5 ms·

It had vision but lacked constraints. The open source bazaar style development delivered 9 projects completed to 10% instead of one completed to 90%. The whole

It had vision but lacked constraints. The open source bazaar style development delivered 9 projects completed to 10% instead of one completed to 90%. The whole "enlightenment vs qt vs gtk" ui environment all half baked and with spotty feature coverage... But hey, they were the ones that tried.

emilsedgh 9y ago
1) There are still ongoing efforts, including Plasma Mobile. 2) The whole "Qt vs. GTK+" worked perfectly fine on desktop. We have several kickass graphical user interfaces on the desktop. 3) What is preventing FOSS on phones is not software stacks. It's the closed hardware.
- mikekchar 9y ago
  > 2) The whole "Qt vs. GTK+" worked perfectly fine on desktop. We have several kickass graphical user interfaces on the desktop. In fact, as person trying to avoid both KDE and GNOME, I am so glad there was not one concerted effort in desktop environments. It's the only reason I still have choice. Had QT been GPLed originally, I wonder what the world of free desktop software would look like now.
  - fiddlerwoaroof 9y ago
    The main problem with kde was the decision to rewrite everything for version 4 (and the same goes for gnome 2->3)
    - digi_owl 9y ago
      They went chasing the eyecandy, but ignored that what really cements a platform's utility is API stability...
      - emilsedgh 9y ago
        That's just not true. Most of KDE's 3->4 rewrite was about rewriting from Qt3 to Qt4 for better API and also introducing abstraction layers like Solid and Phonon only and only for the sake of API stability.
        digi_owl 9y ago
        Well i witnessed more than one project just up and dump any pretext of supporting KDE3 once KDE4 was announced. If the APIs were stable, there would not be a need to drop one for the other. Look at the kernel, there have never been a situation where one have to go "sorry, but i only support X+1 from now on". Similarly, until the 64-bit version, and that in turn was because of hardware not software, one could run binaries from Windows 3.0 (at least) on present day Windows. That is the kind of stability i am talking about. That is the kind of stability that get third parties to stay with a platform.
        fiddlerwoaroof 9y ago
        Yeah, I wish they had gone from Qt3 to Qt4 without redoing the entire UI at the same time. This is doubly true of the apps: Amarok 1.4 was, imo, the best music player I've used while Amarok 2.0 was buggy and slow and had none of the things I liked about 1.4
        audi100quattro 9y ago
        I was looking forward to kde4 until the slow/buggy reality hit. Maybe it was my graphics drivers, but the kicker successor never delivered for me. I switched to fluxbox for a while, and then gnome as it was and has stayed in a better state thanks to the install base on Ubuntu. Haven't looked again at kde since.
        fiddlerwoaroof 9y ago
        That sounds like me, although I eventually found my way to tiling window managers (xmonad for a while, now stumpwm as it's written in my favorite language)
- vsviridov 9y ago
  Yeah, but they had a small time window to deliver a working product to have a small chance to penetrate the market. Instead the efforts were spread on tons of competing solutions. The resulting product was unusable. As much as I was an enthusiast and a fan of the idea the device I received was nowhere near ready for any kind of sensible use.
notspanishflu 9y ago
I'm following https://ubports.com/ https://ubports.com/ with hope.

emilsedgh 9y ago

1) There are still ongoing efforts, including Plasma Mobile. 2) The whole "Qt vs. GTK+" worked perfectly fine on desktop. We have several kickass graphical user interfaces on the desktop. 3) What is preventing FOSS on phones is not software stacks. It's the closed hardware.

mikekchar 9y ago
> 2) The whole "Qt vs. GTK+" worked perfectly fine on desktop. We have several kickass graphical user interfaces on the desktop. In fact, as person trying to avoid both KDE and GNOME, I am so glad there was not one concerted effort in desktop environments. It's the only reason I still have choice. Had QT been GPLed originally, I wonder what the world of free desktop software would look like now.
- fiddlerwoaroof 9y ago
  The main problem with kde was the decision to rewrite everything for version 4 (and the same goes for gnome 2->3)
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    They went chasing the eyecandy, but ignored that what really cements a platform's utility is API stability...
    - emilsedgh 9y ago
      That's just not true. Most of KDE's 3->4 rewrite was about rewriting from Qt3 to Qt4 for better API and also introducing abstraction layers like Solid and Phonon only and only for the sake of API stability.
      - digi_owl 9y ago
        Well i witnessed more than one project just up and dump any pretext of supporting KDE3 once KDE4 was announced. If the APIs were stable, there would not be a need to drop one for the other. Look at the kernel, there have never been a situation where one have to go "sorry, but i only support X+1 from now on". Similarly, until the 64-bit version, and that in turn was because of hardware not software, one could run binaries from Windows 3.0 (at least) on present day Windows. That is the kind of stability i am talking about. That is the kind of stability that get third parties to stay with a platform.
      - fiddlerwoaroof 9y ago
        Yeah, I wish they had gone from Qt3 to Qt4 without redoing the entire UI at the same time. This is doubly true of the apps: Amarok 1.4 was, imo, the best music player I've used while Amarok 2.0 was buggy and slow and had none of the things I liked about 1.4
        audi100quattro 9y ago
        I was looking forward to kde4 until the slow/buggy reality hit. Maybe it was my graphics drivers, but the kicker successor never delivered for me. I switched to fluxbox for a while, and then gnome as it was and has stayed in a better state thanks to the install base on Ubuntu. Haven't looked again at kde since.
        fiddlerwoaroof 9y ago
        That sounds like me, although I eventually found my way to tiling window managers (xmonad for a while, now stumpwm as it's written in my favorite language)
vsviridov 9y ago
Yeah, but they had a small time window to deliver a working product to have a small chance to penetrate the market. Instead the efforts were spread on tons of competing solutions. The resulting product was unusable. As much as I was an enthusiast and a fan of the idea the device I received was nowhere near ready for any kind of sensible use.

notspanishflu 9y ago

I'm following https://ubports.com/ https://ubports.com/ with hope.