KC KDE #24

Issue #24 of KC KDE is available. Summaries include coverage of KDE language bindings, Synchronous KIO, ALSA and aRts, KPilot, CSS Media support, the new DCOP tools and more.

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Comments

by Carlos Rodrigues (not verified)

I guess you're somewhat right about the hardware mixing thing, aRts should be able to use the multiple open capabilities that some audio drivers/cards provide. Think of it as hardware acceleration, that's what DirectSound does in Window$.

by Julien Olivier (not verified)

Just remember that we (you, me and all kde users) are just USERS. We are not KDE developpers' bosses ! So, stop saying "your apps are slow ! Please make it faster ! That's bloated etc...". In fact, we all have three options: wait for developpers to do what they feel better (if they want to...) OR make our own patches and apps (of course FAR better than the ones they have already done) OR use anything else (including MS Windows / MacOS & co.).

What I mean is that we all should always remember that we've not bought anything so we can't expect anything from anybody.

I hope this point is clear for everyone.

And for active KDE developpers, good luck in your already impressive work.

by Julien Olivier (not verified)

sorry about the 3x post

by Iuri Fiedoruk (not verified)

replying multiple times happens, no problem.
About your comment, I do agree, It's like like we're screaming against developers, it's just that "asking dosen't hurst anyone". :-)

by Iuri Fiedoruk (not verified)

What really hursts is my english when writing fast, what I really meanty is:
It's NOT like like we're screaming against developers, it's just that "asking dosen't hurt anyone".
Sorry for the errors.

by Rayiner Hashem (not verified)

Well, there are two ways to look at it. First, one could say that this is just a hobby of the developers and they can take the project wherever they want. Or, one could say that OSS developers should be treated just like any other developer, and they have a responsibility to listen to the requests of their users. Both points have their merits, but I'd tend to agree with the second one. The advantage of open source is supposed to be good software plus freedom. If the software doesn't do what users want it to, I think some (friendly!) criticism is warrented. I can complain to Microsoft, so why can I complain to the KDE developers?

by not me (not verified)

>Or, one could say that OSS developers should be treated just like any other developer, and they have a responsibility to listen to the requests of their users. Both points have their merits, but I'd tend to agree with the second one.

You are in the minority then. OSS developers should not be treated like any other developer. They didn't get into OSS to benefit YOU, they did it for their own reasons. They have no responsibility to you except what they take on themselves, of their own free will.

Constructive criticism can be good, however if you are not a KDE developer yourself and you start making broad statements about how things are being done the wrong way you're not making constructive criticism. You simply start repeating what others have said before, and it adds to the noise. Then people get upset :-(

If you're really concerned about the direction of KDE development, you can first of all find out why it is being done the way it is. If after that you still disagree, you can take your now constructive criticism to the developers, and have a reasonable discussion. Saying there's too much "cruft" in general is not constructive, and rather inflammatory.

by aleXXX (not verified)

I think most developers are happy about feedback for their apps, good news and bad news. And many developers will probably also put wishes from users in their TODO, but they will always use their own priorities. If a wish is not on their top priority, well, you have to wait. But even this is better than closed source, did you ever post a feature request to MS ?
And even better, if you are skilled enough, you can even try to do it yourself :-)
Construtive criticism is good, it helps improving the software.
Screaming "it sucks ! ", "it is bloated and dog slow !", "why did you put so much cruft in it ?" doesn't help anybody.

Bye
Alex

by aleXXX (not verified)

I think most developers are happy about feedback for their apps, good news and bad news. And many developers will probably also put wishes from users in their TODO, but they will always use their own priorities. If a wish is not on their top priority, well, you have to wait. But even this is better than closed source, did you ever post a feature request to MS ?
And even better, if you are skilled enough, you can even try to do it yourself :-)
Construtive criticism is good, it helps improving the software.
Screaming "it sucks ! ", "it is bloated and dog slow !", "why did you put so much cruft in it ?" doesn't help anybody.

Bye
Alex

by Iuri Fiedoruk (not verified)

Ok, I forgot one to be done after the speed.
I wish KDE and Gnome adn whatever-x-app, just behave and look similar depending on withc style/desktop env. you are using.
Simply put: kde apps shold reconize themes and look prefs from gnome and vice-versa.
Example: on kde you choose to toolbars having only 22*22 icons without text. Gnome apps opened inside a running kde should automatically use 16*16 or 22*22 (I don't know if gnome have 22*22 buttons) without text!
This would be a BIG improvement to people start seriously thinking in using linux/kde/gnome at offices.

by Antialias (not verified)

>putting a shutdown option on turning kde off should had already had on kde2 IMHO<

KDE 2.2.1 here. Right click on desktop. Options I have here: logout, poweroff, reboot.

>but, most of anything speed<

KDE 2.2.1 'out of the box' IS fast. No wallpaper, no pixmap themes & styles, no antialiasing, no big icons, no nasty effects etc. It is a matter of choice. More money, more funny. If you want speed and all these effects and eye-candy invest in fast hard drive (which many people don't have), faster processor, and more RAM, more RAM, more RAM). Or when you make comparisons try to run Windows XP and KDE-2.2.1 on 64 Mb RAM, or Windows 98 and KDE-1.1.2 on 16 Mb RAM and tell me which one is faster.

P.S. many people have a feeling that resizing KDE apps is so slow just because they use slow resizing animation.

by Rayiner Hashem (not verified)

Or you could try WinXP and KDE 2.2.1 on 256MB of RAM and see which one flies! (XP, of course). I love KDE-2, but its slower than Win2k/XP on any config with enough RAM.

by Rayiner Hashem (not verified)

Or you could try WinXP and KDE 2.2.1 on 256MB of RAM and see which one flies! (XP, of course). I love KDE-2, but its slower than Win2k/XP on any config with enough RAM.

by Aaron J. Seigo (not verified)

including SPARC and PPC configurations? heh. (sorry, couldn't resist)

on a more serious note i find that a compiled-from-source KDE to be markedly faster than most of the binary packages out there, which is unfortunate since most people's impression of KDE comes only from binary packages.

but when it comes right down to it, what really matters is which environment allows you to get the most work done in the least amount of time and agony.

by Michael Collette (not verified)

XP may very well be faster... with one itsy bitsy desktop. Running 10 of these babies on KDE on this PII-400 laptop, and it runs great! Compiled from source on FreeBSD. Thank you ports tree! :)

While on the subject, are there any benchmark comparisons for desktop performance between the various distros as well as the BSD's? You'd think some folks would be curious about this point enough to actually do something like this up. Hmmm, got me an old PII-350 here that needs playing with.

by Michael Collette (not verified)

XP may very well be faster... with one itsy bitsy desktop. Running 10 of these babies on KDE on this PII-400 laptop, and it runs great! Compiled from source on FreeBSD. Thank you ports tree! :)

While on the subject, are there any benchmark comparisons for desktop performance between the various distros as well as the BSD's? You'd think some folks would be curious about this point enough to actually do something like this up. Hmmm, got me an old PII-350 here that needs playing with.

by Bharat (not verified)

I think the KDE guys have done a great job till now. Ok KDE is not the best when it coems to speed, but it's not too bad, c'mon guys after all, Explorer is still far from being stable though it may be fast and it 's reached Version 6 and still ain't perfect! I don't really have a gripe against Microsoft, i feel what they do is strictly their own business, if they want to dig their own graves the way Apple did, they are welcome. but i believe in using what is best in the market, and as far as I can see KDE wins in comparision to all other Desktops including Gnome which I was using for a while. But I do wish you guys could improve the looks of this thing, I mean it is handsome, but liquid or Mac OS X is stunning. But anyway congratulations on creating a Desktop that doesn't suck.

by kidcat (not verified)

touché!

And when KDE 3.1 or 3.2 hits Planet Earth... whooohaaa!
And lets not forget: KDE has an *impressive* framework which are a bliss for developers. And when an aceptable speed level is gained the world will be taken by storm... simply because things were done in the corect order: stable base, ease of use, ease of development, SPEED! (as oposed to 'that other guy's' system which is somewhat fast and nothing else!)

/kidcat

by limaCAT (not verified)

And when the new gnu linker which is C++ libraries friendlier will touch the
earth... Woooooooooooaaaaah! :*) Other desktops teams will begin their transition to be more Kde compliant :*) (at least, it is my dream ^_^)

by me (not verified)

has anybody recently had a look at http://www.kalliance.org? Seeing this site does not exactly make me happy...

Any news about them?

by kidcat (not verified)

If u go to google.com and enter "www.kalliance.org", google will give u an option called "view google's cache of www.kalliance.org"... unfortunately that page seems to be from the early devel days :-(

If u try to find them on www.ripe.net u get this:

% This is the RIPE Whois server.
% The objects are in RPSL format.
% Please visit http://www.ripe.net/rpsl for more information.
% Rights restricted by copyright.
% See http://www.ripe.net/ripencc/pub-services/db/copyright.html

%ERROR:101: no entries found
%
% No entries found in the selected source(s).

Beats the crap out of me....

/kidcat

BTW: was it a good site that just missed my attention?!? (HATE when it happens :-)

by kidcat (not verified)

DOOOH!!!

www.ripe.net is for IP numbers... BUMMER!!!

RTFM kidcat... and then start acting like ur in the know. LOL

/kidcat

by JohnAsh (not verified)

The google cache is fine and all, but not completely ideal to check dead websites.

For complete mirrors with graphics and everything, see http://web.archive.org/.

Old www.kalliance.org pages are mirrored there.

by me (not verified)

Well, what I wanted to know was what the heck happened to them! What about magellan, the "root" of aethera? What about the developers? Have they given up? Is somebody else now maintaining magellan?

I would simply have expected to hear some news about that, it showed so much potential!

by Ian Reinhart Geiser (not verified)

This happens a fair amount. Many projects start with grand vision no direction. Really magellen and kalliance are a waste of bandwidth and time. The developers of these projects are obviously not in the mood to work on these projects, so we should not care about them. Really I think we should care about projects like KMail. As much as it has problems, at least there are skilled developers working on the projects.

We see the first step in most newbie KDE developers is to try to write:
a) and outlook like client
b) a kde installer
c) write many many emails talking about a cool project that will never exist...

Then they go on and start do something useful. Sorry for my jaded view, but I have no real respect for an email that talks about a new wizbang feature that does not include a patch. I mean there are a few but people like Waldo and David do not count. Just look at the cvs commits and you will know who to take seriously.

In short advise for people getting started in KDE, start small. Do a dock applet, or a Konqi plugin. Most KDE core developers got their starts writing really small applications. I am not trying to discurage people here, I am trying to get more successes in open source so we dont have embaresments like kalliance or megellan haunting us...

-ian reinhart geiser

by aleXXX (not verified)

Well spoken !

Alex

by dig (not verified)

Issue #24 of LB LFR is available. Summaries include coverage of LFR language bindings, Synchronous LOP,
SKDS and bTyd, LPilot, VDD Media support, the new FVPO tools and more.