5 ms·

KDE 3.5 was really great. Haven't had that since then. Guess they had to clean the codebase, but at what cost?

by 127 10y ago

digi_owl 10y ago
Looking across history, it seems like the GUI side of _nix had something of a seismic event somewhere around 2007. A event that has still not settled down to this day.
- satysin 10y ago
  Yeah it was their response to Vista with dwm and other fancy UI things. Yet here we are at the end of 2016 and Wayland still isn't quite there and gnome went some weird direction with everything. I hate how much wasted space there is at the top of the screen for gnome. Cinnamon is really nice albeit a little bloat with options. That isn't really a bad thing though imho.
- kijin 10y ago
  The original iPhone was released in 2007. Desktop environments have been desperately trying to look like a phone interface ever since. And yet, nearly 10 years later, I'm still writing this on a desktop PC with three large monitors and a very typical keyboard and mouse...
  - sangnoir 10y ago
    > Desktop environments have been desperately trying to look like a phone interface ever since. Not the first time I've read this on HN, so I will quote my last answer to that[0] "I doubt the plausibility of that timeline - the original iPhone was announced in January 2007, KDE 4.0Alpha1 was released in May 2007[1]." The iPhone only got released in June of 2007, so KDE4 preceded the iPhone, unless you are suggesting the KDE devs were inspired by the iPhone announcement. 0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12555866 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12555866 1. https://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-4.0-alpha1.php https://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-4.0-alpha1.php
    - Grishnakh 10y ago
      KDE is the one large DE which didn't try to look like a phone interface. The OP erred slightly by implying that all DEs have been trying to look like phones. If anything, KDE4 tried to look a lot like Vista/Aero and Win7 (which IMO isn't a bad thing for Vista; that OS didn't work too great, but it was IMO the best-looking Windows UI ever). Gnome3 came out quite some time after the iPhone, and was definitely part of the trend to tabletize all UIs. Also, it wasn't just KDE that eschewed this new trend; most of the smaller Linux ones did too, plus the Gnome2 derivatives MATE & Cinnamon which have only been trying to look like Gnome2.
- johnchristopher 10y ago
  I always thought it was somehow related to the video previews of longhorn and all the semantic desktop talk of the time.
- e12e 10y ago
  I dunno. I think there's been exactly one recent gui revolution, and that was OS X in 2001. After that it was all jellybeans and minimal windows. One could probably argue that OS X didn't create a trend as much as rode the wave of a trend (something Apple is great at) - but either way, that's how I see the origin of both gnome, kde and MS vista. The problem, which both gnome and kde tried to tackle, is to end up with a consistent vision for all apps. If one looks at BeOS, Amiga OS or maybe even QNX - they all have a more consistent gui experience than probably any Linux gui. Partly that is because, like windows, every Linux distribution will need to support apps that are made for the "wrong" de - no one project manage to reinvent all applications. And non-trivial gui applications really need to be reinvented to work well in a new ux paradigm. I'm talking about apps like gimp, blender, krita - and probably all the office packages and smaller apps like abiword. I'm guessing that the goal has too often landed on a consistent look rather than on a consistent experience - and so one has never taken full-fledged, best-of-breed apps and adapted them to a strong vision, but rather taken a handful of "ok apps" and then written the rest from scratch. Obviously not being able to invest the ~decades of work many apps already have. It's not all doom and gloom - for example we have chrome and modern safari as sane browsers thanks to this hubris-or-bust mindset (that led to the webkit browser engine).
pantalaimon 10y ago
There is still Trinity https://www.trinitydesktop.org/ https://www.trinitydesktop.org/
frik 10y ago
Sadly, it's true. KDE was the last old and great desktop. So many things went wrong with the v4 rewrite I kissed KDE good bye, and moved to GNOME just to be let down again with the switch from v2 to v3. Nowadays Win7 is the best desktop, and I see no alternative :(
- fiddlerwoaroof 10y ago
  Mate isn't too bad and there's always i3, stumpwm and/or xmonad

KDE 3.5 was really great. Haven't had that since then. Guess they had to clean the codebase, but at what cost?

by 127 10y ago

KDE 3.5 was really great. Haven't had that since then. Guess they had to clean the codebase, but at what cost?

Looking across history, it seems like the GUI side of _nix had something of a seismic event somewhere around 2007. A event that has still not settled down to this day.

satysin 10y ago
Yeah it was their response to Vista with dwm and other fancy UI things. Yet here we are at the end of 2016 and Wayland still isn't quite there and gnome went some weird direction with everything. I hate how much wasted space there is at the top of the screen for gnome. Cinnamon is really nice albeit a little bloat with options. That isn't really a bad thing though imho.
kijin 10y ago
The original iPhone was released in 2007. Desktop environments have been desperately trying to look like a phone interface ever since. And yet, nearly 10 years later, I'm still writing this on a desktop PC with three large monitors and a very typical keyboard and mouse...
- sangnoir 10y ago
  > Desktop environments have been desperately trying to look like a phone interface ever since. Not the first time I've read this on HN, so I will quote my last answer to that[0] "I doubt the plausibility of that timeline - the original iPhone was announced in January 2007, KDE 4.0Alpha1 was released in May 2007[1]." The iPhone only got released in June of 2007, so KDE4 preceded the iPhone, unless you are suggesting the KDE devs were inspired by the iPhone announcement. 0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12555866 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12555866 1. https://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-4.0-alpha1.php https://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-4.0-alpha1.php
  - Grishnakh 10y ago
    KDE is the one large DE which didn't try to look like a phone interface. The OP erred slightly by implying that all DEs have been trying to look like phones. If anything, KDE4 tried to look a lot like Vista/Aero and Win7 (which IMO isn't a bad thing for Vista; that OS didn't work too great, but it was IMO the best-looking Windows UI ever). Gnome3 came out quite some time after the iPhone, and was definitely part of the trend to tabletize all UIs. Also, it wasn't just KDE that eschewed this new trend; most of the smaller Linux ones did too, plus the Gnome2 derivatives MATE & Cinnamon which have only been trying to look like Gnome2.
johnchristopher 10y ago
I always thought it was somehow related to the video previews of longhorn and all the semantic desktop talk of the time.
e12e 10y ago
I dunno. I think there's been exactly one recent gui revolution, and that was OS X in 2001. After that it was all jellybeans and minimal windows. One could probably argue that OS X didn't create a trend as much as rode the wave of a trend (something Apple is great at) - but either way, that's how I see the origin of both gnome, kde and MS vista. The problem, which both gnome and kde tried to tackle, is to end up with a consistent vision for all apps. If one looks at BeOS, Amiga OS or maybe even QNX - they all have a more consistent gui experience than probably any Linux gui. Partly that is because, like windows, every Linux distribution will need to support apps that are made for the "wrong" de - no one project manage to reinvent all applications. And non-trivial gui applications really need to be reinvented to work well in a new ux paradigm. I'm talking about apps like gimp, blender, krita - and probably all the office packages and smaller apps like abiword. I'm guessing that the goal has too often landed on a consistent look rather than on a consistent experience - and so one has never taken full-fledged, best-of-breed apps and adapted them to a strong vision, but rather taken a handful of "ok apps" and then written the rest from scratch. Obviously not being able to invest the ~decades of work many apps already have. It's not all doom and gloom - for example we have chrome and modern safari as sane browsers thanks to this hubris-or-bust mindset (that led to the webkit browser engine).

pantalaimon 10y ago

There is still Trinity https://www.trinitydesktop.org/ https://www.trinitydesktop.org/

frik 10y ago

Sadly, it's true. KDE was the last old and great desktop. So many things went wrong with the v4 rewrite I kissed KDE good bye, and moved to GNOME just to be let down again with the switch from v2 to v3. Nowadays Win7 is the best desktop, and I see no alternative :(

fiddlerwoaroof 10y ago
Mate isn't too bad and there's always i3, stumpwm and/or xmonad