Probably the most often misunderstood element of KDE4 is Plasma, the extensive widget engine that replaces the normal desktop and the Kicker panel from KDE 3.x. The entire KDE4 desktop is built up out of Plasmoids (yet another term for desk accessory), including the panel and the desktop itself – and it is the latter that has been causing quite some confusion. Where are my desktop icons? Update: Aaron Seigo has published a screencast showing how the FolderView Plasmoid behaves as a normal desktop, and how to make it so.The answer is Plasma’s FolderView desk accessory, basically a glorified rectangle which can list the contents of any folder right on your desktop – including that of ~/desktop, allowing you to remain in your comfort zone of icons on your desktop. However, the fun doesn’t end here, as the KDE developers are coming up with a lot more fanciness for FolderView than just the listing of icons.
The idea centres around filters. The configuration dialog for a FolderView Plasmoid allows you to filter contents, so that it shows only the files that you want to see. KDE’er/Amarok’er Lydia Pintscher wrote down a blog entry to show these features off.
I have a ~/tmp folder where I throw in all the stuff that is, well, temporary. This stuff needs to be moved somewhere else and I was just too lazy to do it right away or is stuff I need to look at and that can be deleted afterwards. And there are also a few TODO files in there that need my attention. So Plasma to the rescue! I created a FolderView that shows the content of my tmp folder and (here comes the nifty) filters it to only show me the stuff I really care about. Which is files with TODO in the filename.
Using KDE’s KIO API, you can also show and filter contents of remote folders, but that’s not where the fun ends. Using KDE’s Nepomuk, things get a whole lot more interesting, as the following screenshot shows – remember, this is work-in-progress technology.
The FolderView Plasmoid allows people to have a standard, regular, and comfortable desktop, or a modern, more powerful one where multiple FolderView widgets show just the files you need at that moment. In the future, you could possibly have an adaptive FolderView instance, which uses Nepomuk to show files relevant to what you are doing with your computer at that time. Browsing Heather “Dooce” Armstrong’s weblog, and the FolderView widget would show you photos from that trip you made to Salt Lake City. Just a suggestion.
All that’s left to do now is rename Nepomuk to something that doesn’t sound like it would make children cry, and it’s all set.
Again this is a showcase of strength of the KDE 4 design. I just wanted that Aaron and friends wouldn’t have to deal with so much criticism from users who are afraid it’s different from KDE 3.
Just try it out yourself. And it’s likely that just like me, you will be amazed by KDE 4. And if you’re willing, you can imagine where it will go in the near future. KDE 4.1 looks very promising, and I can’t imagine where KDE 4.2 will bring us…
Criticism is good, even if comes from “fear”. Most people are afraid of change, especially when there have been so many examples of changes for the worse, and so few of changes for the better. From my part, the only thing I don’t want to see going missing is the broad configurability (which many people, especially Gnome users have historically been detesting so much), which I’m still ok with in the latest versions, and that only from a user’s pov, since from the dev side it’s pretty shiny.
I was skeptic when KDE4 was launched and I had never had any good experience with KDE before, but the demo last week convinced me to try a KDE4 distribution in my new shiny mainframey laptop.
The main problem I will probably still have with KDE is that the best irreplaceable apps except Skype are GTK+ only.
Give it a rest. We aren’t solving World Peace. Criticism in the Real World is called Engineering Judgement after Brainstorming sessions.
If you don’t like it, join the Peace Corps.
If you want to avoid criticism from users then heading a large FOSS project is probably one of the worst tasks you can take on. I personally wish Aaron and friends had handled the criticism with a bit more grace and professionalism.
I did, and try updates regularly.
Well I wouldn’t say amazed, but certainly impressed and cautiously optimistic that KDE4 could turn into something really cool and genuinely useful.
I’m trying. And the is where the user ‘criticism’ comes in. I, like many others, had concerns and questions about certain aspects of KDE4. I, like many others, also had suggestions on how improvements could be made. Upon voicing my suggestions and concerns, I like many others, got told to stop criticizing, simply trust that the KDE team knows best and stop bothering them with our silly concerns. That attitude, more than anything technical, is what’s worrying me most about KDE4 at the moment.
Problem is Aaron & friends are very nice people and they often respond to thick trolls or spoiled KDE3 users.
I think they should handle it more like Mark S. et al. and just ignore “I want KDE3 tweak/feature X exactly the way it was and I want it NOW!” posts and let happy KDE4 users deal with the poisonous people.
That would give them more time to deal with constructive criticism ..
Edited 2008-06-16 11:14 UTC
Writing off potential “customers” whom are interested in your project and have questions, concerns and/or suggestions as “poisonous people” is not a good strategy in my book. On the whole 5 vocal critics will give you far more useful (if perhaps a bit loud) feedback than 50 fawning fanboys
Where were these critics when concerns and/or suggestions for the design of KDE 4 were actively being sought?
http://www.kde.org/getinvolved/
http://quality.kde.org/
http://quality.kde.org/develop/modules/
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-usability
http://developer.kde.org/documentation/design/ui/index.html
http://developer.kde.org/documentation/standards/kde/style/basics/i…
http://quality.kde.org/develop/howto/howtopromo.php
http://www.kde.org/support/
Edited 2008-06-16 11:56 UTC
“Where were these critics when concerns and/or suggestions for the design of KDE 4 were actively being sought?”
In my case I was complaining about stuff I didn’t like the sound of, like a new filebrowser that at the time didn’t have a tree view and still has a broken one, or wondering what was wrong with symlinks to bring files from disparate areas of the filesystem into the desktop.
I’m not the only one. People who criticized back then were told “how can you criticize when it isn’t even out yet? Wait and see!” Then it comes out and people complain and you’re saying “where were you during the design stage?” wtf.
Sure it would have been more constructive to join committees and be active on mailing lists or submit code, but not everyone has time for that. As it works in OSS people who leave comments on news sites (/me raises hand) instead of the more official channels get less of a say in how things go, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be unhappy with how things turn out.
Do people overreact, and not give new ideas a fair chance? Sure. Does that make it harder for newer and better stuff to get through? Yeah. But is it really better if it’s not what people expect or want? umm.. Is it better to give people the option of the old if it means they will never experience the new and potentially better? Or is it better to force a new desktop interface on them? umm..
Once I got to that point last year (not being able to answer those questions to my satisfaction) I decided to leave it and see how it plays out. So that’s been less complaining from me, but at the same time I’m still not using KDE4. I guess change is just hard, for all involved and I feel for all involved.
Just read these comments and you will get what I mean:
http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2008/06/maybe-people-will-understand-pic…
A lot of people initially complained, for example, that they couldn’t put icons on the desktop like they were used to.
Taking this as just one example: the point is, however, that you can have a folderview plasmoid on the desktop viewing the ~/Desktop folder … and it then becomes the exact functional equivalent of “icons on the desktop”.
See the picture, in the top left corner, where the green long-grass picture is:
http://plasma.kde.org/media/folderview_containment.png
What is that if not “icons on the desktop”?
I think the first comment has it down pat:
“I bet there are a lot of people out there going “OHHHHHH now I get it. I guess I shouldn’t have been such an ass.”
A lot of the so-called criticism is actually like that … the critics have actually got it wrong. If their criticism was correct and KDE 4.1 actually behaved like they believed it did, then their might be a point, but a lot of the criticism is actually factually incorrect or otherwise misguided.
There might be some valid criticism out there, coming from some genuine people, but it is getting lost in the vast noise of “pretend criticism” coming from people who apparently haven’t even run the KDE 4 code.
It is like: “make up a criticism, it doesn’t have to have anything to do with the actual program, voice it loudly … then complain bitterly that your criticism isn’t being acted upon and that the developers are rude”.
It is an apparent pretty intense smear campaign being conducted here … smear against the software … and it is apparently having a desired effect of raising the temper of the KDE developers.
If you have a valid criticism and your valid criticism is being lost in the noise … then this just adds to the success the noisemakers are having, doesn’t it?
While I understood what the screenshot you referenced was supposed to show… it’s a terrible screenshot. A screenshot showing a simple desktop with folder view as a plasmoid, and another showing it as the containment for the desktop, would have been sufficient. Aaron’s example, while no doubt easy to generate, is overly cluttered.
For now we’ll ignore that I have yet to see any DIRECTIONS on making folder view a containment– the plasma team assumes that we, the end users, are following the development so closely that a statement like “just make it a containment, and stop bothering us” is sufficient directions.
As for accusing people who have legitimate complaints about the direction KDE 4.x has taken of being “astroturfers”, that’s just insulting.
Sorry, but I meant to imply no such thing. I apologise if I wasn’t clear.
I simply observe that there demonstrably is a raft of invalid criticism being made … criticism that continues even after the critic has been shown how the criticism is invalid … which is therefore undoubtedly just astroturfing and not valid constructive criticism at all.
I also observe that valid, legitimate, constructive criticism, such as undoubtedly some genuine people are sincerely trying to make … is unfortunately apparently just getting lost in the noise.
Edited 2008-06-16 12:56 UTC
Fair point.
Are any of these any better?
http://www.kde-look.org/content/preview.php?preview=2&id=81388&file…
http://www.kde-look.org/content/preview.php?preview=1&id=80239&file…
http://www.kde-look.org/content/preview.php?preview=1&id=76197&file…
A nice-looking theme with a transparent background “folderview” plasmoid gives you “icons on the desktop” functionality (see the Aya theme screenshot, left-hand side, beneath the clock). Alternatively look at this screenshot:
http://www.kde-look.org/content/preview.php?preview=2&id=76197&file…
(see the folderview plasmoid on the right-hand side).
The panel doesn’t have to be black (in particular, see Glassified theme).
The panel can be re-sized.
http://www.osnews.com/img/19866/folderviewnepomuk.png
As has been said … a lot of the criticism being made isn’t actually valid criticism.
There is a strong chance that legitimate, valid, constructive criticism has been “lost in the noise” as it were.
Edited 2008-06-16 13:21 UTC
What I get from the comments is:
1. You’re a brown nosed ass kisser
2. KDE 4 was released with even the most basic functionality not finished.
Like desktop icons that save their position on the desktop between sessions and context menus.
3. Seeing how much is missing and that it takes a while to iron out bugs after the missing features are added, it’ll take quite a few releases to call it stable release.
4. And from the screen shots, it looks like a bad attempt of a 6 year old trying to copy Vista look.
There was nothing wrong with the silver-blue theming from KDE 3.5.x so why the sudden change to this black, Vista like crap.
I understand people seeing it as a Vista look being black with widgets but what most people dont know is Nuno likes black.
Plasma’s default theme in 4.1 is black panels which fade to the corners more solid, dont know about you but thats about as close as it gets to looking like Vista.
Edited 2008-06-16 22:22 UTC
This is obviously not true since the KDE developer does not do this, they listen and repy to valid questions, concerns and/or suggestions.
The clue here is valid critisism. Raising again and again the same complaints and issues that have been ansvered and explained before on numourus occastions, and in many cases shown to be invalid, are not usefull in any way. And being louder does not change the facts.
When this is beeing done repeadetly by the same vocal critics. They even continue after their complaint has been shown invalid, and in many cases turns to personel attacks and insults. Labeling them as “poisonous people” are very accurate.
Hear hear.
Spot on.
Define, valid.
VALID:
-I don’t like this because I can’t do this that etc.
why isn’t it like so etc.
-why is it different? why is it done it this way?
-this does not work [explanation of bug or description of problem]
INVALID:
-I don’t like this because its dumb/wahhh I want kde3 again
-Kde4 dev’s are arrogant because they didn’t change feature x when I said it sucked.
-kde4 is ugly/kde3 was so much better
-it doesn’t work…kde4 sucks
————————————————-
These are just examples of the attitude (though some of those are almost word for word copies). A lot of criticism has just been noise with no point to it and completely unhelpful.
the most uninformed critics tend to be the loudest whiners
some willfully refuse to be corrected of any errors/misunderstanding or go somewhere else to spread their misinformation.
trolls to be expected under a popular and public project but it seems that some have gone out of their way to as vicious as possible.
It is perhaps easier to give examples of “invalid”.
Examples of “invalid criticism of KDE 4.1 alpha” are:
(1) “You can’t resize the panel” … invalid because you can resize it.
(2) “Why must the panel be that ugly black color” … invalid because the panel doesn’t have to be that color.
(3) “You can’t have desktop icons” … invalid because you can effectively have desktop icons, and in fact it is more flexible on KDE 4.1 than any other desktop to date.
(4) “Its ugly” … invalid when they are criticising just one theme when the KDE 4 desktop is very much themeable.
(5) “It isn’t finished in this area” … invalid (for a release preview) when the developers have already said “It isn’t finished in this area, we will have it finished by the time of release”.
Hope that helps.
Edited 2008-06-18 07:09 UTC
It’s one thing if potential customers have an open mind and are willing to be convinced, or be satisfied with anything less than “I DEMAND FEATURE X or else kde4 sucks”.
These people are poisonous not because they are potential customers, more becasue they are positively hostile to anything that does not suit their particular desires.
Note that there are lots of people that had gennuine queries and had constructive criticism, or didn’t go on a rampage when they were told feature x is not in kde4.1
Writing off potential “customers” whom are interested in your project and have questions, concerns and/or suggestions as “poisonous people” is not a good strategy in my book. On the whole 5 vocal critics will give you far more useful (if perhaps a bit loud) feedback than 50 fawning fanboys
Not all criticisms are equal. Insightful, well-reasoned critiques should not be ignored (of course). But if someone is just indulging in strident whining, why make any attempt to accommodate them? Especially since (IME) the most strident are usually the least-informed.
I think it is probably likely that quite a lot of the “criticism” of KDE that is posted on public forums actually comes from Windows astroturfers.
KDE 4.1 went through a lengthy pre-design process of soliciting user input. When people show up ages after the consensus design has been established, often without a real point (eg. “you can’t resize the panel” … sorry, but you can … or “its ugly” … without any reason to say so) … especially when a lot of these “critics” have never actually run the code … perhaps you can see the reason for sensitivity on the part of developers.
Personally, I think Microsoft is very afraid that in KDE 4.1 the FOSS crowd have come up with an innovative, useful, functional, cross-platform and aesthetic new desktop that Windows cannot hope to match … and hence you are seeing a lot of vitriolic and quite artificial criticism.
If anyone who did not have any comment or suggestion during the original design stages and who has an actual valid criticism to make now … perhaps to the KDE developers this is indistinguishable from the astroturfing, and that is why it is getting short shrift.
Whilst criticism is good, too much of it has been uninformed, whiny, or simply useless.
too many people said thing along the lines “this sucks” , “I don’t like it”, “kde devs are being stupid, screw this I’m going to gnome”.
Very few of these people actually said something about the specific features they didn’t like or even tried learn more after being corrected of their FUD.
Also it would be kind of nice if everyone didn’t expect kde4.1 to be designed PERSONALLY for them.
Looking forward to trying this out….
I have to agree, though, that Nepomuk is an ugly name…
I’d call it something like “Moose”. Ok, moose are dopey but at least they’re big and cuddly (and the very word “moose” sounds cuddly
)
Maybe give it the name of something delicious like Latte, Choc or Doughnut. “Nepomuk” sounds like a disease..
Edited 2008-06-16 08:14 UTC
Nepomuk is a town in Czech Republic (Nepomuk KDE is named after Jan of Nepomuk, who was born in the town). Maybe to you it sounds silly, but keep in mind that to me for example Tulsa sounds silly too.
They’re both retarding sounding names for actual product names, so you won’t get me defending someone’s pet project named after any city, town or country.
I am sure you won’t defend Windows 95 (codenamed Chicago), or Manhattan project for that matter.
Yeah, it really includes potential to make Linux and UNIX more interesting to average users who judge an OS’s value from the GUI layer, its effects, and, of course, its functionalities.
The naming of KDE components seem to force that it includes a K, if possible as the first letter. Krümelkels, Klops, Knödel. 🙂
Okay, this would follow tre growing tradition of naming things in software that do not relate in any way to the software itself, so you cannot tell from the name which kind of software it is.
Morbus Nepomuk, anyone? When I hear the name “Nepomuk”, I would think of a barbarian slaughterer from Transsylvania. =^_^=
Another annotation: Judging from the screenshot
http://www.osnews.com/img/19866/folderviewnepomuk.png
the internationalization doesn’t seem to be complete: You have “Ordner-Ansicht” (folder view) and “Abbrechen” (cancel) along with english words. Folders and directories (“Ordner” and “Verzeichnisse”) are different things, by the way.
(I really hope KDE will improve seriously in terms of internationalization. German computer users get scared if some english word plops into their faces. Ah yes, and the prefix “nepomuksearch:/” seems to be a bit too long. Typing scares users.)
you forgot Kartoffel. mmmmm.. potatoes.
and Plasma. whoops, that one doesn’t work.
“internationalization doesn’t seem to be complete”
translation always lags behind development, since code needs to be written first before it can be translated =)
the translators can always use more hands and eyes, though. if you speak multiple languages, please help out! visit http://i18n.kde.org to find out how…
I guess you’ve never seen a live moose, they are not even close to cuddly, they are large and dangerous when spooked.
“The answer is Plasma’s FolderView desk accessory, basically a glorified rectangle which can list the contents of any folder right on your desktop”
And you can define a folder view to “be” your desktop, making the whole desktop a folderview. Basicly giving you the icon on desktop functionality of legacy desktop systems, without any rectangles(No need for peple to start complaining about this).
Edited 2008-06-16 08:31 UTC
I look forward to finally getting rid of ugly and stupid gnome when 4.1 is ready.
Well, in my book, “desk accessory” is just another fashionable term, just like the others, but longer. And a bit worse, since it’s much broader (an “accessory” can be anything, literally).
Except desk accessory is the correct term. A widget is something completely different than a desk accessory, and to avoid confusion, I prefer the proper, correct terminology which is “desk accessory”.
Was, Was completely different. times and meanings have changed.
it’s not the correct terminology though, you just decided it was by fiat, the rest of the world has pretty well standardized on widget.
that said to “avoid confusion” you should use the common term regardless of whether there is a more specific one out there, no one has ever been less confused by being told they have acute viral nasopharyngitis instead of saying they have a cold.
second the scope of plasmids is far beyond that of the “desk accessory” as it was invented and continuing in the usage of that term creates a seriously leaky metaphor. When your entire desktop IS plasmids it’s a pretty questionable to call them accessories
Will scroll bar be implemented soon?
Small square area is not able to display all the files.
Seconded. That was the second thing I thought when first trying FolderView. The first thing I thought was “wow finally a desktop plasma thingy for which I can actually see the point”. I’m certainly looking forward to KDE 4.1 or 4.2
a preliminary patch was posted just yesterday that adds scrollbar goodness to folderview. there’s still a few issues to work out with the patch, but it’s almost certainly to make it in for 4.1.0, perhaps even for the upcoming beta2.
I’ve been itching to find a good use for Plasma (in the context of MY desktop and how I use it). Does anyone know of a practical guide to using Plasma to enhance desktop usability/efficiency? I just can’t seem to figure it out. I’m ALWAYS working with windows covering the desktop, how can plasmoids that are always underneath things and never seen actually be useful? It’s not just a Plasma thing, I’ve had the same gripe with OSX Dashboard and the Yahoo (whatever it was called) desktop thing. Hitting F12 to see the desktop never really pops into my head while I’m working. Maybe it’s something I need to condition myself to do, I dunno.
I love the concept, just doesn’t seem useful.
“All that’s left to do now is rename Nepomuk to something that doesn’t sound like it would make children cry, and it’s all set.”
ahahahahaha… thanks for the good belly laugh. you have no idea how many times i’ve felt compelled to apologize for that name when presenting kde4 in front of a crowd
it actually wasn’t chosen by people in the kde project, but it still doesn’t make it any better =P
hopefully our users will just come to know it as “that tagging and social networking thing that’s in all those programs..” and not have to deal with crying children
oh, btw, i put up a screen cast about using folderview full screen (aka “traditional desktop style”) today; links to the ogg and youtube versions are here:
http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2008/06/ok-then-how-about-video-more.htm…
update: and as i was posting this, you included an update in the story with the screencast link. doh! thanks =)
Edited 2008-06-16 17:13 UTC
I added that one in an update here faster than you could post that comment
.
I just watched the screencast at the Youtube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhYinDOKbE8
and found out that while 4.1 will allow a user to have a folder-view-based desktop, they’ll need to wait for version 4.2 to be able to put wallpaper behind it.
I know the KDE team is really intent on doing the architecture the right way, which Aaron explains is the case here since they’re going to separate the wallpaper-drawing mechanism from the folder view.
…But. Isn’t there some hack that could be implemented in the meantime or something? Even Windows has been able to draw backgrounds in folder views since god knows when… Yes, it’s the old “give an inch and they’ll take a mile” syndrome, but this is a serious aesthetic flaw we’re talking about here. And up until now, aesthetics was one of the biggest things KDE4 had going for it.
I can hear the screams already…. “My desktop is hideous and there’s nothing I can do about it unless I take all the icons off of it! Booo!”
They may be whiny and annoying, but hey, do *you* want to stare at a gray-and-white checker pattern all day long?
Edited 2008-06-16 18:21 UTC
Or they could wait till 4.2…or even SHOCK HORROR expand the folder view as a plasmoid (not a container) to fit the whole screen.
But yeah, I know what you mean about the whingers, pragmatism won’t stop their noise.
Hmm, I didn’t realize it was as easy to work around as just putting a giant expanded plasmoid on your desktop. Is it also see-through or does it have background-image capabilities?
all plasmoids are freely resizable so you can just “maximise it like any other window”. Its background is semitransparent, but opacity is dependent on plasma theme, which, for example glassified is more transparent than the default.
You can make a folderview desktop plasmoid see-through, so that the icons in the folder view appear as though they are directly on the desktop, bounded by a ghost of a box (which is in fact the folderview window).
You can have several such boxes on your desktop (they can be folderviews of different folders, or they could be different filters on the same folder). You could, for example, have one box for shortcuts to application executables, another box for “working files”, or a couple of boxes for working files for different tasks, and/or you could have a box for “TODO notes”. You can size and position (and even rotate) each folderview box wherever you want to on your desktop.
The only constraint that I can see is that you currently can’t arbitrarily re-arrange the positions of individual icons within each folderview box … within each box you are currently constrained to have icons laid out on a grid, and ordered in some way (such as alphabetically).
Here is an example of multiple transparent folderviews placed on a KDE 4 desktop:
http://www.kde-look.org/content/preview.php?preview=1&id=77969&file…
Another example, with rotation:
http://www.kde-look.org/content/preview.php?preview=1&id=79274&file…
Here is an example of the “background transparency” perhaps taken too far:
http://www.kde-look.org/content/preview.php?preview=2&id=82933&file…
Here is an example where a folderview has been used to put desktop icons in the traditioanl place … down the left-hand edge of the screen:
http://www.kde-look.org/content/preview.php?preview=1&id=76197&file…
Even given that solitary constraint, the folderview plasmoid of KDE 4 can effectively become “desktop icons on steroids”.
Edited 2008-06-17 02:25 UTC
KDE is getting a desktop feature that Windows had last century, and someone needs a video and multiple blogs of exposition to explain this? Is it April 1st?
Edited 2008-06-16 20:29 UTC
its obvious by your comment that you dont follow kde4 development ..KDE4 seeks to take the desktop`to the future but there are people who want to use their desktop the way they have been using it since last century ..this video shows people that they can use their desktop the old way if they want or the new, kde4 way if they want
the video, to the most part reassures people that they can use KDE4 with the desktop they used in windows last century if that is what they want ..or they can make a change and use KDE4 fully ..
I have no problem with doing things the same way as the most popular operating system of all time. It makes sense to copy what works.
What surprises me is that someone thought it necessary to explain three times (with video and pictures) the operation of a feature copied from the most common operating system of all time.
true, but if the cave men said the same thing “why move out of the caves if ..” well, we wouldnt be where we are, would we? ..it makes sense to copy what works, trues(didnt “the most popular operating system of all time” do the same?) …it also make sense to advance things forwards ..kde4 plasma takes the desktop to new heights while keeping the “old ways of doing things” to those who dont want to change ..
.. the current desktop has serious limitations …KDE4 seeks to overcome some of these limitations …this video talks about folderview, a plasmoid that gives a traditional desktop if run at full screen(to people like you who seem to want this) ..or like a regular plasmoid when run next to others on your desktop(the way kde4 is going)
..have you ever used kde4? ..you dont seem to know what you are talking about …
The reason for this is that some, among others the most vocal “critics”, have been either unable to or not villing to understand the developers when they say “in addition to the new way to do the desktop, we also support the old legacy way of doing it”.
Why people need to get it explained tree times is surprising to me, and for the developers too.
Sorry but OS X 10.6 dealing with Multi-Core CPUs, GPUs in an agnostic approach to leverage what they should be doing while not blowing cycles on video games, all surrounded around straight-forward APIs for dozens if not hundreds of fields where such work has long been desired is far more ground breaking than Plasmoids.
Sorry, but making KDE 4.x to bring Linux to the Desktop where both Linux and OS X beat the crap out of Windows should be enough drive in itself.
OpenCL is supposed to be going to Khronos, the same people who administer OpenGL (according to wikipedia). Meaning even if its first on Mac OS X it shouldn’t be the only platform to get it after it comes out. Linux and Mac would likely follow suite quickly after since it would most likely be done in a similar manner to opengl, meaning the vendor implements the api. They seem to like making things the same as much as possible across all their platforms.
More interstingly will be to see if the vendors actually follow along, especially nvidia as it seems like it’d be in their best interest to keep cuda working on their hardware as long as possible to dissuade purchasing of other brands. Fortunately for Apple they seem to be in bed with ATI at the moment.
So your argument in this case is primarily going for mac’s grand-central business. Certainly interesting, but my guess is that they will be using llvm as they supposedly are for opencl (again wikipedia opencl article) in which case, once again, it certainly would be possible for any other operating system that support llvm to take advantage of this.
In either case, neither of these new Mac OS X api/libs/functionality/whatever-you-want-to-call-them deal with how the desktop itself functions, which is primarily what KDE focuses on. So once again you’ve done a plug for Steve Job’s while trying to downplay the rest of the world. They are interesting but have almost nothing to do with the generic desktop interface and almost everything to do with speedy parallel processing of data.
Apple is submitting it as an ISO Standard so if it didn’t make it to the OpenGL group something truly would stink in Denmark.
Really? When and what?
Windows 95 was released last century, which also happens to be last millennium. Over a decade ago. Are these terms you understand?
The KDE 4.1 FolderView Plasmoid is a copy of what Windows was doing last decade, century, and millennium. Does that penetrate the cotton in your ears?
Oh, it is is it? Then please enlighten me on how to make the Win95 (or vista for that matter) desktop to simultaneuosly show files from a smb-share, the users desktop, a ssh-server, and a ftp-server to use a somewhat extreme example (and without the user necessarily having to know where the file(s) is/are located). And how to filter it so you only see the relevant files (such as .zip files for example).
The only way I know of how to do the first is to create shortcuts to whereever the “My Documents/Desktop” happens to be located (which, of course, is possible in KDE as well even if it’s called symbolic links in unix/linux terminology) which is a clumsy workaround at best. And the latter is not possible at all without third-party applications AFAIK. The BIG difference here is that is that the folderview is far more flexible than any “fixed directory for desktop icons” could ever hope to be.
Besides, even if it is a copy Microsoft copied it as well. I remember having “icons on the desktop with a context menu” feature in MacOS and AmigaOS before Win95 was ever released.
If you can tell me what relevance that has to the actual question I asked………..
Right. Did you actually read the question that was asked? When and what?
What was Windows doing last century that matches the functionality Nepomuk, Plasma and the folderview provides? I want a description of what Windows was doing last century so we can all be enlightened. I’m just willing to bet that you haven’t used KDE 4.1 though, and we’ll find that out if this thread continues.
Where are my desktop icons?
That is the question.
And it’s very legitimate question people are asking since we’re dealing with KDE DESKTOP here.
Now, Aaron, comes with a blog post showing a desktop filled with icons all aligned to grid and with no background, not even plain color.
“Here, people, you have your freaking desktop icons, now shut up.”
“Umm, BTW, saving icon position, context menu, and background are features that will be implemented in the future. Now stop bugging me with you stupid questions!”
I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer but didn’t he just clarify the concerns of the critics with that blog post and screen shots?
Good thing he is not a lawyer.