“KDE 3.2 provides an integrated desktop along with various applications to carry out common desktop tasks such as web browsing, email, instant messaging, multimedia, graphics, etc. Some of the impressive features which you will notice include…” Read the article at FedoraNews.org. Update: Two more KDE articles, one at Enterprise-Linux-IT and one at ITNews.
KDE 3.2 Overview at FedoraNews
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I like the new theme, and the speed enhancements…. the Kmenu could use a ‘bit’ more reorganization, but still better than KDE 3.1
Downloaded updated to 3.2 via cooker and urpmi and everything looks good to me. I love the speed of Koffice and now that it will work better and share some of the improvements of OpenOffice I think I might stick with Koffice. Ohhh and the spell-checker in Konqeror rocks ! Also I like how with tab-browsing and the close and open tab buttons are now placed down near the tabs area instead of the toolbar area. I can only see KDE getting better with age my friends. Now let’s see what our Gnome friends have to offer. I can’t wait to give Gnome 2.6 a spin.
kde is probably the fastest desktop enviorment around on any platform. And way faster with 3.2
Well, I don’t know about that. BeOS was scary-fast
But yeah, KDE is pretty fast. I wish they’d do something about the application loading, but otherwise, its quite responsive. Specially with kernel 2.6 
I hear the term “fast” flung around indiscriminately. So I need to ask, what is fast about KDE compared to other environments, because they all seem to be fast to me, well, except my iMac running Jaguar (that’s understandable, Apple likes to animate everything).
I noticed speed improvements for Evolution with Fedora compared to the default version for RH 9.0. Nautilus appears to be solid and best of all, I’ve been running Fedora for a few months now and there is no bloat. I’ve only rebooted twice when I upgraded to kernel to more recent 2.4.x versions. So the nice thing about Linux DE’s is that they don’t degrade and they are fairly stable. One time I ran into a bug when I messed around with themes and I lost the panel, so it’s not perfect. I’d like to see Gnome 2.6.
Not bad site. I like some of their tips. I didn’t know that some things worked the way they do.
eg. This is probably common to other distro but anyway,
http://fedoranews.org/krishnan/tips/tip034.shtml
Cool. Currently connected to my account on my brothers much faster machine. I wish I could transfer audio across the network.
I don’t know how much the speed has really improved. In terms of startup, 3.2 sometimes feels slower and sometimes faster than 3.1 — I can’t really decide. It seems the first time startups are slower but maybe the subsequent startups are quicker. I’m running it on a SusE 9.0 with 2.4. I’m on a laptop with a slow 4800 rpm disk, 392 MB ram and a 850 MHz PIII.
As far as gui redraws and responsiveness, it does seem a little quicker than 3.1 and much faster than Gnome 2.2.
The memory footprint is still high for kde apps.
Kicker reports
18.1 MB Resident, 28.3 MB Virtual, and 15.1 MB shared.
Knotes reports
15.3 MB Resident, 26.5 MB Virtual, 14.3 MB Shared.
Those numbers are not as bad as they seem because of the amount of Shared memory being used.
Still, I wouldn’t want to run this on anything that has less than 256MB though.
Konqueror has immensely improved IMHO. It renders more pages correctly and faster as compared to 3.1. I still have trouble with java and javascript. Try playing pool at yahoo — it still doesn’t work.
It does load quickly after the first load.
3.2 is also far more polished than 3.1 in terms of usablity.
There is one thing I wish they would change in terms of usability. I emailed the people at kde.org about this but nobody seemed to care. I wish kicker would prompt the user when removing an applet or button. As it stands now, this is dangerous for new users because they can easily remove the KMenu unintentionally and getting lost. I’ve seen it happen to quite a few people coming from the windows world, and they’re pretty computer literate. The behavior can literally cripple a new user and he/she would be forced to power off. I noticed in Gnome 2.5.x that the buttons and applets on the panel have a locking capability so that all options are locked when right clicking on the applet. This would do the trick as well in kde.
that was too much writing …..
http://bugs.kde.org/
…is the place to file bugs and requests
I really hate the K naming scheme, along with how dense the control center is. I think having a bunch of preference apps taking care of preferences is the way to go.
Also, the last time I used KDE, the menu bars are a mess.
At least when I talk about speed, I’m mainly talking about redraw — visual performance during moves and resizes, speed of menus popping up, etc. In these categories, KDE is noticibly faster than GNOME. In application startup speed, KDE is slower than GNOME by a good margin. In everything else, they are probably about the same speed, with some apps being faster than others (Epiphany vs Nautilus, for example).
Oh you’ll get over it. I like the K naming scheme because creates a seperate namespace for KDE apps (the ‘K’) then allows apps to have sensible names. Ie: KMail is a lot more obvious and meaningful than Microsoft Outlook. In any case, nobody complains that Microsoft puts a “Microsoft” in front of all of its application names.
The control center *is* split up into seperate apps. Its just that the front-end centralizes everything. It’d be a really simple project to make things into a GNOME-style preferences directory. The fact that nobody has done it is probably an indication that nobody really thinks its a problem, and likes KControl the way it is. What it really needs is more logical organization.
As for the toolbars, I agree. You can customize them, but I agree the defaults need to be better.
-autologger stops working.
-kmenu has gaps between the menu and sub menus
-sound dosent work(had same problem /w slackware and the betas)
-apps become unresposive randomly for ~10secs(in paticular konqueror)
Besides that, I like it, but for now im back on 3.1.4
> I really hate the K naming scheme
Where do you encounter K names? Even the panel menu now defaults to descriptive names being displayed first.
I used to use KDE, even 3.1 I think, but I moved to Gnome 2.2 and now 2.4.
The new KDE looks better, (how it behaves I don’t know). However, to me it just seems ‘busy’. The menu bars (including the icons (for example in Konq)) seem all squished and have things there as defaults, that I personally wouldnt’ choose. Yes, of course it can be customized.
There is also something I think about the QT widget set that I don’t like, it has this look about it that makes me uncomfortable, it isn’t nice (to me). I guess this maybe because I like how GTK+ looks so much that QT can’t compare. I also find Gnome to be more consistent than KDE, perhaps this again is just perception, but it’s one I have.
However, I think it is good that KDE keeps poking on, because it has some good things about it, and people do like it!
– What’s an autologger?
– Eh? Maybe link a screenshot, because I have no clue what you’re talking about.
– This is a known problem with the SuSE 9.0 packages (read the dot.kde.org thread about it). Wait for them to fix the packages. Sound works just dandy with the Debian packages.
– That also sounds like a packaging issue. My apps are behaving just fine.
why? both my desktop and laptop run fine almost flawless on suse 9
only one complaint kget pause resume functions dont work all the time.
by the way, the spell checking in konqueror is cool.
i already replace mozilla with konqueror and kontact.
i still think mozilla web rendering better than konqueror while only noticeable on dial up connection
i bet suse 9.1 with kernel 2.6 and kde3.2 will be the best XP i ever had
There is another frontend to access your settings: type settings:/ in the minicli or in Konqueror’s location bar, and you have very nice, browsable access to all the settings modules, at least as long as you use the icon view; in the treeview a few bugs show up.
Well, I’d certainly agree about the toolbars being cluttered. First, they seem squished to you, because unlike GNOME, KDE doesn’t put text beside toolbar items by default. You can change that if you want. Its a matter of preference really — text labels are not very helpful considering that the purpose of icons should be immediately obvious. The problem with KDE’s toolbars is that there are too many icons there by default.
As for not liking the look of Qt, that’s extremely vague. Especially considering you can theme them to both look the same. Eg: QtCurve makes Qt look quite like GTK+. I think the main thing is that KDE tends to be a bit brighter than GNOME — it uses more colors in its icons, uses a lighter color scheme, etc.
One of the big improvements in KDE recently is in the department of media. JuK is an absolutely great jukebox app. JuK 2.0 is really nice, with a very clean, uncluttered interface, and quite a few nice features like integration with MusicBrainz’s song identification system. amarok, while not a part of KDE 3.2, is an absolutely great sound app. Its basically XMMS for KDE. Its has a slick-looking UI, but still manages to look and feel like a regular KDE app.
What you write here is not exactly the point, or the exact truth.
Yes, you can theme Qt to look better, but then again, there is not a single theme that will fix the specific icon problem that makes everything feel so cluttred. You say that Gnome toolbars look better because they have text, but that’s not true either. I always turn off the text on the toolbars and when I put these windows next to equivelant kde apps, the gnome ones still look better. Why? Because of this:
1. Better menu and icon spacing
2. The icons have the same perspective
3. The icons have the same color range.
On KDE, these things are not happening.
So, even if you theme Qt, I am not sure a themer will be able to fix the icon spacing and even less to create a brand new icon theme which is a hell of a lot of a work to be done properly. And the fact that no one has done it so far (not even Plastik), it does say something about the bad defaults Qt and KDE introduce to the system.
On Monday I had a meeting with the Troltech CEO and I told him that about the menu spacing (KDE menus read like a sentence instead of having usable spacing between menu elements) and he *acknowledged* the problem and he said tha he will be talking to Mathias Ettrich about it (this feature is themable on Qt > 3.2.3 but except Plastik-CVS (post-KDE 3.2), no other theme uses the feature, plus the point is to have sensible defaults and NOT rely on themes to get good *usability*).
So, you can defend Qt and KDE all you want and say that if you turn on this and that or if you turn off this and that you might be able to get the look you want, but this is not so, because: 1. Defaults matter 2. Not everything is themable. Some things should have sensible defaults from the factory.
>As for not liking the look of Qt, that’s extremely vague.
Actually, this is a common comment you will get from users. When they have tried so many themes and none feel “clean” and “right” for reasons these users can’t explain exactly (because they are not usability experts or interface designers), then these “customers” put the blame on the toolkit. It does make sense if you see this from the point of view of customer-business: KDE and Qt should come up with better defaults, theme-independable.
Hetre is my proof:
http://www.osnews.com/img/5910/menus.png
1. Better menu and icon spacing
Gnome has 16pix for the menu and 11 pix for the icons of space between elements.
KDE has 10 and 7pix. As I said above, since today, Plastik-CVS will have also 16 for the menus (I emailed the Plastik author yesterday about it). I am not sure the icon spacing is themable.
2. The icons have the same perspective
Check the KDE application. Remember, this is the default icon set (and this is the important point)! The printer icons look towards the right, and the disk looks on the left, while others look straight! A complete mess!
3. The icons have the same color range
The color *range/hue* on gnome is the same for all icons, while on KDE apps you got the crystal blue, the oranges and the completely off topic other kspread icons, which make the application look like a clown.
And to add to all this, check *how much helpful* is for usability and accessibility the lines between the toolbars and the menu on the gnome/gtk app. It helps the eye to immediately focus on the correct line currently the user needs, while on KDE you get no differentiation between the toolbars and the menu, it all looks like someone threw them all together!
Old unix users will just say that these are “details”, but it’s these details that make an application FEEL comfortable, easy to the eye, welcome and clean. It is all about the “feelings”, it is all about the “impressions” when talking about interfaces. These are the areas where the KDE interface team should be working on IMHO.
Gnome has it’s own problems of course (don’t get me started about Gnome’s quirks because that would be off topic), however in regards to the looks, the “Gnome Default” theme does a terrific overall job to keep things both simple and usable.
1. Icon spacing – this is also themable in Qt 3.3. However, I prefer KDE’s defaults. The menus do not look like sentences – I personaly think GNOME’s are way to spaced out.
2&3 I’ll agree with, must admit I’d never noticed this so much before. And I thought I was picky!
As for the line around the toolbars – this is style dependant, and I personaly hate it when styles don’t put the lines around them! when I wrote QtCurve, I made sure the lines were present.
The GNOME default theme is butt ugly, but thets a personal opionion…
2. The icons have the same perspective
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I agree that some of the icons (notably, the disk one) need to be fixed, but I don’t think its a problem to have both front-facing and right-facing icons. There are some things that naturally have perspective, and some things that don’t. On the other hand, I have to say this is the first time I’ve ever noticed this. Now that I look at it, Windows does this too. For example, the installer icon faces left, while the my computer icon faces right. In fact, this is really the only obvious distinction between the two!
3. The icons have the same color range.
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I’d say this is a matter of preference. I think the liberal use of color makes the icons look nicer, and more importantly sets them apart from one another. The GNOME icons blend together and look the same.
Thanks for providing the screenshot, I did not realize that this was the spacing he was talking about. I agree with you that the default spacing needs to be fixed. Further, I never said defaults did not matter. I agree with you 100% that defaults do matter. If you read my post again, with a cooler head, you’d note that I didn’t say otherwise.
Actually, this is a common comment you will get from users.
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I don’t care if its common, it’s still annoying. Being vague accomplishes nothing. At least if you are specific, someobody can go write a patch. There are certain obligations that come with getting software for *free*. One of them is that detailed, accurate bug-reports are worth their weight in gold, because OSS developers do not have dedicated QA people. Hell, many of them may not even notice such things because they use the software day-in and day-out. I’d say its a small price to pay.
the oranges and the completely off topic other kspread icons, which make the application look like a clown.
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The KOffice icons need to be fixed for reasons other than color choice. They look odd and don’t scale.
It helps the eye to immediately focus on the correct line currently the user needs, while on KDE you get no differentiation between the toolbars and the menu, it all looks like someone threw them all together!
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That really depends on the theme. In Keramik, a gradient is used to seperate the toolbars from the menu. In Plastik, well, you get lines. You also get lines in QtCurve, and Galaxy. I’m pretty sure that covers all the “default” themes, so what’s your problem?
This is insane:
http://fedoranews.org/krishnan/review/kde3.2/controlcenter.png
I tried KDE in PCLinuxOS 2k4 liveCD, and I couldn’t beleive it.
Why have zillion of options? KDE’s Control Center is a mess.
I’m GNOME geek, But from screenshots I really love outlook of KDE now – seems this theme fits very right for it and is very clean and superb.
Cudos to KDE team!
Installed yesterday KDE3.2.Looks really good.But I was away for awhile from KDE.It looks a bit busy to me.Tried some native window decoration from kde-look.Some of them work some don’t.I will still check KDE for about 2 weeks.i’m not picky but so far when I want to do something I’ll open my Dropline.Still to check.beside that , is a great work from KDE team.
See here: http://dot.kde.org/1075969434/
So hold off on installing it till the packagers fix the bugs (unless you’re compiling from source, in which case you can patch it yourself right now).
One of the comments in the article also mentioned something similar going on with Kopete.
As regards the discussion, I’ve been using KDE since the 0.99 days, and I’ve got to admit I feel the Gnome environment is “warmer” and easier to use. It’s a hard thing to quantify – it’s the sum of the little touches mentioned above I’d say. I’ve never liked Crystal though, I’ve used Korilla since it came out.
There should be “lines” between the toolbars that separate them from the menu bar and also from the toolbars themselves. Toolbars with no lines look very unorganised like everything has been thrown together. I don’t know what theme authors think when they miss such basic elements such as bevelled/3D lines between the toolbars.
Well I have to say that this releases is really nice! But I have one really annoying bug-a-like. It seems when you using pager and Firebird. It seems switching between desktops is very very slow and sometime not responsive! More people who having the same problem?
“I type ls -R / on my system and there’s zillions of files. UNIX is a mess.”
Point taken?
KDE 3.2 is backward compatible to KDE 3.x that includes using the same icon set and theme.
Please compare an up-to-date KDE with Plastik and Crystal-SVG Icons or Bluecurve. Are there any of your points valid against these?
>”I type ls -R / on my system and
>there’s zillions of files. UNIX is a mess.”
>Point taken?
No. I still find KDE Control center messy. It’s bad to pile all those options for every damned part of KDE in one single window.
I think better solution is KDE Mission Control.
But that’s IMO. And I find GNOME too slow, but I like GTK apps.
So I use Xfce 🙂
I personally love a centralized place for all my settings. And I believe people who are complaining about control center want centralization too but I think they have trouble understanding trees. Instead they would like to have icons for the different groups. Programmers by default understand trees so they naturally use them to display date but there are others out there who can’t get their mind around them. They are the same people who can’t understand file system structure and put everying in one big directory.
I think all kde needs to do is make the settings icon view that is available in Konqueror, easily accessable( like a desktop icon or menu choice)
@
Nikola Pizurica wrote:
Why have zillion of options? KDE’s Control Center is a mess.
@
That’s the nice thing about Linux and it’s apps.. customize everything from A to Z and don’t hide any options..
I like it
It hurts my brain to think that the complaints seem to be that KDE has too many features. I *love* features… even though I turn off almost all the eye candy myself.
I work in the computing industry and see the average generic machines come in quite often jam-packed to the gills with customizations and third party doohickeys. KDE lets you do all that (if you wish) without all the added baggage of shareware apps, etc. you see in the Windows world. It’s very impressive, and more importantly: expressive.
In KControl, click View -> Mode -> Symbols…
(Should be the default, I think… ;-))
I don’t mind kcontrol, I like having ALL options in one window. My problem with it is the way it is organized. I am just horrible at finding settings in there, but at least the settings exist so I try not to complain, plus I know it’s there I just can’t ever find it lol. Often times I get lost looking for settings I changed days ago.
I’m lovin Konqueror as a web browser, khtml rocks. Kicker has always been my favorite panel, but I would like to see more customizability out of kasbar, especially in the area of how it looks.
Great KDE release, it’s blazin fast!
There is a “search” feature in KControl that can come in quite handy when you are looking for something specific.
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Oh you’ll get over it. I like the K naming scheme because creates a seperate namespace for KDE apps (the ‘K’) then allows apps to have sensible names. Ie: KMail is a lot more obvious and meaningful than Microsoft Outlook. In any case, nobody complains that Microsoft puts a “Microsoft” in front of all of its application names.
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The problem is that is creates ugly names:
* It invites concatenations which does not flow well
* The letter K tend look a bit tasteless – a vocal or cooler letter like X or W might have been better.
* It means repetition which becomes an annoyance, even if it were a good idea to begin with, which it is not
* It creates a closed space which is uninviting. The bystander sees a naming practice which seems technical (not my kind of interest), and is directed toward needs which he do not understand, and is therefore not a part of.
You sound like a developer. The problem is that there is a whole space surroundig a product which concerns its _impression_ and the function it has in conveying values and communicating with the user, and which technical people often do not understand at all, yet a great deal of product choice is clearly decided by it.
Putting “Microsoft” in front of the name does not have these problems, yet it would be better if the application just said “E-mail” or “CD-burner”, so there exist a potential to improve upon that situation.
I don’t mind the K infront of the names. The iLife applications all have an i in front of them and they seem to be doing well, so why not Kapps? Seems like a small thing.
David
I’ve never criticized anyone writing articles, and I wouldn’t have done it this time also (even if the article is just a summary of kde.org’s kde3.2 feature list), if I wouldn’t have read the so-called kde upgrade/installation howto. Boy, the guy is a joke:
# installation: rpm -ivh
# upgrade: rpm -Uvh
For stuff like this we have the rpm man page, don’t we?
# if you’re installing or upgrading, please check dependencies.
This is the whole point when upgrading kde!!!! First the libs, qt, then base, etc, maype install taglib, etc, etc. It’s clear that he only installed kde on a clean machine, or else he’d know.
I cannot beleive what can reach the web these days.
Hi
we have an option in control center to change the menu to display only the purpose of the application like Email for kmail so the names wouldnt confuse newbies. almost all of the distros now follow this pattern
ram
I have been using 3.2 for two days, and I must say I am very impressed by the performance. It is kind of hard to evaluate the performance on my main machine (Athlon 2500+, 512mb), so I installed it on an older machine (AMD k6-2 350, 256mb):
– The startup of the desktop got quite a bit faster.
– The startup of the applications also got noticeably faster
– The redraw speed has almost doubled.
This is highly subjective and also dependant on various other stuff like the kernel and X version, but for me it really makes a difference. YMMV
About the features: I like every one of them. kcontrol has a lot of options, but I never touch most of them and still don’t mind them being there.
It feels much more responsive than other versions. It feels nearly as respsonsive as Windows XP on the same machine, in fact.
The problem is that is creates ugly names:
—-
“Ugly” is very subjective.
* It invites concatenations which does not flow well
—-
Sure they do. Its pronounced “Kay-Spread” and “Kay-Mail.” Just like “Em-Ess-Excel” and “Em-Ess-Word.”
The letter K tend look a bit tasteless – a vocal or cooler letter like X or W might have been better.
—-
How the hell is ‘X’ or ‘W’ cooler than ‘K’? Maybe in the United States, but I’d think the coolness of letters would be something highly localized. ‘K’ is probably a lot cooler in Germany than it is here.
It means repetition which becomes an annoyance, even if it were a good idea to begin with, which it is not
——
And seeing “MS” in front of all Microsoft apps or “i” in front of all the Apple apps is less repititious?
It creates a closed space which is uninviting. The bystander sees a naming practice which seems technical (not my kind of interest), and is directed toward needs which he do not understand, and is therefore not a part of.
——-
At least its immediately obvious to a bystander what the application “K-Mail” does. That seems a whole lot more inviting to me than pretty-sounding likes like “Excel” that have absolutely no relation to what the application does.
Putting “Microsoft” in front of the name does not have these problems
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Why? Only because you are used to it!
yet it would be better if the application just said “E-mail” or “CD-burner”, so there exist a potential to improve upon that situation.
———
That would be easy, but stupid. That limits you to pretty much a singe application per category. And if Konqueror called itself “Web browser” as does epiphany, there would be issues to say the least. The current setup is about as good as you can get — with a descriptive tag next to each a application name in the menu.
Has anyone emerged kde 3.2 on gentoo? if so any problems going to 3.2 from 3.1.x
Yes, I have. No, no problems.
You should take a look at the gentoo forums as this subject is discussed there at length.
hey raynier what sources are you using to get kde 3.2 on deb unstable it doesnt seem to be listed in the normal sources..
also.. Why do people bitch about there being too many options ?
its organised you can find whatever you like i hope they dont ever reduce the options in kcontrol..
also if you used linux on a regular basis you would understand why the k before the name is good.. it lets you locate applications related to the de straight off. lets see apple have started the same naming convention by putting an i infront of all of their progs/peripherials ipod, etc.. etc.. you know instantly yeah thats a mac product same with kde you know instantly thats a kde app.. Its very smart and i hope they dont change it. You dont like it no ones holding a gun to your head and telling you to use it, but dont bitch about it because your in the minority so live with it. Im tired of crappy moans which are irrelavent. Its branding get over it.
next to my issues with kde, i have been a long time kde user and trust me i love it faults included, one thing that does wind me up is when an icon set doesnt have an icon and by default the normal icon set is defaulted to in kde 2x this used to be a real issue as it just mad it look fugly when you have the hires shite lookin icons being mixed for eg with crystal it didnt look right looking at the screnshots eugenia you posted you can see it clearly half of the icons on the left look nice look like crystal the other half is some bastardised hires icons.. They just dont mix well.
Thats not strictly kdes fault its icon developers not releasing full sets and some apps just dont use the default icon set but their own icon set from with /usr/share/whatever that i find annoying. I havent had my hands on kde 3.2 full yet managed to get the rc1 working so far havent noticed any icon inconsistency hopefully thats sorted now.
eugenia i know what your saying about icon spacing tbh i kind of find it a bit knit picky.. Im used to it as is, so i guess its one thing thats personal choice maybe they should allow customizability of this as you said that is a feature available within the next release of qt so no doubt that will be hitting kde shortly.. You see thats the beauty of allowing every thing to be optimised distros can default it to whatever they think is nice users can then tweak to their hearts content. Gnome i really think made a bad choice removing all of the config options. It should be made clearly available not hidden in some crappy registry like ms.. Face it the ms registry idea and tweaking through that is just bullshit..
another major thing i think kde needs to give it a proper facelift is a complete rework of the menu system and kicker i have ideas, slicker was a good attempt in theory its just not come out the way you would expect..
the kicker could be made to look awesome, completely themable as in seperatly themable or themable completely with a specific theme as in it to be broken into regions which all can have pixmaps applied it would look awesome but i dont know how easy it would be to do.
i can draw probably soom concept drawings to show anyone interested in what i mean.
but other than that the bouncing icon as things load is cool.. They really seem to be spending a lot of time working on little things bringing it all together.
Thank you kde devel for your hard, awesome work
a preview would be so nice.. i read my rant over and i cant even understand it.
next to my issues with kde, i have been a long time kde user and trust me i love it faults included.
one thing that does wind me up is when an icon set, doesnt have all of the icons, a default icon set is then used. In kde 2x this used to be a real issue because it made it look fugly. The hi-res icons icons would be with crystal for example.
It didnt look right looking at the screnshots eugenia posted you can see it clearly half of the icons on the left look nice look like crystal the other half are some bastardised hi-res icons.. They just dont mix well.
Thats not strictly kdes fault its icon developers not releasing full sets. Also some apps just dont use the default icon set but their own icon set from within /usr/share/whatever that i find annoying.
I havent had my hands on kde 3.2 full yet, however i have managed to get the rc1 working, I havent so far noticed this icon inconsistency hopefully its sorted now.
eugenia I know what your saying about icon spacing tbh i kind of find it a bit knit picky.
Im used to it as is, maybe they should allow customizability of this. As you said this is a feature available within the next release of qt so no doubt that will be hitting kde shortly.
You see, thats the beauty of allowing every thing to be optimised distros can default it to whatever they think is nice users can then tweak to their hearts content.
Gnome i really think made a bad choice removing all of the config options. It should be made clearly available not hidden in some crappy registry like MS. Face it the MS registry idea which allows tweaking through that is just bullshit.
Thats better I guess, but my grammer is still crap and I need sleep.
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The problem is that is creates ugly names:
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“Ugly” is very subjective.
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Sure is, but that is not the end of the story you know. If it were, there would be no difference between Tolstoy and Neavel, between the design of a ferrari and or a skoda, or between stylish furniture and bad furniture etc. Point is, you are missing something here, aren’t you? And what you are missing has got to be very important. What do you think it is?
There is a lot of things to be said (like you do) about what is good or bad designwise. That is a craft and an area of professional judgement just like programming. But I think a real discussion about the adequacy of the K-naming convention can only be done in a fruitful manner if you take the task seriously.
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yet it would be better if the application just said “E-mail” or “CD-burner”, so there exist a potential to improve upon that situation.
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That would be easy, but stupid. That limits you to pretty much a singe application per category. And if Konqueror called itself “Web browser” as does epiphany, there would be issues to say the least. The current setup is about as good as you can get — with a descriptive tag next to each a application name in the menu.
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Either merge the functionality into a single application, or make different descriptions. Having the name “Konqueror” there mere noise anyway. Especially that name.
If KDE decided to have two control panels, I would be completely behind them. But I still like KControl, and I heavily customize my desktop. On Windows, I download shareware, on KDE, it’s all there. Now, it may seem slightly daunting for new users, but I rather they do not touch it. Rearrange it if you will, but don’t remove features.
The average user that would be bothered with such complexity probably shouldn’t download vanilla KDE. Instead, they should buy a distribution like Xandros or the likes, where only basic control options are shown in KControl/whatever-it-is-they-are-using. If you don’t really fancy for all that customization, use something like Xandros, don’t download KDE.
Users that get overwhelmed with the amount of controls anyway are the ones that probably couldn’t install KDE by themselves even if they wanted to. So I don’t see any point in removing options KControl. Please, keep it that way. There would be far less reasons for me to use KDE without KControl.
Well, KDE must ba a kick-ass piece of software if your issues with it are
1. Menu-spacing (could be improved but it’s not THAT bad)
2. Perspective of the icons (“OMG! That icon points to the left, while that one points to the right!”)
3. Colors of the icons
Only one of those that REALLY needs fixing is menu-spacing. Issues with the icons can be easily fixed by changing the icon-theme. yes it would be good if the default theme was perfect, but it’s not exactly rocket-science to change the defaults.
“I wish kicker would prompt the user when removing an applet or button.”
Thanks but no thanks. I absolutely hate it when in Windows the OS keeps constantly asking me “are you absolutely sure you want to do that?”. Adding the K-menu is not that had, and accidentally deleting it is NOT a common problem.
“Either merge the functionality into a single application, or make different descriptions. Having the name “Konqueror” there mere noise anyway. Especially that name.”
After using KDE for a few years, konqueror means ‘web browser’ to me. In windows, ‘Cubase’ means ‘multitrack virtual studio’ to me. You get used to it, and I would rather not have it changed and have to learn another arbitury name.
One thing I would like to see though is sub grouping within menus.
I would like to see the ‘internet’ sub menu divided into web browsers, email clients, IM apps etc. They could be divided with a single line between the categorys.
This would mean you could identify a program intuitively, even if you did not recognise the name. So, Mozilla, Konqueror, Dillo, Firebird would be grouped together.
This would mean a new user would only need to recognise one of the programs in the sub group to know what all the others in that group did. This would convey their purpose without having to resort to a further ‘Web Browsers’ sub menu, which would bury the apps three menus down.
The same could be done to differentiate CD writing apps in the system menu from configuration apps, and graphic apps like ‘The Gimp’, ‘K paint’ from scanning/photo apps in the graphics menu.
It’s a small visual change, but one that could convey a lot of useful information about what an app does in an unobtrusive way.
as was said on a previous article
netscape navigated the internet
microsoft explored it
kde konquered it
and macintosh now is going on a safari
hi!!
its out of the topic. Can somebody point me to redhat linux 9.0 rpms for kde 3.2 and gnome 1.4 ??
Thanx in advance
“Oh you’ll get over it. I like the K naming scheme because creates a seperate namespace for KDE apps (the ‘K’) then allows apps to have sensible names. Ie: KMail is a lot more obvious and meaningful than Microsoft Outlook. In any case, nobody complains that Microsoft puts a “Microsoft” in front of all of its application names.”
Are you serious??
All those ridiculous Ks are not only highly unprofessional and hinder the adoption of Linux desktops by pointy-haired bosses, they also completely screw up alphabetically sorted menus.
Sorry, but KMag and KJuk are NOT descriptive names. Microsoft Word IS a descriptive name. Microsoft doesn’t have 30 or 40 “Microsoft-” prefixes on your start menu.
KDE has a long way to go before anyone will even dream of using it in the mainstream arena.
Microsoft Word IS a descriptive name.
And Microsoft Excel is…? Or perhaps Microsoft Access? (access what?) MS Outlook? vs. MS Outlook Express? So Word is descriptive. Well… does it mean I can use it to do email? that involves words. how about Instant Messaging? How about writing a webpage?
Why stop there, though? Gnumeric has to do with what? well, numbers I guess… but are we adding them? is it a calculator? how is it different from Gcalc? What in the world is gimp?
And why should every project be named “Web Browser”? or “Mail” Because truly those are the most descriptive names possible. But then that limits you to one app of each type. you say “Either merge the functionality into a single application, or make different descriptions.” But what if I don’t know C++ only C? Or Java? Or what if I think the way an application is designed code-wise is less than elegant, and I think I can do better? What if the developer isn’t open to accepting changes? These are all legitimate reasons why there is more than just one Web Browser, Mail client, Word Processor.
It’s easy to be an armchair designer. But in the end, most distros make the descriptive “Web Browser” the default anyway. So you’re probably just trolling.
All those ridiculous Ks are not only highly unprofessional and hinder the adoption of Linux desktops by pointy-haired bosses,
Do you have any proof to back up the assertion that having a K at the beginning of an application has prevented businesses from adopting KDE? That seems like a pretty baseless allegation to me.
Sorry, but KMag and KJuk are NOT descriptive names.
Actually, it’s just Juk, not KJuk. And it is a pretty descriptive name for a Jukebox app. As far as Kmag goes, isn’t it a screen Magnifier? It’s a lot more descriptive than, say, MS Excel.
KDE has a long way to go before anyone will even dream of using it in the mainstream arena.
KDE was used on the desktop used by those who created the Lord of the Rings’ special F/X. If you look at the featurette on the Making of Gollum in the Two Towers extended edition, you can spot the familiar K logo a couple of times.
In fact KDE is IMO a much superior desktop than Windows (at least than Win2K, and probably XP as well). It is quite ready for prime time. Version 3.2 only strengthens this fact.