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KDE's future: Plasma & SimpleKDE
Posted by
Hemos
on Mon Jul 18, 2005 07:55 AM
from the the-evolving-world dept.
from the the-evolving-world dept.
A reader writes: "KDE continues to grow. Early screenshots, mockups, and developer blogs show that the new Plasma Project (KDE 4.x branch) will bring innovative approaches to desktop computing. On the other hand, the very first screenshots of SimpleKDE, an unofficial fork of KDE, were meant to be a response to those who criticise KDE as being overbloated."
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Server go boom? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Server go boom? (Score:5, Informative)
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"overbloated"? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:"overbloated"? (Score:2)
Re:"overbloated"? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:"overbloated"? (Score:4, Funny)
Something which might be a little better to use if it didn't have its features so closely audited. See: Gnome.
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Flamebait? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"overbloated"? (Score:5, Informative)
as you can see, despite some people loving to claim from the roof tops that GNOME is the default desktop in Distroland, it's a falsehood.
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Mirrors (Score:5, Informative)
Plasma screenshots [mirrordot.org], mockups [mirrordot.org], developer blogs [mirrordot.org] and Plasma Project homepage [mirrordot.org].
SimpleKDE screenshots [mirrordot.org] and homepage [mirrordot.org].
All links courtesy Mirrordot.org [mirrordot.org].
Re:Mirrors (Score:5, Informative)
As far as I know (and I've been following this pretty closely), there is no plasma yet. It's still separated superkaramba, kicker and kdesktop, which they are now porting to Qt 4, and will later combine and alter into what will be plasma. Thus, there are no screenshots, as they're not far enough along yet.
There's lots of interesting mockups at kde-artists.org, though.
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Re:Plasma looks like ass! (Score:5, Informative)
Calm down a little and don't jump to conclusions. Do you really think that Plasma will only have one theme, and that single theme will be pure monochrome? Making judgments of the final product based on one guy's preliminary ideas is ridiculous.
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Re:Plasma looks like ass! (Score:5, Interesting)
seeing as nobody's seen it yet, that's an interesting statement to make
right now we are working with a large number of artists who are all throwing ideas and concepts for different parts of plasma into a pot. i, and a few others from the project, go back to the artists with feedback, questions, critiques and the cycle starts over.
we've done perhaps 1 or 2 cycles thus far and have a few months more to go. the final look and feel is by FAR not decided upon. in fact, in august we'll be getting together with the artists doing Oxygen (a new theme and icon style in quiet development that is aiming to be the default in kde4) while at aKademy and banging out some hopefully hi-octane work then.
> lets not forget that we don't want to go with
> too radical a change all at once
yes, i couldn't agree more!
when working out how plasma might work, i ended up at some rather radical concepts. but as you note, we can't drop some totally new way of doing everything on people.
it needs to be introduced step by step.
thus plasma will be familiar enough in its default configuration for people to transition without really noticing it from KDE3, Windows or Mac... but it will introduce subtle new concepts that will allow us to start edging in a direction that gets us out of the WIMP-jail.
the first concept is that the desktop is not a file manager view, but harmonizes with your panels.
the second concept is that the desktop and panels are meant to be first class citizens that actively enable your workflow.
i'd love to say more about it, but i don't particularly like talking about things which i can't let people play with right now (aka "vapourware") even though development is going forward at a terrific pace. i also don't like it when people snag ideas and run off with them, as has happened a few times in the last couple of years. =/
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well done (Score:4, Interesting)
If I were them, I'd do a bugzilla and block all links from here.. meanwhile perhaps the editors/submitters should note that bddf.ca simply cannot cope with it and there's no point linking directly.
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Re:well done (Score:4, Insightful)
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Cacheing everything is possibly unfair (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Cacheing everything is possibly unfair (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Mirrors (Score:3, Interesting)
Plasma (Score:3, Funny)
The atoms of truth in it might be a bit messed up right now, but once the facts cool, it will be rock solid.
When plasma comes out, if your not there, you might as well be a lame liquid.
Personal Opinion (Score:5, Insightful)
Good God (Score:5, Funny)
Good job, people. We're getting good at this game.
I was going to link to the story on Mirrordot, but it appears that even Mirrordot couldn't get 'em fast enough...
This could be important (Score:4, Insightful)
So simple! (Score:5, Funny)
All I see are a white page and my browser's loading animation!
Seems really cool... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is looks really cool and useful. Both ideas are very welcome. And for those who asks why Linux doesn't have one desktop - this is the reason - Innovation.
Re:Seems really cool... (Score:3, Insightful)
innovation, spreading risk and allowing us to address a broader audience by appealing to a wider variety of personal tastes.
vive la open source desktop!
usability question (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:usability question (Score:4, Insightful)
Humans have a very intuitive grasp of motion. Don't mess it up by arbitrarily changing the action-reaction coupling. It's bad enough that people have to use mouse acceleration because they use mice with insufficient resolution.
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KDE Servers (Score:5, Funny)
What's the deal (Score:4, Funny)
What about Slicker? (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, these are just mockups, and it seems the project has stalled for more than a year. Slicker could use a little attention, don't you think? So if you have some spare time and a love for moving the Linux desktop in cool directions, how about giving it a try?
PS: I'm totally unrelated to the project, just disappointed that this cool idea is rusting
Re:What about Slicker? (Score:5, Interesting)
So, basically what happened was simple. I really was only interested in using it as a way to access Konq, as panels which would slide out based on mouse-to-screen edge movements. I made it relatively plugin-extendable and people whipped up all sorts of nice extensions, like terminal access, K-Menu access, etc etc. People also wanted it to become a sourceforge project and more public, which I was fine with. So, I handed it off, and it promptly died since the people who took it on bickered day and night about website design and themability, and never bothered to write any code.
I then moved on to OS X, where I continued the work that matters to me ( robotics & AI ).
But anyway, it had potential!
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KDE Fork ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:KDE Fork ... (Score:3, Informative)
It turned out that all the noise was really just a few very vocal people and some trolls, and thus GoneME turned out a few patches (reversing button order for instance) then promptly died. I think their last patch to "fix" all of GNOME came to a whopping 22k.
I expect the same for thi
Innovative? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sorry. I saw nothing innovative. It doesn't mean KDE 4.x won't be innovative, it's just that none of the links hint at this. It was slashdotted, but all I saw mirrored was
- animation of a calender built into KDE
- Contacts grouped together with a pop-up (I assume it's a mouse-over effect) saying how many people I'm talking to and who the latest person was.
- Search bar built into the taskbar and results are shown in a pop-up.
- A dedicated button to profile information in the taskbar.
- A dedicated button to computer settings (including a shut-down option)
- Digital or analog clock option
- Taskbar can change colours
- Taskbar can show icon or icon and name of the file (along with pop-up summary cut off to avoid it being too large)
- A start button
- System alerts appearing above the taskbar
- Dedicated buttons in taskbar can be customised
- Dedicated weather button
Grabbing existing programs and building them into a desktop is not innovative, so #1 isn't innovative (it allows pop-ups to be grouped or split, I assume so you can keep it on your screen. Useful? Yes. Innovative? No. It's just grabbing stickies (present in ICQ in 2000) and using them).#2 Microsoft already sort of does, and I have found it annoying, rather then useful. They've added a tiny bit more information (which can be indicated with flashing), but isn't innovative. Useful though? For some perhaps.
A program does #3 for Google Desktop, so even if it is innovative, it wasn't KDE's innovation.
Dedicated buttons are not innovative, and it's really just what Microsoft does with the icons displayed next clock in Windows. So #4, #5 and #11 aren't really innovative.
#6, #7, #9 and #10 is already done either by KDE itself or Windows.
I have no idea why weather buttons are so popular (I prefer the method of sticking my head out the window), but they are. I'd hardly call it innovative though.
So perhaps the blog has this innovation talked about in the summary? Well, no. It mentions pulling a bunch of things (to be reworked I presume), the only thing it mentions on adding is:
we'll have a new clock applet in plasma
I hardly think that's innovative.
With Windows barely changing since 1995, I was looking forward to finally seeing some innovation in desktop interfaces. Unfortunately this article on KDE and plasma didn't include anything that could be remotely called innovative.
The only innovative thing I've heard about that comes to mind recently, is Apple's Spotlight and a filing system that uses labels rather then folders (is Apple going to be doing this? Or is Microsoft? Or is no-one and I'm only hoping someone eventually will?).
I do hope KDE does bring innovation into the desk-top. I hope someone, ANYONE brings it. But I've yet to see any indication anyone will be anytime soon.
Re:Innovative? (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah, the indignation of the armchair Free Software Critic. Note how he comes to conclusions based on a cursory glance at a few mockups, and is able to sneer in plain text. Especially skilled is his repeated entreaty that someone, ANYONE, give him a Free desktop which meets his exacting (if completely unspecified) standards for usability, innovation, and excellence.
Their existence in the geek ecosystem is a bit of a mystery, since for all their bluster, they generally con
Re:Innovative? (Score:4, Insightful)
His points were very accurate. All of the features shown in the screenshot that was DESCRIBED IN THE ORIGINAL POSTING as "innovative" can be found in existing Operating Systems and desktop utilities. Innovative implies new and exciting. The features on display were not innovative.
Your attitude here is exactly the reason many of us don't bother submitting suggestions or critiques anymore. I spent some time a while back going over the Gentoo install documentation, making notes where clarification could be used and how it could perhaps be structured in an easier-to-follow format. My suggestion/report was just discarded with "It works for us"
Usability is the "un-fun" portion of building a desktop. It's just not cool to go through and code and edit to make it all flow together. It's fun to build the fancy widgets, or the pretty themes, or some system tool or whatever. That's the fun stuff. Going through the entire damn thing and editing it to make it mesh together is tedious and boring. Most people, when working on a project for free, are less inclined to do the boring stuff.
Then there's the whole attitude that "Well, lets see YOU do it better!" which is just a load of crap. This is why Linux is lightyears away from being a user-oriented system. The average user would take one look at GNOME or KDE and go "Yuck!" And you can't really expect them to come in and code a new UI for you. And don't start with "Well, then maybe they're not smart enough to use it..." If you want Linux to succeed on the desktop in a meaningful way, you have to make the thing end-user-friendly.
So get off your high horse and come taste a bit of reality. You know, that place the rest of us live. I know it may seem harsh and may conflict with your unrealistic expectations, but a brief stay might be good for you.
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I can say with definity I don't like SimpleKDE (Score:3, Insightful)
That's unbelievable! (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, but we are in 2005 and the "Linux desktop" is still behind the 10-years-old Windows 95 desktop in terms of consistency and usability. The situation is really scary given that Windows 95 interface (as well as its 98, 2k and XP derivatives) is actually a piece of shit. But, at least, it didn't make basic mistakes:
- Fonts are readable and well aligned inside widgets
- Spacing was consistent between elements of the interface
- Contrast between what the user has to recognize/interact and backgrounds/empty areas/decorations is quite high
- Widgets, colors, fonts, decorations, etc. all look the "same", without major discrepancies in style or form
KDE (and Gnome) make *all* the abovementioned mistakes, shamefully. It's amazing how these problems still persist and *none* seems to care about them, energy seems to be used in the creation of stupid themes and wallpapers as opposed to real, obvious issues (look at the fonts issue, for instance, if you don't use ttf fonts stolen from a windows install the desktops look really bad). I should stop my flamebait here, but it's obvious that Apple is going to put the last nail in the "Linux desktop" coffin, for good.Re:bloat for KDE too? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:bloat for KDE too? (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the "problems" with KDE and Gnome is that they are too configurable. They could be much smaller and lighter if they had less options. I am afraid it is a case of you can not have your cake and eat it too.
Re:bloat for KDE too? (Score:4, Insightful)
Ironically, GNOME is no less "bloated" than KDE in terms of memory usage in a typical desktop session. In my experience, KDE is simply more efficient. Both environments require a relatively modern machine to perform well, but KDE gives you far more features and configurability in the process.
If you're asking me, it's because KDE is less driven by politics and more by what users want.
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Re:bloat for KDE too? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's all stupid, just like the "arguments" saying the problem with kde is its high configurability. I only speak for myself here, but I have to tell you my current kde 3.3.2 desktop with superkaramba is the best desktop [in functionality, usability, speed and niceness] I've had for years, both on highly customized windows versions and on earlier kde/gnome/xfce/e versions. Since I know kde fairly well, it took me about 10-15 minutes to configure all the available options from looks to behavior, from menu items to mime associations, to suit my needs. And no, the availability of the many customizable options doesn't make it more resource hungry, bad configuration does.
At some point you need a freaking 3GHz GPU just to run a text editor.
Also, highly and badly stupid. [And I'm not surpised you get a 5 Informative for that, either.] One just needs to know the neighborhood before moving in. I could in this moment show you quite normal [i.e. fast enough, no unnecessary wait] launch times for kate, kwrite, kedit, kword and even oo.org writer.
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Re:bloat for KDE too? (Score:3, Interesting)
Eclipse is not a text editor. It's an extremely powerful extensible IDE and as such it is quite efficient and useful. Eclipse saves developers an incredible amount of time and that time is worth a few orders of magnitude more than the cost of the extra RAM it uses over
Re:bloat for KDE too? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:bloat for KDE too? (Score:4, Insightful)
No. "Bloated" is geek slang for spreadsheet programs whos programmers decide to add a flight simulator game as a secret feature because it doesn't increase program size or resource usage much, relatively speaking.
"Bloated" also refers to programs which grew by constantly adding new features to sell each new version, with very little concern about how those features affected the whole. As a result, a bloated programs interface has 100+ buttons, menus need their own management system, and actually using the program is nightmarish since you always have to wonder if one of the 1000+ automatic features will suddenly decide to reformat the document, save it and delete every previous version, destroying all your hard work in its zeal to be helpfull.
"Bloated" also means delivering help texts in the word balloons of an animated paperclip (and providing a programming API for making additional helpfull characters). It means having a spellcheck running in the background constantly, giving the program a vaguely heavy and unresponsive feel. It means setting parts of the program to be loaded during operating system boot, since starting the program would otherwise take too long. And it means integrating a Web Browser with both kernel and shell just because you can. And supporting automatically executing scripts embedding in text documents.
In short, "bloat" in programs is similar to clogged arteries in human beings.
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Re:bloat for KDE too? (Score:4, Insightful)
Office 2000 SP1 removed the flight simulator from Excel. It is not present in Excel XP or Excel 2003.
"Bloated" also means delivering help texts in the word balloons of an animated paperclip (and providing a programming API for making additional helpfull characters)."
Agreed. Office assistant sucks. You don't have to install it, though. Microsoft Agent has essentially been dead for years.
"It means having a spellcheck running in the background constantly, giving the program a vaguely heavy and unresponsive feel."
That's the stupidest comment I've ever heard about Word. Wavy-underline-spell-check is one of the most useful features to *ever* be added to Word. I don't know what you're talking about with "unresponsiveness", but Word 2003 uses about 14MB on my system and uses less than 5% of the CPU while I type.
"It means setting parts of the program to be loaded during operating system boot, since starting the program would otherwise take too long."
Not true since Word XP.
"And it means integrating a Web Browser with both kernel and shell just because you can."
Trident ("Internet Explorer") has not, is not, and - to the best of my knowledge - will never be a part of the Windows kernel. It is a series of libraries (mshtml.dll, showdocvw.dll, and some others) - not unlike Gecko ("Mozilla"), KHTML ("Konqueror") or WebCore ("Safari").
"And supporting automatically executing scripts embedding in text documents"
Word documents are not text documents, first of all. And, second of all, macros have not executed by default since Word 2000, and in Word 2003, you have to go through a multi-step process to even see the dialog that lets you execute them. Macro viruses are essentially dead.
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Re:bloat for KDE too? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:HI I*m Carrie (Score:4, Funny)
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E17 (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Let me guess (Score:4, Insightful)
Keep in mind you can modify KDE for behavior you find more appropriate.
Also consider enlightenment; that sounds like something you might prefer. One of the nice things about Linux is choice; you don't have to use KDE. Many distributions come with a wide selection of Window managers, and enlightenment is often on the list (it is for SuSE).
None of these are as 'integrated' as KDE, however, but I do not think you can fault the KDE project for acheiveing their design goals, especially because I consider their goals admirable (think, for example, of the recent Novell switch to desktop linux. Do you really think it would have been possible without Windows-like KDE and Gnome?)
I understand that you acknowledge this, but the political motivation really *does* make a lot of sense, especially when you consider that many of the KDE 'developers' work for or in conjunction with the 'ties to IBM, Redhat, (Novell)' that you speak of.
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Re:"Overbloated"? (Score:4, Funny)
Compare with "lightly overweight", "overweight", "obese", "exceedingly obese" and "ugly mass of fat that doesn't even fit in the bathtub". This last one would be KDE.
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