International OSS Desktop Conference aKademy 2004 161
Torsten Rahn writes "The KDE Project is pleased to announce the successful completion of the KDE Community World Summit ("aKademy 2004") in
Ludwigsburg (Germany) taking place from August 20th to 29th. With more than 230 KDE core developers, usability and accessibility experts, translators, editors and artists participating, the event is expected to have a huge and lasting impact on the next major releases of the leading Linux and Unix desktop environment. In addition, 270 visitors from the KDE user base and from other Free Software projects brought the total number of attendees to 500. The international participants, coming from 5 continents, took part in 65 talks, 10 full-day tutorials and numerous BoF-meetings over the course of 10 days. Thanks to this huge turnout and the numerous activities, the event evolved into the largest conference ever held that focused on a single open source desktop environment."
WOW! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:WOW! (Score:1, Funny)
Re:WOW! (Score:2)
Re:WOW! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:WOW! (Score:5, Insightful)
Features that YOU want should come first, speed should only be a concern if it actually has a major affect over what you are trying to get done, which really isn't the case on modern hardware. After all, some people are happy using Windows XP.
So what if KDE is slower than Gnome and uses more memory? (That's just an example, I have no idea what the actual case is here) That's why you have the hardware, it's there to be used and abused to get the results you want.
And for the record, Gnome runs just fine here, fast enough speeds everywhere. I obviously don't have the 'plague' on my system...
Re:WOW! (Score:5, Informative)
1) Menus are displayed before icons are loaded, so the first time you use a menu, all the icons get loaded from disk, and you have a blank menu for about a second until the loading is done.
2) Window redraw and resize is handled poorly. Even the simplest GNOME apps (eg: Gedit), can't resize smoothly without the content area lagging behind the window frame. Moving or resizing a window above another window causes all sorts of ugly effects as the toolkit takes it's sweet time handling the expose events.
3) The lack of multithreading causes the UI of apps like Epiphany to lock for several seconds when loading/rendering complex pages. This is a major no-no. I don't care if the app is simulating the universe --- the GUI should always respond immediately to the user.
Yes, most of these things are cosmetic, but cosmetic things can have deep psychological impacts. The redraw problems, in particular, make it seem like the computer is having trouble keeping up with my workflow, and destroys the otherwise solid feel of the GNOME desktop. The lack of a solid feel, in turn, makes the desktop irritating and tiresome to use in the long-run.
PS> You're "if I wanted speed I wouldn't even install X" comment is bogus. I like lynx a lot, but I'd rather surf Slashdot with a graphical browser, thank you very much.
Re:WOW! (Score:3, Interesting)
Changing applications to use more multithreading to improve "user's experiment" is unfortunately a very big job, which won't happen soon, but I hope that with the multi-core CPU coming soon, perhaps developpers will be more receptive fo
Re:WOW! (Score:2)
Or why not use the Qt/KDE solution? Create the icons the same time you create the menu and keep them in memory. This will cause a slight delay in loading the application if you load icons from the filesystem, but it doesn't bother me nearly as much as the delay at the point of menu display.
Re:WOW! (Score:3, Interesting)
nVidia is the only way to go on Linux. Sorry but everything just works so much better with nVidia.
GNOME starts up hella faster than KDE. It feels a lot better, the fonts look better, I like the consistant button placement, and after getting used to the GUI OK-button-always-on-the-right I wish everything was like that. KDE feels "clicky", I don't know how else to explain
Re:WOW! (Score:3, Informative)
It's not my video card or settings. It's been the same on every Linux distro I've ever used, and I've used a lot of htem.
nVidia is the only way to go on Linux. Sorry but everything just works so much better with nVidia.
I've got a GeForce4Go running the NVIDIA drivers.
GNOME starts up hella faster than KDE.
Who cares how long it takes to start up?
It feels a lot better,
Re:WOW! (Score:2)
Please explain why this doesn't happen on xfce. It uses the same toolkit.
Re:WOW! (Score:2)
Re:WOW! (Score:3, Insightful)
In this case, the application should load its icons when it loads; then, when the menu comes up, it's instantaneous. Load time is meaningless to me when I work in (maybe) 5 or 6 applications that are left running all the time. Render time when I click on a menu is important.
And don't try and argue that loadin
Re:WOW! (Score:2, Insightful)
Funny, I made a weird hack a while back in that on system startup all icons were copied into
But if something like would be done everyone would complain again that gnome is a memory hog
Re:WOW! (Score:2)
Re:WOW! (Score:1)
main()
load_needed()
show()
start_icon_load_thread()
event_loop()
How does that affect your start time? Not at all. How does it affect the app's percieved speed? Dramatically.
Re:WOW! (Score:2)
I'd prefer it if the app loaded it's icons when it loaded. A 32bpp 16x16 icon takes up 1kb of memory. The average app has maybe a couple of dozen menu icons. Epiphany, for example, has 33. That's a trivial memory overhead.
It has become a lot better. But I agree it is still noticable.
It's still not nearly good enough. With the XSYNC patches, Qt/KDE is at the "transparent" point on my system, where I can't notice any lag
Re:WOW! (Score:3, Insightful)
2.4GHz CPU, 1/2 gig of RAM... yes, XP runs perfectly smoothly, as do Java GUI apps, etc.
As you say, on modern hardware, for 90%+ of applications resource usage is a non-issue.
Re:WOW! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:WOW! (Score:1)
I like macOS.
My next machine will be a mac.
Re:WOW! (Score:2)
Re:WOW! (Score:2)
KDE 4? (Score:1)
Re:KDE 4? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:KDE 4? (Score:1)
flamewars? doncha have something better to do? (Score:3, Interesting)
getting to the best may just require siome stepping stones, like kde, gnome, your favoirite desktop, etc..
But I think it is amazing how there is still a lack of a standardized general user accessible IPC port so that users who so chose can automate some things on their own.
Free software will never be free until it is easy enough to create that most anyone with a basic undertsanding of software concepts can create software thru the use of general automation tools. Be it that they use such tools to do simple scripting or complex programming.
But one thing is for sure. A standardized user accessible IPC port is required to reach that level of computing usability.
Flamewars? I'm sure there is plenty better to do..... Or are you all waiting for MS to show you via "software factories" of which they are pursuing.
Re:flamewars? doncha have something better to do? (Score:3, Informative)
On a more serious note, this sounds like a job for freedesktop.org [freedesktop.org]. You might find the bit about CORBA (the first bullet on the page) interesting...
Re:flamewars? doncha have something better to do? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:flamewars? doncha have something better to do? (Score:4, Insightful)
Free software is free already. You don't need to know how to program to use your freedoms, like you don't have to be a carpenter to build your house.
Re:flamewars? doncha have something better to do? (Score:5, Informative)
Some command line examples of dcop in action:
tell KMail to check for new mail
switch to desktop 4
tell KMail to compact all folders
logout
open new konqueror window with www.kde.org
I am _not_ new here, but it never ceases to amaze me how people are so eager to flame away without any factual support for their rants.
Re:flamewars? doncha have something better to do? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes guys, I'm aware of these, however neither are standard in the general scope of linux or FSF software but are instead desktop specific or to complexicated, and this only helps the divide of flamewars.
for whats it worth I even have a bounty set up for anyone who wants to create a bridge between linux and AROS (Amiga Research OS -- a FOSS project on sourceforge -- that can run hosted on linux. bounty thru Team AROS) via such existing projects as dbus
but ease of use and ease of adding to existing open source applications (this IPC port) and documentation of what functionality is accessible thru the port in such applications, is needed.
perhaps there is something to be learned from how Amiga did it, and it became standard, easy to impliment and use and generally the apps include documentation of accessible functionality.
dcop only deals with a small percentage of available packages... and dbus currently even less, but not even a handful of apps.
Standard doesn't mean having numerous and obscure way of doing it (IPC at the user level), as that is quite the opposite of standard.
So.... there are better things to do than flamewar over destops... as such is only a non-productive distraction.
its important, I cannot stress that enough, given what MS is up to in teh direction of "software factories" methodology --- their book has missed two publishing dates so far but they are doing what they do instead.... collect feedback on the scope of this direction via shorter articles, websites dedicated to software factories, etc...
google on - software factories MS book - and if you really understand what they are up to, then you too will realize the importance of getting an easy to use and impliment standard IPC in use.
Maybe that will be dcop or dbus.... A plan, good, fair or poor, is better than no plan at all. Being destop specific is not a plan for the bigger picture or scope of FOSS packages.
Re:flamewars? doncha have something better to do? (Score:2)
I can't say for sure that kde will use dbus, but if I was a betting man, I'd say it will
Re:flamewars? doncha have something better to do? (Score:2)
I am also watching with interest DragonflyBSD, as not only does Matt Dillion seem to understand a direction towards simplicity but also wrote a C compiler for Amiga. He also was the originator for csh on the Amiga, which interestingly enough provided a way to send and receive messages via the Amigas IPC ports typically recognized as AREXX ports, however... AREXX didn't need to be running in order
Umm Old News... (Score:3, Insightful)
All these allow for what you are talking about..
Perhaps kde is not the best that can be done, as you put it, but it does what you are asking for... today...
A tad bit of research before you toss in the pro-MS line might help your credibility..
where's the research for -Re:Umm Old News... (Score:2)
somehow it just doesn't seem to be research, for you to simply have read it. The research would come in what you would find in the mentioned google search.
still 10x slower than BeOS (Score:5, Interesting)
Why is it that this candy-coated windowmanager runs like a *DOG* when it's just moving windows and drawing text on a 512mb 550MHz PIII system, and BeOS 4.0 (pre)release could run multiple video streams effortlessly without lag (may as well mention almost instant boot) on a 166Mhz PPC 604 with 128 MB RAM? 5 years ago.
Maybe getting paid for your work and quality go hand in hand in some products?
Re:still 10x slower than BeOS (Score:2)
Re:still 10x slower than BeOS (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, it's possible that it was too expensive (I don't really know, though).
Re:still 10x slower than BeOS (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, there are a couple of reasons why BeOS was so great:
1) It was pervasively multithreaded. Each window had it's own rendering thread that ran independently of the application logic. This allowed apps to be very responsive, even under heavy load. It's sad that even on my 2.0GHz P4, Mozilla still blocks the UI for several seconds when certain pages take too long to load or render.
2) It had a phenomenal scheduler. It wasn't comparable, in many ways, to Linux's O(1) scheduler (it wasn't very scalable), but it was wonderfully optimized for interactive use. It's interactivity estimation was lightyears ahead of what's in the O(1) scheduler now.
3) It's multimedia subsystem was very good at moving data around the system efficiently.
4) It's toolkit was well-coded with respect to smart redraw and resize behavior.
Interestingly, the OS wasn't all that structurally different from Linux. It had a fairly POSIX-complient modular kernel. It run it's video and audio subsystems as a seperate process (like X, aRts, and Jack). It was just very well-implemented with an eye towards a fast and elegant UI.
Of course, the OS had it's darksides. The toolkit wasn't font-sensitive and layout-based, the VM was antiquated, I/O and network performance was only decent, etc. However, for the average desktop, this really wasn't a big deal, and not something that couldn't have been fixed had BeOS survived to today.
Re:still 10x slower than BeOS (Score:3, Interesting)
That's why we come back to Slashdot!
I'd also like to point out, that in the interest of fostering development, once I signed up with the company, without cost to me they sent pressed OS releases very often, updated MetroWorks compiler and toolkit releases, and even some clothing!
Would Be, I
Re:still 10x slower than BeOS (Score:4, Interesting)
Multi-threaded coding is hard and don't any coding jocks tell you otherwise. It is significantly harder to do 100% correctly (and nothing less than 100% correct will do) than single-threaded coding.
Indeed, according to one of the ex-Be engineers one of the things that hurt BeOS was that writing software for it was quite tricky, it basically meant writing robust thread-safe code even for a simple text editor. There's a good discussion of it here [osnews.com].
Anyway it's sort of academic. One of the main uses of multithreading in BeOS according to be-fan was to do window rendering in a separate thread. Linux will get something very similar within a few months when X compositing lands. OK so it won't be a thread inside the same app, it'll be a separate process which is rendering the entire screen at once but the effect is the same - no matter how busy the app is, you won't be able to "rub out" the contents of the window.
Re:still 10x slower than BeOS (Score:2)
I'm not convinced that X composition will be as good as the multithreading of BeOS, it may help a little but if your application is busy doing something complex the UI will not be responsive even if the window won't be "rubbed out".
Now ho
Re:still 10x slower than BeOS (Score:2)
Re:still 10x slower than BeOS (Score:2)
If you consider that kern
Re:still 10x slower than BeOS (Score:2)
Has someone tried to replicate BeOS scheduler on Linux? Is BeOS's scheduler described somewhere?
Re:still 10x slower than BeOS (Score:2)
Nick Piggen's scheduler patch [kerneltrap.org]
Con Kolivas's scheduler patch [kerneltrap.org]
Re:still 10x slower than BeOS (Score:3, Informative)
There is a reason why Andrew Morton is experimenting [kerneltrap.org] with different CPU schedulers [kerneltrap.org] in his -mm tree
Re:still 10x slower than BeOS (Score:2, Interesting)
Here is why... (Score:2)
Re:still 10x slower than BeOS (Score:1)
Re:still 10x slower than BeOS (Score:4, Interesting)
Have you tried running Mozilla on BeOS? I mean, not a rotten old port of M18, but a recent build of Firefox. Yes, it's still being developed, and it's been getting a lot better. But its responsiveness is a lot worse than under Linux (not to mention the font rendering). Even when comparing a 266 MHz, 64 MB Powerbook running Linux to a 1.4 GHz, 256 MB Athlon XP running an RC of Zeta.
But no, the PB can't run multiple videostreams. It has problems running just one. But video codecs have become much more demanding since the sub 200 MHz days. And so has computer use in general. Net+ was a small and simple browser, but it's practically useless these days, like all small and simple browsers are. You need features to do stuff, and stuff takes up space. That's why a small and simple OS is hopelessly outdated, and big and bloated environments like KDE (500 MB for a basic install?) and OS X (~2.5 GB for a basic install) are the future.
Re:still 10x slower than BeOS (Score:2)
neat (Score:5, Interesting)
I personally hope they are all having a good hard look at Apple's stuff. The main reason I'm not running Linux is that there's a lot of choice out there, and it shows. I hate running to Google every time I want to do something simple. Despite my many years of using Windows, I had no trouble using a Mac when the need arose.
Anyway, sorry if that sounded like a rant. I'm just hoping some of the work that comes out of this gathering deals with the end-user experience. I'd love to get away from Windows.
Re:neat (Score:1)
So why not use them? OS X is easy to use, sure, but it's BSD under the hood, so it has more than enough to play with.
Re:neat (Score:3, Insightful)
I have given that a lot of thought, and I'm actually fairly close to it. There are a couple of hurdles, though:
1.) My main machine is a TabletPC. I use it for drawing. To the best of my knowledge, Apple hasn't moved in that
Re:neat (Score:2)
Re. 2: They say Macs are usable longer than PCs (I haven't had mine long enough to find out yet). Also, when you get the urge to upgrade a component, stick the money you would spend in a jar (or an interest-bearing savings account) and then once you'v
Re:neat (Score:3, Interesting)
I moved from a tablet to a TabletPC for a couple of reasons:
1.) I wanted to be able to dry right on the screen. The only device I've seen that does that is a Wacom Cintiq, and those cost $2,500. Plus, they only run at 1280 by 1024. My TabletPC cost
Re:neat (Score:1)
Oops, I didn't clarify this very well. I meant that from a getting-work-done point of view, it isn't significantly faster.
Sorry, I'm really bad at expressing myself sometimes.
Re:neat (Score:2)
Re:neat (Score:1)
Hehhe. The problem with stacking them is that it'd interfere with my tablet's configuration. It has two modes. Laptop mode and slate mode. I can either use it like an ordinary laptop, or flip the screen around on top so it looks like I'm carrying a small monitor. (and yes, it's very small.) Adhering an i
Re:neat (Score:2)
Re:neat (Score:1)
Unfortunately, I'm not sure what that'd buy me. I'm at a point right now where the OS is pretty much invisible to me. At least for the next 6 months until I need to reinstall.
Don't worry man, next computer purchase I make, Mac'll be seriously considered.
Re:neat (Score:2)
Re:neat (Score:2)
Good thing you made your decision, getting away from Windows to Linux, just can't wait till someone shoe horns Linux into what you want, something like OS X it seems, if only there was something that you wouldn't have to wait so long for.
Re:neat (Score:2)
That's not quite where I was going, but actually yes, it can cause nasty problems. If there were 10 browsers (heh there probably is, good thing Firebird seems to be the de-facto default) for Linux all specialized at doing their own thing well, would that be good or bad? Well, let's see, web developers would have a hard time writing pages that'd conform to all of them, and there'd be a lot of noise on the web to the tune of "Which is best?!?!?" Choice good until ther
Re:neat (Score:2, Interesting)
Good. Guess what, not every app is a swiss army knife. Most shouldn't be. Users are different. This is why you have 2000 computer types and, wait for it, 2000 different type of people buying them. People's wants and needs differ. If there a
Re:neat (Score:2)
I like how you're agreeing in a disagreeing tone.
Re:neat (Score:1)
Unless Galeon, Firefox, Mozilla, Epiphany, Stepstone, Konqueror, Safari, gnuWebCore, et al suddenly merged.
Re:neat (Score:1)
No, he didn't. If you actually understood what he said instead of arguing with what he didn't say, you'd find you're both pretty much on the same side. Your goal here is to argue, not to discuss.
Re:neat (Score:1)
From the top post. Direct quote with emphasis added. If me and the poster agree, rocking, it's just another post I've made that people can ignore. IMHO, we've one sticking point in that they want one browser and only one browser AFAI understand what they wrote, and for that to be the "standard." Which seems to be a common
Re:neat (Score:2)
Does it really cause people nasty problems that there are over ten different manufacturers of NTSC decoding circuits, and over 100 different combinations of NTSC decoder and display device? Do people really find it difficult to produce content that conforms to all the combinations of NTSC receivers that exist?
The problem in software is simply that we're not very good at producing software standards, or at keeping to them. If we had good standards properly implemented
Elegance vs features (Score:3, Insightful)
The Gnome folks appear to be doing just that. I suspect Gnome is an attempt to clone the Mac UI (elegance over features) and KDE an attempt to clone the Windows UI (features over elegance).
Take a look at the difference between Nautilus (the Gnome file manager) and Konqueror (the KDE file manager-cum-web browser).
Nautilus is easier to use if all you want is to copy a file from one local "folder" to another. But if you want to copy a
VFS (Score:1)
This has nothing to to with Konqueror (Score:5, Informative)
The fact is with KDE you rarely would every *have* to copy the file over, since every KDE app can just access the file as if it was local anyways. You can edit a KWord document on an FTP/SFTP/WebDAV server just as easily as you can in your $HOME.
Re:neat (Score:1, Troll)
Heh. What am I supposed to do, clench my fists, bang my chest, and defend myself? Maybe I just don't want to deal with it. Maybe I just don't think that being able to compile a program is a bug f'ng deal. Maybe I just don't think that I should have to sift through Google to figure out how to edit the
Re:neat (Score:2)
Re:neat (Score:2, Insightful)
As others above has said already: if you don't like it, don't use it. Saying that in YOUR opinion it sucks will only anger people to war, no matter it's YOUR opinion you're talking about.
I don't understand one thing: if one has found his way and is happy with a solution (i.e. Mac&OSX) than why's the need to spread that linux sucks ? You just have too much time to spare now th
Re:neat (Score:2)
Ah dammit. I didn't write that very clearly. I didn't mean to say that Linux was a pain in the ass to use. I meant any given program. But I wasn't clear, so I'm sorry. I've been bad about writing my points clearly these days.
However, even if I did mean it the way you interpreted, seriously, grow a thicker skin. (
Re:neat (Score:2)
(I understand there are lots of different opinions here, not everyone wants that, blah blah blah - the impression I get from having read this site for the last few years is
Skip the flamewars, what about organisation? (Score:1, Interesting)
Also, the lack of modularity leads to more proprietary technology, which only increases the difficulty of defeating evil, evil DRM et cetera.
Oh, it'd be nice if someone could point me to a good open source perfect 1:1 CD and DVD copying utility. CD protection is pissing off my ideas of Fair Use (I actually AM creating backups,
Re:Skip the flamewars, what about organisation? (Score:1)
cdrdao copy --source-device ATAPI:0,0,0 --source-driver generic-mmc --device ATAPI:0,1,0 --driver generic-mmc --on-the-fly
eject
eject
Krap... (Score:4, Funny)
Kause people are Ksick (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:Kause people are Ksick (Score:5, Insightful)
Gimp, Gaim , Gkrellm, Gnuisletme , Gnumeric, Gnomoradio, gwavegen, grip, gstreamer, GTheListIsEndless
Konqueror, Kmail, Kopete, Kview, Kruler, Ksnapshot,KTheListIsEndless.
Listen friends Every desktop has its fair share of annoying prefixes, so live with it!
Re:Kause people are Ksick (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Kause people are Ksick (Score:1)
At least that means the KDE guys the benifit of consistency.. A GTK application IS a Gnome application. You don't see very many KDE apps with "Q" for Qt though.
Re:Kause people are Ksick (Score:2)
Some predictions on where this is heading (Score:5, Insightful)
But unfortunatley these things won't be discussed on
So, what can we expect?
Easy, on one side we will see the old gnome vs. kde flame war.
People will tell us that kde is bloated (of course without telling us what bloated means), that only gnome gets it right, etc.
And some people will of course react in the same kind, telling us that gnome is unusable, that all the gnome devs are bad people, etc.
For good meassure there will of course be someone telling us that anyone using anything with more features then twm is no real man and that real man only need the command line anyway.
And of course there will be a lot of posts claiming linux isn't ready for the desktop.
We will here that they had never had any problems with windows, that their XP install has been running happily on their PI 100 for 5 years now and that linux just doesn't cut it.
And we will for sure see some expert telling us that it isn't ready because photoshop doesn't run on linux, as if everyone needed or even wanted photoshop.
I could go on and on of course and people never cease to surprise me with the stupid topics they can come up with, but what annoys me most is that a lot of these incredibly boring and dumb posts will be modded interesting and insightful.
Now there will probably be a lot of people filing me under linux zealot who can't stand anyone critizising his religion, but that is not the point here. There are of course a lot of things that could and should be better and yes, these things should be discussed, but that is something entirely different from the flaimbaits we can expect here.
Re:Some predictions on where this is heading (Score:1)
Link to the original posting (Score:3, Informative)
Managed code for next KDE? (Score:1, Interesting)
I'd like to see a natively compilable Java solution myself.
Re:Managed code for next KDE? (Score:1, Interesting)
Coding everything in C# would be ultimately stupid. I'm not sure if Miguel was misquoted there. I'd like to think that he's intelligent enough to understand how big a mistake that would be. I've been a GTK+ and C fan for years. Only recently I've started doing some application coding with Qt and C++. Boy, what a difference. The UI code was about half the size of the equivalent GTK+ code. I know you can use glade these days, but it should tell you something.
Back to the KDE/Gnome thing, in my experience K
I love GNOME, but I respect KDE... (Score:4, Insightful)
What I really love to see that freedesktop.org starts to really matter for developers. I love that colobration stuff that we can share easily data without breaking each other goals.
Remember, colobration and easy data migration between platforms is the key to the future of Linux *mainstream* destkop.
And yes, kudos KDE team as always for superior translation tool - KBabel.
KDE 4 Graphics System? (Score:1)
i also think i heard that qt4 may be opengl accelerated which would be rather nice.
Re:KDE 4 Graphics System? (Score:2)
Re:KDE 4 Graphics System? (Score:2)
Re:KDE 4 Graphics System? (Score:1)
Re:KDE 4 Graphics System? (Score:1)
It will use real shadows but you'll have to use your real hands in front of a real lamp to form the real shadows when prompted to do so by the OS.
Real transparency will only be available if you have a see-through monitor. Failing that you'll have to make do with some form of virtual transparency.
Re:KDE 4 Graphics System? (Score:1)
Konsole already has it (Score:3, Informative)
Expect other KDE apps to follow suit I imagine.