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This was actually one of the topics brought up in aseigo's TLLTS interview, which I highly recommend to people who want the 411 on KDE4.0 and the plans for the KDE4 series:

http://www.tllts.org/audio/tllts_226-01-02-08.ogg

Aaron's answer was disarmingly honest. Basically, if you hear claims of "KDE4 is 30-40% lighter/ faster than KDE3!!", take them with a pinch of salt: benchmarking is a surprisingly difficult and intricate business, and blanket claims like this (faster how? Faster in every conceivable way? What if KDE4 "does more" than KDE3 but takes slightly more time to do it - can it be called "faster" then?) are really quite naive.

Qt4's memory usage is a good example of this, which he brought up: most of Qt4 operations/ structures do indeed take up less memory than their Qt3 counterparts due to the extensive optimisation carried out by Trolltech - however, Qt4 also double-buffers all widgets, which takes up a fair amount of pixmap memory but also basically eliminates tearing, shearing and artifacting. Is Qt4 more or less memory hungry than Qt3 in this instance? In some ways yes, in some ways no, and in some ways it's apples-to-oranges, as Qt4 is doing a better job.

So don't believe all the performance claims that you hear - good or bad

Edit:

We can at least be assured that even with an unoptimised 4.0.0, performance and memory usage aren't completely diabolically awful, though

http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3137
http://www.jespersaur.com/drupal/node/36

Edited 2008-01-04 21:46

------------and blanket claims like this (faster how? Faster in every conceivable way? What if KDE4 "does more" than KDE3 but takes slightly more time to do it - can it be called "faster" then?) are really quite naive.------------

Faster how, I'm talking in terms of daily usage. Opening applications, windows, and such. Does it "feel" faster? Does it feel like it's in your way, or feel more permissive and smooth?(and yes, I know that's pretty subjective)

Actually, your own link is pretty indicitive of what I'm taking to mind. (KDE devel)

==========KDE 4 is going to be a serious contender for a high-performance, good looking interface on low resource machines like the Eee PC, and I can't wait to try it out on one.==============

Now mind you, I don't look at 3.5 as slouchy, slow, software. I like it, a lot. But 4 seems to be more slick and slippery from everything I'm reading, in all corners. 30-40%? I never believed the claims there. But all things considered, there seems to be universal agreement on it being fsaster.

And as far as memory usage:

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/12/14/kde-uses-les...

I don't expect those numbers either, I expect the completed product to naturally use more. But this is worth noting:

======The old version(3.5) needed 348MB to work comfortably while the new one(4.0) sail through the same tests using only 228MB.========

My expectation is high 2xx. More features naturally and obviously means greater usage. But going from mid 3's to high 2's is a great accomplishment and well worth looking forward to in my book.

"And as far as memory usage:
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/12/14/kde-uses-les.....

I don't expect those numbers either, I expect the completed product to naturally use more. But this is worth noting:

'The old version(3.5) needed 348MB to work comfortably while the new one(4.0) sail through the same tests using only 228MB'"

Which really highlights my point about benchmarking being difficult: the results presented there, while in some ways flattering to KDE, are absolutely, wildly false. KDE3.5 does not take 348MB to work; I've run it easily on a 256MB computer on which I had forgotten to enable swap! The results were debunked here by Lubos and Thiago, who know a lot about profiling and memory usage:

http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3138

and withdrawn by the same guy who presented the figures originally:

http://www.jarzebski.pl/read/kde-3-5-vs-4-0-round-two.so

[in fact, his later figures suggest that KDE4 with compositing uses substantially *more* RAM than KDE3!]

It's kind of weird: I've been combatting claims of KDE's bloatedness compared to GNOME ad nauseum for ages now (
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=153631&highlight=kde+m..., http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=2015680&postcount=1235 ) and now, because of one article that got re-posted all over the place without people bothering to check their facts, I'm having to do the opposite How ironic!

Edited 2008-01-04 22:56

Haha, ok, fair enough. Let's wait until a few days/weeks/months until after KDE4 is officially released, and see what will happen when someone compares finished products.

Also, in your posts I saw the free command I never knew that existed.

But with your arguments on u/forum in mind, there's got to be a way to accurately gauge this thing.

Also, I agree with the notion that unused memory is wasted memory, but Gsysguard seems to do a better job of reporting than Ksysguard does.(by dividing the caches away from actual memory usage)

Which really highlights my point about benchmarking being difficult: the results presented there, while in some ways flattering to KDE, are absolutely, wildly false. KDE3.5 does not take 348MB to work

Even if you can get accurate memory measurements (which you can't really), it's made even more difficult by shared libraries and the fact that a desktop might consume more comparable memory on startup, but allow applications started thereafter to consume less comparable memory by reusing loaded components. How can you say that it uses more or less memory? You can't, but KDE tends to do a lot of this stuff.

You could compare functional requirements and ask how much memory is consumed when you have a web browser open, but that is a much more complete analysis I have never seen anyone do yet. Even then, it's still open to interpretation what comparable functionality is consuming all the memory.

It's kind of weird: I've been combatting claims of KDE's bloatedness compared to GNOME ad nauseum for ages now (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=153631&highlight=kde+m..., http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=2015680&postcount=1235)

Ahhh, the Ubuntu forums. Full of exceptionally knowledgeable ejits who are ready, willing and able to hand out lots of accurate advice on what desktop eats all your memory to the unsuspecting newbie user, sending them right back to where they came from. Ubuntu may be number one on distrowatch, but it's got little chance of going beyond that bubble.

Wow, people do love to bash KDE for any reasons they can find.

Let's do an example:

Microsoft Windows and Office

Each version is supposedly faster, but each version becomes more and more bloated (and slower), requiring faster hardware to take advantage of it all and make it seem like it's faster. Don't believe me - try running MS Office 2007 on an Athlon 1ghz, then a AMD 3000 (barton core), then a dual core Intel, say E6600. Notice the speed difference.

Speed is relevant - it has long been known that software developers take advantage of newer, faster hardware, and use that to offset bloated code. This is the norm (unless you just use blackbox/fluxbox, which will forever stay unusable, because speed is more important to them than usability).

Don't just go blasting KDE, you might want to have a look at a lot of other projects.

In fact, each release of KDE 3.x was slightly quicker than the previous one I might add.

I think you'll find that people are using such powerful graphics cards today, that that'll take a nice load off both the cpu core, and the memory. People want fancy, nice, cool looking desktop environments that fart, burp and shit themselves when you look at them, and the result is always going to be that it takes time to process the underlying code to achieve that "look".

Dave

.

Unusable? They're incredibly versatile, and Fluxbox is so scriptable I can do anything in Fluxbox that I can do in GNOME, faster and more easily. It's really easy to set up too. Also Fluxbox is better for my RSI, as I can make sure there's very little mouse needed.

Lack of clicky boxes (which you can have in Fluxbox if you want) != unusable.

Less memory usage!!!!!

I hear that is heavily debated since it is theoretically impossible to see how much memory is being used without using a patched kernel and even then its not exact.

Edited 2008-01-07 17:42

He would rather blame users for their misconceptions than accept that not everyone sees the KDE 4 project in the same way he does. At least that is the way he treated me. I don't think however we should equate KDE with aseigo he is just one developer on the project, there are many others. He is just more vocal and the head developer of the cool but IMO useless plasma technology, so more people listen to him.

Did you realise he is the President of KDE e.V?

I don't recall replying to your post. I replied to RIchard James13 post in particular,

he is just one developer on the project, there are many others. He is just more vocal and the head developer of the cool but IMO useless plasma technology

He is clearly not "just one developer on the project".

"Create your own entity and proclaim yourself Chairman. BFD. "

while i agree my position as president of our non-prof is hardly interesting, i neither created the entity (it predates my involvement with kde) nor did i proclaim myself anything within it. i was actually very hesitant to take on the position i did due to the added work load.

"produce engineering results that meet or surpass these proprietary companies."

well, that's what kde has been doing and is continuing to do. so ... i suppose we'll all be happy in the end.

KDE ev is a registered non-profit organization, supported financially by commercial organizations, including Novell and Intel. Aaron didn't proclaim himself chairman, he was appointed President by the board of directors and membership.

They are not a proprietary company, but proprietary companies still utilize their software, so they're doing something right, so what's your point again? Or was it just to show off that chip on your shoulder?



So basically you're implying superiority over the hacks running around with an inkling of talent.

That aside, instead of bitching, why don't you utilize that second degree of yours to help contribute? Or are you expecting to be spoonfed like everyone else?



Maybe instead of lamenting GNUstep and the talented and seasoned developers behind it, you should consider instead why it hasn't advanced in user base/app as GNOME/KDE has, despite the talented, seasoned and professional developers. While you're doing that, the rest of the world will be busy moving on.

A President of KDE E.v one of his roles is to speak for KDE. Since the contention was made that he was merely a KDE developer and project lead - which he is - it was countered that he is not just those which is why people pay attention to what he says.

Prior to his election as President of KDE E.v he was one of the more vocal and articulate KDE developers who represented KDE and the KDE developers well. Add his enthusiasm for OSS and KDE in paticular it was probably why he was elected to the position. KDE members were very happy with him being one of the more visible faces of KDE.

are in a different position.

Whenever someone finds out I am good at multi-body dynamic analysis, he wants to make me a project manager of a multi-body dynamic analysis project. For which what would be irrelevant? Yes - being great shakes at multi-body dynamic analysis. Managing skills would be much better (which I seem to lack, I can hardly manage myself).

On the other hand, if someone in the Computer Science field boasts about being great in sorting algorithms, he gets to code a super-interesting sorting algorithm.

If in the mechanical engineering field it only were so, I could satisfy my self-illuminating urges .
Sigh...

"He would rather blame users for their misconceptions than accept that not everyone sees the KDE 4 project in the same way he does."

the missing piece here is that these misconceptions are .. misconceptions. they simply aren't correct, and i don't think anyone is beholden to accept things that are manifestly wrong. you are free to continue to hold your misconceptions for as long as you wish, there's not much anyone can do about that. but don't expect me to buy into them just because you do.

"At least that is the way he treated me."

i'll admit this: i got very, very tired of the horrific attitudes some people showed in the last year. as a perceived leader i probably should have just ignored these insults, instead i replied with my own, at times emotion laden, thoughts. that was a failing on my part.

i'm sorry if i offended you.

if it's any consolation, you and people like you have offended me repeatedly over the past year for no good reason after receiving the fruits of our work for years.

"I don't think however we should equate KDE with aseigo he is just one developer on the project, there are many others."

yep, that's quite true.

Well, you still don't think something like "IMHO, Plasma is all hype and very little substance." is not a nice thing to say, so how can you see any of the things Aaron said to you as insults? Or do the standards differ between you and the rest of the world?

We should take the opportunity given by his participation to thank Aaron. It was an interesting set of comments, clear, frank and to the point. I've usually personally preferred the style of Gnome but have installed KDE for people who prefer it. Its a superb package. And there is no equivalent of some of the KDE apps. The nice thing about the remarks was that they showed a clear vision as well as being interesting and informative in detail.

The other thing of course is, we should be thanking the whole team of people. We users of this stuff do not need to be uncritical, but some of us should be a bit more gracious. KDE (like Gnome) is a massive undertaking from which we're all getting an enormous amount. On a couple of occasions I've had to contact KDE people, and the response was always rapid and most helpful. When I told the client that the support we were getting was free and for a totally free package, jaws dropped.

So Aaron, nil carborundum! And thanks to you and everyone else at KDE.

So, when users complained aboud KDE 4.0 RC stability we were all cursed and even called ignorants

Because you don't know how release candidates are being used here and because you don't understand 'release early and release often'. Ergo, you're stupid.

...then Mr. Seigo told us to way till KDE 4.0 realease.

Did he? What exactly did he tell us to wait for?

Now KDE 4.0 is released and just confirmed our rants, and now he tell us to waith till 4.1.

No one pretended that KDE 4.0 was going to be brilliant and some sort of finished article, by whatever definition you have of the 'finished article'. More applications and features were then going to ported and developed through .1, .2, .3 etc. until we get something of really, really good quality that has been tested and used release through release and not through endless 'betas' and RCs that don't do anything for anyone. That worked great for Microsoft in terms of quality, didn't it? ;-)

The only people who are looking at 4.0 as some sort of 'big-bang' release are people like you, even when you've been told consistently otherwise. Why? Because you're stupid. There's not an awful lot you can do when you're living in a town full of stupid, other than to move out.

I'm not going to be using KDE 4.0 because I have lots of KDE 3.x desktops to look after, as he says. I didn't use 3.0 either. When I test KDE 4.x at some point I might make a decision on moving to it. How is KDE 4.0 and its worrying lack of quality and stability, as you might put it, affect me and users? Oh, that's right. It won't.

Don't you love how he eats his own words?

I'm glad you think so. Meanwhile back on planet Earth, a few people actually read the article. You'd think you had some kind of vested interest in it ;-).

"4.0 will be informative" is the same as "4.0 will have mainstream quality"?

"4.0 will be informative" is the same as "4.0 will have mainstream quality"?

Uhm, no, it isn't?
Especially when taking into account that for months now aseigo and others involved in kde4 told everyone who would listen in every interview, blogpost, etc. that kde 4.0 would be rough around the edges and would not be mainstream quality.

I think stupid is someone who doesn't know the meaning of RC and tells the world is wrong.

How do we know when we have a Release Candidate sweetheart? At exactly what point do we know? Is it a point in time (this wasn't a time-based release), or a set of requirements you have attached to the underside of your toilet seat that tells you?

Alphas, Betas and Release Candidates, and what constitutes a major release, are defined by actual requirements, or via time-based releases, and not by you. KDE 4.0 was designed and destined to be a target development desktop platform - and it is.

People who are coming up with definitions of Release Candidates and Betas haven't got the faintest idea what they're talking about, because what they are depends totally on what the end release is actually designed to be - not on what you think it should be.

aseigo: no, 4.0 will be.

What is KDE 4.0 designed to be, exactly, and what have people been telling you that it's going to be for months? The poster in that comment thread (I Googled) is about your level - ergo, it's you. Nice one:

http://dot.kde.org/1198130504/1198177658/1198191398/1198193468/1198...

Oh, I forgot that aseigo is your idol, sorry, but hey sweetheart, he is just a human who happens to make misstakes too.

Whatever hinny (nicking other peoples' little phrases you find annoying, priceless. For everything else, there's Mastercard).

"The aim of the KDE project for the 4.0 release is to put the foundations in place for future innovations on the Free Desktop."

That's a straight quote from the RC2 release notes. Older release notes read similar. KDE 4.0 is and was never intended to be a mainstream release, but a foundation for later developments -- just like basically every free software dot-oh release.

It's not the most functional desktop in the world, but it is stable. I downloaded yesterday's SVN build via the openSUSE Build Service and played with it for a while yesterday and today. I didn't encounter major bugs in the core applications. There are missing features, the over-use of sound notifications annoys me, but did anything crash? No.

Oh please. It has been clearly stated a number of times that KDE 4.0 is a 'technology release'. It is designed to lay down the technology, that others will use to design applications that will integrate with the KDE desktop environment.

It is also a redesign of the look, and feel of the environment, with the eye to improvements in usability over older versions of KDE (you gotta keep the pro Gnome anti KDE UI whingers happy).

It's a foundation release, with developers expected to add to it and improve it, in the actual spirit of open source development. I mean, if people took your attitude, then the Linux kernel would never have gotten anywhere!!! People would have been saying "oh, but it's slow...", "oh, but it doesn't do X feature", "oh, but X application won't run on it, or run well on it", or "I don't like the way that looks/feels/works" and so on. All software projects grow, and improve over time, why not give the KDE team a chance and see how things are six months down the track?

I stopped using Gnome circa v1.4, as I no longer liked the look and feel etc. I didn't start bagging it until version 2.4 or so, when it became obvious that a lot of Gnome users were simply bagging KDE (which I honestly prefer in terms of UI) for the sheer sake of self promotion (of Gnome).

Dave

KDE 4.0 indeed is a foundation release. "to put the foundations in place for future innovations", I believe that was stated in the release announcements for the beta's and RC's quite a lot. Actually, I KNOW it was, as I wrote it. It is rather unfortunate people apparently have a hard time reading properly...

"now he tell us to waith till 4.1."

i said no such thing. if you think otherwise, please find where i said that in the article and provide a quote here.

disagree with me all you want, but at least get what i say straight.

As you obviously are a recent blow in on the back of the Ubuntu bandwagon, just be told that you have NO IDEA how free software releases have traditionally worked.
I'm sure there is no shortage of people on this forum who can describe to you in more detail what the early releases of gnome 2 were like yet that rebuild was not of the scale of KDE4.
Yet you wouldn't know that using gnome now.

Edited 2008-01-07 03:30

When will KDE 4 be ready? When mainstream Linux distributors start shipping it as one of the supported desktops on their platform. Until then, let's just keep an open mind.

While everyone focused on the next version of Kubuntu NOT being a LTS release, conversely it's good to remember that it's because KDE 4.0 will be the desktop of choice. How good of a release it makes remains to be seen of course, but some distros are planning to jump ahead asap.

The good news is that many of the openSUSE devs are KDE devs. KDE 4.x will be in openSUSE 11.0, it has pretty much been established (remember, KDE 4.x apps were included with 10.3, even as snapshots), though questionable as to whether a default or optional desktop. Given that 11.0 is tentatively looking at a summer release, it could be that 4.1 and 11.0 will coincide favorably. KDE 3.x will naturally be included, since both environments can co-exist easily.

Regardless, the build-service will make each KDE4 release available to the recent versions of openSUSE with nothing more than a single-click update.

Ubuntu the leading distribution because users had put it there not because they say it. It means they are doing the things right.

Ubuntu the leading distribution because users had put it there not because they say it. It means they are doing the things right.

If that gives you some crumbs of comfort then that's great. Unfortunately, 'leading distribution' means very little beyond some people who hang out on the Ubuntu forums and think they're changing the world. Or something. It's a sad state of mind to get yourself into when you look at the computing world beyond Linux and open source software.

Because that's what even core KDE developers say.



The eeePC is a huge seller. It's KDE-based.



SUSE Enterprise: yes. openSUSE: No.



Qt is already GPLed -- since years.


https://shipit.kubuntu.org/


And how is downloading KDE from within Ubuntu any different than using Kubuntu directly? The packages are the same. There's no difference.

And how is downloading KDE from within Ubuntu any different than using Kubuntu directly? The packages are the same. There's no difference.

For the Feisty release, my experience was that a system installed from the Kubuntu LiveCD was fairly unstable, whereas a system installed from the Ubuntu LiveCD, and with the kubuntu-desktop package added, was rock solid.

I had no explanation then, nor do I offer one now, but my personal experience (and someone else who agreed with me, I think on this forum) was that Kubuntu != (Ubuntu + KDE).

Just a side observation.

I can't explain your observations. I don't think that you are hallucinating so there must be something right about your observations, but for me it worked OK.
It could be that you hit a bug in the installer. AFAIK there's also a text-based installer on the CD.

Amen, that is my experience.

Dave

"...I wish IBM would buy trolltech and then release all the QT code under the GPL as an act of good will.
Qt is already GPLed -- since years.... "

Just to point out that,this would probably kill the project's momentum. QT is good because it is a commercial tool kit. It's one of the best ones out there. The commercial incentive ( coupled with the drive for putting good quality software out there ) drives this particular project forward.

"then release all the QT code under the GPL as an act of good will."

i assume you meant "LGPL" because it already is GPL.

My bad, yes.

Dave

Ok, seriously, 80%? WTF?

I've seen some wild proclamations for Gnome marketshare, but that implication, particularly based solely on Ubuntu and Fedora, is pretty out there.

KDE has an established commercial and community footprint in Europe, for instance, something the Gnome org (if not the userbase) has grudgingly acknowledged in the past. And then there's Asia, that little spot of the world where linux lives quite comfortably, and Gnome barely exists. Red Flag and Turbolinux, two of the predominant distributions in Asia, are KDE-based, yet they rarely receive mention, yet they very likely both exceed RH or Novell for desktop marketbase (servers are a different story).

Novell still has a predominantly KDE userbase, both with the community-based openSUSE and the commercial SLED product; though this is owing mostly to the SuSE heritage and legacy userbase, it's evidence that Novell's Gnome "focus" hasn't really done much beyond incite the community.

Gnome has certainly earned a respectable marketshare, but I think any speculation that it has exceeded KDE is simply speculation. The only metrics we can potentially rely on require commercial sales numbers, and in that area, KDE dominates. Red Hat doesn't have a significant desktop product, Novell is a fence-sitter, but the rest of the commercial distros are pretty much KDE exclusively. Linspire, Xandros (and the Asus Eee), the Asianuxes etc.

Yes, Ubuntu is popular. But even when Shuttleworth proclaims that 7 million people are using Ubuntu (the last figure I saw him state), it doesn't break out the Kubuntu users, and it means nothing to the ISV's anyways. They'll be more interested in commercial sales than free-downloads, in terms of early-market opportunities.

I won't argue your implication that agendas are involved with the distros that try and distance KDE, but people have been claiming Gnome dominance for some time now, yet strangely, nothing seems to have changed in the big picture.

edit: forgot this part of your quote

<<Sometimes, I wish IBM would buy trolltech and then release all the QT code under the GPL as an act of good will. I wonder how many enterprises would then look at KDE/QT?>>

How many enterprises are looking at Gnome/Gtk? In other words, how can you point to Gtk's free-as-in-beer status as being proven to be better value?

The majority of Tt's licenses come from Qt/Win32 customers. So if customers are willing to pay for a high-quality framework for Windows development, despite the "free" framework Microsoft already provides, why would the same equation not hold true for linux?

Gtk already exists as a free toolkit for price-conscious commercial developers, and Qt exists for developers that value a well-documented and well-supported cross-platform, feature-rich development framework. The armchair quarterbacks in the community should simply leave it up to the commercial companies to decide which way they want to go, but you can rest assured that they use a different set of ROI measurements than the general userbase does when it comes to expenditures.

Ok, just my 2c...

Edited 2008-01-05 09:18 UTC