“The KDE Project today announced the release of KOffice 1.4.2 for Linux and Unix operating systems. Support for the OpenDocument format, recently adopted by Massachusetts state in the USA, has been greatly improved, especially in KWord, KSpread and KPresenter. Karbon, a vector-based drawing program, has also seen a lot of development lately, and many fixes have gone into it.”
Is that they do not need the entire system installed in order to run an app. Abiword, GNUmeric, etc are all run-able on other platforms with out the need for GNOME.
Well, KOffice is the KDE Office. And MS Office doesn’t run without Windows’ APIs and libraries either. Neither iWork without Aqua or QuartzExtreme (Keynote in particular requires QE for its graphics).
And while I agree with you that it’s easier to port/run the Gnome Office apps as they don’t have real Gnome dependencies, on the other hand, by not being part of Gnome, these apps don’t work well with each other. Up until recently you couldn’t share info between Gnumeric and Abiword. And their printing dialogs are different from Gnome’s or from eachother’s.
So, don’t shoot KOffice for being the KDE Office. At least it’s coherant between its different parts.
Not sure what you are trying to say here. QT is more portable than GTK. Look at Opera on OSX. The reason KOffice requires KDE is because they chose the path of beter integration over better portabilty.
Which, IMO, is fine. We have OO.o if we want a portable office suite.
Trevor, what he meant to say is about the KDE dependency, not the Qt one. The Qt one is not a big dependency, as you said it’s pretty portable. It’s the KDE — that’s much bigger — that he’s arguing about.
He wasn’t even really arguing. All he did was imply that GTK is somehow more portable than QT.
I understood what he was trying to say (that the GNOME office suite is more portable, which it is) and I addressed that in my comment. But, I also him why that is and that there is a reason.
I did not even bring QT into the argument. so how was I implying that?
The thing is, Koffice is not only dependent on Qt but also on kdelibs, and that is why it needs them installed.
There are lots off apps that just use Qt and don’t require kdelibs, just off the top of my mind, for example psi the jabber client and eSvn a svn gui.
Also, having done some GTK+ development myself you can use just GTK+, but sometimes you use some extras and when you realize it you also need things like libglade, libgnomevfs, etc, so it’s the same as with Qt, you want extra things, you add extra dependencies.
yes, but the path that GTK+ is moving in is to move all that GNOME stuff into GTK+
Yes, all the Gnome UI stuff will be folded back into gtk+ and thus KDE fangirls will say that there are no Gnome apps because Gnome isn’t structured like KDE where there’s another layer on top of the qt libraries.
Yes, all the Gnome UI stuff will be folded back into gtk+ and thus KDE fangirls will say that there are no Gnome apps because Gnome isn’t structured like KDE where there’s another layer on top of the qt libraries.
Very true, but there is still a lot of work to be done. And there is a huge difference between being runnable and being usable. Project Ridley might open the doors for portability to many applications, but there is still work to do for getting integrated to these platforms. For instance, GNOME HIG-fied applications would just look alien on a Windows platform…
Is that they do not need the entire system installed in order to run an app. Abiword, GNUmeric, etc are all run-able on other platforms with out the need for GNOME.
The trouble with running on different platforms is that you give up a certain amount of cohesion and integration. Would you rather something worked well together in one place, or in lots of places not very well at all? That’s what you trade off when talking about cross-platform.
That only proves that they are not truly Gnome apps and that indeed very few are, despite what Gnome fans always claim. That’s why those who want real integrated applications (and not bad hacks) choose KDE.
I will be probably be modded down for this, but I don’t care. I know which desktop is really improving the Linux desktop experience.
“Is that they do not need the entire system installed in order to run an app. Abiword, GNUmeric, etc are all run-able on other platforms with out the need for GNOME.”
That’s good if you really like the apps, but not so good if you want an integrated desktop.
Different strokes for different folks.
Kde apps only require kdelibs. But that’s a common misconception that they require other packages
.
And many GTK programs require an assortment of Gnome libraries.
but cool thing on it is that it is tightly integrated with kde , this is kilelr argument for using it other gtk apps which luck lots of things like decent printing support, for example gnome-printer api does not support printing of several pages per page
I am using KDE 3.5 SVN as well as KOffice as we speak and it totally rocks. Just converted all my Gnumeric spread sheets to KOffice’s open document format. The stuff is working perfectly and rock solid. The people who spent all their time and energy in creating such an outstanding great project require all my support. KOffice is the fastest and most complete office suite found on open source architectures. OOo is by far to complex and bloated to be taken serious. But KOffice otoh fits nicely into KDE, looks awesome and really promising. Even Krita is keeping up and will soon have surpassed GIMP from functionality and features.
I understand the fact of having choices, but is really necesary to have that many office alternatives?
I think is a waste of resources. All those programers should be helping with open office and make it a better program.
Because OpenOffice goes in a direction that some people don’t like? Personally, I am quite fond to have an Office suite with a native look & feel, widgets, speed, integration, etc. I do not need all the functionalities offered by OOo, so I am better served with a lightweight alternative.
It’s not a real waste of ressources as long as they are using the same file format.
yeah, we should all wear the same clothes, buy the same furniture, food, cars… simply because diversity of products is just waste of resources. What the hell, we ought to select the one person, stop having sex and start cloning so that all future generations will look the same ;-P
thats not a half bad idea!
I’ll be gracious enough to allow you to use *my* DNA.
OpenOffice is a piece of crap. The only reason people actually use it is because there isn’t really good alternatives.
That’s why creating alternatives is good.
Koffice seems like it would be a good alternative, but it’s dependecies on KDE make it fairly useless to anyone not using KDE.
Abiword is getting there.
– Jesse McNelis
“OpenOffice is a piece of crap. The only reason people actually use it is because there isn’t really good alternatives. That’s why creating alternatives is good.”
Agreed. Anyone who looks at OpenOffice (even the new version) and decides to settle on this as the de facto standard is selling the free software community short. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve only seen one desktop application for which I would even feel comfortable attempting this argument, and even Firefox is not the de facto standard browser.
Where does the office suite fit in the LotD paradigm? I believe that if a DE ships with a default browser, email client, document viewer, etc., then this is level at which the office suite should live. In this sense, I prefer KOffice and “GNOME Office” to OpenOffice ideologically.
In addition, OpenOffice is notoriously hard to hack on, which limits the ability of the community to contribute patches or even file insightful bug reports. Most of the OpenOffice developers are Sun employees (I think around 80% of them), which is not healthy for an open source project.
I think that one day, one toolkit (GTK, Qt, or a newcomer) will become dominant. As this process gradually occurs, the DE and application stack will fall into place. Although I think that Qt4 poses a neat threat to upcoming releases of GTK, the corporate acceptance of GNOME is a powerful force. Also, the wide acceptance of Firefox challenges the native browsers (Konqueror and Epiphany), especially since the former doesn’t use Gecko.
The scuffle over languages is important, too. KDE is largely C++ based, and many developer hate C++. GNOME is C-based, and many developers prefer not to have to write C code. I don’t think it’s at all unlikely to see a Python-based toolkit come out of nowhere and gain momentum bigtime in the late 2006-2007 timeframe. I just have a feeling that Python is going to play major role in the “second wind” of LotD.
i think that OO is the best office suite available on linux today. it is light years ahead of both koffice and that suite thats meant to be gnome office. for example: when it comes to rendering a word document with graphics, abiword tries to but fails, kword doesn’t even begin to come close, yet OO renders it 99-100% perfectly. despite its size, its by far the best office application. 2nd best is gnome office. koffice is so rubbish that i don’t even bother to use it. it can’t even compare with gnome office when it comes to compatibility with MS docs (however much i don’t want to use them, one has to think of practicalities), and gnome office is rubbish. hopefully the version shipped with kde 3.4 will be better than that in 3.3.4.
hopefully the version shipped with kde 3.4 will be better than that in 3.3.4.
1. KOffice is not shipped with KDE
2. there is no KDE 3.3.4
3. KDE 3.4 has been released half a year ago.
> koffice is so rubbish that i don’t even bother to
> use it. it can’t even compare with gnome office
> when it comes to compatibility with MS docs
If MS Office import/export is more or less the only thing that counts for you then I wouldn’t recommend KOffice to you.
OTOH there’s not much to see in what is called GNOME office that deserves the name “office”. Just two standalone apps and some DB functionality thrown together that slowly start talking to each other. That’s really no match yet for KOffice’s integration, code reuse and breadth of available components.
OpenOffice has nice functionality and integration into KDE, too, which is important to some of us (http://kde.openoffice.org/), but the startup time is really getting on my nerves.
> hopefully the version shipped with kde 3.4 will be
> better than that in 3.3.4.
There is no KOffice in either KDE 3.4 or 3.3.4. It’s on its own release schedule and released separately. If you want to give it another try then now would be a good time (Hint: read the title of this news item.)
KDELibs is currently being ported to run natively in windows. A lot of work is going on in that area. The hardest part is not in the toolkit, but in replacing/ifdef the unix-like behaviour, since the port does not require cygwin. See;
http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-commits&w=2&r=1&s=win&q=b
Unfortunately, this effort is for KDE/Qt 4, so KOffice 1.4/1.5 will not be available natively for Windows. But KOffice 2.0 will probably be released as a native application for Win/OSX/Unix.
BTW, kdelibs is not that big…
OMG a kde article
There’s some guy that put forth a proposal that Qt and gtk+ apps could hook into the desktop without resorting to hardcoded stuff. I don’t have the link. I think the way it works is that basically makes a query over an IPC to see what services the desktop can offer, and if it can’t then it basically goes into standalone mode. But maybe I’m not right about that
That was the “Rudi” idea. Not sure how this is evolving…
Who is working on Karbon14? I was surprised to find out there was lots of work done on it. Dose anybody know?
A whole bunch of people, Tim Beaulen, Jan Hambrechts, Pierre Stirnweiss to begin with.
Man, people like to be off-topic sometimes. I’ve got news for you. Letter “K” infront of KOffice stands from KDE. Yes, it’s KDE Office Package. The idea of dropping KDE support by KDE Office seems to be stupid. Why should you ask for downgrading application? Why would someone like to have different file selector, than he has in every application on his KDE Desktop? KDE application rocks when it comes to integration. It’s something that I find very handy, when you can share contacts between e-mail client, IM client and appliaction X. When I can save my KOffice document over the net, on the SFTP server, thanks to KParts magic.
People seems to think that applications for GTK+ won’t depend on Gnome. You should install ie. Ubuntu Base and they fetch few GTK applications. Then notice that some of them will pull random (glade, volume, code) parts of Gnome desktop.
i hope to try this out next week. hopefully without it crashing. but i best not get my hopes up. KDE really should use a different icon set from crystal because its not at all easy on the eye.
> it is not easy on the eyes
The gnome artists seem to disagree. See the tango icon guidelines…
yes i saw that. its only some gnome artist that disagree. and they were referring to the icon outline, not the glaring and sickly-sweet visuals of crystal.
Um. The Tango icon guidelines say this under “Things to Keep in Mind” for “A KDE Artist”:
“Only add glossiness for objects which have a shiny property in real life.”
http://tango-project.org/Tango_Icon_Theme_Guidelines
…and thats where KDE have been going wrong all along IMO. it appears to me that the KDE artists/developers have added far to much gloss and bright colours over the years. personally, i just don’t think its a good idea. and i think the overall interface should lose a lot of that clutter. just look at korganiser for a good example of how not to go about getting it right.
> KDE application rocks when it comes to integration.
> It’s something that I find very handy, when you can
> share contacts between e-mail client, IM client and
> appliaction X. When I can save my KOffice document
> over the net, on the SFTP server, thanks to KParts
> magic.
Indeed, superior technology makes it possible. I enjoy using all the great KDE applications that exists. Not that I consider KDE to be better (desktopwise) than WindowsXP – no, also quite some applications that exist are far ahead of Microsoft counterparts. Task Juggler to name one is far better than MS Project, amaroK as media player totally kicks ass. I fully understand why the vast majority of Open Source lovers enjoy KDE as their primary and only desktop. They love consistent look, they love light applications, they love the integration, they love that things work the way they want and they love using superior technology and great applications. Linux is ready for the desktop – KDE makes it possible.
> i think the overall interface should lose a lot of
> that clutter. just look at korganiser for a good
> example of how not to go about getting it right.
Yeah but nobody gives a flying f–k. Why don’t you look on your own side first. The clutter started with the first byte of source code written.
there’s no need to be rude. when you say “Why don’t you look on your own side first”, what ‘side’ are you referring to?
That is infected with GPL virus and the propietary Qt toolkit.
RIP KOffice.
Those Gnomies… always do that in every KDE articles
And you don’t see KDE trolls in GNOME threats.
lol
they are the worse.
you make it sound as if it is all one way. you poor downtrodden kde users that have to put up with those nasty gnomies always slating kde. yet kde users, being holier than thou, never ever slate gnome.
the truth is that you are both as bad as one another.
WOW Lets fight GNOME vs KDE because fighting unites people for a common cause – makes them go hand in hand – and brings choice on the desktop – and makes Monopolies fear the alt. desktop </sarcasm?
WOW Lets fight GNOME vs KDE because fighting unites people for a common cause – makes them go hand in hand – and brings choice on the desktop – and makes Monopolies fear the alt. desktop </sarcasm?
That’s one of the reasons that Microsoft just laughs at the idea of Gnome or KDE as a threat.
The best scenario would have been KDE using a toolkit with a decent license and Gnome had never been started.
Now the groupthinkers hate that and will scream choice and whatever else they’ve been taught to say, but in that scenario you would have the linux desktop, none of this talk about KDE libs would be happening, KDE technology would be even better, usability would most likely be better, there would be more and better apps for the end user.
But at this point there’s really no reason to think that KDE or Gnome will ever be a threat to windows. The transition from a traditional unix server to a desktop system hasn’t worked out so well. It might be time for people to step back and re-think whether either Gnome or KDE has much of a future.
both gnome and kde has its good points to offer. if gnome had never had existed, kde wouldn’t have evolved half as far as it is. qt is better as a development model for a gui because its OO. the downside of it being written in an OO language is that bindings are relatively very difficult to achieve. this means the bindings are always going to be light years behind the current qt and kde. i don’t think it would be a good idea for only kde to have existed. compared to gnome, kde just looks unprofessional, cluttered, and far more complex than it needs to be. kde can learn a lot from gnome, and gnome can learn a lot from kde.
perhaps, in a way, it would have been better for there only to be one desktop. at least for the end user.
its not kde or gnome thats going to pose the threat to windows. its the open source model thats going to be the threat to windows.
if gnome had never had existed, kde wouldn’t have evolved half as far as it is.
I reject that assertion. Gnome is such a cobbled together mess from a developer standpoint, that I doubt KDE has much to learn from them. Besides the Qt license, the only thing I would be critical of would be that something like DCOP wasn’t written in straight C as a lowest common denominator.
the downside of it being written in an OO language is that bindings are relatively very difficult to achieve. this means the bindings are always going to be light years behind the current qt and kde.
See my point above about KDE system libraries.
compared to gnome, kde just looks unprofessional, cluttered, and far more complex than it needs to be.
That is all cosmetic though. All of that stuff could be changed rather easily compared to bringing Gnome technology up to the state of KDE.
kde can learn a lot from gnome, and gnome can learn a lot from kde.
Except for some of the clutter, and Gnome goes way too far when you talk about dumbing down, KDE really doesn’t have anything to learn from Gnome. The Gnome folks screwed up when they didn’t get a C++ binding out earlier. There were two failed efforts at it until gtkmm.
its not kde or gnome thats going to pose the threat to windows. its the open source model thats going to be the threat to windows.
We’re talking about the desktop here, not servers. Just giving out source code for free is not enough to really challenge Microsoft’s domination of the desktop. OSX has a much better chance at that, especially with the switch to Intel.
I think until some group steps back and says we’ve got the linux kernel and some GNU utilities, how can we make a real desktop system out of it, then the open source desktop is going nowhere fast. It’s almost ’06 and the numbers are pretty much backing me up.
i wouldn’t describe gnome as being a cobbled together mess. the advantage of it is that its far more flexible (from a developers point of view) than kde could ever be. rather than changing the whole of kdelibs, the change is made to only one of the small parts that make up gnome. both have their good points. can you explain why kde takes 3 times as long to load as gnome on my pc? its because its bloated and far more complex than it needs to be. its not a pleasent experience from an end users point of view. and thats not to mention the overly cluttered interfaces. it can’t just be the licence issue that makes all the big businesses reject kde in favour of gnome. whats $2500 to them. peanuts. its because gnome have got the interface right and kde haven’t.
technologically speaking, i would say that kde was behind gnome. not ahead. theres only kparts where kde is ahead of gnome. cairo is more developed than arthur. gstreamer is better than arts(arts is so old hat). etc etc.
you mention: “OSX has a much better chance at that, especially with the switch to Intel”. not true. apple are going to make it very very difficult for users to use OS X on non-apple hardware. if you want to use OS X, you’re going to have to buy apple hardware to run it on. there will likely be no difference now than there was when apple with with ppc concenring OS X challenging microsft.
“That is all cosmetic though. All of that stuff could be changed rather easily compared to bringing Gnome technology up to the state of KDE.”
i’ve got virtually every theme there is from kde-look.org and it still doesn’t look half as good as gnome, even with something like mist theme.
i wouldn’t describe gnome as being a cobbled together mess. the advantage of it is that its far more flexible (from a developers point of view) than kde could ever be. rather than changing the whole of kdelibs
It’s a pain to build. Some of the more alternative distros just choose KDE by default strictly because of the pain of getting Gnome to build.
But it’s more than just the way that its modularized. Gnome just doesn’t have the technical functionality of KDE.
can you explain why kde takes 3 times as long to load as gnome on my pc?
Personal anecdotes are almost always meaningless when it comes to benchmarking. I find KDE to zippier than Gnome. Qt is faster than gtk+, Konsole loads up faster, and metacity seems to have “issues”
ts because its bloated and far more complex than it needs to be. its not a pleasent experience from an end users point of view. and thats not to mention the overly cluttered interfaces. it can’t just be the licence issue that makes all the big businesses reject kde in favour of gnome. whats $2500 to them. peanuts. its because gnome have got the interface right and kde haven’t.
The problem is really 3rd party KDE apps that just overdo it because of the RAD abilities of the KDE framework. It makes it real easy to put a lot of buttons and menu items and attach functionality to them. But I guess the KDE desktop proper could address some usability issues – but I think the whole argument is overdone by Gnome zealots
The only think I’ll say about the license is that something like KDE or Gnome or whatever alternative desktop needs low barriers to entry in order to penetrate markets. It’s an issue no matter how many KDE zealots would wish it would just go away.
technologically speaking, i would say that kde was behind gnome. not ahead. theres only kparts where kde is ahead of gnome. cairo is more developed than arthur. gstreamer is better than arts(arts is so old hat). etc etc.
That’s just crazy talk. Just the mere fact of DCOP and Kparts makes KDE leaps above Gnome technically. And then you get down to the KDE libraries that programmers use and there’s just no comparison. This is one of those situations where Trolltech selling licenses does have its advantages because all the KDE guys have to worry about is the actual higher-level KDE framework and not also Qt.
Cairo is still new tech and Qt will use it when and if its appropriate. Gstreamer will be used by KDE (most likely), but it has issues too.
not true. apple are going to make it very very difficult for users to use OS X on non-apple hardware. if you want to use OS X, you’re going to have to buy apple hardware to run it on. there will likely be no difference now than there was when apple with with ppc concenring OS X challenging microsft.
Yes true. OSX will run on generic PCs eventually whether Apple wants it or not, but that’s not the point. The big selling point is that you will be able to either dual (or triple)-boot windows and x86 linux or run virtualization software at a really good speed. The new virtualization tech is getting really good and OSX going to intel makes it very fast.
Also, people said that Apple would never go Intel and they were wrong. Don’t count out someone like Dell eventually selling Apples down the road.
i’ve got virtually every theme there is from kde-look.org and it still doesn’t look half as good as gnome, even with something like mist theme.
I’ll agree there even though that’s not that big of a deal to me. But I’ll add that adding a new theme to KDE seems to be an exercise in frustration compared to Gnome. Gnome going with Cleartype as the default theme is a smart move.
‘Personal anecdotes are almost always meaningless when it comes to benchmarking. I find KDE to zippier than Gnome. Qt is faster than gtk+, Konsole loads up faster, and metacity seems to have “issues”‘
i don’t know how you work that one out, considering that kdelibs and qt include EVERYTHING in it, whereas gnome just has what it needs. if the user doesn’t want 60,6000 paint programs, the user doesn’t have to in gnome. they don’t even have to have 1 paint(as an example) program.
“That’s just crazy talk. Just the mere fact of DCOP and Kparts makes KDE leaps above Gnome technically. And then you get down to the KDE libraries that programmers use and there’s just no comparison. This is one of those situations where Trolltech selling licenses does have its advantages because all the KDE guys have to worry about is the actual higher-level KDE framework and not also Qt.”
i do believe that dbus on gnome is ahead of dcop. like i say, there is only kparts where kde is ahead. if kde was so much betetr then i’m surprised that kde uses so much of the gnome stuff yet gnome don’t use any of the kde stuff. try having a ‘pure’ kde and you won’t be able to. kde uses glib etc. try having a ‘pure’ gnome desktop and it IS possible without even a hint of qt or kdelibs in sight.
“Yes true. OSX will run on generic PCs eventually whether Apple wants it or not, but that’s not the point. The big selling point is that you will be able to either dual (or triple)-boot windows and x86 linux or run virtualization software at a really good speed. The new virtualization tech is getting really good and OSX going to intel makes it very fast.”
i think you’ll find that apple are going to make it near impossible. there’s a lot of money in making it so that it only runs on apples hardware. one heck of a lot, in fact. apple makes most of their money on the hardware that they sell. OS X is built on top of BSD, which contains assembly language. its not so portable as linux is. it will make apples job even easier.
one of the annoying things about kde themes is having to compile it. with a gnome theme, its just a case of dropping the icons into /usr/share/icons, the controls and window docorations into /usr/share/themes. its simplicity, and i like that.
i don’t know how you work that one out, considering that kdelibs and qt include EVERYTHING in it, whereas gnome just has what it needs. if the user doesn’t want 60,6000 paint programs, the user doesn’t have to in gnome. they don’t even have to have 1 paint(as an example) program.
That must be why the GNOME guys are merging about 10 libs in GTK+… Oh, my KDE installation doesn’t come with a paint program.
i do believe that dbus on gnome is ahead of dcop. like i say, there is only kparts where kde is ahead. if kde was so much betetr then i’m surprised that kde uses so much of the gnome stuff yet gnome don’t use any of the kde stuff. try having a ‘pure’ kde and you won’t be able to. kde uses glib etc. try having a ‘pure’ gnome desktop and it IS possible without even a hint of qt or kdelibs in sight.
Except that dbus isn’t GNOME technology. Same with gstreamer, cairo, etc. They are using the new fd.o stuff. KDE could use them right now, but they got backward compatibility to worry about. They got alternatives that existed even before these projects started. KDE4 is going to use many of these new fd.o developments.
I don’t see anything wrong with using libs from another DE. Code reutilisation should be your friend. I believe the main reason why you don’t see KDE code in GNOME is because they are using a specific dialect of C++, not because they really like to reinvent the wheel.
“Also, people said that Apple would never go Intel and they were wrong. Don’t count out someone like Dell eventually selling Apples down the road.”
For a sec, I read that as “Don’t count out someone like Dell eventually selling apples down the road,” as in the fruit
The bindings issue is a canard: it is just as easy, and for some languages much easier, to create bindings for Qt and KDE. The Python, Ruby and Java bindings (those are the ones that interest me personally) are always completely up to date. It’s true that the C and Objective C bindings have been dropped, but that was because no-one was interested in using them… The situation with the C# bindings is unclear, but that’s because of personal issues, not because generating the bindings is hard.
In fact, Richard Dale, the KDE bindings guru was surprised to learn that GTK and Gnome bindings are mostly done by hand, while he generate almost everything.
i believe that C sharp has been dropped and is now as dead as the dodo. there were far too many problems with it, apparently.
It’s true that the C and Objective C bindings have been dropped, but that was because no-one was interested in using them…
Not true. The Objective C bindings in particular were starting to see some use before the plug was arbitrarily pulled.
Not true. The Objective C bindings in particular were starting to see some use before the plug was arbitrarily pulled.
Well, being OSS, if someone has enough interest they can rouse up interest in ObC bindings within the Objective C users. They don’t have to do it themselves, necssarily, just interst enough people who would want to do it.
This is one of a long line of OpenDocument-supporting applications that have been released or are being released from now through the first quarter of next year.
Congrats to the KOffice team! Diversity in interface. Unity in format.
I reckon that ultimately, FOSS is driven by the engagement of developers. All commercial devs have a stake in catering to users and expanding their market share, but FOSS devs work for their own reasons, which may or may not involve expanding market share.
I often hear that what FOSS cares about is fulfilling personal standards of quality, and not beating MS per se. The upshot being, there’s not a strong enough reason for the devs to go through with consolidation.
Ok, let’s play with your statement about FOSS developers.
But you’re forgetting that both KDE and Gnome both have corporate interests – Gnome more so. So instead of being creative and leap-frogging over what Windows and OSX are doing they are playing catchup because customers want to be like windows.
Apparently it was more that people couldn’t agree on the best way to do it — and after that came a lack of interest. There was no technical obstacle that made C# bindings hard.
The problem with the C#/Qt bindings were because of the originator of the first project who shall remain nameless, but frequents #dotgnu and has several “issues”.
Some guy “maynoso” or something was supposed to get something going later after the first project, but I have no idea what happened with this.
It seems a shame that KDE developers don’t have KDE and Qt bindings for a powerful framework like Mono, but C++ obviates the need for a higher-level language to a certain degree, something the Gnome developers almost have to do.
The thing that was missing in the last version was a database package which is usable at the same level the database part of AppleWorks, or Filemaker, is usable. Kexi is so far not a real contender – its hard to use, and so far it lacks scripting. If they get this to the level of functionality you had in, say, Filemaker v 4, KOffice will be a real player. The WP function is nice. The spreadsheet is fine except that if you try to use it on largish files (my sample was 2000 rows and 40 columns) it is impossibly slow. As is Gnumeric for that matter. OO will do this just fine.
You really have to use these packages in anger to form a good picture of their competitiveness….
I checked out the screenshots of the recent KOffice components, and I’m actually quite impressed with what I can see of the interface. It’s not as cluttered as I would expect from a KDE application. Unfortunately, it’s a no go:
I absolutely need to export to MS Word and MS PowerPoint on a regular basis, and KOffice doesn’t have any support for either. It claims decent import functionality from MS Word, but almost no support for importing MS PowerPoint.
This is a showstopper for me, and until MS Office users can read OpenDocument, I can’t use KOffice for most of my office-related work.
Even OpenOffice gives me some annoying problems when I export to MS Powerpoint, even if I create the presentation as a ppt from the start. I’m anxiously awaiting a world that agrees on OpenDocument…
but almost no support for importing MS PowerPoint.
it was one of the Google Summer of Code projects. i think it will be merged with the next version, 1.5
That’s true — but don’t expect perfect support. I mean, what can you expect when even Microsoft couldn’t support writing files in Word 6 format from Word 2000: they simply use rtf with a .doc extension when saving as Word 6. And the other MS file formats are not exactly better…
The time spent in arguing/fighting here @ OSNEWS over why the other DE /office suite sucks would be better spent in improving the documentation of the office suite/ DE you like.
When will we understand this?
We are just wasting precious OSS manhours for nothing! If you have a problem with a DE/Office Suite – put a feature request /bug report on the project’s site. Fighting here will probably lead to nothing other than wastage of time.
> The time spent in arguing/fighting here
I wholeheartly agree with you, unfortunately it’s common practice for GNOME drones to kill off KDE threads that way. Their only little chance to manifest GNOME as desktop. If they can’t do it with code, they do it by talking KDE threads to death.
> for example gnome-printer api does not support
> printing of several pages per page
Actually it does support it. Unfortunately there are plenty of GNOME apps who doesn’t support the feature offered by gnome-print.
Here a Bugreport:
http://bugs.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=311348
And here the Illustration:
http://bugs.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=50130&action=view
Unfortunately people keep working on all things but forget the important printing possibilities offered.
> KDE4 is going to use many of these new fd.o developments.
Which ones ? Could you name some ?
for example DBUS and HAL
> > KDE4 is going to use many of these new fd.o developments.
> Which ones ? Could you name some ?
– GStreamer may very well be the recommended multimedia backend in KDE 4 (wrapped by KDEMM that allows swappable backends). In any case it will be supported.
– poppler in KPDF
– Support for the openclipart.org collection in apps like KOffice, maybe in combination with the “Get Hot New Stuff” feature
BTW: Software that’s listed at fd.o is not to be taken as standard software, it’s more like a marketplace that offers exposure and it is a chance to reuse code. KDE will use it where it makes sense. If it is any good *and* there are no issues with doing so, e.g.
– bad code quality
– missing API stability of the software
– restrictions on the side of KDE due to the binary compatibility that KDE has committed to
– KDE already having a working implementation that’s considered just as good or better
Well, keeping with the subject of the article KOffice is a fine piece of work. When you consider the lack of developer resources these guys have, and a lack of time, it’s incredible that they’re managing to keep a word processor, spreadsheet, presenter, visio-like app, database application, image application, chart and drawing applications going and pushing them forwards you can see the power of KDE’s development framework and infrastructure. Krita, in particular, and the pace of its development is incredible when you consider that the GIMP has been around for ten years now and still isn’t a Photoshop replacement.
Now, the other thing. From a general user perspective I really don’t care about KDE or Gnome. There could be fifteen desktops for all I care. However, when I’m looking at the pros and cons of each of those desktops, and looking at doing what people have only been talking about for the last five years, namely getting businesses to use desktop Linux, I need a desktop that will give me the minimum amount of grief possible and be an adequate Windows replacement. Because of the quality of the development infrastructure (and that matters, because it comes out in the applications for an end user), and hence the quality of the applications, that desktop is KDE. I can also be confident that that desktop development infrastructure will help all developers, giving them the support they need, and because of that I can then place more trust in the desktop itself.
With Gnome, yes, it is a reasonable desktop for many end users. However, for what I referred to before (getting Windows users in businesses to use it) my experience has not been good. Keep in mind the target audience here. Too many things are not right with Nautilus, such as handling large numbers of files and folders (how long has this been in development and how much did Eazel spend on it?), printing infrastructure, shaky media players and applications, UI responsiveness, slowness with lots of Gnome/GTK applications open etc. At one time there was an accusation that KDE didn’t have many applications, but when you look at the relative quality of KDE applications today (amaroK, Kontact, Krita etc.) versus GTK and Gnome there is no contest. Look at the variety as well – remote desktop, a wide assortment of games and check out the kde-edu module for educational apps! These things make a difference. Too many Gnome/GTK apps just don’t hang together. The ones that just about do are Nautilus, Evolution, GAIM, GIMP etc. but they tend to be large applications with a lot of development weight, and in some cases, millions in investment – and that’s free software you can use Qt to develop for nothing as well! What’s happened with Evolution is a bit shocking (curiosity finally killed me and I went off and had a look). Evolution was a good e-mail app at one time, but it just seems as though since they’ve added features (groupware, calendaring etc.) the thing has started to drop to pieces. What’s that phrase some Gnome devs tend to use? “Just Works”(tm). Right. I would say that the development base they’re using is just not scalable, not necessarily that the developers are not talented.
Considering that we’ve got people like Dave Neary and others who have rabidly pushed Gnome as a corporate desktop, and tried all ways to scare people off KDE (licensing, blah, blah, blah), the fact that they’ve got a desktop that just doesn’t hang together isn’t funny. No wonder there are many “Linux not ready for the desktop” comments. At the very least, the KDE people are not trying to sell something that doesn’t exist. I don’t have a problem with Gnome itself, but the continuous marketing crap is just totally tiring now.
Is KDE perfect? Hell no. Is any desktop? The things I hear consistently from KDE naysayers tend to involve the words ‘clutter’, ‘options’, ‘usability’, blah, blah, blah. Well excuse me, but I and other users can put up with a bit of clutter and some slightly confusing dialogues for the sake of a working, solid desktop that “Just Works”(tm) and a desktop you can have confidence in for the future. Waiting twenty seconds for Nautilus to catch up with itself or Evince’s printing ability is not anyone’s idea of usable. Now, if some people just can’t accept all that within the context of what I am talking about then that’s just tough luck. You can sell me a pair of the glasses you use, because they must be good!
Does KDE need tidying up and to have more focused usability work done? Yes, it does. Has Gnome taken a lead in this area and inspired others? Yes, it certainly has. However, this stuff doesn’t just happen and its about more than getting developers to follow a HIG. In KDE devs won’t need to follow it all anyway because of the common base they can all use. When the HIG changes, whoila, you change your base and all the apps inherit all of the stuff they have in common.
KDE also seem to have some pretty nice usability experts on board now, but it’s going to take some time in the run-up to KDE 4.0 to see the results of that. Getting usability in the process is hard work on any project. I also hope to see KOffice 2.0 there as well with its incredible array of applications and functionality, and with the steady pace of development (and good development infrastructure!) that should be a nice release.
Finally, thanks to Inge Wallin and Anne-Marie Mahfouf for doing more promotion and making the KOffice site nicer!
Apparently it was more that people couldn’t agree on the best way to do it — and after that came a lack of interest.
Yes, good summary. But writing bindings is hard, very hard whether for KDE or Gnome in spite of what anyone might say about the Gnome C api being easy to wrap.
We couldn’t afford to waste resources on two competing projects, so I put my effort ‘kimono’ on hold and let Adam Treat and others get on with trying their approach. He has now stopped working on Qt#, and I don’t think anyone else is very active. It might be nice to revive Kimono, which uses the cross language Smoke bindings library for KDE 4.
C# is quite hard to learn as it has quite a few more systems programming features than Java. If you can master C# it isn’t that much harder to learn to program Qt/KDE in C++. Ruby and Python are much easier and more fun; they are a better basis for RAD environments.
There was no technical obstacle that made C# bindings hard.
P/Invoke doesn’t interface very well with unmanaged C++ as it doesn’t have a standard name mangling scheme for handling overloaded methods. Kimono solved that by routing every method call through a single Proxy.Invoke() method using transparent proxies, which meant you only needed to wrap one method with P/Invoke. That single method would interface with the Smoke runtime.
> – GStreamer
> – Poppler
I am aware of Poppler and GStreamer being an option for KDE IV but how do you deal with the Glib dependency ? I’d really like to avoid as much GNOME related stuff as possible. Please take this into consideration. I have no problems substituting GStreamer with Xine in the kdemm framework since I prefer Xine over GStreamer, which simply works. But Poppler can be an issue due to its Glib dependency and because Poppler + Cairo causes a bunch of rendering problems within Evince.
But Poppler can be an issue due to its Glib dependency and because Poppler + Cairo causes a bunch of rendering problems within Evince.
I don’t think Poppler depends on glib.
$ apt-cache search poppler
libpoppler-dev – PDF rendering library — development files
libpoppler-glib-dev – PDF rendering library — development files (GLib interface)
libpoppler-qt-dev – PDF rendering library — development files (Qt interface)
libpoppler0c2 – PDF rendering library
libpoppler0c2-glib – PDF rendering library (GLib-based shared library)
libpoppler0c2-qt – PDF rendering library (Qt-based shared library)
The kpdf developers work on Poppler, together with some GNOME people. kpdf does not use poppler right now because the kdpf developers added some features to xpdf (which is used in kdpf and which is also the base of Poppler) that are not yet ported to Poppler.
>if the user doesn’t want 60,6000 paint programs, the
> user doesn’t have to in gnome. they don’t even have
> to have 1 paint(as an example) program.
They don’t have to install any paint program in KDE either. Every decent distro (like debian) splits the modules up into the different applications.
To use a single KDE application, you need qt+kdelibs+the app, nothing else.
>i do believe that dbus on gnome is ahead of dcop.
> like i say, there is only kparts where kde is
>ahead. if kde was so much betetr then i’m surprised
> that kde uses so much of the gnome stuff yet gnome
> don’t use any of the kde stuff.
DBUS is DCOP renamed and somewhat enhanced. DBUS is cluttered, is not mature yet and the API is not stable. So DCOP is around for 5+ years, and the Gnomes reinvent the wheel, and make it big hype. Instead of taking DCOP (which has room for improvement, but is tested and stable for years)
Which is what they are good at: mimicking, writing crappy undocumented C code (man, we are in 2005. nobody needs C on the desktop!) and making a hype out of it. That’s marketing, not engineering.
>try having a ‘pure’ kde and you won’t be able to. kde uses glib etc.
Where? glib is used when using some lib or plugin, but nowhere in the core of KDE.
>try having a ‘pure’ gnome desktop and it IS possible
> without even a hint of qt or kdelibs in sight
Because of licensing issues that are gone now. If Qt was under GPL from the beginning on, Gnome wouldn’t exist today.
> DBUS is DCOP renamed and somewhat enhanced. DBUS is
> cluttered
What do you mean by “cluttered” in this context?
> glib is used when using some lib or plugin, but
> nowhere in the core of KDE.
Well, arts uses it. Not KDE core but an important dependency of KDE. But arts’ reliance on glib and the use of C as language were two reasons why many KDE devs wouldn’t or couldn’t touch it which turned out to be its doom.
“There is no KOffice in either KDE 3.4 or 3.3.4. It’s on its own release schedule and released separately. If you want to give it another try then now would be a good time (Hint: read the title of this news item.)”
must be 3.3.2 then. its the one in mandriva LE2005 10.2
“If MS Office import/export is more or less the only thing that counts for you then I wouldn’t recommend KOffice to you.”
no, it certainly isn’t. apart from a few seconds faster loading up time, what has koffice or gnome office got that open office hasn’t?
“To use a single KDE application, you need qt+kdelibs+the app, nothing else.”
its dkdelibs and kdecore that comes bundled with lots of applications that i don’t want. its a bit like MS bundling IE with windows.
“Where? glib is used when using some lib or plugin, but nowhere in the core of KDE.”
try it out for yourself then. uninstall glib and everything thats part of gnome, and see how much of kde you have left.
“Because of licensing issues that are gone now. If Qt was under GPL from the beginning on, Gnome wouldn’t exist today”
its true that the licencing issue was the initial inspiration to start gnome. but qt has now been GPL’d. yet all the major companies are STILL overlooking kde in favour of gnome. what does that tell you?
> must be 3.3.2 then. its the one in mandriva LE2005 10.2
No, what I meant is that KOffice and KDE are not released together. So whether the KDE version is 3.3.2 or not doesn’t really matter. KOffice has its own version number and that’s what counts. Dunno which one is in mandriva LE2005.
> > “To use a single KDE application, you need
> > qt+kdelibs+the app, nothing else.”
> its dkdelibs and kdecore that comes bundled with
> lots of applications that i don’t want.
The alternative would be a massive reinvention of the wheel instead of code reuse through libraries.
Or static linking of big code chunks to hide the fact that external functionality is used.
It’s funny how the same people who happily install megabytes of Adobe Acrobat Reader complain about dependencies of KDE apps that are shared between the different apps.
its dkdelibs and kdecore that comes bundled with lots of applications that i don’t want.
kdelibs comes bundled with applications?
You mean for example the dcop commandline tools?
let me introduce you to something called a dependency.
Yes, I know that.
my kdelibs package depends on kdelibs-bin, which includes such tools like dcop, dcopfind, etc.
It might not be necessary to include those tools as a dependency of kdelibs, but I guess the quite small kdelibs-bin package (around 800KB) doesn’t really matter.
> KDE4 is going to use many of these new fd.o developments.
Which ones ? Could you name some ?
He is probably thinking of DBUS and gstreamer in that case.
DBUS are one thing which may get adopted and used as a replacement for DCOP. That is if it’s enough, that is meets the requirements KDE has for IPC or can be fixed to meet such demands. If it’s not KDE are better of using DCOP and extending it with direct bindings to HAL.
As for gstreamer it’s one of several backends for the new backendindependent multimedia framework for KDE 4. Other candidates are NMM, alsa, mas and aRts. My personal preference are NMM for it’s incredible cool tech, or using alsa directly for simplicity when having a soundcard capable of HW mixing.
Making Arthur, Qt4 vector drawing framework, use Cairo are also one possibility. When Cairo gets stable and if there are someting to gain from doing so, that is.
“No, what I meant is that KOffice and KDE are not released together. So whether the KDE version is 3.3.2 or not doesn’t really matter. KOffice has its own version number and that’s what counts. Dunno which one is in mandriva LE2005. ”
i see. i meant the koffice thats intended to work with the greatest compatibility with kde 3.4.
“It’s funny how the same people who happily install megabytes of Adobe Acrobat Reader complain about dependencies of KDE apps that are shared between the different apps.”
its recently been ported to linux using the gtk toolkit. i won’t be using it though. there are many applications that render pdf sufficiently enough in the vast amjority of cases but that are a fraction of the size. so you can count me out of those: ‘same people who happily install megabytes of Adobe Acrobat Reader’
> > Adobe Acrobat Reader
> its recently been ported to linux using the gtk
> toolkit.
That’s what I was talking about:
# apt-cache show acroread | grep -i installed
Installed-Size: 53192
> there are many applications that render pdf
> sufficiently enough in the vast amjority of cases
> but that are a fraction of the size.
That application is kpdf for me:
# apt-cache show kpdf | grep -i installed
Installed-Size: 1693
As KDE user I don’t have to take the size of KDE libs and Qt into account because they’re installed anyway. I’d say at 1,7M that’s quite a bargain for me compared to Adobe’s viewer, isn’t it?
And even if you have to install all the dependencies it’s still in the same order of magnitude as acroread (I don’t have the accumulated numbers. I won’t venture a more precise guess.). But most people don’t just use a single KDE app. And with every used KDE the calculated result gets better.
What size is your viewer including dependencies?
Not true. The Objective C bindings in particular were starting to see some use before the plug was arbitrarily pulled.
Umm, as the author of the Objective-C and C bindings I can confirm that the KDE Objective-C bindings were never actually released. I couldn’t get them to run although they linked. The Qt only ones worked well, but I never heard of anyone actually using them.
If there really were lots of people wanting to write KDE apps in Objective-C, I would be only too happy to have a second attempt using the Smoke library via -doesNotUnderstand:
I think it’s best to wait until Objective-C++ is available for gcc on Linux, otherwise it’s a PITA to mix KDE C++ code with Objective-C.
Using both C and Objective-C bindings libraries meant you have such a huge memory requirement and slow load times. Using Smoke would elimanate the need for a C binding though at least.
Its true that the licencing issue was the initial inspiration to start gnome. but qt has now been GPL’d. yet all the major companies are STILL overlooking kde in favour of gnome. what does that tell you?
It tells me that KDE is mainly community driven and actually I think it is a good thing. I don’t understand why some people are so happy because a company like Adobe uses gtk to port their Acrobat reader to Linux. I understand that a programmer is happy, when his own program is used by a lot of people. But why should someone be happy if software coded by someone else is used by some company X?
“As KDE user I don’t have to take the size of KDE libs and Qt into account because they’re installed anyway. I’d say at 1,7M that’s quite a bargain for me compared to Adobe’s viewer, isn’t it?”
you have 300MB+ of bloat already installed, so why not add to it by using kpdf. no harm in that, i guess.
it would have been better to just have what little there is of gtk installed, then add adobe viewer. note than adobe viewer doesn’t use gnome.
i wouldn’t choose either option.
“It tells me that KDE is mainly community driven and actually I think it is a good thing.”
thats a good excuse. what would you be saying if the situation was the other way around? would you be saying: ‘oh, its because gnome is community driven’? i think not.
“I don’t understand why some people are so happy because a company like Adobe uses gtk to port their Acrobat reader to Linux.”
i haven’t even given the subtlest of hints that i was one of them. it doesn’t make any difference to me.
thats a good excuse. what would you be saying if the situation was the other way around?
What situation was the other way around?
would you be saying: ‘oh, its because gnome is community driven’? i think not.
Well, looking back down the thread of comments here this assumes that Gnome/GTK has all these companies supposedly backing it. Since that isn’t true, this comment is totally void. Feel free to take those incredible glasses of, stop getting corporate delusions of grandeur and have a look at where Gnome really is in the world today. That’s right, nowhere.
i haven’t even given the subtlest of hints that i was one of them. it doesn’t make any difference to me.
No quite clearly not :-).
Stop trolling. With every one of your posts it gets clearer and clearer that that’s the only thing you’re after.
> you have 300MB+ of bloat already installed,
The MBs spent on KDE are not bloat but contain the functionality I use in my every day work. And I don’t just want a PDF viewer, I want transparent and stable network transparency as offered by the IO Slave technology, I want an integrated desktop, … There’s no other alternative that offers the same functionality, integration and consistency.
> so why not add to it by using kpdf.
> no harm in that, i guess.
In the face of 300*GB*+ hard discs I can hardly take your concerns seriously.
> it would have been better to just have what little
> there is of gtk installed, then add adobe viewer.
> note than adobe viewer doesn’t use gnome.
> i wouldn’t choose either option.
…and I couldn’t care less.
> kdelibs and kdecore that comes bundled with lots of
> applications that i don’t want. its a bit like MS
> bundling IE with windows.
1) kdelibs doesn’t ship a single application, it’s the framework, dude.
2) You mean kdebase with “kdecore” (kdecore is a lib actually)? You don’t need kdebase to run anything outside of kdebase.
3) Distributions split the modules up in per-app packages. So no need to install _any_ application you do not use.
4) Every developer not reusing code but reinventing the wheel is stupid, as he wastes his time, and his solution is most likely inferior to one shared and reviewed by hundreds of people.
So if the developer uses other libs instead of kdelibs, you win nothing but a even bigger mess where every apps has completely different dependencies.
And if you link it statically, you don’t win anything either, you waste lots of system resources even.
> try it out for yourself then. uninstall glib and
> everything thats part of gnome,
http://www.kde.org/info/requirements/3.5.php
As I said, glib is optional (mostly when fiddling with some C lib), and apart from that, there
is no dependency on gnome libraries.
There is libxml2 and gstreamer mentioned though, but both is optional.
> its true that the licencing issue was the initial
> inspiration to start gnome. but qt has now been
> GPL’d. yet all the major companies are STILL
> overlooking kde in favour of gnome. what does that
> tell you?
It tells me that some companies want to ship proprietary software without paying a single cent to the makers of the toolkit and framework. For proprietary software on KDE you need a Qt license, on Gnome you don’t, as its LGPL.
Apart from that, there is lots of company support behind KDE, they just don’t make such a hype around of it.
t tells me that some companies want to ship proprietary software without paying a single cent to the makers of the toolkit and framework.
He was talking about companies favoring GNOME.
That almost certainly doesn’t mean software vendors, because all of avoid creating products with desktop environment dependecies and go the toolkit-only root.
More likely he meant distributors using GNOME as their default desktop, because Sun, Redhat and Ubuntu do that and he is conveniently forgetting the ones using KDE.
you have 300MB+ of bloat already installed, so why not add to it by using kpdf. no harm in that, i guess.
$ df
/dev/hda5 7.5G 5.7G 1.9G 76% /
My Linux installation is about 5.7G. So why should I care if Qt+kdelibs+kdebase is about 300 MB+ (I am not even sure if this is actually true)?
So why should I care if Qt+kdelibs+kdebase is about 300 MB+ (I am not even sure if this is actually true)?
That was obviously exaggerated. Its more around 50 MB.
“It tells me that KDE is mainly community driven and actually I think it is a good thing.”
thats a good excuse. what would you be saying if the situation was the other way around? would you be saying: ‘oh, its because gnome is community driven’? i think not.
I am working on a KDE application. I think I wouldn’t do it if KDE would not be community driven. For me, the special thing about Linux and OSS is its developer community. And KDE has a really nice and friendly developer community and I am happy to be part of that developer community. I really don’t care for some companies to make money with open source.
“2) You mean kdebase with “kdecore” (kdecore is a lib actually)? You don’t need kdebase to run anything outside of kdebase.”
yes, i meant kdebase.
“It tells me that some companies want to ship proprietary software without paying a single cent to the makers of the toolkit and framework. For proprietary software on KDE you need a Qt license, on Gnome you don’t, as its LGPL.
Apart from that, there is lots of company support behind KDE, they just don’t make such a hype around of it.”
‘lots of company support behind KDE’!? you’re having a laugh aren’t yer? name me one big company thats behind kde? answer: none. and i’m not talking about distrubutions here. companies have to think about their customers. they have to ascertain whether their customers will like working with and using the DE in question. and they’ve apparently all decided that people prefer working with gnome than they do with kde. they have done their market research beforehand to find out what the vast majority of people prefer because there’s lots of money involved.
“I am working on a KDE application. I think I wouldn’t do it if KDE would not be community driven”
yes, i’ve heard that too. but then again, you’d have to be ‘community driven’ when there is no interest from big business in kde.
‘lots of company support behind KDE’!? you’re having a laugh aren’t yer? name me one big company thats behind kde? answer: none.
Where are these big companies behind Gnome and GTK?
Suse/Novell, Trolltech and a multitude of smaller companies all going out and doing it with KDE and being realistic about where they actually are. Who’s using GTK? VMWare (simply because they run on Red Hat foremost), Nero, with a rip-off of toaster, and Adobe, who don’t care enough for Acrobat on Linux, and no one uses it anyway. Your large companies are really making a hell of a difference, aren’t they? Look, people have been talking about this Gnome/GTK/big company support crap for years. It’s bollocks simply because you’re having to keep on talking about it after all these years.
Tell me – where’s this mythical corporate support getting Gnome and GTK? Where’s the multitude of third-party applications? Is it making the desktop any less shite? No, it isn’t.
yes, i’ve heard that too. but then again, you’d have to be ‘community driven’ when there is no interest from big business in kde.
I’m sick of hearing thise utter drivel. There’s not too much interest in Linux desktops by business at the moment anyway, not KDE and certainly not Gnome – and Gnome marketing people can wriggle, squirm and pretend as much as they like.
<sarcasm>
What I want to know is why all the LiveCDs use KDE as a desktop environment when it is so clearly bloated. I mean, they have to pack everything onto 1 CD and instead of choosing the much superior, and completely bloat-free Gnome they go with something that must take up the entire CD just to launch the desktop.
Oh wait… I guess all those distributions are just run by incredibly stupid people… </sarcasm>
slax, by the way, is just 180 mb (and there are even smaller versions) which has KDE including quite some applications. of course not all KDE applications, as there are lots available… if gnome had even one third of these apps available, someone might use it
(gnome still has no decent cdburner, no decent webbrowser (firefox = no gnome app), no decend office (gnome office sucks), only the instant messenger is kind’a working (gaim).
“What situation was the other way around?”
surely it can’t be that difficult for you to understand. or am i expecting too much off people who believe that kde is the best desktop on linux?
“Well, looking back down the thread of comments here this assumes that Gnome/GTK has all these companies supposedly backing it. Since that isn’t true, this comment is totally void.”
ok, give me a laugh. there are many big businesses who are supporting linux. the vast majority are behind a particular desktop environment and a particular toolkit. i’ll even give you a clue: its not kde and qt.
as an aside, have you seen that sun microsystems now has a gtk look and feel now. no sign of a qt look and feel (hardly surprising, though).
“That was obviously exaggerated. Its more around 50 MB.”
50MB for kdelibs(which is a dependency of kdebase), kdecore, kdebase? i think not.
“(gnome still has no decent cdburner, no decent webbrowser (firefox = no gnome app), no decend office (gnome office sucks), only the instant messenger is kind’a working (gaim).”
at least gnome has SOME applications that are at least semi-professional, which is more than i can say for….