7 ms·

KDE Frameworks 5 Tech Preview

63 points by conductor 13y ago

Crito 13y ago
I guess it is not reasonable to expect KDE to stop 'being KDE', but I am a little disappointed to see that they don't really seem to have shifted their emphasis anymore in the "lightweight" direction. I used to be a KDE user, up until about 4.2 (I even used 4.0), but after that I stopped and switched to a lightweight window manager. Most linux desktop users that I interact with often have done the same, more or less at the same time. There is probably some selection bias going on here or something, but from my perspective it seems like the linux desktop zeitgeist is moving towards barebones tiling window managers, rather than traditional desktop environments, perhaps as the dream of "Linux for the proverbial grandmother" is slowly abandoned (or perhaps as the idea of the native GUI application dies, in favor of browsers (which provide the same facilities regardless of your WM/DE) and terminals).
- GuiA 13y ago
  I've observed the same phenomenon. I use xmonad on my Linux box (arch), and most of my friends use awesome/ion3/openbox/xfce/etc. I agree with your assessment that everything being in the browser now is probably amongst the primary causes for it. As a developer, everything I do is either in a terminal or in a browser; and tiling managers are just much better and efficient for that user persona. And if you're a nerd but still want to use a floating wm (why would you!?), then there's almost no reason to use Gnome/KDE over a more lightweight alternative. The users who (debatably) benefit from non-tiling WMs (the computer using grandpa, but also designers, 3D modelers, engineers who work using CAD programs, accountants, etc. etc. etc.) are all on Windows/OSX anyway, with little reason to move to Linux ever (and when they do use Linux, for example to process bigdata®, they do so over SSH on EC2 anyway). So what's the future for Gnome/KDE? Obviously they'll always be there for people who are first discovering Linux and need something familiar to navigate around; but I doubt they'll ever have the popularity they had in the early 2000s. I for one am looking forward to a year 2030 where nerds still use tiling window managers and "ugly" terminals :) Addendum: I guess SteamOS could sway a lot of gamers towards Linux; and that uses Gnome. So who knows, maybe the Gnome community can get a boost from that.
  - laumars 13y ago
    I'm a nerd who spends most of his time in "ugly" terminals; but KDE is still my preferred DE. Since I use tmux heavily and am often found browsing the net in lynx (or just curl when I'm looking for something specific), I could get away without Xorg completely if I had to. But KDE just seems to compliment my workflow nicely. Everyone is different though. I wouldn't ever push my preferred WM/DE's onto anyone else any more than I'd expect to like whatever set up they've fallen in love for.
    - GuiA 13y ago
      Interesting. Is there anything specific about KDE's workflow that you like and haven't seen elsewhere? When did you start using KDE? If you discovered Linux today, how likely do you think you'd be to use KDE? (i'm writing a toy WM + DE stuff in my free time, and am curious to hear about all of that :)
      - laumars 13y ago
        I've been using KDE for years. I can't remember exactly how long, but I vaguely recall getting excited about a magazine which had KDE2 on it's cover disc, so I must have been using it since the later versions of 1. Some stuff that I like about KDE4 are (in no particular order): o Dolphin - it's a fantastic file manager which has all the features you'd expect from a powerful modern file manager yet in a clean and uncluttered interface. Yet everything is easy locate and enable as and when I need o Unified / Integrated components - I can be running Dolphin and hit [F4] and a Konsole terminal pane will attach to the bottom of the file manager; already cd'ed to the directory I'm browsing. And as it's KDE Konsole, all of my profiles et al from the standalone terminal emulator will be available. o Taskbar - while I might dislike Windows as an OS (personal preference; not trying to start a flamewar), I do think the taskbar was a stroke of genius. The Windows taskbar peaked at Windows 2000 / XP (minus the themes). The KDE taskbar has the same clean layout that I liked from Windows 2000. o KWin Compositing - I used to dislike KWin and much prefer Compiz, and in many ways Compiz is still probably preferable. But these days KWin is actually pretty decent on it's own; which is handy because I don't have a whole lot of time to spend making a computer look pretty. So it's nice to have an "out of the box" solution that comes with KDE4 rather than having to install lots of additional glitter manually. o Krunner - [F2] then type any application or document name and it pops up. Hugely convenient. o Configuration - I work as a Linux and UNIX systems administrator by trade, so sometimes I just can't be bothered to configure things the "proper" way if I just need to quickly add a printer to CUPS (for example). KDE comes with some pretty decent control panel applets for desktop administration. Though I really dislike how they've grouped the items in System Settings - which makes it just as counter intuitive to find items as it is in Windows Control Panel when you're unfamiliar with Windows. o Snap Regions - I know most WMs support that these days, but it was less common when that feature was released in KDE4.0 (or at least that's what I seem to recall. I might be wrong about that). o Sane defaults - for the most part, I find I don't have to do much to make KDE usable. I know most of what I've described can be done in other WM/DEs, but I've always just felt at home in KDE. Maybe part of it is just because I've been using it for so many years on so many different distros (SuSE, Arch, Mandrake, Slackware, etc) or maybe it's because many of the distros I've ran on my desktop have been KDE-centric (eg SuSE, Slackware) or at last been one of the few to do decent packages for KDE (I'm still not convinced KDE4 on Kubuntu isn't total garbage where as Arch seems to suit KDE well). But KDE just feels like home. The only other environment I've felt comfortable in was Awesome, which, weirdly, is the polar opposite of KDE. Most of the other DE's look pretty but I'm quickly bored of them (which I'm guessing is exactly how you and many others feel about KDE4?) As for if I discovered Linux today; who knows what I'd be using. Probably Awesome because I'd want to think of myself as "l33t". Good luck with your DE/WM project by the way. That's quite a daunting project you've taken on - but I can imagine it'll be great fun too.
- mpyne 13y ago
  > but I am a little disappointed to see that they don't really seem to have shifted their emphasis anymore in the "lightweight" direction. It's not the job of KDE to do AwesomeWM better though. I mean, you mention as much but that's the real reason. If people wanted barebones tiling WM they'd use that. If they want GNOME, they'd use that, etc. And while we at KDE are certainly striving as always to make the desktop as efficient as possible (since a featureful desktop should not require massive resources), having a comprehensive desktop experience is the mission, not a zeitgeist-compliant KWin. ;)
  - Crito 13y ago
    As I said, it isn't reasonable to ask KDE to not be KDE... I just don't want to see them slide out of relevance. They bring a lot of good ideas and tech to the table, but currently aren't packaging it in a form that I find palatable.
    - mpyne 13y ago
      Well I'm currently reading an economics book that describes the "creative destruction" that results from disruptive innovators displacing old industries... and I guess the point to that is that if KDE gets made irrelevant because no one uses desktops well, such is life, you know? May the best GUI win and all. It's not impossible we'd make a KWin-lite that only does tiling WM (but how would that integrate to the rest, that's the question). IMHO the KDE contributor community is even more valuable than the software at this point, which is all the more impressive given how anarchical it all really is. There's no Linux kernel-style "hierarchical command-and-control" development framework, no major corporate sponsors, and yet things still get done which is a testament to the skill and "give-a-shit".
      - yareally 13y ago
        > There's no Linux kernel-style "hierarchical command-and-control" development framework, no major corporate sponsors Google is a major corporate sponsor of KDE. http://ev.kde.org/supporting-members.php http://ev.kde.org/supporting-members.php
- laumars 13y ago
  This is the beauty of Linux though. You can run your lightweight managers while others whole want a heavier but more complete desktop environment can run their chosen DE.
- notthemessiah 13y ago
  > I guess it is not reasonable to expect KDE to stop 'being KDE', but I am a little disappointed to see that they don't really seem to have shifted their emphasis anymore in the "lightweight" direction. What are you talking about? They are modularizing KDElibs into things that can be run outside of KDE. This is a huge benefit for anyone who wants to use KDE tools outside of KDE, which we need these days now that GTK+ dropping the ball by focusing on GNOME. LXDE is merging with RazorQt instead of using GTK+3 for this reason: http://blog.lxde.org/?p=1013 http://blog.lxde.org/?p=1013
8ig8 13y ago
I haven't thought about KDE in a while. When I first installed RH Linux (5.1?), Gnome was the dominant windows manager (I think, that's what I initially ended up with). Gnome was okay, but when I found and switched to KDE, I felt like Linux could really take on Windows 95. KDE was so _clean_ compared to Gnome. It was beautiful. If I recall, KDE seemed odd because it was developed by a commercial entity. Gnome was developed by individual _hackers_. Funny, though, since RH was commercializing Linux at the time. I was happy to buy the box since downloading over dial up seemed impossible. I'm sure my history is off, but KDE is a good memory. My favorite memory from that era was the bumper sticker I got at the Raleigh Linux convention: "In a world without fences, who needs Gates?"
- Shamanmuni 13y ago
  The problem at that time was that Qt wasn't free nor open sourc software (you could see the code but could not redistribute modifications). Both GTK and Gnome were started as truly free alternatives to Qt and KDE. If only Qt had implemented a dual licensed model like they do now, the history of Linux's DEs would be very different.
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    The fact that Qt is C++ also played a role. I have always sided with C++ in the usual C vs C++ wars, since I know the language (1993). My first Linux distribution was Slackware 2.0 back in 1995, before GNOME or KDE existed and many used twm as their window manager. Having been part of the gtkmm mailing list for a while, mainly due to my dislike on those days of Qt using moc, I can tell there were quite some heated discussions in the usual C vs C++ style. So C guys would side with GTK, C++ with Qt and not many in the GTK world cared about us in gtkmm.
- milliams 13y ago
  For the record, KDE was always developed by individual hackers, not a commercial entity. This continues to this day and among open source projects, KDE is still one of those most free from commercial 'interference'. GNOME, on the other hand, has been largely guided by RedHat for a long time with many of the major developers being employed by that company.

63 points by conductor 13y ago

Crito 13y ago

I guess it is not reasonable to expect KDE to stop 'being KDE', but I am a little disappointed to see that they don't really seem to have shifted their emphasis anymore in the "lightweight" direction. I used to be a KDE user, up until about 4.2 (I even used 4.0), but after that I stopped and switched to a lightweight window manager. Most linux desktop users that I interact with often have done the same, more or less at the same time. There is probably some selection bias going on here or something, but from my perspective it seems like the linux desktop zeitgeist is moving towards barebones tiling window managers, rather than traditional desktop environments, perhaps as the dream of "Linux for the proverbial grandmother" is slowly abandoned (or perhaps as the idea of the native GUI application dies, in favor of browsers (which provide the same facilities regardless of your WM/DE) and terminals).

GuiA 13y ago
I've observed the same phenomenon. I use xmonad on my Linux box (arch), and most of my friends use awesome/ion3/openbox/xfce/etc. I agree with your assessment that everything being in the browser now is probably amongst the primary causes for it. As a developer, everything I do is either in a terminal or in a browser; and tiling managers are just much better and efficient for that user persona. And if you're a nerd but still want to use a floating wm (why would you!?), then there's almost no reason to use Gnome/KDE over a more lightweight alternative. The users who (debatably) benefit from non-tiling WMs (the computer using grandpa, but also designers, 3D modelers, engineers who work using CAD programs, accountants, etc. etc. etc.) are all on Windows/OSX anyway, with little reason to move to Linux ever (and when they do use Linux, for example to process bigdata®, they do so over SSH on EC2 anyway). So what's the future for Gnome/KDE? Obviously they'll always be there for people who are first discovering Linux and need something familiar to navigate around; but I doubt they'll ever have the popularity they had in the early 2000s. I for one am looking forward to a year 2030 where nerds still use tiling window managers and "ugly" terminals :) Addendum: I guess SteamOS could sway a lot of gamers towards Linux; and that uses Gnome. So who knows, maybe the Gnome community can get a boost from that.
- laumars 13y ago
  I'm a nerd who spends most of his time in "ugly" terminals; but KDE is still my preferred DE. Since I use tmux heavily and am often found browsing the net in lynx (or just curl when I'm looking for something specific), I could get away without Xorg completely if I had to. But KDE just seems to compliment my workflow nicely. Everyone is different though. I wouldn't ever push my preferred WM/DE's onto anyone else any more than I'd expect to like whatever set up they've fallen in love for.
  - GuiA 13y ago
    Interesting. Is there anything specific about KDE's workflow that you like and haven't seen elsewhere? When did you start using KDE? If you discovered Linux today, how likely do you think you'd be to use KDE? (i'm writing a toy WM + DE stuff in my free time, and am curious to hear about all of that :)
    - laumars 13y ago
      I've been using KDE for years. I can't remember exactly how long, but I vaguely recall getting excited about a magazine which had KDE2 on it's cover disc, so I must have been using it since the later versions of 1. Some stuff that I like about KDE4 are (in no particular order): o Dolphin - it's a fantastic file manager which has all the features you'd expect from a powerful modern file manager yet in a clean and uncluttered interface. Yet everything is easy locate and enable as and when I need o Unified / Integrated components - I can be running Dolphin and hit [F4] and a Konsole terminal pane will attach to the bottom of the file manager; already cd'ed to the directory I'm browsing. And as it's KDE Konsole, all of my profiles et al from the standalone terminal emulator will be available. o Taskbar - while I might dislike Windows as an OS (personal preference; not trying to start a flamewar), I do think the taskbar was a stroke of genius. The Windows taskbar peaked at Windows 2000 / XP (minus the themes). The KDE taskbar has the same clean layout that I liked from Windows 2000. o KWin Compositing - I used to dislike KWin and much prefer Compiz, and in many ways Compiz is still probably preferable. But these days KWin is actually pretty decent on it's own; which is handy because I don't have a whole lot of time to spend making a computer look pretty. So it's nice to have an "out of the box" solution that comes with KDE4 rather than having to install lots of additional glitter manually. o Krunner - [F2] then type any application or document name and it pops up. Hugely convenient. o Configuration - I work as a Linux and UNIX systems administrator by trade, so sometimes I just can't be bothered to configure things the "proper" way if I just need to quickly add a printer to CUPS (for example). KDE comes with some pretty decent control panel applets for desktop administration. Though I really dislike how they've grouped the items in System Settings - which makes it just as counter intuitive to find items as it is in Windows Control Panel when you're unfamiliar with Windows. o Snap Regions - I know most WMs support that these days, but it was less common when that feature was released in KDE4.0 (or at least that's what I seem to recall. I might be wrong about that). o Sane defaults - for the most part, I find I don't have to do much to make KDE usable. I know most of what I've described can be done in other WM/DEs, but I've always just felt at home in KDE. Maybe part of it is just because I've been using it for so many years on so many different distros (SuSE, Arch, Mandrake, Slackware, etc) or maybe it's because many of the distros I've ran on my desktop have been KDE-centric (eg SuSE, Slackware) or at last been one of the few to do decent packages for KDE (I'm still not convinced KDE4 on Kubuntu isn't total garbage where as Arch seems to suit KDE well). But KDE just feels like home. The only other environment I've felt comfortable in was Awesome, which, weirdly, is the polar opposite of KDE. Most of the other DE's look pretty but I'm quickly bored of them (which I'm guessing is exactly how you and many others feel about KDE4?) As for if I discovered Linux today; who knows what I'd be using. Probably Awesome because I'd want to think of myself as "l33t". Good luck with your DE/WM project by the way. That's quite a daunting project you've taken on - but I can imagine it'll be great fun too.
mpyne 13y ago
> but I am a little disappointed to see that they don't really seem to have shifted their emphasis anymore in the "lightweight" direction. It's not the job of KDE to do AwesomeWM better though. I mean, you mention as much but that's the real reason. If people wanted barebones tiling WM they'd use that. If they want GNOME, they'd use that, etc. And while we at KDE are certainly striving as always to make the desktop as efficient as possible (since a featureful desktop should not require massive resources), having a comprehensive desktop experience is the mission, not a zeitgeist-compliant KWin. ;)
- Crito 13y ago
  As I said, it isn't reasonable to ask KDE to not be KDE... I just don't want to see them slide out of relevance. They bring a lot of good ideas and tech to the table, but currently aren't packaging it in a form that I find palatable.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    Well I'm currently reading an economics book that describes the "creative destruction" that results from disruptive innovators displacing old industries... and I guess the point to that is that if KDE gets made irrelevant because no one uses desktops well, such is life, you know? May the best GUI win and all. It's not impossible we'd make a KWin-lite that only does tiling WM (but how would that integrate to the rest, that's the question). IMHO the KDE contributor community is even more valuable than the software at this point, which is all the more impressive given how anarchical it all really is. There's no Linux kernel-style "hierarchical command-and-control" development framework, no major corporate sponsors, and yet things still get done which is a testament to the skill and "give-a-shit".
    - yareally 13y ago
      > There's no Linux kernel-style "hierarchical command-and-control" development framework, no major corporate sponsors Google is a major corporate sponsor of KDE. http://ev.kde.org/supporting-members.php http://ev.kde.org/supporting-members.php
laumars 13y ago
This is the beauty of Linux though. You can run your lightweight managers while others whole want a heavier but more complete desktop environment can run their chosen DE.
notthemessiah 13y ago
> I guess it is not reasonable to expect KDE to stop 'being KDE', but I am a little disappointed to see that they don't really seem to have shifted their emphasis anymore in the "lightweight" direction. What are you talking about? They are modularizing KDElibs into things that can be run outside of KDE. This is a huge benefit for anyone who wants to use KDE tools outside of KDE, which we need these days now that GTK+ dropping the ball by focusing on GNOME. LXDE is merging with RazorQt instead of using GTK+3 for this reason: http://blog.lxde.org/?p=1013 http://blog.lxde.org/?p=1013

8ig8 13y ago

I haven't thought about KDE in a while. When I first installed RH Linux (5.1?), Gnome was the dominant windows manager (I think, that's what I initially ended up with). Gnome was okay, but when I found and switched to KDE, I felt like Linux could really take on Windows 95. KDE was so _clean_ compared to Gnome. It was beautiful. If I recall, KDE seemed odd because it was developed by a commercial entity. Gnome was developed by individual _hackers_. Funny, though, since RH was commercializing Linux at the time. I was happy to buy the box since downloading over dial up seemed impossible. I'm sure my history is off, but KDE is a good memory. My favorite memory from that era was the bumper sticker I got at the Raleigh Linux convention: "In a world without fences, who needs Gates?"

Shamanmuni 13y ago
The problem at that time was that Qt wasn't free nor open sourc software (you could see the code but could not redistribute modifications). Both GTK and Gnome were started as truly free alternatives to Qt and KDE. If only Qt had implemented a dual licensed model like they do now, the history of Linux's DEs would be very different.
- pjmlp 13y ago
  The fact that Qt is C++ also played a role. I have always sided with C++ in the usual C vs C++ wars, since I know the language (1993). My first Linux distribution was Slackware 2.0 back in 1995, before GNOME or KDE existed and many used twm as their window manager. Having been part of the gtkmm mailing list for a while, mainly due to my dislike on those days of Qt using moc, I can tell there were quite some heated discussions in the usual C vs C++ style. So C guys would side with GTK, C++ with Qt and not many in the GTK world cared about us in gtkmm.
milliams 13y ago
For the record, KDE was always developed by individual hackers, not a commercial entity. This continues to this day and among open source projects, KDE is still one of those most free from commercial 'interference'. GNOME, on the other hand, has been largely guided by RedHat for a long time with many of the major developers being employed by that company.