A quick glance at the PPC version of Kubuntu’s LiveCD. Some screenshots too of this Ubuntu derived distribution.
A glance at Kubuntu
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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kunbuntu screenshots here: http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=306&slide=2…
that’s been flamed about a lot.. i’m a powerbook owner and my main OS (90%) is linux on it – i also have tiger running but i enjoy linux.. also comes from the fact that when i moved from intel i just copied my home-folder and could continue working without any further app-specific-config. – i’m running plain ubuntu on it after having been debian/ppc for quite a long time
> also comes from the fact that when i moved from intel i
> just copied my home-folder and could continue working
> without any further app-specific-config.
That is a valid reason for you personally, but what’s the reason to create this distro in the first place?
Beside the fact that it looks well polished (and that comes from gnome user) I just can’t stand not to bitch about two things.
[sarcasm]
OpenOffice.org and 2-3 others don’t follow standards.
Everything else in start menu starts with K. That probably means that KOpenOffice.org would be the way to go.
Can anyone file a bug?
Oh, yeah KControl still exists as one of the greatest examples of world most cruel abominations in known universe and beyond.
File a bug for that one too
[/sarcasm]
Can KDE finally stop using K* for start menu. The rest of the world has already moved to world readable names. This is soo 95-ish.
Rearrange KControl in something more user friendly. Then KDE could become more.
What exactly is the difference between this and Mepis?
Yeah, thinking it now… My bad.
I should better click three times with my mouse and start repeating to my self
“There’s no software like KControl”
“There’s no software like KControl”
“There’s no software like KControl”
> What’s the point of running Linux on the PPC?
> You already have a killer unix based OS in OSX 10.4.
Ever heard of *freedom*?
OpenOffice.org and 2-3 others don’t follow standards.
Like what? Of course it doesn’t follow many desktop KDE or Gnome standards because it’s a cross-platform application.
Can KDE finally stop using K* for start menu. The rest of the world has already moved to world readable names. This is soo 95-ish.
iWish iCould get rid of all of this prefix nonsense, but iT seems to MySelf that this is a part of iMarketing.
The rest of the world has already moved to world readable names.
Have they? I certainly haven’t noticed. What on Earth makes you think that Access is a database application or that Evolution is a mail client?
After so many years of enjoying OSnews, I think I’ll stop reading the comments section and merely browse the front page once in a while, if even that. No use reading comments anymore, half the stories are bland pseudo-reviews. At least there’s some interesting stories or articles sometimes
> What’s the point of running Linux on the PPC? You
> already have a killer unix based OS in OSX 10.4.
Because they can. Because of the geek factor.
But seriously, I’m interested in more tangible reasons, too…
Hope my reason will be tangible enough for you two.
While some of you see OSX as their saviour OS, I don’t. Unresposiveness and time lags are just killing me on my G5. My only feeling to OSX is: I feel unproductive.
No sane support for more than one monitor. I always use more than one monitor with at least 1600×1200. And having menu on one screen only… well, I often feel that Apple should award me somehow. Just like Frequent flyer with airlines, I should be awarded with mouse milleage.
No real terminal by default. And don’t try to tell me how I can run fink and install gnome or kde software. I preffer my OS being clean, one interface only. And as little installed software as possible.
No virtual monitors by default. After hour or so, I have about 60-80 open windows every time I do my system work. With so much of windows expose is completely unusable.
Double-click to minimize and getting icon in launchbox? God, I hate that. With my number of windows. I soon have complete “after war” state being colored with small unrecognisable colored icons on the botom.
I could continue this, but I hope that would be enough for you to see one point. For some things and users OSX can be the best they encoutered, for some others OSX can be the worst.
That is why I avoid my G5. I would maybe install linux on it. But having cca. 10 PC linux boxes, I don’t see a point. I use my G5 about 1 hour a week or two.
iWish iCould get rid of all of this prefix nonsense, but iT seems to MySelf that this is a part of iMarketing.
Don’t forget to install winRAR or winZip and there’s also a new version of winEdit out there, but I have a problem with winSock. Also, can you tell me the gConf key for gThumb? And how do I start gEdit? I also installed gDesklets last night. Did I already tell you how much I love gAim? But gStreamer crashes!!
Thank you for your answer and one of the very few non-troll comments in this thread. I was really interested what you had to say.
But I’m not sure IIUC: Are you running a PPC Linux on that box when you do have it on? (That’s what the original question was about, after all.)
Oops, sorry. I misread your last paragraph.
Using it, I’ve found no way to add a netload applet like in Gnome and Windows and even xfce which was disappointing. Finally, I’ve had a bit better luck with applications in Gnome such as gnomebaker vs equivalent k3b, for whatever reason. THis makes me recommend ubuntu over kubuntu right now, because I had 2 friends try it out because they liked hte screenshots better, and had some unresolvable problems (they wanted automatic ntfs reading/mounting) and some resolvable problems if they had used Ubuntu instead… Just my POV.
Have they? I certainly haven’t noticed. What on Earth makes you think that Access is a database application or that Evolution is a mail client?
Agreed, but obviously you haven’t got it. I was talking something completely different
fd.o specification of laucher specifies that there is description field in launcher. fd.o spec also says that menu should expose to user a description not the application name (which kde does, but problem is that *X name is named first, even worst every *X name starts with K).
Here is example how it should be
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=305&slide=4…
and here is the kubuntu same menu
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=306&slide=4…
having K* (Some software) is completely wrong. It messes up complete perception of menu layout.
Having
Some Software (K*)
or
Some Software – K*
would look and feel much nicer. Every usability expert will tell you the same thing. Menu should be arranged by letters, and first letter carries a lot of weight when user searches for something in list. Now imagine that first letter of 99% of menu items in KDE is K and even in that time names arren’t arranged by alphabet. Where does that lead? Secondary Start meun carries another vital weight in users perception of desktop.
Make a little test.
Search for .desktop files on your computer. Open them in any editor and make descriptions nicer (for example: Like I proposed). Then open your start menu. And, the whole thing took you 5 minutes?
What I was talking was not bashing over KDE, but bashing over KDE not following fd.o spec in such vital point as this.
Using it, I’ve found no way to add a netload applet like in Gnome and Windows and even xfce which was disappointing.
http://www.kde-apps.org/index.php?xcontentmode=235
and had some unresolvable problems (they wanted automatic ntfs reading/mounting) and some resolvable problems if they had used Ubuntu instead
Ubuntu and Kubuntu share the same codebase.. only the GUI is different, so if something doesn’t work in Kubuntu, it won’t work in Ubuntu either.
Well sure you can, but just because you can do a thing does not mean you should do a thing. Compared to OSX, Linux just does’nt have any good apps. Oh sure they have some that are fine but compared to OSX I just can’t even so a good reason.
> Some Software (K*)
Funny, that’s exactly the way it is here (not Kubuntu, but Debian KDE 3.4 experimental).
Actually I’d prefer it the other way around but I guess that’s just me. I don’t suggest that for a beginner’s distro, though. OTOH I haven’t bothered to find out how to reverse it, yet. Maybe I should try Kubuntu… 😉
having K* (Some software) is completely wrong. It messes up complete perception of menu layout.
Having
Some Software (K*)
or
Some Software – K*
would look and feel much nicer.
While it’s not the default, there’s an option for that in the menu panel. IIRC, 3.5 will get also a (optional) only-description menu layout.
Every usability expert will tell you the same thing. Menu should be arranged by letters, and first letter carries a lot of weight when user searches for something in list. Now imagine that first letter of 99% of menu items in KDE is K and even in that time names arren’t arranged by alphabet. Where does that lead?
I don’t agree on that. After having started an app, what you see in the taskbar is the k* name. So, the description in the brackets is useful only for the first times you use KDE, i.e. if you don’t know what k*-app does. After a few times, you’ll know that Kate is the kde text editor just like you know Excel is the windows spreadsheet program.
Because if people have not noticed there are only 2 things out there 1. Windows and 2. linux. All other OS’s are going in reverse (Losing market share)
If you want to keep up with what companies are using then you use Windows or Linux.
I love the Mac OS. But I am not gonna get a job because I know how to use it. I am on sites like GURU.com etc and companies are looking for Windows and Linux support. Not Mac OS.
I wish the best for Apple, but unless apple puts the Mac OS on Intel or AMD 64 bit, they are going to be left behind when IPod sales slow down. Sorry to say.
With Linux being used on more then just PC’s so it’s going to continue to grow. On cell phones, set top boxes, PDA’s, Wireless AP’s etc even if Linux doesn’t take over the desktop market.
My pretty damn GNOME CVS installation look very hot and clean as you can see on this picture:
http://img234.echo.cx/my.php?image=screenshot34ji.jpg
It’s following the techn00l0gy from Freedesktop.org and is totally HIG compliant. I only wish KDE would look like this so I can finally use it
Ok, I’ll bite this one.
I do c, c++, c#, pascal development (mostly crossplatform). XCode is just not good as for example anjuta.
Most of my work is based on terminals. Native terminal in OSX is a real pain.
I need mailer. OSX hasn’t got one mailer that would come close to evolution.
Web browser. Epiphany does job best for my taste. I can’t live without bookmarks arranged as in epiphany.
I need crossplatform office suite. Meaning almost only viable choice is OO.o
Rhythmbox, well I like it much more than iTunes.
All my image drawing is restricted to RGB and Gimp does much better job for my illustrations than Photoshop did ever (Yes, I was using PS for 5 years), and having Inkscape is a real godsend (small, fast and yes, I’m convert from Illustrator).
Mplayer for watching movies.
Ok, now I don’t know any regular application I would need.
And now your comment from my point of view
Compared to Linux, OSX just doesn’t have any good apps.
You could argue that I could run them with X11. Nah, not interested. Either app is native to environment or I don’t use it. So fink and other things are just a bad excuse in my point of view
Agreed, but obviously you haven’t got it. I was talking something completely different
Funny. You should perhaps try reading your own comments, because that’s exactly what you’ve written.
fd.o specification of laucher specifies that there is description field in launcher. fd.o spec also says that menu should expose to user a description not the application name (which kde does
Well you certainly haven’t got it at all. What on Earth makes you think Freedesktop is a standards organisation (hint – it isn’t) which you can use to criticise software?!
Besides, from above KDE obviously adheres to this as it provdes a description.
but problem is that *X name is named first, even worst every *X name starts with K).[/i]
That’s your opinion, not Freedesktop’s.
Here is example how it should be
Nope it isn’t, and it doesn’t even fit with what you’ve written. The application name comes first there, along with a one or two word description which isn’t representative at all. Users will assume that those menu entries are what the applications are actually called. They’re also totally inconsistent in terms of naming and even punctuation. You could have easily picked each of those apps from totally different environments, because they don’t look related at all. That’s where branding comes in
.
having K* (Some software) is completely wrong. It messes up complete perception of menu layout.
Having
Some Software (K*)
or
Some Software – K*
would look and feel much nicer.
Read above.
No it wouldn’t, it would look like total ass because you need to know what a piece of software is called first and foremost. When you tell a user to run KSomething from the menu, are they going to be able to find it? In all probability, no. That’s just daft.
Do you see any other desktop environment doing that anywhere?
Every usability expert will tell you the same thing.
Will they really?
What I was talking was not bashing over KDE, but bashing over KDE not following fd.o spec in such vital point as this.
KDE is not bound by Freedesktop as any sort of standards body, because it isn’t, and by your own admission KDE provides a decent description of the application, which is exactly what it should be doing. What it doesn’t do is fit with your bizarre idea of how this work.
Was there any point in this at all? Unbelievable. The K Prefix trolls are out I see. Put the usability textbook away, because you’ll find that not everything in the world fits into a round whole.
Yeah, but you coud use Quick Lounge Applet:) I was fighting the same problem (quadzillion launchers on top panel), then I found Quick Lounge Applet
http://quick-lounge.sourceforge.net/
All those lauchers on top panel make me dizzy
I think the anonymous was sarcastic
Maybe, but I wasn’t about feeling dizzy when looking at his screenshot;)
What’s the point of running Linux on the PPC?
In short, the answer is because OSX HATES 800×600 resolution (lack of virtual desktops by default make it a pain to do things) but I still want my clamshell iBook to be functional.
In long:
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=29833&highlight=ibook
I have an older Mac: old enough to be unsupported by Apple’s Tiger, but new enough to be still be useful. It is already on an obsolete version of the OS (10.1, if you need to know), and it is generally useless because nobody writes software for it these days. While I could go out and buy a second hand copy of Panther, why would I want to upgrade it to yet another usupported OS? I would be in the same boat a year down the road.
> KSomething and KControl were the reason why I don’t even
> istall KDE anymore.
“KSomething” is IMHO a really *ridiculous* reason to use or not use a certain software. There are much more important reasons than that, like consistency or features. But you’re free to do what you want.
“KControl” is option-packed, that’s true. But
1) it’s already gotten somewhat better and
2) AFAIK there’ll be a rewrite / redesign for KDE 4(?)
Maybe I’m missing something? Whenever I see screenshots of a KDE based distro, it looks like KDE. Also, Gnome based distros look like Gnome.
What am I supposed to see?
Let me be short
Please do.
KSomething and KControl were the reason why I don’t even istall KDE anymore.
Well good for you. You now should go and tell Apple not to brand their applications with ‘i’, or tell Microsoft to create incredibly descriptive names for their software that no one will remember.
KNow KDon’t KBother KMe KAnymore KWith KYour KStupidity. KThere’s KNo KSuch KThing KAs KGrandma KHacker. KMostly KThey KJust KHave KBad KVision KAnd KYour KKSomething KJust KMakes KThem KHarder KTo KRead
It’s completely readable, isn’t it. Even more than
There’s no KDE menu item that looks like that, but maybe you wish there was? I don’t even think that there’s a Gnome menu that looks like that either. We’re not talking about descriptive sentences here – we’re talking about names of applications that people will remember.
Was there a point?
>What’s the point of running Linux on the PPC? You already >have a killer unix based OS in OSX 10.4.
Personally I run Ubuntu on my ibook because I don’t have the money to upgrade to tiger and don’t see a reason to. I still use 10.1 for Office and multimedia stuff, but for any real work I’m in GNU/Linux.
I am really surprised by the polish of Kubuntu. Booted the LiveCD on my G3/500 iBook. I wanted to see what the fuss is all about.
It found my Airport card connected to my basestation. GUI is fast and responsive. I’ve been using it for a few hours and no complaints. Its solid. Its not going to replace MacoSX for me but I would like to put this on older NewWorld Macs or some Old Worlders if the hardware can handle it.
Overall I’m impressed. I am sure the distro is better on the PC side and I can see Linux gaining if the distros worked together on making a few things common across all the distros. I am downloading YellowDog 4.0.1 and a Gentoo PPC Universal install to try as well.
Since you are so into standards from fd.o you should have know that KDE was the FIRST to follow the spec on this. As per spec you can chose how you want it dispayed in your menu. In KDE you do:
Configure->Configure Panel->Menus where you can select the different combinations as the spec states. Name only, Name (description), Description only or Description (Name).
Insted you try to spread FUD and come with some lame ass ramblings about usability and standards. BTW have your bellowed Gnome fully implemented the desktop spec yet? Last time I looked they had not.
Throw an eye on all these differen Toolbars. Some with Icons only, others with Text below the Icons, others have a Draghandle on the Toolbar, others are different height than the others etc.
>What’s the point of running Linux on the PPC? You already >have a killer unix based OS in OSX 10.4.
Well for one thing, OSX isn’t free. OK, you get a “free” copy when you buy a Mac, but you don’t get free upgrades. And you don’t get free apps. Sure, Adobe Photoshop and MS Office are good apps, but hardly free. When you buy a Mac, you can spend US$1000 or more to buy apps, or you can obtain Linux for free or almost free and have thousands of apps.
This is not to mention the fact that you might have more than one computer. It’s nice to have the same interface and apps on a PC and Mac, and be able to move between the two seamlessly.
Rearrange KControl in something more user friendly. Then KDE could become more.
The KControl have been reararanged so many times now, that it is resonable OK by now. After all, users will configure their systems once and then they will not look at it very often.
KDE would benefit much more from fixing problems in konqueror, kontact, and other applications that user use more frequently.
For one thing, most users that start using KDE will have experiences from some other GUI desktop system, in most cases probably windows or MacOS. Why not take advantage of these previous experiences?
That could mean:
-Use double click as default method of activaion. Microsoft tried to introduce single click activation in their active desktop in IE4. Most users turned it off.
There is no reason to think that KDE users would react differently.
-Remove the iconbar at the left side of konqueror, not even experienced users have a clue of how it works. I have tested it on real users with computer science background but not even they have a clue, even though one of them have worked as a Solaris sysadmin.
– Make konqueror support .hidden files like MacOS-X and Gnome Nautilus. Hide files like /etc, /proc, /boot /usr
/lib, /sbin, /initrd, /dev from ordinary users. That way users can concentrate on their work without beeing disturbed by directories where they never need to go, or at least shouldn’t need to go to.
Hiding these directories will make file selection much faster in file dialogs. Users should be able to unhide hidden files, just like with ordinary dot files, this should not be a way to prevent users from seeing or opening these files, just a way to keep them out of the way in every day work.
-Remove the drag&drop menu containing the items “Move here”, “Copy here”, “Link here” and “Cancel”. On most unix systems I have encountered the number of soft links is less than one percent of all files. Most of these links are created by install scripts and not by users using a file browser. No other menus in KDE have a “Cancel” item to close the menu, why does this menu need it? Further more draging and dropping files is not something you are likely to do by mistake. In almost all cases user want to do a move when doing drag&drop. This means that we have two menuitems that almost never are used (“Cancel”, and “Link here”). And one “Move”, that is used in the overwhelming number of cases. Why have this menu in the first place. Why not just do a move, and handle copying and linking from the edit menu.
To make it even worse, the only way to create a link is through this drag&drop menu. This means that this behavior is totally hidden. By the way there is no way to make hard links.
Popping up this menu everytime a users drops a file on a drop target breaks the users flow of work. Imagine how annoying this is if you are going to sort a number of images from your digital camera into various folders.
– Fix the kicker. Several item are placed on top of each other. One example is the pager applet where 4 deskops are aligned in a square pattern. This means that you can’t make maximum use of the enourmous target the edge of the screen makes up. Why not do like Gnome and have one kicker panel at the bottom of the screen and one at the top, and that way make the most of Fitts law.
– Adding applets to the kicker panel, and adding buttons to application toolbars is a very similar action from a user perspective and should have a similar user interface.
– Avoid defaults desktop backgrounds with images where the smallest detail is the same size or less than the size of icons. That way it would be less risk that icons on the desktop gets camoflaged by the desktop image. We can’t do much about what images users add themselves, but we could at least have good defaults.
The K-menu is divided into several sections. E.g. an “Application” section and an “Action” section. Make these sections separate menus. Rearange the menuitems so that they always have the same order from the panel regardless if the panel is on the top or the bottom of the screen. That way it would be possible to arrange the menus according to how often they are used, or to make misstakes less frequent.
–
Most of my work is based on terminals. Native terminal in OSX is a real pain.
What’s wrong with it? It’s the same bash you use in Linux. Add fink and you can get ports of all the linux console apps, which integrate perfectly into the OS since they do not have to run in a separate interface, unlike X apps.
I need mailer. OSX hasn’t got one mailer that would come close to evolution.
Microsoft Entourage is similar to Evo, and a combination of the built-in Mail and iCal can do what Evolution can as well.
I need crossplatform office suite. Meaning almost only viable choice is OO.o
Abiword has a native OSX port (not X) using Cocoa. The NeoOffice/J project is also busy working on a native port of OO.
Rhythmbox, well I like it much more than iTunes.
Funny, since Rhythmbox is meant to be a clone of iTunes and is working to integrate all of iTunes’ key features.
All my image drawing is restricted to RGB and Gimp does much better job for my illustrations than Photoshop did ever (Yes, I was using PS for 5 years), and having Inkscape is a real godsend (small, fast and yes, I’m convert from Illustrator).
Gimp has a native, (non X) OSX port.
Mplayer for watching movies.
Both Mplayer and VLC have native (non X) ports.
You could argue that I could run them with X11. Nah, not interested. Either app is native to environment or I don’t use it. So fink and other things are just a bad excuse in my point of view
Technically, X is no less “native” to OSX than it is to Linux- it is a windowing system for all *nix OS’es. Apple’s X11 in OSX lets X apps use the Aqua theme and integrate into the dock. And console apps installed via fink are arguably just as native as all other console apps, integrating perfectly with the OS. Not that there is any problem with running Linux on PPC. I’m just correcting a few of your misconceptions about OS X.
“What’s wrong with it? It’s the same bash you use in Linux. Add fink and you can get ports of all the linux console apps, which integrate perfectly into the OS since they do not have to run in a separate interface, unlike X apps.”
The terminal in Mac OSX sucks because all you can do with it is command line stuff. You can confgure the terminal window it’s self, can’t change colors, can’t make tabs etc.
“Microsoft Entourage is similar to Evo, and a combination of the built-in Mail and iCal can do what Evolution can as well. ”
Entourage is a half harted effort to mix Outlook Exspress and Outlook when they could of just put Outlook on the Mac. But that is one of their most popular programs don’t want people to replace their Windows machines with Macs and use Outlook from there.
“Abiword has a native OSX port (not X) using Cocoa. The NeoOffice/J project is also busy working on a native port of OO.”
Abiword is not an office suite (I know you know that) And by the time Neo Office has ported Open Office 1.1 to stable, Open Office 2 stable will be out on Windows and Linux.
Fink is cool and a great idea. But you will always behind playing catch up.
@Uno
“-Remove the iconbar at the left side of konqueror”
“- Make konqueror support .hidden files like MacOS-X and Gnome Nautilus. Hide files like /etc, /proc, /boot /usr
/lib, /sbin, /initrd, /dev from ordinary users”
Am I the only one who finds the juxtaposition of these two points ridiculous? Those directories are hidden by default, since the default file view dumps you in the “Personal Directory”. If you need to get to the others, you choose the “Root Directory” icon on the iconbar to the left. Bingo. Directories users have no business being in are hidden, but are accessible if needed.
How can the left iconbar possibly be hard to use? When I first used Konqueror I saw the bar, wondered what it did and clicked on the icons. Oh wow, the button with the “root directory” tooltip brought me to the root directory! the one with “personal directory” as the tooltip showed me my directory!
Phenomenal! We are talking 5 seconds to comprehension here. Maybe another 5 seconds and I realized that clicking on the already active icon hides the dirtree. Oh noes! How to get it back? Clicking anything brings it back, oh OK. 5 seconds more used up, and I’m perfectly comfortable with it. Where do people like you find such utter retards who can’t figure crap like this out? Don’t know what something does? Check the tooltip and/or click on it; now you know.
@somebody
“fd.o spec also says that menu should expose to user a description not the application name (which kde does, but problem is that *X name is named first, even worst every *X name starts with K). ”
How completely ironic that the shot of Gnome you link to as an example of how it should be done shows menu entries as ‘app name description’. I’ll give you that there are fewer gApps than kApps in the other screenie, but the app name description order is *the same*.
Aside from that, on every distro I’ve used with KDE, the first thing I’ve done is switch the menu from ‘description (app name)’ to ‘app name (description)’. In my experience, it comes exactly how you want it be default (and exactly how I don’t want it). BUT it can be changed to suit either of us.
No matter which way distroX chooses, one of us will be unhappy, at least until we pop open kcontrol and change it. Wowie!
Speaking of dogging kcontrol for options.. thank heaven for the options. We can both be happy with our menu. If you wanted, you could switch the OK, Cancel dialog order to match Gnome’s. (Gnome of course won’t let me switch gtk apps to match the way I want dialogs to be ordered). A Machead can have his universal menubar, everyone wins. Gnome may win friends for choosing “the right way” but when that way isn’t my way and there is no way to change it, well, it means I don’t use Gnome
“Phenomenal! We are talking 5 seconds to comprehension here. Maybe another 5 seconds and I realized that clicking on the already active icon hides the dirtree. Oh noes! How to get it back? Clicking anything brings it back, oh OK. 5 seconds more used up, and I’m perfectly comfortable with it. Where do people like you find such utter retards who can’t figure crap like this out? Don’t know what something does? Check the tooltip and/or click on it; now you know. ”
my art history teacher, probably 30 years old so not old enough for the “new technology” defense had no idea what happened to internet explorer when she minimised it, she had to be directed to look down at the bottom of the screen and click on the box that said “internet explorer” keep in mind that there is an animation showing it minimizing. as well as this behavior being more or less consistant with macs which she claims she has.
near as i can tell she also had no concept of the back button during file browsing
my mom who uses computers pretty much every day for keeping track of grades, writing.. general teacher work, still doesn’t know how to cut and paste. both she and the neighboring teacher were absolutely astounded when i changed their screen resolution for them.
my grandma calls me and tells me her internet is gone if she accidently deletes the icon.
NEVER EVER underestimate people’s complete inability to grok shit.
NEVER EVER underestimate people’s complete inability to grok shit.
Well, for people like that, they always need someone besides them to help.
Side panel can be made hidden. But for more computer literate people, those buttons help to access more locations easily and faster.
But if it was made completely hidden, then it make assumption that all people will never have such intelegence to use those panels.
KDE devs please don’t make assumption that all people are dump or stupid like [….] Please?
“-Remove the iconbar at the left side of konqueror”
“- Make konqueror support .hidden files like MacOS-X and Gnome Nautilus. Hide files like /etc, /proc, /boot /usr
/lib, /sbin, /initrd, /dev from ordinary users”
Am I the only one who finds the juxtaposition of these two points ridiculous? Those directories are hidden by default, since the default file view dumps you in the “Personal Directory”. If you need to get to the others, you choose the “Root Directory” icon on the iconbar to the left. Bingo. Directories users have no business being in are hidden, but are accessible if needed.
The problem is that there are other ways to get to the “/” directory than using the iconbar. E.g. if you need to navigate to a friends folder who gratiously have given you read permissions on his home directory. Another example would be if the sysadmin have set up some shared resource e.g “/shared files”.
If the iconbar is removed you would naturally need some other way to see the home part of the filesystem tree, and the full tree. I would suggest displaying this as two trees with the home directory at the top. Nautilus navigational browser does it this way and it works quite OK.
The tree part could then look something like:
My Files-
+SomeFolderOfMine/
+SomeOtherFolderOfMine/
+SomeFileOfMine
Filesystem-
+applications/
+/media/
+/home/
+/some shared resouces/
Preferably the filesystem tree should be collapsed by default. I would also suggest adding a virtual directory
applications:// to the filesystem view containing starters for all applications intended to be used from the GUI.
The applications:// directory could also be used for software installation. Drag an rpm into that directory and your application is installed.
How can the left iconbar possibly be hard to use? When I first used Konqueror I saw the bar, wondered what it did and clicked on the icons. Oh wow, the button with the “root directory” tooltip brought me to the root directory! the one with “personal directory” as the tooltip showed me my directory!
1) You shouldn’t need to wonder what things do. Many people are afraid to break something if they click on buttons of which they don’t know the function.
2) Many of the groups are unclear, e.g. “Services” contains a mish mash of various things. What is the difference between “Network” and “Bookmarks” and why is the network stuff listed once again in “Services”
3) The labels doesn’t work right. When you click on a label it moves and the text describing it appears on top of it.
This is not good as the icon is more graphically heavy than the text. What happens is that the eyes of the user follow the icon downwords and is the forced to read the text from bottom and up. This feels unatural as texts usually are read from top to bottom. Another problem with the moving icon is that you cant use your motorical memory. Not to mention that you easy can see the name of what you have selected, but your options is only icons.
Phenomenal! We are talking 5 seconds to comprehension here. Maybe another 5 seconds and I realized that clicking on the already active icon hides the dirtree. Oh noes! How to get it back? Clicking anything brings it back, oh OK. 5 seconds more used up, and I’m perfectly comfortable with it. Where do people like you find such utter retards who can’t figure crap like this out? Don’t know what something does? Check the tooltip and/or click on it; now you know.
I typically find these retards at universities amomg people with at least a master degree in CS, some have even PHDs. Others run companies with 10 or more employees. Many of them have many years of professional unix experience.
off-topic but does linux support the latest revision powerbooks trackpad yet? i grabbed ubuntu when i first got this puppy but the trackpad didnt work and i havent looked at it again since
Use double click as default method of activaion
It is the default for any user choosing a Windows like base setup in first login for exactly that reason.
Remove the drag&drop menu
Sounds like a good idea. Or at least have it indicate how you can get each action without menu, i.e. that holding SHIFT while dropping becomes a move or CTRL becomes a copy.
have one kicker panel at the bottom of the screen and one at the top
I am not sure what would keep you from having such a setup.
AFAIK having multiple panels on any edge is already possible.
Adding applets to the kicker panel, and adding buttons to application toolbars is a very similar action from a user perspective and should have a similar user interface.
Sounds like a very good suggestion. AFAIK Aaron or some other Kicker developer is thinking about supporting adding by drag&drop from a applet selection dialog or something like that.
Following that toolbars could also be configured that way
I wonder why some of the first replies got moderated. Are they offensive in any ways, not complying with the terms of this institution or did they annoy Eugenia because it has not the letters “GNOME” typed over it’s full face ?
I tried Kubuntu but it wouldn’t install on my PC – it didn’t like my SATA drive. Well that’s not true – it found my SATA drive hooked up to SATA A, but it was convinced there was something connected to SATA B and refused to continue installing it until it had worked out what it was. I gave up waiting for it to timeout after several minutes and re-installed Core 3 + KDE.
Waiting for the Skunkworks sanctioned SuSe distribution: Skunkbuntu. It’s running tons of great stuff, only you can’t tell anyone
Sorry for interrupting your discourse, it was too much to resist.
/thinks this is an agreeable looking distribution, not sure about the shaky ATI support.
Is the color scheme an indication of the fact that they’re slugging it out with OS X’s Aqua interface? One could be forgiven for thinking so.
Nothing wrong with it, at least they’re working to improve the system.
Won’t make me change from Tiger over it though.
Looking at the screenshot tour at LinuxBeta.com, it appears in the menu that Kubuntu doesn’t even include games or a simple text editor in it’s default install.
Yeah, I know it’s easy to open Synaptic (or Kynaptic) and install stuff from Ubuntu repositories. But not everyone has unlimited bandwidth (a lot of users are still on dial up).
And the argument that there isn’t enough space on a single CD is hogwash – Knoppix manages to cram 2 gigs worth of stuff on one CD with it’s compression technology (all open source GPL – free for the taking).
So it’s pretty inexcusible that Kubuntu can’t manage to have a least one editor (Kate or Kwrite), and some of the standard KDE games included in it’s default install, on one CD.
hey, uno,
you have some nice ideas (altough I dont agree on all of them). http://www.bugs.kde.org or kde-apps/kde-look.org might be a nice place to start
I wonder why Uno is trying his advises on KDE anyways. He should better care and start wiping the dirt infront of his own door. I’m not really thrilled by looking at this picture.
http://img234.echo.cx/my.php?image=screenshot34ji.jpg
Before advising others how to do it right, why not start on his own plattform first. From the looks of this single picture (which tells more than 1000 words) it looks like there is a lot of work to do. If not more work than on KDE.
What’s the point of running Linux on the PPC? You already have a killer unix based OS in OSX 10.4.
10.3 was optimized for the G4, and 10.4 is optimized for the G5. Us G3 users are being left behind. Each OS update goes slower for G3 users. Ubuntu is clearly faster on my G3 iMac. I have it set to dual-boot Ubuntu or OSX, so if I need to run something in OSX that doesn’t exist in linux, I can. I don’t see a problem with that. Most PC linux users have their systems set to dual-boot linux or Windows so they can play games which don’t work in Xine, for example, so why should PPC users worry about dual-booting their PPC?
What’s wrong with it (OSX terminal)? It’s the same bash you use in Linux. Add fink and you can get ports of all the linux console apps, which integrate perfectly into the OS since they do not have to run in a separate interface, unlike X apps.
I could never get fink to work in the OSX terminal. It works great in the Apple X11 terminal. Maybe it’s a G3 thing. Overall, I get the impression that Apple put a lot of work into making the terminal unneccesary, so they haven’t worked all the kinks out of the terminal. The X11 terminal is much more mature and debugged.
Again, I don’t see this as an either/or situation. Install both linux and OSX on your PPC. With the size of drives these days, it’s no big deal if you rarely use one or the other.
In the above reply, I meant games which don’t work in WINE, not xine. Sorry about the confusion.
I wonder why Uno is trying his advises on KDE anyways. He should better care and start wiping the dirt infront of his own door. I’m not really thrilled by looking at this picture.
http://img234.echo.cx/my.php?image=screenshot34ji.jpg
What makes you think that I just advice KDE developers on usability. I assure you, the Gnome crowd and others get their fair share as well, and for your information, over the years I have used KDE a lot more than what I have used Gnome. I try to be toolkit agnostic. What I like to see is full interoperabilty between applications written in various toolkits.
The screen shot you show is indeed butt ugly. It actually helps showing one of my favorite topics in usability,the advantage of a MacOS like top application menu. KDE allready have this so not much use in complaining about that here. However to be of any use, developers of major toolkits need to decide on a common way to do it, or applications that don’t have top of screen menus will stick out like a sore thumb. This is something for freedesktop.org.
> What I like to see is full interoperabilty between applications written in various toolkits.
This doesn’t work and won’t happen anyways. You can’t tie a cow ontop of a hen and say: “look it just works” because it doesn’t work and one of both are going to die.
> This is something for freedesktop.org.
Why ? What exactly is freedesktop.org besides the fact that some pro-GNOME zealots want to make it become a standards place – which it doesn’t if you read the main site.
Many of the responses to earlier posts ask: Why run anything other than OS-X on Apple-HW?
Probably it is just me, but my reason to dump OS-X was the apple character set. Everything I have written for the last years is in LaTex and coded in iso8859-1 (or-15 which differs in 3 code points, one being the EUR sign).
So when I bought my iBook (G3/500) some years ago, it initially worked out quite well. Using/sharing the printer from my Linux PC, mounting the home directory nfs-exported from that PC, etc. Would have sticked to it.
But when it came to real work I quickly noticed that Apple had come with its one character coding which, beyond ASCII is different than what all my documents were/are.
And since I wanted to continue to work on both machines and permanently recoding the documents I immediatly ruled out as an option, the choice left was to install Linux there, too.
First I had Linux in parallel to OS-x, now it is a NetBSD only box, as is my PC.
Wounder why no-one else mentions this compatibility issue as a reason to not run OS-X on that hardware?
Everyone else here english-only?
> What I like to see is full interoperabilty between applications written in various toolkits.
This doesn’t work and won’t happen anyways. You can’t tie a cow ontop of a hen and say: “look it just works” because it doesn’t work and one of both are going to die.
It all depends on wether people want it to work. Given that the alternative to not make it work is to have no chance of break the Microsoft desktop domination many people overcome their disposition to their favorite system. Remember the UNIX wars that is the major reason that Microsoft have such a dominant position today. And then there are people that think choise is a good thing, and don’t like the lock in created by Gnome and KDE.
So far, the success of integration between Gnome and KDE have been tremendeous. Look at menus, trashcan, mime types, drag&drop,… There is really no reason other things e.g. such as a MacOS toolbar could work in an interoperable fashion.
> This is something for freedesktop.org.
Why ? What exactly is freedesktop.org besides the fact that some pro-GNOME zealots want to make it become a standards place – which it doesn’t if you read the main site.
They provide a forum for a dialog, that is a start.
> Given that the alternative to not make it work is to
> have no chance of break the Microsoft desktop domination
> many people overcome their disposition to their favorite
> system. Remember the UNIX wars that is the major reason
> that Microsoft have such a dominant position today. And
> then there are people that think choise is a good thing,
> and don’t like the lock in created by Gnome and KDE.
Anyone who reads this thread is in competition with Microsoft ? The majority of people don’t care for Microsoft or Apple, all they want is a flexible, fast, customizable and integrated desktop solution. I and probably most other readers are not interested to bite the balls of these big companies nor are we interested in doing so. Please stop with your obsession with Microsoft no one here cares enough for that.
Now if GNOME would have been good enough then Microsoft starts to worry on their own without us having to mention it on all places. Though they already fear KDE as we recently heard.
> They provide a forum for a dialog, that is a start.
You mean like the XDG mailinglist ? Where more people flame ahead that people committing constructive stuff ?
WOOOHOOOO!!!
MORE UBUNTU HYPE!!!
WEEEEEEYYYYY!!!