The KDE Project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of KDE 3.4 Beta 2, dubbed “Keinstein”. Also, here’s an article on KDE’s usability.
Announcing KDE 3.4 Beta 2 “Keinstein”
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Good to see they are starting to think more of this. Let us hope they have gain some more resources and recruits to their project.
Unfortunately, it is going to be a huge project to make KDE truly user-friendly now. Better defaults, less (and more intuitive) icons, less clutter in Konqueror, de-jargonised dialogue boxes, better organisation of menues; the list seems endless. Still, they need to start acting now if they wish to remain a realistic alternative to GNOME and even the Mac…
get rid of the “Kandalf” character from the logout screen. It’s just embarassingly unprofessional. I like to have as much fun as the next guy, but just don’t make it the default. Allow someone to create an add-on theme where there can be as many cartoon character as one may want. Still, even when I don’t use KDE for business use, I don’t want to see it. I believe the default should be as non-character-oriented as possible. Imagine if there were a particular country’s flag on logout, or a person’s mug shot (where you can’t avoid the racial/gender issues). You could say “it’s their perogative, if you don’t like it you can remove it”, but it just hurts their credibility. Similarly, although to a lesser extreme, having such a character as “Kandalf” minimizes the psychological appeal of the core technology behind KDE, which I have been an avid user of since well before 1.0.
Exactly. And we all know Windows XP will fail on the desktop because the dog in the search window makes the whole product unprofessional, right?
The features are impressive but how come there is so much stuff there still in in color red? Just take a look at http://developer.kde.org/development-versions/kde-3.4-features.html… Is it that the nice developers have not yet updated this page yet?
> get rid of the “Kandalf” character from the logout screen.
I don’t see Kandalf there. Kandalf was the wizard within ktip and is gone for several KDE versions already.
> how come there is so much stuff there still in in color red?
Because KDE does time-based releases not feature-based releases. Those were not implemented in time.
> Is it that the nice developers have not yet updated this page yet?
This is only for very few of those red entries true.
They should use one of these themes located at http://kde-look.org/content/preview.php?preview=1&id=12330&file1=12….
What do you think?
> Exactly. And we all know Windows XP will fail on the desktop because the dog in the search window makes the whole product unprofessional, right?
The first guy brought up a legitimate point. When I log out I see a dragon. It doesn’t look good and I can’t turn it off (or I don’t know how).
He wasn’t slagging Linux and he didn’t mention Windows so why was that brought into the discussion. Learn to take constructive criticism will ya. Just because another OS does something it doesn’t mean that we all have to follow.
BTW the dog in Windows does look bad but at least I can turn it off.
“and he didn’t mention Windows so why was that brought into the discussion.”
The same reason why people bring Linux in when anybody dares to criticise Windows or MacOS X.
> get rid of the “Kandalf” character from the
> logout screen.
Thanks for reminding me to fix this issue. Hope you filed a bugreport so we won’t forget about it before releasing KDE 3.4.
PS: His name is Konqi. Kandalf was the wizard in KDE 2.x.
> The same reason why people bring Linux in when anybody dares to criticise Windows or MacOS X.
Ah OK then. Hopefully they don’t all run off a cliff.
Woah, another usa-bla-bla-bility post.
Frankly… who cares? It doesn’t strike me as embarrassingly unprofessional – they’re allowed a mascot. Hell, Tux turns up just about everywhere – look at the number of distros that used to have the little Tux in the corner at boot. Nobody cared about that…
KControl is just a bit slicker. The screens for the wallpaper etc are interesting although I’m not totally sure I like them.
I’d still like to see the “Improving KDE” patches merged – I thought they were going to be, but it seems not so far. Admittedly not all the packages have updated on here yet, so there’s still hope 🙂
> It doesn’t look good and I can’t turn it off (or I don’t know how).
That’s easy. You can override about everthing in KDE. Just create the appropriate directory in your home directory and copy a png image there with your favorite logout picture, named “shutdownkonq.png”. You can’t avoid it altogether, but a one pixel image will do:
$ mkdir -p ~/.kde/share/apps/ksmserver/pics
$ cp foobar.png ~/.kde/share/apps/ksmserver/pics/shutdownkonq.png
That’s “easy”? Talk about fulfilling Linux stereotypes…
> That’s “easy”?
Typing the commands in *is* easy. Finding them less so, I have to admit. But it’s at least not harder than achieving the same in some sort of registry. 😉
Windows is no different. I remember changing the bootup and shutdown logo in Windows 9x: you had to overwrite logo.sys or something. With 2000/XP that’s not possible anymore, without using external ($$$) programs that patch a system dll. So yes, the above method is quite easy.
For an even bigger laugh for what Window’s people find easy compared to Linux people, check this out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address#Changing_MAC_addresses
I thought GNOME did time-based releases and KDE did feature-based releases. In fact, KDE’s roadmap says beta 2 should’ve been out last week.
>In fact, KDE’s roadmap says beta 2 should’ve been out last week.
Tagged, not released.
I fail to see how opening a dialog and typing in a MAC address is harder than f***ing around with ifconfig.
Yep, another Linux stereotype I guess.
Nice one 🙂
Pretty much everything involving the registry is hard by default. It’s funny how people don’t complain though because there’s a semi-GUI interface (regedit) rather than a CLI, but as soon as you say the words “shell prompt” in relation to Linux, they immediately say “oh well that’s too hard, it should be easy like Windows”.
The article said that not all drivers support that method, and it differs per device. They described the dirty registry hack as a “better” way for just that reason.
It’s fine for 99% of people to prefer it, but if it only works for half of them that’s not so great.
Anyway, anybody who wants to change their MAC address can surely type a command into a shell? It’s hardly something these fabled “average users” are going to do…
It was tagged in CVS last week.
“They should use one of these themes located at http://kde-look.org/content/preview.php?preview=1&id=12330&….
What do you think?
I think the fonts look cartoonish, oversized and just plain ugly.
Icons on the toolbar are too small and too close too each other. Also the dropdown arrow on some of those buttons looks stupid and out of place in the theme.
The adress bar has a stupid salient button-like border.
That bar between the directory tree pane and file list looks like… nothing else on that window and who the hell can read vertical text.
The status bar has some very, very ugly lowered text boxes.
But what i really hate in KDE is kicker, that crap wont look good no matter what you do to it. By default it just looks too big, if you make it smaller it looks too small and the icons look like crap, and it allways looks cluttered. Not to mention that the clock has that ridiculous digital clock font
They should replace it with something like this: http://www.unrandom.com/Projects/slickbar.php
That’s “easy”? Talk about fulfilling Linux stereotypes…
It’s no harder than to change the Win98 shutdown screen (I’m not sure how to change it at all in Win2K). Of course, you don’t have to use the command line, you could have used Konqueror to open the directory, copy the image in it using the mouse, then right click on it and choose “rename” to rename the file. But that takes longer to describe in an internet post – and if you really consider two lines of command “hard”, maybe you’re not on the right web site…
In any case, it’s up to the distros to brand these types of screen/UI elements, not up to KDE (example: Mandrake has a a star – their logo – branded on the K menu, Red Hat has, well, a red hat, etc.). I’m actually going to mention it on the cooker list for Mandrake 10.2, it does make sense to put a distro-specific graphic there.
Anyway, anybody who wants to change their MAC address can surely type a command into a shell? It’s hardly something these fabled “average users” are going to do…
Excellent point. Not only that, but if one of these almost-mythical average user needs to change his MAC address for reason X over the phone with a member of the friend-and-family-tech-support brigade (i.e. me and probably quite a few of the people here), the Linux way would be a LOT simpler.
– Right click on the desktop
– Choose “Open a Terminal” in the menu
– Type “ifconfig eth0 hw ether 00:01:02:03:04:05”
Tom, try to guide someone to do that in Windows over the phone, using only three (short) sentences…
ifconfig is a very powerful command, and pretty easy to learn – just type “man ifconfig” in a Terminal (or “man:/ifconfig” in Konqueror if white-on-black monospaced text gives you the willies).
u know everything u wanna log out of kde :p
sorry…
a gnome user. but no kde hater.
God, if gnome is what you call a good desktop environment we’re in real trouble.
I find KDE quite damn reliable and quite damn usable, and quite a decent UI thanks. What i’ve seen of Gnome in recent outings leaves a lot to be desired.
Just my 2c worth.
Dave
Quote: “But what i really hate in KDE is kicker, that crap wont look good no matter what you do to it. By default it just looks too big, if you make it smaller it looks too small and the icons look like crap, and it allways looks cluttered. Not to mention that the clock has that ridiculous digital clock font
They should replace it with something like this: http://www.unrandom.com/Projects/slickbar.php ”
Each to their own, I don’t have any problems with kicker, and neither do a lot of users. Then again, the slickbar that you’ve linked to doesn’t do much for me either.
It’s amazing how many Gnome KDE bashers are out there, but you know what they say, people generally bash things that are better than what they currently have out of jealousy.
Dave
Repeat after me:
No, not everyone who thinks KDE can improve is a KDE basher.
No, not everyone who thinks KDE can improve wants to start a kindergarten gnome – kde flamewar.
With that out of the way:
After trying out the new kde-3.4 for some time now I have to say I’m really impressed. There are a lot of “small” things that make kde just so much more enjoyable. For example, finally there is a trashapplet for kicker, there is a great storage media applet that uses hal and will show removable devices in kicker when they are added. Finally, kpdf simply kicks ass now.
David, its usability that KDE is wanting, something Gnome started off with the release of Gnome v2.x, the HIG has come to define it. KDE has far too many options, it even scares me, let alone anyone new to KDE. Gnome’s keep it simple and clean way, is a nice change, yet it still very usable.
Sorry to say David, KDE isnt the ‘be all and end all’.
It’s amazing how many Gnome KDE bashers are out there, but you know what they say, people generally bash things that are better than what they currently have out of jealousy.
jealousy? you’re trolling now, most gnome users have tried KDE at some stage, so when someone complains about X feature or Y looks, take it as constructive criticism.
Accept that KDE isnt perfect, hell, we never said Gnome was perfect, but from your trolling here it sounds like the *only* solution you believe is KDE. Sorry, that doesnt wash.
> That’s “easy”? Talk about fulfilling Linux stereotypes…
Well, if it were configurable through a GUI option then hordes of GNOME trolls (the ones who would be the last to suffer from it!) would come whining “but KDE has too many options”.
I’m all for cleaning up the UI but I’m seriously pissed that trolls keep repeating this who are not even affected because they use GNOME anyway (or so they say). It’s definitely not their intent to make KDE better as you can see from the language they’re using. It all amounts to stupid KDE bashing.
jealousy? you’re trolling now, most gnome users have tried KDE at some stage, so when someone complains about X feature or Y looks, take it as constructive criticism
I’m afraid most of it isn’t constructive criticism. Time after time it’s the same stuff – “Oh, it’s usability”, “Oh clutter”. I’m afraid that isn’t constructive. It’s just trying to grasp at straws for reasons which are best known to you. No – a HIG does not solve everything, as KDE’s current constructive approach to usability will demonstrate. It will take time.
Ehm, a new HIG for kde is at the heart of the current kde usability effort. ;-D
> most gnome users have tried KDE at some stage, so when someone complains about X feature or Y looks, take it as constructive criticism.
But too often those users have tried eg KDE 3.1 and then still complain about it when there is KDE 3.3 review while their issue has been already addressed since KDE 3.2.
Neither KDE nor Gnome is perfect. It is also a lot about taste which one to prefer. Can we settle with that?
Though something that really annoys me is that since this is a thread about KDE, people who prefer Gnome have to write that they do just that in it. I think a post about Gnome here is trolling no matter what they say.
I’m afraid most of it isn’t constructive criticism. Time after time it’s the same stuff – “Oh, it’s usability”, “Oh clutter”. I’m afraid that isn’t constructive. It’s just trying to grasp at straws for reasons which are best known to you. No – a HIG does not solve everything, as KDE’s current constructive approach to usability will demonstrate. It will take time.
considering that KDE’s “HIG” a joke, Gnome’s HIG is so much more advanced, and mature, I can relate to the usability and clutter complaints, sometimes less is more. Sure HIG doesnt solve everything, but it does help certainly to streamline everything. I think you’re being a little naive dismissing completely valid arguments against KDE.
http://dot.kde.org/1107931942/
Even some KDE users do believe the interface itself is a little overwelming and bloated. Nothing like KDE HIG huh?
People talk a lot about how KDE lacks focus on usability. This is right, but it should be noted that this is only a part of the problem with KDE. I think the problem is best summarized with Bart Decrems’ words: “There’s an elegancy missing in the thing.”
It is not just an unwillingness/inability to make the choices necessary to simplify various elements, but it is present in the lack of proportions, in the completely unacceptable K-naming convention and in the incoherent and amateurish graphical elements.
GNOME has a clear vision about where the Linux desktop needs to go, while KDE is stumbling in the dark. The KDE developers will no doubt continue to disagree with this assessment, all until GNOME is the de facto standard. At which point they will probably say that it happened due to GNOME’s corporate support.
30 posts in a kde discussion before gnome was brought up! this has gotta be a record.
Sorry, but this is just a rant, giving only examples based on personal taste and it’s full of unfounded claims.
I’m not saying everything you stated is untrue but you’re not giving a single proof. But the parts that involve personal taste cannot be proven anyway (like naming convention, artwork).
It’s like me saying: “GNOME is mostly stone age technology (hence the apes in all the artwork). The few evolved parts have yet to be implemented thorougly in the majority of the apps. GNOME has still to see the light of an elegant framework. They even use C, that already says all.”.
It is a rant, and frankly I am unsure how to substantiate it, since I do not know how to argue that any particular suggestion I would make is more than a personal preference. I would need to sit down with a designer and come up with a solution which people could relate to.
But that a partly problem that pertains to the subject matter. Imagine discussing interior design of public office, and you would hold, eg. that using deep sofa makes too much an impression of a private house, or that excessive use of certain kind of striped curtains creates a too “rigid” appearance. Then the structural engineer could say “seems fine too me, you are just expressing a personal preference”, and there would be nothing you could say that convince him otherwise. Aestegic judgement is objective, that is why some things are elegant, fits a purpose etc, while others do not, but it depends on a certain shared sense of judgment to order to discuss.
So, my rant may perfectly right and an appropriate assesment of the situation, even if I don’t provide arguments which can convince everyone.
The KDE developers will no doubt continue to disagree with this assessment, all until GNOME is the de facto standard. At which point they will probably say that it happened due to GNOME’s corporate support.
Oh, the mythical corporate support rears its head again.
You may try telling that to Mandrake or Suse who sell hundreds of thousands of boxes of their desktops off the back of KDE – you know – the only companies who are making any sort of money from desktop Linux. Sun aren’t, and Ximian, either in the past or as part of Novell, never have.
You may also try telling that to the people who have consistently voted KDE, and many of its applications, the best desktop. It’s a clear reflection of the current reality that the vast majority of people using desktop Linux use KDE and its applications.
But then again, none of that matters when you’ve got corporate support, does it?
That’s right, KDE has corporate support too. I put those words in the mouth of others 🙂
I’ve seen the contests that votes KDE the top desktop, and I am puzzled by them. I think there must probably be something wrong based on the selection of the participants or something. Or perhaps the old userbase is conservative, and things will change when the Linux desktop takes off and new users choose without having an entrenced preference.
Mind you that I don’t mind being wrong about that. Good for KDE. I just happen to think that I am not. I think Firefox and Google shows that people prefers simplicity over complexity.
> Imagine discussing interior design of public office, and you would hold, eg. that using deep sofa makes
> too much an impression of a private house, or that excessive use of certain kind of striped curtains
> creates a too “rigid” appearance.
And other interior designers would disagree and do it differently. It’s not about artistic vs. technical value.
KDE artwork was created by artists and judging the quality of their work is highly subjective (Granted, within certain bounds, I wouldn’t like to use an icon theme designed by myself. 😉 ). Saying they are no artists or their work is crap is extremely arrogant, IMHO. I happen to like the “typical” GNOME artwork although I use KDE exclusively. But I know other people who think the Crystal stuff is the best since sliced bread. I won’t judge but you seem to think you can (“amateurish”).
> Aestegic judgement is objective, that is why some things are elegant
What? Aesthetic quality is *the* classical case of subjective judgement.
#!/usr/bin/bash
DEST=”$KDEHOME/share/apps/ksmserver/pics”
IMG=$(kdialog –getopenfilename $DEST “*.png *.jpeg *.jpg *.gif *.rgb *.tga”)
[ -n “$IMG” ] && mkdir -p $DEST && cp $IMG $DEST/shutdownkonq.png
Aestegic judgement is objective, that is why some things are elegant, fits a purpose etc, while others do not, but it depends on a certain shared sense of judgment to order to discuss.
Uh, no. Aesthetics is heavily subjective. Modern art was often derided in the early years as being aesthetically deficient, before it got accepted into the mainstream. By definition, Aesthetics (including such concepts as beauty and ugliness) are essentially subjective notions.
This, however, is besides the point. KDE is extremely configurable, and can be made to mimic the style of a Gnome desktop pretty well. You can edit menus (including context menus) and toolbars, making them as bare or as crowded as you want. Not only that, but some elements (like the open/save dialogs) are – in my subjective opinion – easier and more intuitive to use in KDE.
That said, both KDE and Gnome (and XFce, for that matter) are fine desktops. Neither is going away anytime soon, and their adoption of common standard tends to indicate that they’ll continue to converge and collaborate within the freedesktop.org framework.
I just happen to think that I am not. I think Firefox and Google shows that people prefers simplicity over complexity.
Argument by popularity, a logical fallacy. Following this line of thought, one would say that Windows XP is a much better desktop than Gnome, since more people use it…
What I have found is that Mac users tend to feel more at home with the Gnome desktop, and Windows users tend to prefer KDE. I myself do not find Mandrake’s version of KDE to be too complex to use, or too cluttered (they did clean up the menus a bit). Most importantly, I can customize it to my liking, which is a bit harder to do with Gnome (I still haven’t found a simple way to change the color scheme in Gnome without changing the actual theme).
There you go! Now package this script with an icon and a menu entry, et voilà !
Will you be releasing it under the GPL? 😉
How come every time there’s an article about KDE, the Gnome champions have to jump on the comments bandwagon and start slamming KDE? And it’s always the same FUD about HID and usability. I LIKED Gnome 1.4 because it wasn’t HID. I moved to KDE when Gnome 2 came out because I don’t like your concept of what a desktop should be. Frankly I think KDE has the right idea – it’s about the users, not about concepts. So please just leave us happy KDE users (about 2/3 of the linux desktop market apparently) alone and quit trying to force us to use something we don’t want.
HID = FUD
How come every time there’s an article about KDE, the Gnome champions have to jump on the comments bandwagon and start slamming KDE?
I have the same question to KDE trolls, every GNOME news, release or improvement, some KDE troll comes and talks overhyping KDE usability, easy to use (a big lie btw), etc etc.
Concerning the subjectivity of aestetics. Certainly, it is hard to negotiate preferences, and to some extent there will be large areas of judgment where there will be “no fact of the matter” as to what solution is best, most stylish etc. When I am saying that aestetics is objective I am merely pointing to the undeniable fact that “good, bad – right, wrong” evaluations with regard to tase are essential to us. That is why we think a Ferrari has a cooler design than a Toyota, that fashion matters to some people, that there are innovations in graphics design, why Kubric is a better director than Renny Harlin, that a properly made Coq au Vin is better than a hamburger, and that pink is an inappropriate color in a police station. The existence of experts in design, advertising, typhography, fashion etc would make no sense if aestatics wasn’t objective. The attitude that any evaluation is as good as any other with regard to desktop design is destructive if the goal is to improve it.
With regard to the popularity argument. I doubt if windows would be as popoular as it is if people didn’t like it in the first place. There might always be other and additional explanations for the popularity of software, but especially in the case of google and firefox, minimalism is still a fairly obvious candidate for their success.
“Aaron: What form do these suggestions take? Verbal descriptions, mock ups, diagrams? All of the above?
Ellen: Hm, that’s still a problem. We mostly upload them to OpenUsability in PDF format, but we found that this format does not support discussions in a satisfying manner. The developers asked us to use plain text instead. But this does not support including mock-ups or screenshots. Therefore, we are working on an XML report format. The first version was released in October.”
The above is a usability problem that both projects face. The OSS process fits best the semi-autonomous development process. When close cooperation is required then things become more difficult. A whiteboard with multicasting would certainly help. Or some of the ideas from Opencroquet maybe. A remoting capability were say the widgets are on one machine, and the code that drives it, are on another. The whole area is one were OSS could innovate.
The point is the to many options FUDsters don’t really get it. They yell about usability, but actually have no clue whatsoever what it really means. And they holds up make belief examples of hypothetical newbies and coporate users. Corporate users who won’t quit using windows because of MS Office. Theres a great example of applications with rather crowded toolbar, but I can’t remember having heard of any users stopping to use it for that particular reason.
But lets take a real example of usability, can you “experts” please explain to me how 6, 12 or 18 buttons in the toolbar of my browser make any difference for me when I navigate and read the articles here on OSNews today?
And compare that to, me from my home computer seamlessly saving the content the second tab of this browser session as pdf in my homedir on my computer at work.
I know which form of usability I prefer. But I’m only a computer user not a usability expert, so what do I know.
Try thinking for just a second before you post. The MAC address is under the registry key: “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSet ControlClass{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}”
There are two possible scenarios. A: you know what to do already, maybe because you read the Wikipedia site. In that case, typing the ifconfig command is easier than digging into your registry that deeply. B: you don’t know the command. In that case, ifconfig is even easier. Who in his right mind would think that their MAC address is under “4D6E972…”? At least somebody with a modicum of computer skills could get from “man ifconfig” to the right command. There is just no way to arrive at the Windows method by yourself, not unless you wrote the damn thing.
In a nutshell. Usability is based upon the commonality of man. The same that allows one to get a medical degree, which can then be applied to the majority of humans, without having to go back to school for each individual. There’s still room for individual “window dressing” as it were even in the field of usability. But there also has to be a question of priorities. And for something that will be used by more than just one, that’s important.
Quote: “Accept that KDE isnt perfect, hell, we never said Gnome was perfect, but from your trolling here it sounds like the *only* solution you believe is KDE. Sorry, that doesnt wash.”
No. We have a KDE article here on osnews.com and we start having pro Gnome users decide to post and bash KDE. If it wasn’t for the QT debacle a few years ago, and peoples hesitance to use KDE because of it, KDEs “market share” would be even greater by now i’d suggest. Market share generally suggests that you’re doing things right, for the majority of people.
Yes, KDE has an awful lot of options, but that doesn’t mean I have to play with them. No one is holding a gun to a potential KDE users head saying “you must configure and tweak every setting”. You can if you want, but you don’t have to. KDE has perfectly sensible defaults by the way, contrary to what some Gnome/XFCE/Windowmaker/Blackbox/Fluxbox/IceWM users would say.
It works, it works well, and it’s a fully featured desktop environment. Of course, then we get people comparing it to the Windows GUI environment, and of course, since Windows is bad, ergo anything that’s remotely similar is bad as well.
I just get very fed up with the Gnome users (mostly) who decide to post on a KDE article and trash KDE. If they don’t like it, they don’t have to use it, and they certainly don’t have to make derogeratory comments on it either, or snide remarks. It happens every time a KDE article is posted on here. The number of pro KDE users who jump on a Gnome article and start bashing/trashing is a lot less from my experience.
Maybe the moderators might want to moderate and keep the topics on hand?
Dave
Quote: “GNOME has a clear vision about where the Linux desktop needs to go, while KDE is stumbling in the dark. The KDE developers will no doubt continue to disagree with this assessment, all until GNOME is the de facto standard. At which point they will probably say that it happened due to GNOME’s corporate support”
You sure you’re not smoking illegal materials? People are using Gnome because it the licensing method, QT not really allowing large corporations to run with it. If it wasn’t for that i’d say it would be pretty much echoing the ‘market trends’ of general usage thru the Linux population. KDE has a significant number of more users, it’s not even a close race. I think that says a lot. So, as for Gnome becoming the de facto standard, that’s about as much a possibility of me marrying Avril Lavigne tommorrow after a night of hot sex.
Dave
“If it wasn’t for the QT debacle a few years ago, and peoples hesitance to use KDE because of it, KDEs “market share” would be even greater by now i’d suggest.” AND “People are using Gnome because it the licensing method, QT not really allowing large corporations to run with it. If it wasn’t for that”
WAS a problem, or IS a problem?
“Yes, KDE has an awful lot of options, but that doesn’t mean I have to play with them. No one is holding a gun to a potential KDE users head saying “you must configure and tweak every setting”.”
Let’s assume for a second that I have a large row of menu’s across the top of an application. I don’t have to “play with them”, however that doesn’t mean that those menu’s aren’t in the way.
“i’d say it would be pretty much echoing the ‘market trends’ of general usage thru the Linux population. KDE has a significant number of more users, it’s not even a close race”
Well seeing as how Linux’s market share can’t be esimated with any good degree of certainty, just by the nature of the beast. What method of estimating KDE’s market share do you possess, that’ll get around that problem? Opinion polls? Questionaires? Do I really need to do a “Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics” post?*
*Or maybe I should just point out that Linux is a multi-account, multi-preference, multi-WM OS, and commitment only applies between you and Avril Lavigne.
Why is it every single opinion poll puts KDE user % way out in front of Gnome? Surely they can’t all be wrong. If I could figure out how to find every single user of Linux and poll them I would.
Quote: “Let’s assume for a second that I have a large row of menu’s across the top of an application. I don’t have to “play with them”, however that doesn’t mean that those menu’s aren’t in the way. ”
Methinks you are being pedantic and looking for problems that don’t exist. If that’s the best you can do, it’s not a lot.
Was and is. Trolltech make a fine development environment, they own it. Get it? It’s theirs. Their IP. They can pick and choose, who, when and why and where it’s used. For normal home usage, it’s fine. For those corporations that wish to use KDE then, like with most things in life, you might have to pay some money. Who pays the developers that work for Trolltech on QT? mmm? Thin air?
KDE works, works well, and that somehow seems to piss off the majority of Gnome users, who have nothing better to do than to bitch on osnews.com about it. If you don’t like KDE fine – there’s lots of things I don’t like but I don’t bitch about them all. You can keep and use your Gnome HIG, i’ll wait for KDE to do it right 🙂 I’ve long considered Gnome broken post 1.4, and that’s when they started all this funny crap. That doesn’t mean I say to other people not to use Gnome, they can use whatever they like. In fact I very rarely “Gnome bash”, although if you rile me enough with your KDE fud then you’ll give me the shits and i’ll start bashing Gnome. That’s called normal human behaviour I might add.
One gets very sick of the Gnomites and their KDE fud.
Dave
PS I like XFCE a LOT as well, and occasionally use it, it appeals to myself far more than Gnome does.
“Why is it every single opinion poll puts KDE user % way out in front of Gnome? Surely they can’t all be wrong. If I could figure out how to find every single user of Linux and poll them I would. ”
Because polls are rather self-selective.
“Methinks you are being pedantic and looking for problems that don’t exist. If that’s the best you can do, it’s not a lot. ”
Me thinks you’re intentionally missing the point.
“Was and is. Trolltech make a fine development environment, they own it. Get it? It’s theirs. Their IP. They can pick and choose, who, when and why and where it’s used. For normal home usage, it’s fine. For those corporations that wish to use KDE then, like with most things in life, you might have to pay some money. Who pays the developers that work for Trolltech on QT? mmm? Thin air? ”
Don’t look at me. Your words were the one’s being quoted. Either the license is an issue or it’s not.
“KDE works, works well, and that somehow seems to piss off the majority of Gnome users, who have nothing better to do than to bitch on osnews.com about it. If you don’t like KDE fine – there’s lots of things I don’t like but I don’t bitch about them all. You can keep and use your Gnome HIG, i’ll wait for KDE to do it right 🙂 I’ve long considered Gnome broken post 1.4, and that’s when they started all this funny crap. That doesn’t mean I say to other people not to use Gnome, they can use whatever they like. In fact I very rarely “Gnome bash”, although if you rile me enough with your KDE fud then you’ll give me the shits and i’ll start bashing Gnome. That’s called normal human behaviour I might add. ”
Don’t you get tired of carrying that chip on your shoulder around? The point is that people don’t have to pick one or the other. They can have as many as they want without Linux breaking a sweat.
“One gets very sick of the Gnomites and their KDE fud.”
Is one variety of FUD preferable over another?
“PS I like XFCE a LOT as well, and occasionally use it, it appeals to myself far more than Gnome does.”
Good for you. The KDE/Gnome wars are a nonissue with me, because I’ve been using Linux before either one was a gleam in their respective developers eyes.
The existence of experts in design, advertising, typhography, fashion etc would make no sense if aestatics wasn’t objective.
I disagree. You’re confusing consensual convergence with objectivity. In other words, some things will appear to possess aesthetic qualities in an objective way because so many people agree on them, but that still won’t make it objective because it is a matter of taste. Most people don’t like Death Metal and find it aesthetically empty – but some people love it.
Other reasons why aesthetics is ultimately subjective is that it is subject to cultural differences, education as well as the passage of time. I’m sorry, but even if we can agree on the aesthetics of a Michael Snow experimental film, it will be completely foreign to a south african bushman born in the 30’s…
I’m not saying that aesthetics is not important – of course it is – simply that you can’t claim that they are based on objective reasoning.
With regard to the popularity argument. I doubt if windows would be as popoular as it is if people didn’t like it in the first place.
Popularity doesn’t mean superiority. I think BetaMax vs. VHS proved that… Many factors influence the popularity of a product (as represented by market share), how much people like it is just one of them. You also have price and availability; hype (and its darker cousin, FUD); familiarity (including branding); etc.
There might always be other and additional explanations for the popularity of software, but especially in the case of google and firefox, minimalism is still a fairly obvious candidate for their success.
That’s a hypothesis, but there are others: Google is popular because it is powerful, Firefox is popular because it lets you avoid spyware and is extensible.
Personally, I can’t live without Konqueror and its plethora of kio_slaves. As soon as I can install it in Windows at work, I will! 🙂
Yes, KDE has an awful lot of options, but that doesn’t mean I have to play with them. No one is holding a gun to a potential KDE users head saying “you must configure and tweak every setting”. You can if you want, but you don’t have to. KDE has perfectly sensible defaults by the way, contrary to what some Gnome/XFCE/Windowmaker/Blackbox/Fluxbox/IceWM users would say.
Hard to believe when it comes by default with a theme as shitty as Keramik.
I have a love/hate relationship with KDE. I always hated its looks and its interface, yet KDE applications are getting better and its framework is superior to the open-source alternatives. That said, I have the same kind of relationship with GNOME but I tend to favour QT/KDE since I started doing some development during my spare time…
I applaude their efforts for better guidelines for KDE 4 and I hope they will stabilise my relationship with KDE. Unfortunately, it seems to be still quite far… ETA 2006, I believe?
> Hard to believe when it comes by default with
> a theme as shitty as Keramik.
Hope you like the more minimalistic default “Plastik” in KDE 3.4 then (in opposite to the old rather baroque style). While Keramik was nice to show off new capabilities in our style engine and while it was (and still is) quite popular we felt that it was time for a change that reflects our recent efforts to make KDE more appealing and easier on the eyes in terms of usability as well as design.
Quote: “Hard to believe when it comes by default with a theme as shitty as Keramik. ”
Ah well, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. I don’t have a problem with keramik, nor plastik, not that I use them. I use a Baghira theme cos I like the look.
I don’t mind the look, I don’t think it’s overly busy, nor is it ugly. It’s certainly no worse than Gnome or Windows if you ask me. Of course Aqua on OS X is damn well sexy, so if you’re comparing it to that, then yes it’s not quite as ‘pretty’. In the end I don’t give a rats rear end about how pretty it is, what I care about is “can I do my daily thing with it?” and the answer is a positive YES.
AS to polls:
Quote: “Because polls are rather self-selective. ”
I disagree. Any poll is a small snippet of the user market – no matter what the thing being polled is. Generally speaking, market trends are revealed by polls, maybe not with a total accuracy, but with enough accuracy to guauge obvious trends. As I said if I could poll *every* Linux user and ask…
I’ve had several friends check out Linux at my bequest and not one of them has preferred Gnome to KDE. Every single one has went for KDE, and truthfully told, they weren’t impressed with Gnome one iota. I specifically told these particular friends to try both Gnome and KDE and see which one THEY preferred, so my influence was very minimal.
What annoys me is distros that ship with either KDE as the default (Suse), or Gnome as the default (Ubuntu) with not much choice for anything else. I’d rather them all, and then the user can pick and choose without any bias. Libranet is good for this, it has kde, gnome, icewm, xfce and from memory blackbox/fluxbox as well. All fully functional (the default is icewm) and easily changeable out of the box.
Quote: “Don’t you get tired of carrying that chip on your shoulder around? The point is that people don’t have to pick one or the other. They can have as many as they want without Linux breaking a sweat. ”
What chip? I get sick and tired of Gnome users deliberately posting on a kde article and bashing/trashing kde. That’s what really pisses me off. The article is about kde, get it? Comprehende? I see the same people bashing kde at every instance from post to post, and all of them seem to be Gnome users.
AS to the license issue, what’s the big deal? If you’re buying a distro, then it’s not an issue in a corporate environment, if you’re going to design custom QT apps to run on kde then you need to talk to Trolltech about licenses.
As to gnome/kde wars, and using Linux before either, good for you. Tell me, how do you manage to watch a dvd from the command line 😉 GUIs have their place. I pretty much use a terminal for all the sysadmin stuff on my system, despite the plethora of kde/gnome tools available to me. Not everyone is the same, some people prefer a GUI tool, each to their own…
Dave
That first quote was from Wrawrat (IP: —.aei.ca).
“I disagree. Any poll is a small snippet of the user market – no matter what the thing being polled is. Generally speaking, market trends are revealed by polls, maybe not with a total accuracy, but with enough accuracy to guauge obvious trends. As I said if I could poll *every* Linux user and ask…”
Polls also can be manipulated rather easily.
“What chip?”
“If you don’t like KDE fine – there’s lots of things I don’t like but I don’t bitch about them all. You can keep and use your Gnome HIG, i’ll wait for KDE to do it right 🙂 [Emphasis mine]” AND “In fact I very rarely “Gnome bash”, although if you rile me enough with your KDE fud then you’ll give me the shits and i’ll start bashing Gnome. That’s called normal human behaviour I might add. [emphasis mine]”
That chip. Comprehende?
“AS to the license issue, what’s the big deal?”
“If it wasn’t for the QT debacle a few years ago, and peoples hesitance to use KDE because of it, KDEs “market share” would be even greater by now i’d suggest.” AND “People are using Gnome because it the licensing method, QT not really allowing large corporations to run with it. If it wasn’t for that[emphasis mine]”
You tell me. Obviously it was important enough for you to mention.
“As to gnome/kde wars, and using Linux before either, good for you. Tell me, how do you manage to watch a dvd from the command line 😉 ”
Pre or post DeCSS?
can’t find a single thing on their website pertaining to usability…
Hope you like the more minimalistic default “Plastik” in KDE 3.4 then (in opposite to the old rather baroque style).
Really? That’s good news. I thought Keramik was going to be the default theme for the 3.x branch. I know that 3.0 didn’t shipped with it but it’s an old release, too.
Plastik is a really great theme. That’s the one I use and I am quite happy to see that it’s becoming the default theme!
While Keramik was nice to show off new capabilities in our style engine and while it was (and still is) quite popular we felt that it was time for a change that reflects our recent efforts to make KDE more appealing and easier on the eyes in terms of usability as well as design.
Okay, I understand. Keramik was definitely not easy on my eyes.
Ah well, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. I don’t have a problem with keramik, nor plastik, not that I use them. I use a Baghira theme cos I like the look.
That is very true but I have an hard time to believe that somebody on this Earth actually _likes_ Keramik.
I don’t mind the look, I don’t think it’s overly busy, nor is it ugly. It’s certainly no worse than Gnome or Windows if you ask me.
I don’t know. While their default themes are not attractive to me, they are not repulsive either…
As for OS X, Aqua never attracted me. I prefer Industrial (GTK2) or Plastik… Then again, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, right?
In the end I don’t give a rats rear end about how pretty it is, what I care about is “can I do my daily thing with it?” and the answer is a positive YES.
Of course but that’s the problem I have with Keramik. I hate it so much that I even bothered to change the theme for my root account just for kdesu…
Anyway, I still have issues with the defaults but it’s quite nice to see that they do something. In all honesty, I didn’t even thought they were trying to design some new guidelines before reading the article. I just hope that the devs will follow them.
They should use one of these themes located at http://kde-look.org/content/preview.php?preview=1&id=12330&….
What do you think?
They look nice all of them, but they would be even better if the colors was toned down a bit. The GUI shouldn’t screem at the user. It makes it hard stress important messages if you always talk in a loud voice. Some of them are very close to Luna and some Microsoft lawyer might object to their looks.
I do have some consideration for the close buttons. It should be aligned to the corner. That way a window that is aligned to the top right corner could be closed just by moving the mouse to that corner and a single click. If thre is window decoration parts around the button you have to use much more precision to position the mouse before you click.
Regardless of how they look, I think its time for KDE, Gnome,… to join forces on themes and graphics. The default theme of KDE should look similar to Gnome. This is what happens anyway as soon as Red Hat, Mandrake or some othe Linux or Unix distributer gets hold of either of them.
If KDE and Gnome cooperated chances are that it actually would look like the artists intended and not some ugly bluecurve or brown ubuntoish thing.
As it is now a lot of work by graphics artists gets waisted. If sombody develops a cool style for Gnome, it should be possible to use it for KDE as well.
One way to start would be to create a common graphic language for the free desktop. It should be possible to tell what an icon represents from common form elements.
E.g. on old MacOS a runnable program had a rombic shape
and all documents had dog-ears etc. This limits the artistic freedom somewhat, but it is also gives the artists a greater challange that could be fun and inspiring.
It’s like me saying: “GNOME is mostly stone age technology (hence the apes in all the artwork). The few evolved parts have yet to be implemented thorougly in the majority of the apps. GNOME has still to see the light of an elegant framework. They even use C, that already says all.”.
Actually, you are right. Compared to KDE, GNOME is stone age technology. Just look at kio-slaves in KDE and compare them to gnome-vfs. In KDE it just works.
But at the end of the day, it is Gnome that ends up on my desktop. It does that, even though KDE was my favorite desktop for years. The critisism is very justyfied.
> The critisism is very justyfied.
You missed my point.
The things you quoted may be justified if I had given any supporting facts (like you did). The way I put it (deliberately) it’s just an unproven claim (just like the one of the poster I replied to).
Anyway, at the end of the day, not surprisingly, it’s KDE for me.