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Re: KDE wins Linux Journalīs Editor Choice Award
by raindog on Thursday 16/Nov/2000, @13:15
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Actually, while I grew up with the command line myself, that particular lynx command is just the Helix GNOME's web site's single instruction for installing HG. They tell you to get a root prompt and copy and paste that line, which to me still seems kind of hard for ex-Windows users.
See, I'm now trying to evaluate Linux desktops with an eye for installing them on non-technical people's desktops -- since at least half a dozen of that kind of person have asked me about Linux recently -- so I'm doing my best to avoid doing things they wouldn't do. (Obviously the exception is when I write my little applets, but even then I've been trying to write in such a way that people using it won't have to compile anything. And of course when my machine blows up, as it did when LM7.2 decided to install XFree86 4.0.1 after I'd asked it not to.)
I found a lot of things confusing about HG, but they were similar things to KDE2's changes from KDE1 - how themes are handled, keyboard shortcuts, window manager differences, etc. I agree the default theme (Sweetpill Eggplant or something like that) is kind of odd. I eventually settled on a theme that mimics the QNX Photon interface, and it's very easy on the eyes. (Tried to import it into KDE2 and the theme importer crashed.)
And at least in the LM7.2-final ISO's I downloaded, there is no Helix GNOME, just GNOME 1.2 with a bunch of Helix apps and themes tacked on. You get a Linux Mandrake splash screen, there's no helix-update, etc. But I installed using the so-called developer option, so who knows, maybe it just decided I didn't need HG.
At any rate, I realize I'll get a much more stable installation if I build KDE from scratch. But I can't tell end users -- like my parents -- to build their KDE from scratch, so I'm not going to either. This means KDE is held hostage to the whims of the individual distros' packagers, but frankly, it needs to be that way if it's going to be at all useful to Windows refugees (and let's not pretend we don't need them.)
KDE could really benefit from an easy installer/updater like Helix has, especially if the KDE one didn't require any command line interaction at all. I thought I heard Shawn Gordon's people were working on such a thing but that was quite a while ago.
Rob |
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