There is a nice and favorable review of KDE 2.2 available here.
The author does make some mistakes and some propositions that do not seem too clueful (Gecko instead of KHTML? Try KMozilla..), but it's still a nice read.
I do agree about the need for better integration between the kdepim programs and kmail, however.
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What version of windows are you talking about ?
DOS is still the basis of 95/98/ME, so those Windows are no better or worse than KDE from that point of view. Windows NT or 2000 could be called an Operating System (by some).
I entirely agree with this. You cannot compare apples and oranges, just like you cannot compare operating systems and window managers. To be controversial, I will say that windows still has a performance advantage (I compare windows 98 and linux 2.4.7 w/ kde), quite possibly an unfair one. I would like to see Microsoft sell its operating system and leave window managers to open sourcing, reminicent of the DOS days. Only then will people be able to compare linux to windows correctly.
Why is everyone talking about "competing with Windows"?
I have yet to see the Windows GUI touch the flexibility, configurability or aesthetics appeal that are common in even older versions of KDE or GNOME.
Finaly someone hit the nail.
KDE/Linux enables me to use my computer more productively that Microsoft Windows will EVER allow me to do.
/Jocke!
First of all I want to congradulate the KDE team on their great products. It's definately something to be proud of. =)
Nice to see that xinerama works properly now. (I hate single monitor even with virtual desktops)
I am relatively new to KDE and even *nix for that matter. I've always been a windows user but lately I've been trying out different flavours of *nix, firstly to learn more, and secondly to move away from the Microsoft monopoly.
I keep seeing some *nix users making adament statements that they don't want everything integrated or that a certain desktop looks too much like windows, and it troubles me. I understand the diversity they want, but if you contemplate the future of *nix as a desktop OS, it is obvious that everything needs to be closely integrated and userfriendly if you want to compete with the Redmond Machine. The average Joe/Jane off the street can't handle something that is going to take them days or even weeks to learn/install/configure.
KDE is doing a great job catching up, and hopefully in version 3, they can compete side by side with windows.
It's obvious that no other *nix desktop development is in the race anymore. I won't mention the "G" word *wink*
Keep up the great work all,
CalDude
Not really, if you work in a tech support line, you would see that Windows "nice-little-look" is not so easy to use for people who have not use computers before. KDE is relatively easy to use. I think its because you have been using Windows way to long, its gets into your head (the UI)
Why not to mention Gnome? They're going
a good job too...
They have the Red Carpet. It's pretty
easyer to install the Gnome then KDE.
I prefer KDE, but I like very much
Gnome too..
Another one that is VERY, VERY good
too is WindowMaker. YES, there are
others in the race. I still use these
three window managers.
Sorry about my poor English. I'm still
learning English. My native language
is Portuguese.
Well, I hope KDE 3.0 and higher get
even better to start competing with
M$ Ruindow$ (Ruim = bad in portuguese.
Is sounds something like Hoo in, so we
use that Ruim + Window$ to refer to it)
:)
Thank you for reading me.
KMozilla, i think, is just a Mozilla clone built for KDE. Athera no KOutlook (same case with KIllustator is KOutlook is use - courtroom) Gecko I think is quite fast, but its mozilla that slows everything down.
No, kmozilla is gecko used as replacement for khtml in konqueror / KDE. Install kdebindings.
Mozilla can be compiled with QT for those people who like antialiassing(among other advantages over GTK-1.x). Maybe you thought this was meant?
I've never been able to successfully compile mozilla source --with-qt and have it work. At latest attempt with 0.9.3 source and qt 2.3.1 it compiled ok but refused to start with some major error. I'd love to see a qt-mozilla or k-mozilla but until someone compiles it and gets it working and makes it available for download then it still doesn't exist. Any takers? This is the big one I've been looking for in kde.
Open Konqueror, click View->View Mode->KMOZZILA. You now have the Konqueror interface using the "kmozzila" widget instead of the "khtml" widget to render pages (ie, you now have Konqueror w/ Gecko engine).
But what version of the gecko engine?
It wouldn't be fair if they bundled some ancient version of gecko with it.
It uses whatever version of it you have installed on your system (the same way Galeon and SkipStone).
but which version of konqueror is able to do so? i'm using 2.2.2 (kde 2.2.2) and i cannot find anything. :(
îÅ ÎÁÄÏ ÐÅÒÅÈÏÄÉÔØ ÎÁ Gecko - Konquerror ÌÕÞÛÅ !
Not gecko - konqueror best
Only compiled kdebase and kdelibs at the moment, but it runs wonderfull already.
One thing however: Icons seem to autoarrange, how to disable this? There is no entry for turning it off when I right (or middle) click on the background....
Danny
There is no auto-arrange. When KDE starts all icons vertically aligned - at least they were with me. When I switched off vertical alignment in DEsktop configuration (or whatevr in English), all icons were horizontally aligned, but were free to place them anywhere on the desktop.
KDE 2.2 is great, cograts to the development team for this feat.
only the default sounds in KDE are annoying, they're blocking my Realplayer, so I had to switch off aRts soundsserver in the config panel
Yes I had the same problem, it was irritating... I tried several things without success but then it was again fine. After 1 or 2 reboots... Strange... And I see that now the vertical alignment is checked. I uncheck it... Yaaaarghhh all my icons are now horizontal on the top of the desktop !... I try to rearrange... Yes, I can... It seems now good...
... you can read 'bout whats happening in 'startkde' script... :)
KDE 2.2 looks like a big step forward. The reason I was willing to give it another shot was the fact that it claimed to have Xinerama support. I switched to Gnome + E a long time ago because I couldn't stand KDE's lack of support, even though I loved the desktop environment itself. However, I've had no luck w/ KDE 2.2's xinerama support. I'm running it on RedHat and after some reading I pulled down the kdebase src rpm and recompiled it w/ the --with-xinerama flag, thinking the rpm perhaps wasn't compiled with it (looks like it wasn't). NOW - I see the "Xinerama" section in "Window Behavior" / Advanced tab in kcontrol. However, it's all grayed out - I'm unable to modify the settings (click the boxes to enable it). I manually edited the kwinrc file to turn the options on, but still no dice. Has anyone else had such problems? I'd really like to give KDE 2.2 a fair shot, but I can't stand this issue.
I belive there is also a --with-xinerama flag in kdelibs????
Worth a look.
Royce
I stopped using KDE for few reasons, (no applications, no applications, no applications based on QT!). Yes, KDE seems to be moving faster than GNOME, but... it seems to me, it's lacking application support! All my applications are based on GTK+, for example (GNUMERIC, GNUCASH, GTKGRAPH, OREGANO, GIMP.... you name it!). No one seems to be writing good, useful applications based on QT. Why run KDE using QT when all your applications are bases on GTK+? Even downloading netscape requires GTK+! Also, KOFFICE, so far is useless on my mind. If it can't export, import Microsoft Office files, it's useless! Star Office is slow, but, hey, it works. Open Office seems to be using GTK+ also.... GNUMERIC is good a year & half ahead of KSPREAD. I use XFCE with GNOME. XFCE look as my desk and running GNOME in the background. I tried running KDE applications under XFCE, but... it takes long time to open. GNOME maybe useless, too slow (with all that crappy nautilus and so on), but running GNOME in the background and using XFCE as a desktop makes a complete DESKTOP system that's fast, stable and application rich! GNOME+XFCE is like having better CDE. KDE is doing great, but... it's QT based applications are limited; and, that's the whole reason I'm using GNOME + XFCE. Also, I would like to have an option like CDE PANEL look in KDE.
P.S. My Redhat 7.1 also seem to make use of GTK+ tool kits for it's system managements, for example, up2date....etc.
Cordially,
Sung N. Cho,
Saturday, August 17, 2001.
Dept. of Physics,
Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University.
Make sure you use kdeinit_wrapper when you launch KDE applications. It's much faster. You can set up symlinks to automatically use kdeinit.
Have a look at the application data base, you will find many programs for QT/KDE there.
I do not agree with you about kword, it is already very useful, which version did you test? Try out kword-1.1 next week, you will like it. Also look at kspread again, will ya?
gimp is king, but there are alternatives, wait and see....
gnucash, well gnucash, there are commercial QT/KDE alternatives: kapital. QT/KDE based and nice, but it costs money. On the other hand it is said to be better than gnucash.
http://www.thekompany.com/products/kapital/?dhtml_ok=0
I can't say a lot about GTKGRAPH or OREGANO, because I am not into that kind of thing, but I searched for you.
kpl looks like a good alternative to gtkgraph to me:
http://frsl06.physik.uni-freiburg.de/privat/stille/kpl/
viPEc looks like a good alternative to oregano:
http://vipec.sourceforge.net/
Maybe check them out and report back?
also have a look at kmatplot ... it seems to be _really_ nice (and it supports octave), but the build system seems to be a bit broken.
there are also free KDE finance programs, have a look at apps.kde.com.
there are less apps for kde than gnome because:
1) many people find c simpler to learn than c++
2) commercial companies (like redhat, mandrake) prefer to stick to an LGPL gui library, so in case they need to develop a commercial app they can do it without paying. instead with QT you have to pay money to trolltech.
3) the development of GTK+ is mainly driven by open source people, so it's a real product of the open source community. instead qt is mainly developed by trolltech, so it is essentially a commercial product, even is there is a free GPL version.
(i'm not trying to be a troll, just responding :) )
>> there are less apps for kde than gnome because:
how do you get that statistic? I would agree that there are probably more gtk+ apps than kde/qt apps, but I highly doubt that there are more gnome-only apps than kde apps. If you count the number of gtk+/gnome apps and the number of qt/kde1/kde2 apps, you'll probably find it about the same.
>> 1) many people find c simpler to learn than c++
There are a LOT more people doing c++ development in the world today than c development. I'd venture to say that more software in the world is written in c++ than in c (by a long shot).
In the UNIX and UNIX-like world, C has had a tradition of usage for over 30 years. Still, I'd say that the C-C++-Java ratio would be something like 4-2-1. It is something like that in sourceforge.
>> 2) commercial companies (like redhat, mandrake) prefer to stick to an LGPL gui library, so in case they need to develop a commercial app they can do it without paying. instead with QT you have to pay money to trolltech.
You can sell gpl'd software without paying trolltech (on X11), or generally, you can sell any gpl'd software.
> 3) the development of GTK+ is mainly driven by open source people, so it's a real product of the open source community. instead qt is mainly developed by trolltech, so it is essentially a commercial product, even is there is a free GPL version.
The development of Qt was done by TrollTech, a company devoted to open sourced software. I'd agree that the FreeQt license was probably not a OSI license, but the QPL was clearly. You can use and sell any software for X11 that links with Qt. The only restriction is that you must keep it open.
For Windows, you can use the non-commercial version, and develop open and free (as in beer) software that is under less restrictive licenses than the GPL. Or, you can chose to buy the commercial Qt and receive lots of support (have you ever tried to use Gtk+ in windows? it does not work that well)
If you bring commercialization to this, notice how many gnome-hackers are employed by Ximian :)
> >> 2) commercial companies (like redhat, mandrake) prefer to stick to an LGPL gui library, so in case they need to develop a commercial app they can do it without paying. instead with QT you have to pay money to trolltech.
> You can sell gpl'd software without paying trolltech (on X11), or generally, you can sell any gpl'd software.
I think he meant if they want to produce a *closed* source application like Yast e.g. (I think it is, I don't use SuSE). I personally don't see this as something that would turn companies away though. People in the business world like to have somebody to complain to if things doesn't work the way their supposed to and if they buy qt, they also get a company to blame for it's errors. Some companies might however like the fact that they can develop free of charge using GTK+, but I (in my perfect world) hope that they rater judge them on their technical merits and not the cost. If I ran a company I sure would, price is merly a part of the eqation. Well, enough ranting...
Regards,
Jörgen Lundberg ([email protected])
> 1) many people find c simpler to learn than c++
C/GTK+ is much harder to learn and use than C++/Qt. Do you recommed Gtk++ for newbies ? Gtk+ uses its own non-standard, object-oriented language build on top of simple C language.
> commercial companies (like redhat, mandrake) prefer to
> stick to an LGPL gui library, so in case they need to
> develop a commercial app they can do it without paying.
> instead with QT you have to pay money to trolltech.
Companies which write commercial programs choose rather Qt ( Opera, Corel, Borland ). I don't know any serious commercial apps using Gtk++. Price is important for in-house development, especially because Qt is a very expensive product, so some _distributors_ choose Gtk+ over Qt. In software development a quality is most important and Gtk hasn't a production quality ( only Microsoft can sell a MFC-shit ).
> the development of GTK+ is mainly driven by open source
> people, so it's a real product of the open source
> community. instead qt is mainly developed by trolltech, so it
> is essentially a commercial product, even is there is a free
> GPL version.
Yes, that's true. People don't want to support a commercial company, when they give away their work for free.
And a few other reasons:
C++ compiler is very slow ( for each *.cpp file the second one *.moc.cpp is generated which slows everything ever more ). Elf linker is slow.
Build system with moc and uic is very complicated, with some conflics between KDE and Qt, with instructions like that :
uic -tr i18n -i dialoginterf.h ./dialoginterf.ui | sed -e "s,i18n( \"\" ),QString::null,g" >> dialoginterf.cpp || rm -f dialoginterf.cpp
echo '#include "dialoginterf.moc"' >> dialoginterf.cpp
But I see no counterpars to Qt. Maybe Gtk++ wrappers, but I prefer to use only a native interface - there are always so many problems with wrappers. If GNOME had been more programmer friendly it would have beat KDE. But they are sinking - have you seen its COM-based component model (Bonobo). You can tell that C is easier than C++ forever, this means nothing. They have forgotten that they are not Microsoft.
Gtk+ or QT.. I don't give a rats *ss as long the app is good. Which widget set my apps are don't decide alone which desktop/UI is better and which I want to use. But I like to see better compatibility between KDE and GNOME like drag'n drop. Sooo.. here's *THE* question to KDE and Gnome developers: when can I drag and drop between GNOME and KDE apps???
Gtk+ or QT.. I don't give a rats *ss as long the app is good. Which widget set my apps are don't decide alone which desktop/UI is better and which I want to use. But I like to see better compatibility between KDE and GNOME like drag'n drop. Sooo.. here's *THE* question to KDE and Gnome developers: when can I drag and drop between GNOME and KDE apps???
On debian, I upgraded kde to 2.2 then x to 4.1. I was running kdm, but after the x upgrade, booting starts me to a weird gnome desktop (I primarily use gnome) and does not start kdm or any *dm. The desktop is blank (like the x background) and I am only able to click to pop-up a menu. I can use the mouse, but the keyboard does not work.
XF86Config-4 looks fine, it is the same one which worked under x4.0.3. Also, XF86Config-4 includes keyboard settings. I ran kdm-config (after cutting and pasting my root password from a document) and checked kdm's configuration --- it looked fine.
I decided to try gdm. But, the gdm package will not install until kdm is removed. I tried to remove kdm, but removal fails.
Any suggestions?
XF86Config-4 has nothing to do with which apps get launched, it's just a hardware configuration script that indicates the details about what hardware you want X to use. The software side is done with various scripts in the /etc/X11 directory.
Your problem is most likely with overwriting of the xserverrc and xinitrc (or just plain removal of these two).
X probably asked you whether you wanted to replace these or keep them, and you probably answered you wanted them replaced.
I suggest you make your own .xinitrc file in your home directory that contains the instruction to start kde (which I believe to be "startkde", but I'm not sure, it's been a while.
The other option is to force a configure of kdm, by running "dpkg-reconfigure kdm". That might overwrite your files with the correct ones.
Or even better, just look through the documentation of kdm (man kdm, info kdm, files in /usr/share/doc/kdm, and the site of kdm)
I've had problems after upgrading to KDE2.2 too. As I observed, it's because kdm configuration files move from /usr/share/config/kdmrc to /usr/share/config/kdm/kdmrc. Moreover, the kdmrc file from the KDE2.2Beta1 is not compatible with the one from KDE2.2 final. So I had to modify /usr/share/config/kdm/kdmrc again. And, I' had to create file /etc/sysconfig/desktop (I use Mandrake 8.0, which has RH-based sysconfig dir) with contents of:
DESKTOP=KDE.
Be careful with session types list, desktop types are case sensitive, so correct values are (so far I know)
KDE, Gnome, IceWM, BlackBox...
After trying to run kdm with new configuration nothing helped but reboot (yes, Windows users laugh now..), but
from then it works perfectly.
I hope this will help.
Hello,
i toyed a bit with kmozilla and altough it seems to be a bit early for real browsing (frames are broken, and apparently posting too) its a nice project ...
I noticed the following:
- selecting text is way faster in kmozilla than it was in khtml (it seems selecting text in khtml is cpu hogging and slow on my system ... is this a known issue or did i misconfigure something ?)
- scrolling seems faster, but i discovered thats just because the mousewheel seems to be configured differently in mozilla. is there a way to reconfigure kde mousewheel support ?
- it also seems (don't know if its true) mozilla uses some screen-buffering to avoid flicker. Altough it does not make it faster, it gives that impression, and it's nice.
- unrelated: sometimes the html form widgets in khtml are slow here (but its only sometimes, the cpu stays idle, and hitting refresh fixes it)
i saw someone mention this here too ...
greetings
Regarding the mouse wheel, you should be able to configure it in kcontrol->Peripherals->Mouse->Advanced, "Mouse Wheel Scrolls By:"
What you mentioned is exactly the point where mozilla, opera, IE and possibly still even netscape outperform khtml quite a bit. The problem seems to be that every time something has to be highlighted, underlined, selected (mouse activities) etc the whole DOM (or rendering ?) tree has to be traversed to look up the specific element(s). This process takes so much cpu that it results in a lagging effect. I know several speed ups were done in the past, but IMO it's still rather sluggish. Does anyone know how these things are done differently in the mentioned browsers ?
Anyway, I do think khtml is _really_ good, except for a few little problems :)
Just wondering when I'll actually _want_ to switch from GNOME.
heh! gnome is a bloated fugly POS, with almost no developmental momentum
maybe it's time to revisit kde again (i've used kde 1.x, then used gnome 1.2.x, then used kde 2.1.x for a while before starting to use blackbox 0.61, and now I'm compiling kde 2.2.x, it looks nice :)
good work kde developers
I also think GNOME looks better than KDE, but KDE works better. Then how about a GNOME theme (icons and all) for KDE? Anyone wants to give it a try? I might as well, when I get the time.
Well an icon theme is available here:
ftp://derkarl.org/pub/incoming/theme-gnome-0.4.ikn
It is not complete, but works fine. (There are also some other icon themes to be found there...)
Maybe you can complete it?
Regarding the gnome style: You can import gtk-themes into KDE without a problem and kwin uses icewm themes if you tell it to.
I tried to import the Gradient theme from GNOME ( it's a pixmap theme), but klegacyimport can't get it right.
Hmm, interesting that dot trolls such as this appear in most profusion whenever kde makes a major release, or the next few articles after that.
Perhaps someone should get a sociologist to examine trolls in action (heh, perhaps the Crocodile Hunter) and see if there is a behavioral pattern...
Eat me, retard.
I asked if KDE 2.2 was still damn ugly. Nobody's answered! Is it because you disagree that KDE used to be ugly? Or is it because it still is ugly? What?
Seriously dude, I want performance and reliability out of my hardware, kernel, filesystem and C compiler. I could care less if there were a ton of quirks or ugly hacks in the user interface, and indeed, I'd much rather that then the alternative: KDE, a well-architected, decently-coded steaming pile of sh!t that at best is an eyesore, and at worst is distracting in the extreme.
Don't get me wrong - I *want* to switch from GNOME, but I won't as long as KDE is fsck%g ugly. So I ask if it's still fsck%g ugly. Is that too much to ask?
>So I ask if it's still fsck%g ugly. Is that too much to ask?
No, It isn't ugly. IMHO :-).
1. Mimetype icons are awesome (some app icons could be better though).
2. Really nice widget sets available. You can also find the 'liquid' one at www.mosfet.org.
3. Kwin is completely themable. It can import Icewm themes, which are nice.
Thank you KDE developers!
KDE has come extremely far in such a short time. Don't listen to anyone's criticism for now. Enjoy your accomplishment. I have been using KDE as my only desktop for about a year and it's very usable. Usable. Just like software should be. The rest of the desired bells and whistles people are mentioning are just icing on the cake. I can wait for those.
Thanks again!
I totally Agree :
Forget about all the people that compare kde to windows , please if you dont like this great job use windows !!
I cant believe the incredible work that this people do for us for a price of nothing.
Really guys , why you dont create a monthly cds with themes , new applications from the Open source, etc to help your group working with some adittional money in your pockets ?
Carlos Arana
Lima-Peru
> Really guys , why you dont create
> a monthly cds with themes , new
> applications from the Open source,
> etc to help your group working
> with some adittional money in your
> pockets ?
Or even an own Linux distribution suitable for daily home and office work?
Maybe, you could even create an "online distribution", so you just download a short install routine (one boot floppy), which loggs onto the internet in order to download and install the desired packages.
Nethertheless, keep up your excellent work, I deeply admire you guys.
Best regards,
Florian Grätz
> Really guys , why you dont create
> a monthly cds with themes , new
> applications from the Open source,
> etc to help your group working
> with some adittional money in your
> pockets ?
Or even an own Linux distribution suitable for daily home and office work?
Maybe, you could even create an "online distribution", so you just download a short install routine (one boot floppy), which loggs onto the internet in order to download and install the desired packages.
Nethertheless, keep up your excellent work, I deeply admire you guys.
Best regards,
Florian Grätz
i can't view arabic pages in konqueror when i brows an arabic site and set my encoding to Windows(1256) ...
in KDE 2.1.2 it was fine and working but in KDE 2.2 is not viewing!
i use SuSE 7.2 Pro
thanks..
Sami