’ll find the devs fairly receptive to feedback and concerns, since they need that input as part of the process for integrating KDE into the next version. The build service makes it easy to upgrade, and I think you’ll find a higher level of support than many other distros would provide for even an “official” release.
You can achieve this with Compiz Fusion as well – if that’s any help to you?
Hm, nice, but my desktop is empty space, i dont want to do any fancy things with my desktop, or with my windows, i dont want “gadgets”, i just want my software to works, a working place what Works and Works Fast! I think KDE got the vista-way, the way to nowhere..
I dunno, all the features the top post here lists look like invisible backend changes to make stuff work better (pulseaudio support, better policykit support, [new?] networkmanager frontend (the old one does NOT work in KDE with ascii-password networks)).
And hey, they worked some more on the animations again. I would still like a ‘darken unresponsive window’ option like Compiz had, that was genuinely useful; I wonder if they actually put that one in this time around.
And this the power of KDE, the fancy stuff are there for the people who need or want it, but it is not mandatory. KDE works just as good without.
Besides the main power fo KDE are still the powerful high quality applications. A flexible desktop able to improve workflow and not getting in the way is great, but in the end it’s in the applications time is spent doing actuall tasks.
Actually, at least some of the fancy stuff IS mandatory for me. I have to turn on desktop effects (as a category, but I can leave all the effects off) to not have new widget tooltips erase the portion of the screen a previous widget tooltip was displayed on. Apparently it’s a bug in the implementation of X.org’s X server.
Fortunately, I see no slowdown in speed with effects on.
Edited 2009-12-01 00:02 UTC
One can have a KDE desktop as empty space. No problem. Just close any desktop widgets, and set the activity type to “folder view”.
Example:
http://ourlan.homelinux.net/qdig/KDE4_desktop/Cahkra-ArchLinux-KDE-…
Nothing on the desktop except running application windows and a “Home” folder icon.
This way you still get to enjoy the undelying fast new, clean framework of KDE (Solid, Phonon, kwin, etc) without any “frills” that you don’t want.
BTW: your post is typical of what I mean by an “Internet meme bagging KDE”. Your post was an unsupported claim that KDE was cluttered and slow, whereas in actual fact it can be completely uncluttered and it is very fast.
Edited 2009-11-30 23:23 UTC
There seems to be a concerted “push” going on to disparage KDE. Here is a good example:
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/opensource/?p=1093
Lots of venom but no substance whatsoever. Not one word about why that author considers KDE to be bad.
Given this apparent media push to disparage (without actual substance) an emerging desktop, it perhaps indicates where the strongest competition to the dominant incumbent desktop is coming from.
that’s some pretty good newspeak. People disparaging it must mean it’s good
Prior to KDE 4, people wanted KDE to just die because Gnome was better supported/more easily understandable/nicer looking/Free
The KDE 4.0 and 4.1 “beta tests” made it even worse.
Meanwhile, GNOME is headed for 3.0, which could potentially be an un-useable disaster like GNOME 2.0 (beta tests) was, whereas KDE is working its way towards more functionality and performance with 4.4 after it achieved solid stability with 4.3.
Ironically on the “Free” front, KDE is GPLv3, Qt is LGPL, and GNOME seems to be ever more closely approaching dependency on Mono for its applications.
You think GNOME is nicer looking? How?
http://ourlan.homelinux.net/qdig/KDE4_desktop/Cahkra-ArchLinux-KDE-…
Clean, uncluttered, good look-and-feel harmony between a GTK+ application (OpenOffice) and a Qt application (Amarok) on the same desktop.
Edited 2009-11-30 23:20 UTC
Considering that KDE’s developer base is increasing constantly, I doubt you have any connection with reality.
And there again, ChromeOS is used as an example of why KDE failed. If ChromeOS succeeds, that means Gnome, KDE, XFCE, E17, Windows and Mac OS X also failed.
and felt compelled to mitigate the upcoming disaster.
The Gnome team isn’t progressing as fast as the KDE team and everyone can see it.
KDE4 is the modern looking desktop. Gnome looks like it is from the 90’s and Ubuntu doesn’t help by making its netbook remix browntastic.
Chrome OS just has a browser for an interface and the majority of Linux geeks are not about to reduce their computers to a browser. Most consumers won’t be interested either.
I mean just look at this video of Gnome 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQUuH2dIFHM
It’s almost a parody of awful UI design.
Gnome is in trouble and its defenders can sense that.
That video is a half year old. GNOME 3.0 won’t be released until autumn 2010.
That video is a preview of what is to come.
It’s detailed on their website
http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell
Instead of watching videos, you should try it out.
I actually did. It’s bundled with GNOME 2.28.
It’s not my thing, but it’s also not as bad as you make it sound.
I can see what an awful system they have for switching between programs.
It’s counter-intuitive and the animations are annoying.
Have a look at the youtube comments, people are already talking about switching to KDE after seeing where Gnome is headed.
KDE fans should be celebrating, Gnome 3 has the potential to end the desktop war.
So? People also said the opposite after KDE 4.0 came out.
I, btw, think that Xfce will get a user boost as it is in its current version 4 pretty much a verbatim copy of GNOME 2.x.
Both are GTK-based, so mixing both DE’s apps is easy anyway.
1.) There is no desktop war. If there was, GNOME and KDE wouldn’t be cooperating in various levels (dbus, PolicyKit, WebKit,…).
2.) I am a KDE fan. IMHO it’s the greatest FOSS project around. That’s why I became a contributor a few months ago (4.3.1 was the 1st release containing patches by me).
That said, I don’t want GNOME to go. I don’t want Xfce to go. And I especially don’t want lesser known DEs like Étoilé to go.
They target different user groups, development preferences, etc.
I may not be as fond of them as KDE, but they all share the common goal to spread Free Software and that’s great.
…and that was the most reasonable, level-headed post so far. Well done.
That’s why people like Jack Wallen write these articles. They know that once a desktop environment gets a strong majority share it will become a de facto standard and developers will flock to it.
Any collaboration that exists between KDE and Gnome is for mutual benefit.
However overall neither Gnome nor KDE benefits from the existance of the other. A developer submitting a bug patch to Gnome could have been doing the same for KDE. There is a limited number of available oss developers and by dividing the existing talent pool each project is held back by the other.
I hope that doesn’t imply the “more features” concept, but the “better quality” concept, too.
In the past, I wasn’t lucky with KDE’s internationalization support, especially its german language variant. Missing and incorrect translations, sloppily done in arbitrary places, made me check out Gnome. Allthough it was not as “feature rich” as KDE, its support for German was much better, more consequently done.
Anyway, I will try out KDE’s new version, and even have a look at how Gnome 3 handles language.
To me, it doesn’t quite matter, because I use all my programs (except OpenOffice) in english language, which is much more pleasant and clear, and I mostly use WindowMaker as a fast and versatile WM instead of a complete desktop environment. But for customers, for “average users”, language quality of their native language does matter. Germans are scared when you present them an english error message, and they will suddenly abandon every OS or GUI that hasn’t “everything in German”.
Modern or just modern looking? 🙂
I agree about Ubuntu, but Gnome performs somewhat better, in my very individual opinion. But since Gnome and all the applications migrated from Gtk 1 to Gtk 2, their hardware requirements got higher. This makes Gnome, as well as KDE, not a joy to use on non-up-to-date hardware.
Don’t you think that it’s quite possible that in the future, more and more functionality will be moved from locally installed programs towards browser-accessed applications? 🙂
Let me guess: KDE via Kubuntu or Mint, right?
Kubuntu (or Canonical for that matter) has a long history of sabotaging KDE, especially when it came to language support.
Check out my screenshot set: http://www.flickr.com/photos/19616885@N00/sets/72157608562200171/
Only recently Kubuntu’s policy shifted away from sabotaging KDE. I think it was due various reasons. One probably was bad press pointing the finger at Canonical for its bad behaviour against KDE (incl. my set — some pictures have over 10000 hits) and another reasons seems to be that Harald Sitter (aka apachelogger) seems to have taken Kubuntu’s lead (AFAIK he’s not employed by Canonical) and starting the Project Timelord initiative.
KDE itself has always been well translated into German. Until now K3b 1.6x was badly translated, but I took over the German translation duties for that one a few days ago.
I like KDE, and if I’m on Linux that’s what I use, but it definitely looks like after a brief push towards simplification they are trending back to insane overconfigurability.
http://www.santyago.pl/data/santyago/images/kde44-1055000-animated-…
8 (!!) options to control animations in the interface. That is so insane it’s hard to comprehend the thought process that went into it. What user in their right mind would need that fine grained control over their animations. If they don’t like animated things they can turn them off. If a certain animation is annoying a significant number of people, then that animation is broken and needs to be fixed.
Anything more than a single animations on/off toggle is massive overkill.
Agreed. I guess it’s part of the KDE culture. More is better in their book, which makes no sense if “more” is more confusing.
I’ve just talked to the developer of the animation feature. We came to a tentative solution to reduce the clutter while at the same time not hurting the KDE SC 4.4 string freeze that’s already in effect.
It will be further improved for 4.5.
The thing that most people seem to miss when discussing these things is the audience they are intended for. People look at the horror that is the KDE UI and cringe, thinking that it is intended for the masses. Which is not surprising, because the KDE devs and hard-core users live in a fantasy world where everybody would, if only they would try out KDE.
Here’s the reality. The KDE UI is not designed for “most people”. It is designed for hard-core KDE users who like the sort of UI anarchy that KDE provides. Which would be fine, if only the devs could be honest about that fact, and non-KDE folks understood it.
I’m not married to any particular desktop. But philosophically, I gravitate strongly toward Gnome. And maybe preferring Gnome erodes my geek credibility in some way. I don’t care. I’m a UNIX guy from back when a lot of the current developers were in diapers. I don’t need geek credibility. But I do like to see truth in advertising. And I like to call a spade a spade.
The KDE folks are dreaming when they think that the world wants such an interface as their core users desire. The KDE community would be up in arms if they achieved the popularity that they seem to want to attain.
It’s like I said earlier: Be careful what you wish for, KDE guys. Because there is a price. And you’d hate the results if KDE paid it. Because you guys don’t want the same interface as most peeople.
Think about it.
Having 2 major desktops plus some others is very advantageous for Linux. But people totally miss *seeing* the advantages by insisting upon comparing Gnome and KDE as apples to apples, rather than apples to oranges.
Fortunately, the fact that many fail to see the advantages does not, in practice, nullify the advantages themselves.
Edited 2009-12-01 19:15 UTC
Without doubt, hard core Unix users are one important part of the KDE user base and they are served to their needs. Anything other would be wrong.
But: I have always insisted that KDE is the better desktop for new Linux users in e.g. office environments, because it has better features in for a professional environment like that (Linus Torvalds famous flame about the printer dialog comes to mind: usefull printer configuration features users did actually need were removed because they would confuse users).
KDE fully allows you to provide a desktop that professional but not computer-savvy people need. And yes, such users do enjoy to play with features like button animations and mouse behavior.
Edited 2009-12-01 20:54 UTC
Before I answer that, I would like to ask how many business Linux desktops you support, and for how long. What sorts of work do your users do?
You mention Linus. But I don’t believe that he has ever supported any at all, for any time period.
Edited 2009-12-01 21:12 UTC
It was a project of about 100 users spread about 10+ organisations, the largest being about 30 users, the smallest just 3 (i.e. had to run without local technical knowledge).
The users work in an office situation, i.e. word processors, spreadsheets, e-mail. A small database was implemented of which contact data was exported via LDAP. KDE’s groupware features were a big plus here to integrate this with e.g. e-mail.
The project was a huge success, users are very happy about their systems and complain about their some PC’s not having the usefull features their Linux PC’s at work have.
Many minor unexpected features of KDE to convince new users were found. For example:
– The ability of each user to customize his logon picture easily. This was one of the first things users started doing and had great fun. It’s like customing desktop backgrounds, only that the result is immedeately visible on all computers.
– The KDE-games package. Users had great fun with them during breaks.
Also several “bad features” were found. A very difficult one the users was that OpenOffice is not a KDE application, it turned out to be very hard to explain why some things that worked in all other applications would not work in OpenOffice.
Lastly: The users did like text terminals. A need for an accounting package was needed. A commercial package was bought, but their Linux version was terminal only. We feared the users would not accept it (they had a modern GUI before the switch to Linux), but surprise, surprise, they absolutely had no issues at all to work with those text windows.
This project was done in 2003. I am no longer involved with this project, but the implementation is still in use.
Sometimes the guy can make a good point. He was right users need to be able to control settings like duplex printing, selecting the paper drawer to take etc. That is simply mandatory in a business environment.
Edited 2009-12-01 21:48 UTC
f–k me, not this ‘business desktop’ bullshit again.
You cannot pigeon-hole users in this 80/20 nonsense that does the rounds. Why? Because it’s always a different 20% of users each time. Users go from being office users and then merge into call centre users, then help desk operators, system administrators and developers. You dismiss the latter user group at your peril. To dismiss those user groups in favour of some mythical ‘Joe User’ that you think that you have is total nonsense that needs to go the journey if Gnome, in particular, is to survive.
Many people used Unix desktops right throughout the 80s and 90s and using a third mouse button was always a useful and integral part of what made a Unix desktop different and useful. Do we just throw features like that away in the open source world now?
Objectively, if you put your Ubuntu Gnome desktops together with Vista/7 and OS X (we’ll leave KDE out of this for the moment because that’s the competition benchmark) and let them see all of the features, applications and functionality available on those systems then there is only going to be one loser. There will certainly be one loser on aesthetics.
Unless open source desktops compete with that then they will continually be running on empty until they stop. No amount of pigeon-holing users and claiming that features aren’t necessary is going to change that. No one ever sold a piece of software based on the fact that it had less features than the previous version and was ‘simpler’. Anyone who believes that has lived an extremely sheltered existence.
Unless you can actually define the ‘masses’ and what they actually do then I’m afraid you’re living in a well trodden la, la land and are talking out of your arse. It’s always a different 20% of users in the 80/20 rule, because that’s what you’re describing. The masses are made up of office users, help desk operators, system administrators, graphical workers and developers. The latter is very important because they create the applications that other user groups actually want to use. Without developers then no one is interested in how neat your UI is. Each user group has a knock-on effect on others, including ‘Joe User’ if he exists.
Can KDE’s feature set be presented better? Yes. Do we do that by chainsawing features off? No. No one ever got anywhere selling software with less features than the competition. Ever see a Lite version of Microsoft Office selling well with a ‘neater’ UI? No, because when it boils down to it users want their software to do more. A feature is always dispensable until someone tries to use it – and that could be 5 times out of 100. Just because it’s rarely used it doesn’t mean that it is unwanted or unneeded. Things move on.
That’s the reality, but unfortunately many open source desktop developers and their users are clinging on for dear life to the notion that that isn’t the case.
You are wandering off into generalisations of ‘most people’ again that simply don’t exist and you can’t define. Desktop users want their desktops to look nice and have applications and features available when they need them. Trying to paint KDE as some power users thing simply isn’t going to work I’m afraid. Given what Vista/7 and OS X provide users maybe we should start labelling them as anachronistic and do some marketing on that and see how far we get?
Hmmmmm. That would be back when people used a third mouse button, accepted it and used it without any trouble whatsoever?
I’m afraid not. When people see a Vista/7, OS X and any Linux desktop sat together then they will compare them equally primarily based on applications and features. What can I do with them?
Desktop are moving on and evolving. Graphics and aesthetics are evolving, infrastructures are evolving
and people want to try and organise their current mess of applications, documents and widgets. People need features and functionality to manage that. History tells us that those that don’t keep up fall by the wayside.
I am diametrically on the other side of the spectrum.
When having to use GNOME (that is at first time log into a desktop after a clean Debian install to get KDE installed via a graphical package manager), I again and again have to find out, that I simply cannot wrap my brain around the way I am supposed to use Gnome.
Neither so with a KDE desktop as it is set up by the distributors. And here comes the difference: I CAN configure KDE to my liking, and I can do it using graphical tools. Having to search through 2000 options is by far less annoying for me, than searching through 200, then searching again through 200, and again, only to discover that what I want to configure is not configurable, leaving me frustrated and going on the internet finding a workaround for it.
That said, it bugged me BIG TIME, when the taskbar color of Fedora’s KDE4.1.3 did not react to ANY color setting I tried in the control panel (and I tried ALL of them, multiple times), when it was largely advertized all over the web that taskbar color is now changeable. Aaron Seigo told me upon asking, that the taskbar color is tied to the window background color, but that most themes have set it fixed to a different color.
Well, if something is seen as different by most theme designers (like taskbar color and window background color), probably it would be a good idea to treat it as different and dedicate an option to it.
In that regard KDE4 as it is delivered by most distros is still one step away from what I really would like regarding configurability. KDE3 was the optimum for me.
Are you sure you are not spending to much time and effort on configuring and too little on getting work done?
Is the color of the taskbar so important? Oh, I’ll agree that the color of the taskbar is within the realm of things which should be easily configurable. And, of course, pretty much any of the DE’s allow that. But is that sort of thing worth focusing on?
I can tell you that the number of times that any of my 80 or so Gnome users has come to me with that kind of issue over the last several years has been… zero. “How do I get a link to appear in that little tool bar in Epiphany?” Sure. (You just drag it there, BTW.) But futzing with panel colors? I think that’s what sets real users apart from us config-obsessed, geek-procrastinators who read OSNews and think we can’t get any work done if our taskbar is the wrong color, and/or the font of the title bar is sans when we prefer serif.
That said, I have had times that the user has accidentally dragged the panel to the left or right edge of the screen, and has no idea how to put it back. In my opinion, Gnome is still a bit too configurable for the general run of users. I’ve never seen a Windows user with that particular problem.
“What user in their right mind would need that fine grained control over their animations.”
I would.
I like to have fine grained controls to tailor the UI exactly to my taste. The only thing they should do is have presets or a slider like in KDE 3 for the level of effects, so that those who don’t want to bother can make quick and easy adjustments.
Edited 2009-11-30 22:37 UTC
It’s obvious what they do, and there are certainly fewer options than Vista or 7 offer. I fail to see how it is at all confusing. if you only want one option, there’s that one checkbox that turns it on/off globally–you can have your cake and eat it, too.
Dude, KDE SC 4.4 is still two months away. Likely that window is just tentative.
A power user
Seriously, if you like developers making these kinds of decisions for you (and nothing wrong with that), then use Gnome or OSX.
No. That is a silly approach to take, and that’s what got us into the configuration overload that was KDE3. “Just make it an option” is the cheap cop-out solution and leads to problems with overly complex GUIs, and hard to maintain code, as well as a huge load on translators (every option is another string to translate). It is bad for the project and not sustainable at all.
If you don’t have a good use-case for adding an option then that option shouldn’t be there. And saying that “I want to enable and disable each widget animation separately” is not a good reason and not nearly enough to subject the whole project to another option. Not saying there isn’t a use-case for some fine-grained control here, but “I want it” is not a valid reason. If you want fine-grained control for no good reason you can change it in the config file.
By the way, after my somewhat harsh post here, I brought it up on kde-usability. Turns out the guy who wrote this feature agrees and is looking at what can be done to rework the dialog. Discussion here: http://lists.kde.org/?t=125962073100007&r=1&w=2
The myth that power users like complex GUIs is a disease that needs to die. Sure, if KDE’s goal is to be the interface that only the 0.01% of the population that has time to waste on useless configuration wants to use, then so be it, but I think the goal is to make a powerful desktop for the majority, and for that to happen it needs a good UI (without taking away useful features!). There’s lots of low-hanging fruit to start on.
Well bad dialogs is one thing, but I think having the options to easily change detailed preferences is a plus.
Also some of the most crappy config dialogs in KDE beat the crap out of gconf-editor!
I’m all for a simple layed out desktop, clear and well readable dialogs, but I seriously detest the GNOME attitude of not even giving the options in the background to change whatever! Sometimes you have to praise yourself lucky to even have key to change in gconf. The developers (preferred) defaults are nice and all, but I since I usually don’t share all their preferences I like to make my own tweaks.
Edited 2009-12-01 12:08 UTC
So, having to edit a crappy config file is more user-friendly than a (suitably unobstrusive) GUI dialog?
From the user’s POV:
Sane defaults + good configuration tools > hardcoded behaviors
Every.single.time.
So, I think this “too many options” myth is a lazy developer conspiracy to convince users they don’t need the extra features which cost developers extra work. Either that or a dot-communist plot.
I still haven’t heard a single reason for anyone needing the ability to turn off menubar hover but leave toolbar hover enabled, or any of the other combinations we can achieve here.
When someone comes up with a valid reason, then the option is good. If the option is just there so the developer doesn’t have to think about it, then it is bad.
Right, but my point is, “sane defaults” means the developer *has* to think about it.
im NOT sorry to say it, but you are an idiot. your point is completely retarded, and you should probably castrate yourself before you have children.
you are basically saying that every user is FORCED to iterate every configuration option there is… these are features, dont like them? well dont f–king use them..
It is part of the Internet meme being spread lately: “try and find something to moan about with KDE. Anything. Anything at all. It doesn’t have to be something bad, just something that you can moan about will do”.
There was one poster who recently moaned that there were ten options to have fine cotrol over the KDE desktop animations. This OSNews poster bitched that there should be “just one control to turn animations on or off” … completely ignoring the fact that there is indeed one such control provided in KDE4. You have to get past the screen with this control on it to get to the lower-level screen with the finer control options.
http://www.osnews.com/permalink?397328
As I said … to partake of the “bash KDE” Internet meme that is being spread by some interest that wants KDE to be bashed, one’s complaint doesn’t have to be about something bad in KDE. It doesn’t even have to be about something real, or have even the tiniest element of truth to it.
Edited 2009-12-02 02:25 UTC
Wow. Are you sure it isn’t just a paranoia meme spreading throughout the KDE advocacy community? I would advise your vaccinating against it, but it appears you already have it.
It’s true that Just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean that people aren’t really out to get you. But most of the time, it just means you’re paranoid.
Well, frankly you don’t have to be paranoid to generally observe these memes. Just look at the M-dollar-sign memes that have been going on for over a decade now.
I tell you what I do see. A paranoia wave sweeping through many communities and a denial that open source desktops simply don’t need to compete with Windows and OS X aesthetically and don’t need to try and compete on features, applications and functionality and try and get ahead.
I also see that the “80% of users use 20% of the features” and “One checkbox and button on a dialogue should be enough” mental illness is still of epidemic proportions.
I’ll let you into a little secret. Not even Gnome’s developers actually truly believe in this ‘simple UI’ and ‘users don’t need that feature’ philosophy. The reason why they’ve naturally gone down that route is because their desktop infrastructure is so inadequate that creating a UI of any moderate complexity, with features you’d find on any other desktop, and maintaining it, is so difficult as to be impossible.
Many people equate Mac OS X to Gnome, but that’s a complete myth also. There are features, functionality and configuration options you will find in OS X that you’ll find in Windows and KDE that you won’t find on Gnome.
Open source desktops either move on with what Windows and OS X are doing or they totally die out as those odd irrelevant things that a minority of odd people use. Getting all religious about trying to drag down one open source desktop’s attempt to compete with them isn’t going to change that one bit.
Try reading for a change. I like KDE. I want to make it better, that’s why I take the time to raise stuff like this. And guess what, the developer responsible for the animation agrees and this prompted him to actually fix the problem. All credit to him, but sometimes these things just fall by the wayside and then never get done.
You need to educate yourself on usability research. Too many options are detrimental to users and to developers. Not to say that useful options should be removed, but after all the bitching on this thread there is not one person that has actually said that THESE SPECIFIC OPTIONS are useful and then cited a use case for them.
You’re misunderstanding me on purpose now. The point is that the other options are useless and add to clutter and maintainability problems for no discernible reason (if you have one, please mention it). The reason that “someone might want to configure this in the future, so let’s make it an option” is short sighted and lead’s to poor UI.
Yeah sure, it’s a big conspiracy!! Time to get out your tinfoil hat!
I think you’ll find that OS X has more features and options for configuring things like this than Gnome does.
It’d be more worrying if it was an options dialog that users were required to use initially or that they would want to use regularly. It’s not a particularly nice dialog but the users won’t usually see it, so I wouldn’t have thought it was a big problem…
“For me, Anything more than a single animations on/off toggle is massive overkill.”
There. Fixed it for ya. *
– Gilboa
* Unless you magically represent 99.9999% percent of the KDE user-base.
KDE is hardly the only OS with those kinds of options.
http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/3449/windows7advancedsystemp.png
OK, that’s fairly well hidden in Windows 7, but so was that dialog you mention in KDE 4.
Yeah because Windows is the pinnacle of UI design, and we should aspire to make our interfaces just as nice as 15 years of accumulated Windows UI cruft.
Yep – Windows isn’t something we should strive to emulate, but something we should strive to surpass. Repeating the same mistakes Windows made is not a good approach.
However, all these settings are pretty far out of the way. As long as the defaults are sensible, most people will never touch them. I certainly don’t – the defaults just aren’t annoying enough for me to even go looking to change them.
Stripping out all the options that only a few people would use is a mistake. People use different sets of features and options. No matter how obscure the option, chances are that someone’s using it, and considers it to be very important.
It’s the same reason that feature-light word processors never catch on. They may have all the core features, but anyone that uses them inevitably finds that it’s missing some feature they need. No matter how good the rest of the thing is, the impression it will leave is basically “X is missing, so it’s useless”.
I’m not suggesting that this particular example is one of those options that someone can’t live without. It probably isn’t, as long as the defaults are OK.
I love that dialog. I can check “show window contents while moving” and uncheck everything else. I hate all those little animations. If it was all bundled into one checkbox, I could get rid of them but be stuck with nothing but a window outline when moving windows, which is not what I want
Maybe you missed the top “Enable animations” checkbox.
The same sort of people that can customise the look of their desktop in other ways and configure screensavers, just as they can do on OS X and Windows. 😉
Just a caveat here … as with ANY *.0 release of FOSS software, KDE SC 4.4.0 will contain new code and features which may contain bugs. If your aim is stability above all else, do not install KDE SC 4.4.0 when it becomes available, and stick with KDE SC 4.3.4. Wait until at least after the first round of bug fixes, which will come in KDE SC 4.4.1, before upgrading to KDE SC 4.4.x.
Every time I try KDE, the default clock is set to the 24h setting. Being an American who has never joined the military, I much prefer the 12h AM/PM style clock.
I seriously had to use Google to find out how to change this setting, and that proves that it has serious UI issues. In Gnome you just right click on the clock, select Preferences and it’s the top option.
To do it in KDE, you have to go into the control panel, and futz around with HH:MM:SS p or some crap.
When I first read about KDE4, I was hopefuly, because it sounded like they were going to finally make it more gnome-like and simplify the UI / control center. But oh no, it’s still as cluttered and overly complicated as KDE 3.5 and Windows.
I agree with the comments above, it’s as if the developers just thought “hey, I want this feature” then threw it in. Didn’t really consider WHERE it should be.
i understand your point, but if you think about it, it makes way more sence the kde way.
you just configure/select your country and localization settings, and it applies to the rest.
instead of customizing every widget or applications for each setting, you just select it on the global settings, and its used for every other clock or app or widget.
think about it, what do you prefer ? to have to configure every app manually or to have a global setting that applies to all the rest ?
thinking of it in the gnome way, creating the setting in every app or widget, its way more complex.
You could still provide this setting inside each app, but have it influence the global settings (or bringing up the global settings dialog).
so , basicly , what you are arguing is that you want more options , an option to change the same thing in two ( or more ) places.
is that it ? please tell me no
KDE became a draconian desktop in terms of usability. It gets in users’ way. The interface is a mix of Aero and Aqua, probably this was negotiated between developers as some wanted to make it look like Win7 and others wanted to make it look like OS X. KDE4 was an expectation to make GNOME vapour, fullfilling all desktop user needs, following the consistent and stable releases from the 3.x series. But the KDE4 unforgettable fiasco happened – and it’s struggling hard to recover from it. Unless some real leaders decide to make this desktop more usable like GNOME, the future is doomed. But probably the devels don’t care… they are living in another world.
So for now…
I WON’T EVEN TRY IT.
KDE 4.4 is not KDE4! KDE 4.4.1, to be released in July, will be KDE4. Don’t judge it until then.
This is not about stability. It’s about standards. And KDE4 set fundamental and erroneous standards for the subsequent KDE4.x releases.
Well, whatever it is you are compaining about, it will be fixed in 4.4.1.
you’re not getting… i said standards… the thousand-entries kickoff menu… the hard work that is to find things… the miraculously elaborated dolphin panels… the inability of setting 2 panels… and don’t come say I can switch views to something else… it’s the default that counts…
KDE4, the KDE 4.x fiasco series….
Gnome looks like a desktop from the 90’s.
The only desktop that can compete with Windows and OSX is KDE.
You can talk about the simplicity of Gnome all day but the public won’t care when the desktop interface has the aesthetics of a cheap cell phone.
With Gnome 3 they have shown that they don’t have what it takes to make their desktop more modern looking.
pretty right… GNOME looks very old. That’s why there is this love-and-hate relationship with Linux… probably because people love and hate both GNOME & KDE.