KC KDE #43 is Up

Friday, 23 August 2002 | Jappel

KC KDE issue #43 is out featuring everything from KDE 3.1's new look, the future of multimedia in KDE, a refitted Konqi, math app news, mouse news, and much more. Get it here.

Comments:

Red Hat, Again - Navindra Umanee - 2002-08-23

>On other development fronts it is said that RedHat's new beta includes a KDE >version that is made to look like GNOME. Icons, widget-style and kicker apps >have been replaced, as it has been whispered in the trees. Oh dear god, that's horrible.

Re: Red Hat, Again - Ian Reinhart Geiser - 2002-08-23

Whats even cooler is they removed the about KDE, so you dont know you are running KDE. For all of the work they are putting into destroying KDE, why dont they just drop support? Is it time to take a more agressive stance on packageing so we can keep some control how KDE looks? I mean is it KDE anymore, or should we just call it a fork? Just wondering... -ian reinhart geiser

Re: Red Hat, Again - Navindra Umanee - 2002-08-23

Can you give me full details on the changes? Have you tried this beta?

Re: Red Hat, Again - Ian Reinhart Geiser - 2002-08-23

Mostly off of what I have heard on IRC. I was planning on downloading this weekend, since I have to support RH for a client. So far all i know for sure is off of the changelog. There where some pretty wacked out patches applied from looks of it. They even say "Removeing KDE About Box", its pretty obvious they are looking to shut down KDE for good here. Personally Id like to call RH on this one, but our liberal packageing policy has allowed them to fork KDE and trash it for the world to see. I dont know though, RH has been curiously silent on the issue thus far. Im waiting on their official response before I really get bent out of shape over this. Personally I am more interested about this eOne/OpenOffice thing going down... Isnt this what RH has been talking about for their desktop linux? Wacky... too much to read up on... really id rather be codeing :) -ian reinhart geiser

Re: Red Hat, Again - Roberto Alsina - 2002-08-23

Actually, removing copyright notices (and those are there in the "about kde box") is a violation of section 2c of the GPL.

Re: Red Hat, Again - Anonymous - 2002-08-23

Wrong, copyright notices are in the "About foobar" box.

Re: Red Hat, Again - Roberto Alsina - 2002-08-23

Not copyright notices for the LGPLd kdelibs. I was wrong in the provious post, though, it is a violation of section 6 of the LGPL, see post below for details. But anyway, if it's real, it's stupid. It is like Stalin removing his dead enemies from official pictures.

Re: Red Hat, Again - Anonymous - 2002-08-23

"About KDE" contains following tabs: "About", "Report bugs or wishes", "Join the KDE team" and in KDE 3.1 "Supporting KDE". None of them mention copyrights, a license or kdelibs.

Re: Red Hat, Again - Roberto Alsina - 2002-08-23

"The K Desktop Environment is written and maintained by the KDE Team, a world-wide network of software engineers committed to free software development." Sure, it doesn't say "copyright 2002 microsoft corp.". However, it is a copyright notice. It is not a legal copyright notice in the US. But it is placed there by kdelibs, and refers to the authorship of "KDE", which includes kdelibs.

Re: Red Hat, Again - I am Wiggle - 2002-08-24

>But anyway, if it's real, it's stupid. >It is like Stalin removing his dead >enemies from official pictures. Ahh, there's nothing like a wild overreaction from a zealot. You are clearly a lunatic and *badly* need to get out more and get some perspective. Clue: RedHat has done nothing illegal or wrong. Not that it will stop you and your jihad buddies from calling down the wrath of the holy armies. Get a bloody grip you loon.

Re: Red Hat, Again - Roberto Alsina - 2002-08-24

1) Since when is removing someone from a picture illegal? 2) Since when is removing someone from a picture you own wrong? The answer to 1) is, of course, that it is not illegal. The answer to 2) is that it *is* wrong if it is made for some reasons, and not wrong if it is done by other reasons. I think both Stalin's and Red Hat's reasons (if this has actually happened) are wrong, despite not having spoken with Stalin or Red Hat about it. And I think the removal of this *is* against the licensing. I could be convinced otherwise, though. I could even be convinced, if someone from RH says why they are doing it, that it is not a wrong thing to do. But it would have to be a very convincing explanation. I can even say that maybe Stalin could convince me there was a good reason to remove those people from the pictures, you know.

Re: Red Hat, Again - Spark - 2002-08-24

The "About KDE" dialog doesn't explain at all what KDE actually is. Seeing that it is more than likely that people are using KDE apps in GNOME, this could be a problem. They shouldn't have to care about the difference and I think it's obvious that this was the thought behind the removal. But you should just ask RedHat if this concerns you.

Re: Red Hat, Again - Roberto Alsina - 2002-08-24

What people should or shouldn't care about, I do not care about. I do care about Red Hat removing references to projects I do care about from the code kindly provided to them by that very project. I mean, we all would agree that, for example, changing the names of the applications on the about dialogs would be bad, right? And what about removing the about dialogs completely, and making them available only through a command line option? That would be bad too, right? Removing this about dialog is bad in my opinion. Apparently not on your opinion. But hey, I care more about MY opinion ;-) I have already asked RH. As for the reason... I don't care about the reason all that much, in abstract. I mean, sure, if they can explain, it may make sense, I can even agree. But until they explain, I am pissed. Of course in the great order of things, the anger of Roberto Alsina plays a very small role.

Re: Red Hat, Again - Spark - 2002-08-24

"I have already asked RH." Fine, let's wait for the answer before we draw any further conclusions please. :) "But until they explain, I am pissed. Of course in the great order of things, the anger of Roberto Alsina plays a very small role." Well... Right. ;) In the end it's all about serving the *user* and I hope that the KDE project as a whole stands behind this intention. Removing references to products is very well in the interest of a user, that's the same reason why there is absolutely no reference to Ximian (not even Evolution) in the menusystem unless you actually start the application (and then you have to launch the about box to see the Ximian logo the first time). All kind of branding has nothing to do in a GUI (even the red hat startmenu is questionable, but I don't think a foot or "K" is better ;)). I'm not saying that copyright and "about" information shouldn't exist, of course it should be available somewhere from the KDE desktop.

Re: Red Hat, Again - Roberto Alsina - 2002-08-24

Again, I don't care if Ximian does it, if GNOME does it, or if the pope does it. I care that KDE did it, and Red Hat removed it. I don't care if you think it doesn't belong there, either. It wouldn't even matter if I thought it didn't belong there myself! (hell, I think I voted against it when it was discussed). It WAS inside the app. It was a menu option at the bottom of the farthest menu item, about as unintrusive as it gets. But out it went.

Re: Red Hat, Again - Spark - 2002-08-24

This is tiresome and repetitive. Fine, you are against this. Bitch if you want to. It will not change anything anyway. You also probably misunderstood me. Ximian isn't doing anything, it's RedHat which has removed the branding of Ximian Evolution not Ximian itself. My only point is that it's done for a reason with a _lot_ of software. Nobody is complaining about this but KDE people. Again. This is really not a good attitude if you want to get the Linux desktop to more users. Heck, I'm getting the impression that it would be easier to just fork the KDE desktop as "RedHat Desktop Environment" or something like that. ;) So unflexible... A shame for free software.

Re: Red Hat, Again - Roberto Alsina - 2002-08-24

Yes, it is repetitive and tiresome. If Ximian jumped off a bridge, should we all jump, too? Are you telling me Red Hat removed all references to Ximian from Evolution? And sure. They have a reason. Which one? We don't know yet. Are they doing it to a lot of software? Not important to me. Noone is complaining? Their problem. Get it? Or are you AGAIN going to say "Oh, but they did it to GNOME too" (No, they didn't because GNOME didn't have this)? If you keep on saying the same thing, of course I am going to keep on saying why that same thing doesn't matter!

Re: Red Hat, Again - Navindra Umanee - 2002-08-23

This is bad. Why are they doing this? They seem to be actively trying to destroy us by making us look bad. What is the point of all these stupid changes to cripple KDE and make us look like (or worse than) GNOME? When you say Red Hat has been silent, does this mean they have been queried on the issue? Why should there be an official response if nobody asked them?

Re: Red Hat, Again - daniel - 2002-08-23

mmh, u say really a lot of sh****. sorry,. but I used limbo, and kde doesn't at all look bad. I think it's normal,if redhat trys to keep a consistent look and feel between all windowmanager in their ditribution. I thing this are only well-know trolls "gnome versus kde" and "redhat versus kde". U don't blame mandrake for their default kde look that is lot more ugly as that from mandrake! daniel

Re: Red Hat, Again - Chris Parjer - 2002-08-23

You need to try it out before you rush to judgement. Redhat has stated that they are going to be supporting the desktop market, which means that they are going to be supporting BOTH gnome and kde. It is alot easier to support both desktops if the menus/icons look the same. Most desktop users won't know that they are using KDE or GNOME, just the applcation 'x' is not working and they want to fix it. Having two desktops with completely different looks and feels is a support nightmare.

Re: Red Hat, Again - antialias - 2002-08-23

'Mostly off of what I have heard on IRC' Huh, not very reliable sources. 'Removing KDE About Box'... That is violation if it is true, but seriously I don't think they did it.

Re: Red Hat, Again - Ian Reinhart Geiser - 2002-08-23

Well irc is what got me looking at rpmfind and the changelog. This is the link that got me interested: - Added patch to remove "about KDE" menu item from help menu (bug #67287) This effectively removes the about KDE part of the menu. While this isnt in violation of any license, it does make it so you dont know an app is a KDE app. Why would they do this. As I said this weekend I am installing it to see what it is. -ian reinhart geiser

Re: Red Hat, Again - Roberto Alsina - 2002-08-24

Ha, https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi Permission denied. Sorry; you do not have the permissions necessary to see bug 67287.

Re: Red Hat, Again - Carlos Laviola - 2002-08-25

Try creating an account, moron.

Re: Red Hat, Again - James Richard Tyrer - 2002-08-25

HELLO! I have an account. I logged in. I still get: Sorry; you do not have the permissions necessary to see bug 67287. Welcome to CCCP 101 And just why is that hat RED anyway? :-D -- JRT

Re: Red Hat, Again - Roberto Alsina - 2002-08-26

Carlos, dear, without an account you can't get to that page at all.

Re: Red Hat, Again - ac - 2002-08-23

Excuse me, but you appear to be totally ignorant on this matter.

Re: Red Hat, Again - Ian Reinhart Geiser - 2002-08-23

http://rpmfind.net//linux/RPM/rawhide/1.0/i386/RedHat/RPMS/kdelibs-3.0.3-2.i386.html is my unofficial source, until i get it installed here. Granted this is 10 days old, but unless rpmfind is generateing bad rpm information what they are shipping is far from KDE source. GPL says they can do what they want, but at least they should have the repect to call it a fork. -ian reinhart geiser

Re: Red Hat, Again - Roberto Alsina - 2002-08-23

kdelibs is not under the GPL, kdelibs is under the LGPL. The LGPL says in section 6 that you can "distribute [a program linked to a LGPL library] ... If the work during execution displays copyright notices, you must include the copyright notice for the Library among them" The "About KDE" dialog is the copyright notice provided by kdelibs. Removing it from kdelibs with the purpose of it not being displayed by the programs is probably a violation of the LGPL, not to mention a pretty stupid thing to do, which will surely cause, if true, a violent backlash against Red Hat. I would be surprised if even GNOME supported such a thing. In any case, I don't think removing copyright notices is legal EVER, and that is what that patch would do. It sure ain't ethical.

Re: Red Hat, Again - antialias - 2002-08-23

'For all of the work they are putting into destroying KDE...' KDE provides sources, you know that. What distros and packagers do to KDE is their own business. Not a big deal. All desktop-oriented distros (and RedHat is not one of these) have KDE as default desktop. ' Is it time to take a more agressive stance on packageing so we can keep some control how KDE looks?' I am afraid you can not do that (GPL). How KDE looks like? Good question :) Take a look at the screenshots on kde-look.org or even on kde.org and you will see that KDE has thousands of different looks (though mostly MacOSX-Aqua-like and WinXP-like). You can download gnome icon sets from kde-look.org (BTW, they are excellent) and many of gnome's (sawfish) window decorations ported to IceWM for KDE. We also used to have a gtk-theme importer for KDE 2xx.

Re: Red Hat, Again - Ian Reinhart Geiser - 2002-08-23

I guess we can all repeat the mantra of "KDE only provides source..." over and over and hope for the best. Unfortunately on this side of the pond RH == Linux. I have only seen a handfull of companies that dont think otherwise. Lucky IBM is nice enough to help break this idea, but companies like Sun and HP, seem to ignore SuSE (a damn fine desktop linux dist, and server for that matter) when they look at linux on the desktop. What I am talking about is a more reliable method of getting packages made. SuSE and MDK dont seem to have a problem with this (outside of a few bumps and scrapes because users upgrade from stock configs over time), so why cant RH seem to get it right? I mean we have debian package package information in CVS, why cant we have maintained spec files? Just some thoughts of latenight frustration as I get Solaris to compile KOffice... Ironic how KDE 3.1 seems to run better on Solaris than my Gnome CD that I got right from Sun... poor sods took it on that one... -ian reinhart geiser

Re: Red Hat, Again - David Walser - 2002-08-23

Wow, you got KDE3 to work on Solaris? Looking at the build requirements, it looks like you'd have to upgrade the entire build environment just to get it to build (and this was Solaris 9 I was looking at!). Hey, question, does KDM work (XDMCP included)? With the KDE 2.2.2 they shipped with Solaris 9 I can't get XDMCP to work with KDM.

Re: Red Hat, Again - Ian Reinhart Geiser - 2002-08-23

Yes a kind company was nice enough to donate some solaris HW and CPU cycles. I used stock Solaris 8.0 with gcc 2.95 off of the opensource CD. I added the SSL packages and a small patch to get /dev/urandom to work. The only part I have not had much luck with is the Motif part so NS plugins dont work. If I can have a spare second here I wanted to get Beta1 snapshot packages out, but the way its looking here I may not get packages out until Beta2 because I am still cleaning up stuff like KSysguard. KDM also works, but you have to "tickle" it a little. We are getting close to fixing that too. I have patches to make dtlogin show KDE or to use KDM, whatever is more stable Ill put in CVS. Stay tuned. BTW the most effective methods for getting HW and OS support for KDE on your pet platform is to either do it your self or donate: cpu cycles, beer, hardware or software ;) Cheers -ian reinhart geiser

KDE3 on Solaris, was Re: Red Hat, Again - Len Laughridge - 2002-08-24

Hi, Ian, glad the Ultra is working well for you. I'm doing some more with the Grid Engine as I get the time, so pretty soon I may be able to let you do some network cluster compiling! We're up to 31 workstations now, so that should result in some speedy 'make' times... We temporarily halted our compiling of 3.0.2 since 3.0.3 was released. We'd like to do 3.0.3 with GCC 3.2, 64-bit. Len

A gnome users perspective - Janne - 2002-08-24

OK, here's hoping I don't get flamed to a crisp here: There is quite a lot of negative reactions about the UI changes to KDE here. Believe me, there's quite a bit of it from Gnome people as well. Red Hat has done the same thing to Gnome as it has to KDE, i.e. replaced the default look'n'feel, menu system and so on with their own designs. If you're worried that KDE now looks like Gnome, rest assured that it doesn't. Indeed, the most common complaint among Gnomers is that it makes Gnome look far too much like KDE. :) As much as we dislike these changes (and yes, I'm one of those that aren't too happy with it), they are making a point, and an important one. They want to deliver a desktop to their customers that feel integrated. That is pretty important to them, and to the majority of their aimed-for user base (corporate desktops). Thus the common theme and common menu structure (another peeve from the Gnome camp). As other posters here has pointed out, most users do not care, and do not _want_ to care about arcana like what desktop environmnet an app belongs to. This of course makes you - and us - pretty uncomfortable. Another policy they are enforcing with RH8 is that there should be only one default app for every function. That is not to say there can not be several overlapping apps, just that there should be one default, and one only. For KDE, it apparently means Konqueror will play second fiddle to Mozilla; it also means Galeon is in the exact same situation as Konqueror. Having played with the beta, I have repeatedly become surprised that _my_ particular favourite app is not available; it's been easy enough to pull it in from the CD:s, to be sure. Again, I get somewhat frustrated over these choices, and again, I fully understand why this is a good thing for the majority of users. Fortunately, it seems it is quite easy to tweak the desktop for all of us to quickly regain the eye-candy and apps of our choice. And, yes, it probably _is_ preferable that geeks like us will need to do a bit of tweaking over having a lot of not-very-knowledgeable users attempting to get an integrated desktop (and failing). Again, I'm not here to troll or anything, I just wanted to point out that Gnome people seem no more happy with the beta than you are, and that there are a lot of good, solid reasons for RH to do what they are. /Janne

A KDE developers perspective - Adam Treat - 2002-08-26

Hello Janne, I think you are spot on. IMHO, RedHat is entirely within it's rights to modify KDE to suit there customers needs, as long as they release there modifications in accordance with the appropriate license. I fail to see how this is any different from the numerous companies that modify Free Software applications to meet there particular marketing/customer needs. Lycoris, Lindows, Xandros, Ximian... They all rebrand and modify FS/OS and there associated icons. I do not particularly care if RedHat patches KDE to remove the 'About KDE' box. AFAIK, the box does not contain any licensing information and therefore it is not against the license. I am only concerned that they release the patch under the LGPL ;-) Cheers, Adam

Re: Red Hat, Again - Andrew - 2002-08-24

Well said. In the past I would never consider using Redhat because KDE was not well supported. The new Redhat has them on equal footing and I could easily chnage the look and feel to Keramik. Menus maybe not, but I could still easily setup to use Konqueror, Koffice and any other K app. I am definately more impressed with Redhat over the zero improvements found in Mandrake.

Re: Red Hat, Again - Mathew McBride - 2002-08-25

Oh, shut you f***ing hole. "RedHat makes x crap improvments to GNOME, RedHat kills x KDE features" I am still plodding along with Red Hat 7. In a preview Kde 2 rpm (1.93) they removed Kpanel!. Boy am I pissed (even though it's two years old). I'll rather use Mandrake (but my cd's keep on getting freakin' stuffed)

Re: Red Hat, Again - Stof - 2002-08-25

And the panel is alive in kicking in RedHat 7.2 final. What's the big fuss about a packaging bug in a *preview* version?

Re: Red Hat, Again - ac - 2002-08-26

> RedHat kills x KDE features "About KDE" is a feature?

Re: Red Hat, Again - Ronald Trip - 2002-08-28

Well, Red Hat did mark it a bug, didn't they? :-)

Re: Red Hat, Again - Blah - 2002-10-14

For crying out loud its open source. They can change, remove, add, or do anything they want to pretty much... Do I think it's right to remove developer info? no I don't, but they are free to do whatever they please. Isn't no different from what Mandrake was doing awhile back. Change some code here and there and voila... RedHat is Mandrake... did you see redhat references all over the Mandrake distro? Didn't think so... If they are that concerned about what is added and removed, then close the source to the public. If not then stop the bitchin...

Redhat is doing a good thing - Moritz Moeller-Herrmann - 2002-08-23

It is not horrible. It is sensible. Why should KDE and Gnome not both have an identical default look? From the user perspective it would only make sense if Gnome and KDE apps behaved the same. And obviously neither KDE nor GNOME would ever give up their default look themselves. Therefore only a third party (like Redhat) could do it. It was discussed on gnome-kde meetings before though, IIRC. Maybe we could even use the look they use (together with GNOME) and call it the freedesktop standard? Futhermore it is sensible to let KDE mimic GNOME, because GNOME is simpler and has less advanced features. Gnome could never mimic KDE with keramik. If KDE were not just adapted but crippled, users would complain, so Redhat would be stupider than I think they are to do it. You will still be able to use e.g. keramik and so on, I think. I wouldn't believe rumours about ripping out KDE "About" menu entries until I hear them from a reliable source.

Re: Redhat is doing a good thing - ac - 2002-08-23

What is the point of KDE if the KDE desktop is going to look like the GNOME desktop, not be installed by default, and have no distinguishing features? You are defending this??

Re: Redhat is doing a good thing - Ian Reinhart Geiser - 2002-08-23

Integration is one thing, editing into oblivian is another. I can see makeing gnome apps look like kde apps when you are in kde or vis versa, but to completely remove the look and feel is something different. If i want to use KDE its because I like KDE, and wish to use KDE, then again I am strange... -ian reinhart geiser

The point - Moritz Moeller-Herrmann - 2002-08-23

The point is that users don't care one bit about GTK or QT or Gnome or KDE as long as the apps cooperate nicely. If they look the same -- GREAT. So I can see the reasoning behind changing the "look" of kde applications to become gnomish. I can not see any sense in offering a reduced, minimalist version of the KDE as a desktop option. KDE users will not accept this anyways. Those who use Gnome will never see it. Best reaction: Tell any Redhat user coming to KDE for support to get a real KDE. If I worked at Mandrake or SuSE, I would look forward to the next Redhat release :-)

Re: The point - Spark - 2002-08-24

"If I worked at Mandrake or SuSE, I would look forward to the next Redhat release :-)" I wouldn't, because outside of zealot-websites, there is some real excitement about the betas, as they really kick ass as a desktop operating system (that's what I heard). Also this seems to become their best KDE integration ever. :) You (KDE devs and fans) really should calm down a little bit. RedHat does a lot of changes to KDE but not half as much changes as they do to GNOME. They aren't doing this to cripple anything but for the better of the user. And of course all the fancy Keramik, Crystal, etc stuff will still be included so they are just a click away (or ten, depends on kcontrols efficiency ;)). And no functionality will be ripped (silly idea).

Re: Redhat is doing a good thing - Ian Reinhart Geiser - 2002-08-23

' I wouldn't believe rumours about ripping out KDE "About" menu entries until I hear them from a reliable source.' Well according to the source (quite a reliable source) they went as far as to remove the std action. --- kdelibs-3.0.2.me/kdeui/khelpmenu.cpp.aboutkde 2002-06-02 18:51:09.0000 +++ kdelibs-3.0.2.me/kdeui/khelpmenu.cpp 2002-08-02 12:44:08.000000000 +0 @@ -88,7 +88,9 @@ KStdAction::whatsThis(this, SLOT(contextHelpActivated()), actions); KStdAction::reportBug(this, SLOT(reportBug()), actions); KStdAction::aboutApp(this, SLOT(aboutApplication()), actions); - KStdAction::aboutKDE(this, SLOT(aboutKDE()), actions); +#if 0 + KStdAction::aboutKDE(this, SLOT(aboutKDE()), actions); +#endif } } The about app is still there at least, but KDEs information is gone... Why? What does this serve? -ian reinhart geiser

Obvious: Gnome-2.2 - Moritz Moeller-Herrmann - 2002-08-23

Well I guess it is a preparation to switch from GTK based Gnome to KDE without losing face :-) Redhat will use KDE and tell their users it is really GNOME-2.2!!! After all, they want a piece of desktop linux! To make this work, the copyright and credits have to go! ;-)

Re: Obvious: Gnome-2.2 - Spark - 2002-08-24

Haha. ;) No seriously I think they want to remove it as it won't help the user. Think about it, as we already said quite a lot of times, new users don't care about KDE and GNOME, they just want it to work. So they install GNOME, use KMail and go to the help menu, now there is a "About KDE" box. Hmm. They might click it and maybe they think they are running KDE (which they aren't). However, why isn't it enough to just place the "About application" in the help menu like everyone else does too (consistency could be another rational for this action)? I hope though that the about KDE box can be accessed from another place (in GNOME you get it by right clicking on the panel). If not, this could indeed be a problem (but I'm sure that RedHat would be more than willing to solve it if someone tells them). In the worst case it could be placed somewhere in the KDE menu.

Re: Obvious: Gnome-2.2 - Roberto Alsina - 2002-08-24

The "About KDE" thing. It's called branding. Like Red Hat is trying to do. Except they are removing the KDE brand from KDE code for some reason.

Re: Obvious: Gnome-2.2 - Spark - 2002-08-24

RedHat is trying to do branding? I don't see that. There is a red hat as a GNOME foot/ K menu replacement but besides of this, it's very neutral and I don't see the term RedHat anywhere in the GUI. But having an "about KDE" that does not explain at all what this "KDE" is in half of the apps is pretty weird and it makes not much sense to have this in a GNOME environment anyway but better read my short response further above. ;) However, you will find no such "branding" in GNOME apps so is it really _that_ bad if KDE apps don't have it either in RedHat?

Re: Obvious: Gnome-2.2 - Roberto Alsina - 2002-08-24

> Red Hat is trying to do branding? Sure. Red Hat puts Red Hat icons on the desntop, that take you to the Red Hat site, a Red Hat icon from where you start all apps, and generally puts that silly guy with the hat everywhere. Branding. As for "you will find no such branding on GNOME apps", I don't care. GNOME does what GNOME wants to do. GNOME is not KDE. The "About KDE" dialog also has a link to www.kde.org, so it leads, in one click, to all the available information about KDE. Also, you miss something I thought was pretty obvious: KDE lives through branding! KDE wants KDE to be noticed! KDE wnats people to know they are using KDE applications! Why? Because continuing flow of people wanting to help KDE is how KDE survives. We want more applications to be KDE applications in the future. We want when someone likes an application, that he KNOWS it is a KDE application, and where he can get more like it.

Re: Obvious: Gnome-2.2 - Spark - 2002-08-24

Ok, I understand your intention to get more developers. But the current KDE about dialog will nothing but confuse new users if they are running RedHat/GNOME (at best luring them to your site because they want to get rid of their confusion). This is not quite fair to GNOME, etc. Maybe this information could be placed in the aboutbox of the application and/or explained a little bit better ("this application is based upon libraries which are part of the KDE desktop environment, you can get more information at, etc, you are invited to yaddayadda"). Then I'm sure RedHat would put it back in. Right now you have to ask yourself, would you prefer RedHat not to include KDE at all (absolutely not gathering any potential developers) or to include KDE as it is now, gathering potential developers only if they actually try out the KDE desktop, not just some applications. Of course it would be different if it would be a legal issue but I'm to 89% sure that it isn't.

Re: Obvious: Gnome-2.2 - Roberto Alsina - 2002-08-24

"Then I'm sure RedHat would put it back in." Why are you sure? "Right now you have to ask yourself, would you prefer RedHat not to include KDE at all (absolutely not gathering any potential developers) or to include KDE as it is now, gathering potential developers only if they actually try out the KDE desktop, not just some applications." To be honest, that sounds an awful lot like blackmail. I doubt Red Hat would put it in those terms, so I see no point in even discussing it.

Re: Obvious: Gnome-2.2 - Tim Gollnik - 2002-08-24

>But the current KDE about dialog will nothing but confuse new users if they >are running RedHat/GNOME (at best luring them to your site because they want >to get rid of their confusion). This is not quite fair to GNOME, etc. I don't understand why it's not fair if a KDE-app. states that it is a KDE-app. It's not fair to not mention it, and I can't understand you at all. And where ist the confusion? ("Ah, okay, this is a GNOME-app, and this is a KDE-app. Wow, I'm confused.."??) Your opinion sounds like a pretty silly excuse. "An den Haaren herbeigezogen.", as we say in Germany. I really get cross the more I think about it. You're talking about fairness? And then the only point you have is:"It's not illegal"?? Best regards. And think about this: "Ah, you like the cake? Thank you! *smile* Eermh, I've made it.. who else? " Das nennt man: "Mit fremden Federn schmücken." Bäh! Tim Gollnik

Re: Obvious: Gnome-2.2 - Kavau - 2002-08-24

As much as I sympathize with KDE and the KDE programmers' desire to be seen and heard by the people that use their products, a very valid point has been brought up a few times already in these discussions: People might use KDE apps in a Gnome environment (and vice versa). In that case an "about KDE" help menu entry would indeed be out of place. Sad fact is a general user of, say, KMail probably doesn't want to learn about the history of his favorite mail program and its integration into the KDE desktop suite. He simply wants to learn to use the program, and not worry about the difference between KDE and Gnome (he thinks he's using Linux, not KDE or Gnome, anyways). Why not do the following: In the KMail help menu, an 'About KMail' entry is surely appropriate. The popup that is activated by this entry should give a brief description of what KMail is and who its creators are, and then contains a statement along the lines of "KMail is a part of the KDE desktop environment", the words "KDE desktop environment" being a hyperlink that takes the user to another text explaining what the KDE desktop environment is. This way no-one gets confused, KDE still gets noticed, and everybody can go home happy. On another issue - there has been talk for the longest time about Gnome/KDE integration, and if I recall correctly, one of the planned goals was to have KDE applications adopt the Gnome style by default if run in a Gnome environment, and vice versa. Of course this would require compatible style engines, but I thought that had been in the works for the longest time. Can anybody in the know tell us what the status of this project is, and whether we will see KDE/Gnome style integration some time in the foreseeable future?

Re: Redhat is doing a good thing - Waldo Bastian - 2002-08-25

You wonder why they hack the source for this while they also could have added the following two lines to kdeglobals: [KDE Action Restrictions] action/help_about_kde=false Cheers, Waldo

Re: Redhat is doing a good thing - Christian Parpart - 2002-08-25

really nice and definitely more elegant. But do you agree with it? Lot's of developer put their work into these applications, and they have the right to be noticed in a about box in their applications too. I am also developing and I fill out my about box as everyone else does too, and I really can't agree when (i.e.) redhat removes this, so that the average user will never know how to contact the original user nor know that I used the fabulous KDE libraries. Cheers, Christian Parpart.

Re: Redhat is doing a good thing - Waldo Bastian - 2002-08-25

Anyone is free to make any changes they see fit. Lindows does that and RedHat appearantly follows in their footsteps. Being able to make changes is what sets open source software apart from proprietary software. Microsoft OEMs can only have wet-dreams about that. Of course you don't make friends with the developers if you rename their applications (Lindows) or remove about boxes (RedHat). I don't think that's a very big problem for RedHat since they have zero credability within the KDE community any way. Cheers, Waldo

Re: Red Hat, Again - Jason - 2002-08-23

I found some screenshots of KDE 3 running on the Redhat 8.0 beta: ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/contrib/texstar/screenshots/redhat17.jpg ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/contrib/texstar/screenshots/redhat18.jpg ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/contrib/texstar/screenshots/redhat19.jpg ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/contrib/texstar/screenshots/redhat20.jpg Notice that all icons have been removed from the panel. Of course, there's no way to tell if this is the stock RH configuration or not, but I suspect it is (these were posted by PCLinuxOnline.com; the point was to show what the new RH looks like "out of the box"). Also, the "K" menu icon is replaced with a Redhat logo (OK, no big deal I guess...they replaced the gnome foot as well) In shot 19, the Internet menu contains an "Email" item, in addition to "KMail"...anyone want to speculate whether "Email" launches KMail or Evolution? There's also a "Web browser" item (could be Konq, could be Mozilla). At least shot 20 shows Konqueror running (and using the Keramik style), so they apparently didn't actually remove the program, just (possibly) removed it from the menu. I suggested it in another thread; I think it's time we thought about making "real" KDE packages for redhat users.

Re: Red Hat, Again - Jon - 2002-08-23

Wow, those are spectacularly ugly screenshots. What's with the acres of unused panel space between the 'hat' and the virtual desktop applet?

Re: Red Hat, Again - David Walser - 2002-08-23

Well that blows whoever's argument that RedHat is doing this for consitency. Looking at those sshots, they've created a look that's horribly inconsistent.

Re: Red Hat, Again - Spark - 2002-08-24

I'm using one of the latest of their redhat-artwork RPM's (with Gentoo) and they definetly have a Qt style that looks like the Gtk style. AFAIK this is used in the Null beta but not in earlier betas. I also expect a lot of changes to the themes before they ship. Consistency is definetly their goal.

Re: Red Hat, Again - David Walser - 2002-08-23

> I suggested it in another thread; I think it's time we thought about making "real" KDE packages for redhat users. Who is making these RH packages anyway? I know Bero used to make their packages, is he doing this? If not, what happened to him?

Re: Red Hat, Again - CanaDyne - 2002-09-26

He left RH yesterday. He is a link to his anouncment http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-devel&m=103293985032408&w=2

Re: Red Hat, Again - fault - 2002-09-27

Does Preston Brown still work in Redhat, or did he leave a long time ago? He was the orignal author of korganizer, among other things.

Re: Red Hat, Again - fault - 2002-09-27

Never mind, I found my own answer: http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-pim&m=102691602802466&w=2

Re: Red Hat, Again - fault - 2002-09-27

Never mind, I found my own answer: http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-pim&m=102691602802466&w=2

Re: Red Hat, Again - Q - 2002-08-23

No that is great. Whats so wrong with having another theme? Whats wrong with Gnome and KDE looking similar? Why are the guys here bitching about Redhat changing the look of kde? Nothing prevents them, and if it was not desired, KDE shouldnt be themable.

Re: Red Hat, Again - rb - 2002-08-23

I rather agree. I also understand people being uneasy with the way redhat is doing this. And since their motivation for doing this is not clear at all, it's making it even more suspicious...

Re: Red Hat, Again - Kanwar Plaha - 2002-08-23

After reading through all the points and counter-points, I fail to understand why RedHat should not be allowed to do something like this. If any of you guys were to see the customization I do sometimes to my desktop. It looks like (worse) than the big bad OS ;) From the screenshots linked above, it seems like a pre-themed KDE to me and that fine. End users are happy with that. For instance, Lycoris has a mix of KDE/GNOME apps running on a customized KDE desktop. Check it out at http://www.lycoris.com As for the KDE About menu option, if it violates the GPL, it should not be allowed.

Re: Red Hat, Again - Roberto Alsina - 2002-08-23

The theming, I don't care. The default config looks awful? Their problem. When they start touching the "about" boxes, though... that touches a nerve.

Re: Red Hat, Again - Kanwar Plaha - 2002-08-23

Right about the about box. Can the community, as a whole, do anything??

Re: Red Hat, Again - sure - 2002-08-23

Whoever has copyrights on any piece of the KDE code that redhat includes can sue Redhat. I suspect some Redhat employees themselves have contributions and own a piece of KDE. Of course, Redhat would probably just add back the about boxes, and maybe even restore the old KDE look. Bad press is bad for companies.

Re: Red Hat, Again - Sad Eagle - 2002-08-23

> The theming, I don't care You should. The widget style plays a role in virtually all the drawing and layout operations. A bug in that, and your app may start behaving rather oddly. And by the way, a stabilization of a widget style can often take months, since there are thousands of odd combinations of things it needs to handle. You may want to look through kde-bug-dist archives for various older kstyle bugs for some examples.

Re: Red Hat, Again - Roberto Alsina - 2002-08-24

If the application is properly layouted, it should account for anything the style throws at it. Except, of course, for bugs in the style. But KDE has shipped with buggy styles in the past, and it has not been that much of a problem. Sure, a buggy DEFAULT style will be annoying, and cause bad bug reports. All that will cause is bad publicity for Red Hat, and (sadly) a bit more work for maintainers. As for the stabilization of the style... well, that is a problem for the style's author, isn't it? Red Hat is a company, it is not a terribly bright company, but it is not a STUPID company. Of course I can be proven wrong, and I have a nagging feeling.

Re: Red Hat, Again - Sad Eagle - 2002-08-24

I imagine people who had Konqueror crash on them because their bookmarks didn't fit on a screen due to a style bug felt otherwise; and so would people whose favorite programs or the programs they implement look like trash because the rendering options they use are slightly unusual (like, say, bottom tabs); and aren't handled right at all. And when it comes to the author.. Well, I definitely trust the authors, and will hopefully send them some bug reports (actually, I already have a dozen, some major after a casual inspection of a few minutes); but I don't know whether they'll have time to fix it properly, and what's more, test it thoroughly, since from what I undestand their release will be out pretty sure. The same, of course, applies to other patches they apply -- such as switching Qt3 to use Xft2 (which is a very invasive change, touching virtually all of the font handling code); and switching library loading flags from RTLD_LOCAL to RTLD_GLOBAL -- good luck finding causes for crashes caused by weird symbol clashes. I don't know what your experience is, but mine, coming from sorting and classifying incoming bug reports is that packaging bugs are often the biggest problem users face, since they often tend to affect almost everyone, unlike source bugs which are often corner-case; partly because it's a lot more difficult for a packager to test everything than for the developer -- since after all, almost every piece of KDE code is watched and cared for by someone, while there are typically only a few packagers who handle all of KDE and probably hundreds of other things; and changing things drastically is not going to make producing packages as reliable as the original sourcebase any easier. And I really would not want the large contributions of many developers, and the smaller ones by myself to KDE to be undeservingly judged poorly because RedHat, for whatever reason, pushed a bit too hard with the changes, and ended up breaking something. It's certainly possible that everything will be right -- but that doesn't mean one shouldn't worry, does it?

Re: Red Hat, Again - ne... - 2002-08-23

I also agree. I also think everyone should note that this is a beta. Nothing has been finalized as yet (or so I think). There are changes between Limbo and (null). Some of the stuff I don't like, but then I have always rolled my own KDE since 1.x. About the about boxes, I can't check that now as I'm not on my (null) box.

Re: Red Hat, Again - aigiskos - 2002-08-23

I agree with Q here. Redhat should be able to do this, and there may be good reasons for it. I'm not sure I like the look that much either (though it is only a beta so far). Note that Redhat also changed the default look of GNOME2 so that it could look more like KDE and make the two desktops seem more similar (i.e. no fubar at the top and the return of the foot menu-- but in the guise of a red hat). The GNOME usability people, who have argued strenuously about the menus on the fubar and the default set-up, are not exactly happy with Redhat's changes, either. From what Havoc Pennington has said in various emails about related topics (but not this one particularly), I think Redhat is trying to brand the whole desktop for itself. The Redhatters reason is that most people don't really understand what GNOME or KDE is. Those people, coming from a Windows or OSX world, think of the whole thing as the OS. So, telling them that they are running Redhat Linux with KDE on top will confuse them. Redhat appears to be trying to make the GUI more seamlessly associated with the rest of the system (i.e. it's all Redhat). In addition, Redhat is probably trying to make the two primary choices of desktop environments, KDE and GNOME, look similar for support reasons. That way, if a support call comes in describing what's wrong, the situation on the screen will look similar whether the person is running GNOME or KDE (the support person could say, "Ok, go to the bottom left-hand corner and click on the button with the red hat; go up to web browser and click on it..." --works for either KDE or GNOME). At any rate, I *don't* think that Redhat is trying to destroy KDE, though they certainly do prefer GNOME (hey, they've been instrumental in developing it from the beginning; so, I guess that's natural). Cheers.

Re: Red Hat, Again - David Walser - 2002-08-23

> In addition, Redhat is probably trying to make the two primary choices of desktop environments, KDE and GNOME, look similar for support reasons. That way, if a support call comes in describing what's wrong, the situation on the screen will look similar whether the person is running GNOME or KDE (the support person could say, "Ok, go to the bottom left-hand corner and click on the button with the red hat; go up to web browser and click on it..." --works for either KDE or GNOME). I don't buy it. They could accomplish that the way Mandrake did, w/out destroying KDE. And why just make KDE look the same, why not XFce and IceWM and WindowMaker too?

Re: Red Hat, Again - dr_lha - 2002-08-23

Because when you install RH it gives you the option of having Gnome or KDE - and not the others you mention. They may be available on the CD but first time and corperate users most likely won't install them.

Re: Red Hat, Again - heiko - 2002-08-24

David: If ypu think modifying KDE means distroying it would be better to make KDE clodes source. The reason to license a program under the GPL is to allow and support(!) modifying. The GPL means freedom for evryone not only for people who have the same opinion. What if somebody uses a modyfied KDE version to easily develop mass destruction wapons? Either accapt the rules of the GPL or do not use it. Btw: If you would look at the icons in Redhat Null they look much more similar to the default KDE nes than the default Gnome icons.

Re: Red Hat, Again - Uno Engborg - 2002-08-23

Yes, I agree. But the folderlike K-menu icon replacement is really a bad thing from usability perspective. Users may think that it is some kind of structure in the file system. If they should replace it at all, an ordirana Red Hat logo would have bin better.

Re: Red Hat, Again - Spark - 2002-08-24

For GNOME they use simply a red hat so I guess they will do the same for KDE (looks better and makes more sense indeed).

The Red Hat Operating System - James Richard Tyrer - 2002-08-25

It appears to me that there isn't very much wrong with what Red Hat is doing. That is, if you actually understand what they are doing. Perhaps is is important to first understand why this is happening. The reasons are found in Economics. RedHat, SuSE, Caldera, and Mandrake are in competition with each other. They could compete on price, but companies would rather not do that -- they would rather charge more for their product. To do this they must differentiate their product. They started doing this with the installer, but this has now leveled off -- they all have a good installer and there isn't much difference. So, what RedHat is doing is the same thing that Lindows is doing. They are not going to just distribute Linux. They are going to make their own OS that is based on Linux. Now IMO, we would all like a distribution that was about the same as if we had built it all from source with, possibly, some addons for configuration. But, the question is, is this what Joe average user wants or what he will buy. And what about the users that have to get technical support to find out how to change their menu? So, unfortunately, this 100% pure GNU/Linux/XFree86 with a desktop is not what companies are going to be selling. They are going to be selling something like RedHat's new OS with more and more different "features" that make compatibility impossible. This is WHY UNIX fragmented, the market forces cause this. Linux standards are not going to stop this unless Linus is willing to say that they can't use the trademark unless it meets the standards. There is clearly a market niche for a company that made a 100% pure distro, but ... Or, should the Free Software Foundation sell a Linux distro? Or, should there be a KDE/Linux distro? Would The Kompany be interested? -- JRT

Re: The Red Hat Operating System - Spark - 2002-08-25

*sigh* I thought you would write a very good reply until the second part. The fact that companies like RedHat are actually going to create real operating systems (not just distributing a lot of random software packaged together) is a _good_ thing, not a bad thing. This is the _only_ chance for GNU/Linux to actually compete with decent and complete desktop operating systems like BeOS or MacOS. A "vanilla" system is not, what most people want. Does this fragment Linux? How? RedHat ist still using the same libraries, the same file system, the same package manager. Applications will work for RedHat equally well as for Lycoris or Mandrake as long as they support the LSB. It's just the GUI and the polishing that is adjusted by the distributor, _not_ the architecture. The flexibility of Linux was once thoughed to be a huge advantage. Now I just hope that zealots always crying FOUL when someone actually takes advantage of this won't destroy it. If you want a distribution that just provides you with the vanilla software, you already have _plenty_ of choice: Slackware, Gentoo, Debian, ... Nobody is forcing you or anyone to buy a specialized distro. But many people will enjoy it (I'm actually looking forward to the next RedHat and think about buying it if it becomes as good as I hope). I hope you don't think that it's bad if people enjoy something. Especially if it's completely Free Software like RedHat always is as opposed to a sadly growing number of competitors.

Re: The Red Hat Operating System - James Richard Tyrer - 2002-08-29

I don't think that I disagree with you as much as you might think. I said that a "vanila" system was only a niche market. A disrto for KDE users is a slightly different question. But I think that you misunderstand about fragmentation. Applications will probably work on the new RedHat ONLY if a version is made for RedHat. It doesn't matter if all of the things which you listed are the same. The system's files are located in different directories and this is enough to make even an application's RPM incompatable. As I said, standards could be promulgated to prevent this problem, but only if there were enforcement. Mandrake, Caldera, SuSE, and RedHat RPMs for applications are already incompatable. Someone needs to find a cure for this -- and soon. Either a standardized directory system or a way for RPM to know where to install stuff based on a configuration file. I can think of other improvements to RPM as well, but is it really open or does RedHat control RPM? -- JRT

Re: The Red Hat Operating System - Evan "JabberWokky" E. - 2002-08-29

RPM is opem, and it's part of what you have just described: The Linux Standards Base, or LSB. Right now, it primarily covers directories, their uses and designates RPM as a package standard (since even deb based distros can install them, using alien). Yes, RPM has problems, but the biggest problem is simply a lack of a standard dependancy naming convention, which will hopefully be addressed soon (the other 'problem', dependacy auto-completion, has distro specific fixes, and as long as the dependency naming is different for each distro, that's the bext solution, imo). 1.2 defines a standard ABI, with detailed information for x86 and PPC archetectures. I thought that was still in the future, but it was released July 28th. SuSE, Mandrake and Red Hat all take LSB seriously, and are, or say they will be with their next release, LSB compliant. Check out their website. http://www.linuxbase.org/ -- Evan

Re: The Red Hat Operating System - James Richard Tyrer - 2002-08-31

Yes, RPM is open source, but is it truly open. What I was wondering about was if they would be at all interested in adding a couple of features. 1. If I don't have something that it asks for as a dependency, I could simply tell it NO (just once) and it wouldn't ask again unless I removed it from a human readable configuration file. 2. When it asks for a dependency, could it please ask LD.SO about it and if it says it has it, then on the command line version a small notice would print out and say it was found. The directory problem is significant. It certainly shows how stuff can be totally open and yet incompatible. Does RedHat really improve Mozilla by installing it in: "/usr/lib/mozilla/" rather than the default: "/usr/local/mozilla/"? My radical suggestion is that the default install directory should be (as part of the standard) the one that the person that wrote the code specified as the default install directory. I know that there would be some slight problem here and there. Like, where should you install: "Mesa"? But, in general, the stuff should install the same place on RedHat as it would if you built if from source. And, yes there might need to be a few changes but from then on we would have a standard. A standard dependency naming convention would be a great help. Again, I have the same (or similar) radical idea. Most dependencies are libraries so if we got that fixed then it would be over 90% of the problem. And we already have a standard for libraries, it is what LD.SO uses, the actual name of the library. Using the actual library names would sure make a completion search easier too, wouldn't it. I don't think that LSB compliant means that the directory usage will have to be the same. And, in that regard, it appears that RedHat may be using the FHS standard to make their distro even more non-standard, but (as you say) we will have to wait and see. As I see it, what is needed is for an application vender to have one RPM that will install on ANY standards compliant system (you would still have to install the needed libraries and in a very few cases some additional packages). I don't think that RedHat wants that, and (therefore) I don't expect to see it soon. But, I will have to wait and see what United Linux is doing. -- JRT

Re: The Red Hat Operating System - Evan "JabberWokky" E. - 2002-08-31

:: What I was wondering about was if they would be at all interested in adding a couple of features. Who is "they"? if you want the features, write them. -- Evan

What´s the difference ? - KDE User - 2002-08-25

So what´s the difference anyway? RedHat never went for KDE on their distros, why would they change now? People will just see that Mandrake, SuSE etc is much nicer. Too bad for Red Hat. Did anybody expect that RedHat suddenly would make a KDE-desktop distro?

Re: Red Hat, Again - rufus - 2002-08-26

Hello, Anyone checked out Lycoris or Lindows screenshots lately?? It's KDE packaged as WinXP!!! Uhh, KDE is starting to look a lot like Mac OS X to me!! Get a grip people!

Re: Red Hat, Again - me - 2002-09-02

LOL, i think they made gnome look too much like KDE in the null screenshots - i guess everyone's different

From someone who has actually used the beta... - Peter Backlund - 2002-08-23

I don't know about the 'About...' box, don't remember if it was there or not. It definitely should NOT be removed. However... The deal is that RH has created themes for QT, Gtk 1 and Gtk 2, which look the same, to provide a consistent look between KDE and Gnome apps. Damn fine looking ones, too, if you ask me. Wonderland, I think they call them. When you start up KDE for the first time, the Settings wizard runs as usual, and there's an option to choose 'Red Hat default' style, in addition to the old KDE default, Redmond etc. That's all there is to it. /Peter

Re: From someone who has actually used the beta... - ac - 2002-08-23

That's not all. If KDE apps looked the same in GNOME and vice-versa, that would be okay. Cripping the KDE DESKTOP is not okay.

Re: From someone who has actually used the beta... - sure - 2002-08-23

Where was any crippling done? The end user is free to run whatever programs they want. All KDE programs are included in the beta.

Re: From someone who has actually used the beta... - TCorbin - 2002-08-24

Yes, ok, I understand having gnome and kde look alike. But what happens when the user picks a new theme using the kde control or gnome control panel? Do all the apps then continue to look the same? I doubt it. This effort is too easily broken for me to believe that it has any merit.

It's worse. - ac - 2002-08-23

RedHat has replaced Konqueror and KMail by Mozilla and Evolution in the default KDE desktop. Who will *want* to use KDE after this? RedHat has turned KDE into a cheap and broken rip-off of GNOME. This is a kick in the face for the KDE developers. Complain LOUD AND CLEAR to RedHat. Email them, file bug reports and let them know your displeasure.

Better reaction - Moritz Moeller-Herrmann - 2002-08-23

Don't use Redhat. Simple, easy, immediately noticed by Redhat. Complaining is useless. If anyone comes to the lists and complains about a KDE program on Redhat tell him: None of our business, you use Redhat, Redhat hates KDE, get a real KDE, not the crippled broken version.

Re: Better reaction - ac - 2002-08-23

Complaining is NOT useless especially if you have paid for the priviledge. This is what the bug tracking system is for. Let them KNOW.

Re: It's worse. - dr_lha - 2002-08-23

>RedHat has replaced Konqueror and KMail by Mozilla and Evolution in the default >KDE desktop. Who will *want* to use KDE after this? RedHat has turned KDE into a >cheap and broken rip-off of GNOME. This is a kick in the face for the KDE >developers. Hey - I've done that myself. Personally I believe that Mozilla and Evolution are better than Konquerer and KMail for their allotted tasks. I'm still a staunch KDE user - does using the best tools for the job make me a bad person?

Re: It's worse. - sure - 2002-08-23

so? They are free to replace whatever programs they want. The average KDE user may use Mozilla or Evolution conversely, an average GNOME user may use Konqueror or Kmail In the real world(tm), people using KDE/GNOME often use applications of the other desktop. Who cares? If you don't like redhat, nobody aren't forceing you to use it at all. I personally use Gentoo and Debian, which are perfectly desktop neutral. They don't default to one over the other, as it can be a bit touchy issue for developers (but should not be).

Re: It's worse. - Sad Eagle - 2002-08-24

The problem here, really, is that the customizations RedHat is making wouldn't give people much chance to really try KDE. Have you dealt with the newbies much? If so, you'd realize that people who are really just starting rarely ever change from defaults. And as such, any user using RedHat will likely start with Gnome, and if they're reasonably comfortable would have little desire to try KDE, if though if they did it's quite possible that they'd like KDE better. Now, suppose the user decides to try out KDE, the other option, they start it, chose RedHat default options (since those must be chosen for a good reason, right?), and see a desktop which looks a whole lot like the one they had before, and it behaves quite similar too, since RedHat has changed many of the default behavior settings KDE uses, which were picked very carefully, and often after spirited discussions with those that are much closer to Gnome. Oh, and all the preferred apps are the same too, so a new user might not even realize that Konqueror and KMail exist. As you see, there is little incentive for someone to continue exploring at this point, since the first few minutes are rather boring -- even though the difference between KDE and Gnome are quite significant in many aspects, it's also the more superificial and changeable look'n'feel preferences that are noticed first. Thus there is a real possibility that the changes like this would simply not give people a reasonable changed to try out KDE the way it was meant to be used. It's one thing for someone to try Mozilla and Konqueror and decide to use Mozilla, or to try Gnome and KDE and to decided to use Gnome, and quite another for them to try Mozilla and Mozilla and pick Mozilla, and Gnome and KDE groomed ot pretend to be like Gnome and pick Gnome. The former is choise, the latter is 1-party elections.

Re: It's worse. - Spark - 2002-08-25

Woah, is this so difficult to get? KDE isn't made to look like GNOME, both are made to look like something new. RedHat has specifically avoided to make any desktop look like the other (otherwise they could have just used the default GNOME icons, the default GNOME panel layout, etc) becaue they wanted to avoid beeing called biased. Result? GNOME zealots complain that the desktop looks KDE and KDE zealots complain that the desktop looks like GNOME. Talk about stupid. The new unique look allows both desktop to shine where it really matters: Technology. Users will stick with the desktop that works best best with them, not with the one that looks fancier. I guess you don't want to tell me that KDE has nothing to offer but fancy looking themes and icons? If the look or the default settings suck, then users will dislike both desktops equally or in other word, they will simply dislike RedHat. But most testers so far actually like those settings and the look.

Re: It's worse. - dc - 2002-08-23

Alright, go start bitching at all people who use Windows who replace IE with Moz. Or anyone who uses anything other than the default. I don't support (or agree with) what they've done, but I support their right to do it.

Re: It's worse. - TCorbin - 2002-08-24

Hey, I don't care if the *user* decides not to use kmail or konqueror - but Redhat is making the decision for the user. That's what I think is rotten.

Re: It's worse. - Johnny Andersson - 2002-08-24

Yeah. People argue that Redhat has the right to do what they're doing, and I guess they have. But Redhat rely on opensource apps, and opensource apps wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the fact that the people who write them (1) scratch their own itch or (2) get credit. Redhat doesn't give KDE peope proper credit. Simple as that.

Heres $0.01, buy a clue. - Bah - 2002-08-24

So RedHat only wants to support a single browser from multiple desktops/window managers. It seems pretty reasonable to choose a slightly more featureful browser that isn't closely affiliated with a particular desktop. But what the hell, let's hang'em anyway! Cummon people...

Re: Heres $0.01, buy a clue. - Roberto Alsina - 2002-08-24

It degrades the performance of KDE as a whole. If you are managing some files, and want to browse a web page it is almost instantaneous because it is the same program. If you are managing some files in Konqueror and then open mozilla, it sucks, because it takes about 20 seconds to start. Besides, neither one is more featureful than the other, since both have features the other lacks.

Re: Heres $0.01, buy a clue. - BT - 2002-09-02

<QUOTE> Besides, neither one is more featureful than the other, since both have features the other lacks. </QUOTE> Please use logic people...Browser A, and browser B...Browser A has features D,E,F, Browser B has features X, and Y. Both have features the other lacks, but yet....yes I do believe browser A has more features (3 to 2). Just an example of the lack of intelligence in this community. Evolution and Mozilla are both better (not great though)...that is why RH made them default, if you want new users to use linux, give them the best tools....if you don't like those tools, then run the others...they are still there. BT

Re: Heres $0.01, buy a clue. - Evan "JabberWokky" E. - 2002-09-02

Doesn't much matter if you want to "X". I use both Mozilla and Konqueror. I vastly prefer Konqueror, and it's due to the integration and beautiful rendering. Mozilla may be able to give me a swedish massage - until it's better at one thing, browsing the web, I'll use Konqueror. -- Evan

Re: Heres $0.01, buy a clue. - Roberto Alsina - 2002-09-02

It all depends on what you need. For one thing, Konqueror is head and shoulders above mozilla when it comes to viewing files, or managing them, or ripping CDs or whatever. Even if you did count features in such a stupid manner as you want, I doubt Mozilla would have more, considering all the non-browser functionality in Konqueror.

Re: It's worse. - Andrew - 2002-08-24

Why do you say its broken. It's not broken. Compare KDE for REDHAT 8 beta to Gnome for SuSE. Gnome users should complain.

Eh? - kaoruAngel - 2002-08-24

You mean you wouldn't have replaced them, anyway?

No mister AC - Stof - 2002-08-25

<A HREF="http://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/contrib/texstar/screenshots/redhat20.jpg">Konqueror is still there.</A> <A HREF="http://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/contrib/texstar/screenshots/redhat19.jpg">And guess what? KMail is still alive too!</A>

.... - DaWallace - 2004-02-03

as you speak of newbies, and i, until recently, was one. but judging from my friend's experiences, a hardcore one. I must object, anybody who isn't just casually trying it will change the defaults and mess with stuff if they are ever going to master it anyway I have renounced redhat, I can't stand it anymore redhat tries its best to hide all of the scary configuration files from you so you never have to get your hands dirty user frinedliness is what they're going for but redhat is trying to compete with microsoft that sense which completely destroys everything it had going for it. so I have switched to slackware and am considering debian but redhat is out of the question

Re: It's worse. - DaWallace - 2004-02-03

RedHat Null KDE App Screenshots - Jordy Potman - 2002-08-24

I've put some screenshots of Konqueror and KDevelop running on RedHat Null (the latest RedHat beta) online: <a href="http://home.student.utwente.nl/j.potman/redhatnull/konqueror_help.png"> http://home.student.utwente.nl/j.potman/redhatnull/konqueror_help.png</a> [75.5K png] <a href="http://home.student.utwente.nl/j.potman/redhatnull/konqueror_about.png"> http://home.student.utwente.nl/j.potman/redhatnull/konqueror_about.png</a> [80.8K png] <a href="http://home.student.utwente.nl/j.potman/redhatnull/kdevelop_help.png"> http://home.student.utwente.nl/j.potman/redhatnull/kdevelop_help.png</a> [93.6K png] <a href="http://home.student.utwente.nl/j.potman/redhatnull/kdevelop_about_kde.png"> http://home.student.utwente.nl/j.potman/redhatnull/kdevelop_about_kde.png</a> [125.9K png] So Konquerer does not have an About KDE dialog, KDevelop does have an About KDE dialog. Jordy

Funny... - Stof - 2002-08-25

People bash RedHat for "removing" Konqueror, KMail, etc. and when somebody proves them wrong by posting screenshots, nobody responds and blindly keep bashing RedHat.

Re: Funny... - ac - 2002-08-25

Hey why don't you go check RedHat before you come spouting off here? Konqueror and KMail have been replaced in Kicker defaults.

Re: Funny... - blub - 2002-08-25

Offcourse Lycoris is pushing Mozilla as their webbrowser too, but nobody complains about that... Btw, I think Evolution and Mozilla are better than KMail and Konqueror. Redhat thinks so too, and they have every right to make the best application the default. And the whole point is that it would be alot easier for newbies to switch desktops. If the default applications where their e-mail settings, bookmarks, and such are stored are "gone", then they are pissed or at the very least confused.

Re: Funny... - Stof - 2002-08-25

I know that. But the point is, *they are still there*. They are still available if the user *wants* to use them.

Re: Funny... - ac - 2002-08-26

Right. Give me a break, go back to your GNOME camp if it's so good.

Re: Funny... - Frank Rizzo - 2002-08-26

>>Hey why don't you go check RedHat before you come spouting off here? Konqueror >>and KMail have been replaced in Kicker defaults. >> Right. Give me a break, go back to your GNOME camp if it's so good. Dude, Have you completely lost your sense of mind? Read over what you've said and think about it. So if Dell sells a Windows PC with Mozilla as the default browser, they are cheating Microsoft somehow?

Re: Funny... - fault - 2002-08-26

There is nothing about gnome there. They replaced galeon with mozilla in GNOME too. I like, use, and even once in a while advocate KDE. But there is way too much zealotry in the comments to this article.

Re: Funny... - maKKus - 2002-08-26

Hahaha..... So in your eyes (and many other KDE zealots in this group) Microsoft is right and everybody can stop hacking on microsoft for their monopoly. It is their desktop and they decide what application companies like Dell are installing default on their desktop, namely Microsoft applications integrated in the Desktop, Mozilla as default, we can't have that! Later, when you and your buddies at the end rule the desktop (do you wear a black cape and play organ, Whuhahahaha!) KDE ones off course!!! Oh yeah while your at it, I've some ideas for future enhancement for your 'precious', How about constant nagging pop-up windows when the browser isn't konqueror, or the Instant Messenger isn't a KDE endorsed one! Iritating advertisment pop-ups for KDE applications, Mime types reverting back at login to link to KDE applications, etc! You know what? go and take a look in window XP, I'm sure you find some idea's to make K rule the complete desktop! How about a license manager and remote switch to turn off the desktop when default programs are removed, then they have to get a new license at the KDE purify bureau with brainwash to get started again, All heil to the K!!! I see KDE is not only mimicking Microsoft on the desktop but the similarities go much deeper

Re: Funny... - me - 2002-08-29

or.... a moron filter for dot.kde.org

Re: Funny... - maKKus - 2002-08-29

This reaction was expected! Why stopping with the desktop when you want to 'purify' KDE!

Re: Funny... - William Greeley - 2002-09-17

This is completely ridiculous. Grow up. I feel dumber for actually taking the time to read through these comments. Understand that standardization is the best thing for the Linux community. Varity is a spice of life, but unfortunately incompatibility isn't. Besides, it's not like Null prevents people from downloading their preferred applications. Why do you people insist on wasting your time bickering? If you don't like it, don't download it.

Re: Funny... - fault - 2002-09-17

> Understand that standardization is the best thing for the Linux community. Not necessarily. Applications are the best thing for the Linux community, not standardization. Many win32 apps have weird widgets and such. It's like running GNOME apps on KDE or vice versa. It doesn't really matter. But I appreciate what Redhat is trying to do.

shared libraries - Edward Moyse - 2002-09-16

A lot of you people are missing the point slightly. Sure RH can do whatever they want to a GPL'd desktop, and I'm all for making Linux easier. However, by choosing GTK apps instead of KDE ones in many instances RH have weakened KDE, both by damaging the interoperability of KDE apps, and forcing a user running KDE on null to have vastly more shared libraries loaded. KDE is going to appear a slow, quirky, memory hog - something I think is unfair. Finally, of course people can choose other distros, but RH is by far the biggest, making this a very bad bit of PR for KDE.

Re: shared libraries - Colin Powell - 2002-09-16

Ok, so what if this is bad PR for KDE, cry me a river then build me a bridge. Because all this bickering isn't making KDE any more stable, or making GNOME any more feature-packed. RedHat took the best of both worlds to make NULL (with a slight bias towards GNOME, granted). Hey, they used Xft2 to do font smoothing! What'd ya know, GNOME doesn't use that, I wonder where they got it from... As for choosing GTK+ apps versus QT, um...mozilla and OpenOffice are not GTK+ apps...they are no-mans apps. They didn't choose either Galeon or Konqueror as the default browser...and its an unfortunate coincidence that Konqueror also does everything in KDE. The shared library business is gonna suck too, by the way, but hey, it should be more incentive to merge KDE and GNOME (which, I know, isn't going to happen in my lifetime). Finally, RedHat has a personal bias towards Nautilus and GNOME...thats obvious, and I must say its unfortunate that they couldn't come up with an all-in-one solution to file browser and web browser. I'd consider this a problem long since dead, but by having both Nautilus and Mozilla, RedHat has failed to address this. In my personal opinion, however, Konqueror was not the obvious choice for this because it is (watch out! personal opinion!) fairly unstable compared to other apps out there...I'm running 3.0.1 and it still crashes on me quite often... So I'd say shut yer trap and realize that whether RedHat pushes KDE or GTK+ its their freakin' choice. Open-Source is a beautiful thing, don't turn it into a petty M$-style argument, please?

Re: Konqueror unstable ? - Denis B - 2002-09-16

>In my personal opinion, however, Konqueror was not the obvious choice for this >because it is (watch out! personal opinion!) fairly unstable compared to other >apps out there...I'm running 3.0.1 and it still crashes on me quite often... Well, in my experience neither Konqueror _nor_ Nautilus are flaw free, but I have had way more trouble with Nautilus than Konq. And I have actually been using Konq. the most. (This was even on RedHat, with their really buggy KDE packages :-/ ) Now I switched to a distro which takes KDE seriously, devotes time and resources to developing it, and even packages updates continuously.. Another point which I wonder why nobody has asked about is whether RedHat have developed a "RedHat" look for OpenOffice / Mozilla too ? They do not exactly mimic any of the desktops, and thus these heavily used desktop apps would imho make the desktop consistency thingie they talk so nicely about less consistent.. If they _really_ want to do some good, I propose : - Extend gnome2 / GTK2 to mimic the KDE file dialogue - Work hard on the GTK2 port of Mozilla, and make themes for Galeon and konqueror to match the "RedHat" look. - Use Konqueror / Galeon with the new "RedHat look" as the defaults in either desktop choice. (Set Konqui to use KMOZILLA as the default render..) - Give OpenOffice an overhaul GUI wise to look like the "RedHat" look (icons / styles) And the next level : - Port OpenOffice to either GTK2 or KDE widgets .. (probably unrealistic, but imho needed, as it is OpenOffice is veeery slow and big due to relying on a completely separate widget library) Now we're talking consistent gui .. :) -denis

Re: Konqueror unstable ? - Michiel Toneman - 2002-09-16

I'm curious, you say Nautilus has given you more trouble than Konq. Are you referring to the Gnome 1.4 version of Nautilus, or the Gnome2 version. Nautilus in a recent Gnome2 build is a completely different beast than the slow, unstable, unusable eye-candy it was in Gnome 1.4. On a 'modern' machine I would even go as far as to call it 'snappy'.

Re: Konqueror unstable ? - Observer - 2002-09-16

Your idea of consistent is to make Gnome look like KDE, other people's idea of consistent is to make KDE look like gnome. Neither view is very consistent, and both are very biased. Anyway, to make my rant short, I recently tried the RedHat (null) beta and loved it! I've been a user of Linux since 1997, and have used many different desktop environments, from enlightenment to windowmaker, gnome to kde, and a few others. (null)'s consistent style makes me plumb happy. I always hated the fact that the two desktops looked so different. KDE always looked too much like windows to me, and it's always been slow and buggy (the compiled from source version and the dbeian versions!) for me even on a fast system. On a side note afaik GTK+ is free on all platforms, Qt is not packaged the same on other platforms (not free I believe). If I as a developer write an app, it won't be for kde, why? Portability. Neither will I write an app specifically for gnome. Why? Portability. However, if I write my app using wxWindows it runs using the closest native API on that platform. GTK+ is the closest native on the *nix platform. MFC on the Win32 platform...

Re: Konqueror unstable ? - standsolid - 2002-11-26

well, it is true that people see thier DE of choice as superior only because they like it better or read a falm they thought was stronger than another. I use my DE because i like the feel of it, i like the look of it. I want apps written for other ToolKits to have the same feel as the apps written for MY choice of Desktop. I don't think we need to have GTK modeled after QT or QT modeled after GTK, but to have the toolkit teams work together to create standards so they can at least communicate with each other. it'd also be nice if they had the same themeing engines so you REALLY get a consistent look. i would like it if QT used pango for fonts, or if GTK could use QT's theme engines. This way they could share a consistent look. I think we should fire off two AI bots at each other with info about KDE on one and GNOME on the other. but we all know kde would win ;p (sorry that was a joke)

Re: Konqueror unstable ? - Colin Powell - 2002-09-18

Hehe, thanks for not flamin' me about the Nautilus/Konq. thing...just a careful observation, I appreciate it. I was also well aware that there are plenty of people who swear by KDE/Konq., but the fact of the matter is I was using the Nautilus from the most recent Gnome (2.0.1) and the Konq. from the then/most recent distro (3.0.2) and had been having problems with Konq. more often than Nautilus. And don't get me wrong, I try to love KDE and GNOME equally, but right now I've been on a bit of a GNOME stint and it just seems to work with less "overhead". One thing is that I know what everything is doing under GNOME, I didn't feel that way with KDE. Anywho, thats a debate that will never be over, quite unlike the Null debate. I think you raise many really good points about the Mozilla-OO.org issues. And I don't think anyone will argue that Gnome2's dialog boxes are really REALLY sub-par. (Though one might argue that that should get better, Gnome 2.0 was really to bring it up to Gtk2) But yeah, I think redhat is doing a noble thing trying to make a consistent gui, no one else has tried it yet, and hopefully someone else will take it up too...maybe someone with a bias toward KDE instead of GNOME... good luck to RedHat, I still can't believe they made it through the crash! -colin

Re: RedHat Null KDE App Screenshots - A - 2002-09-16

Where can I get the new 'null' "start Here" compass and map icon in png format?

Re: RedHat Null KDE App Screenshots - Dennis Van Spuck - 2002-09-17

Heh, Come on people, stop the flame war, u dont like Red Hat, dont use, you dont like GNOME, forget it exists, u dont like KDE, bash it off from your mind... There's always alternatives, so this stupid flame wars or holy wars make no sense... Anyone complains when Mandrake rips off lots of stuff from redhat ? no... no one complains... Now I see some guy saying that KDE should import ideas from XP, cool, in what it concerns to me, the guy should use XP 'cause I dont think we want a wimpy desktop MS alike or a XP clone, do we ?... Besides when it comes to redhat, they have much more or GNOME hackers, what do you expect ? why dont u people wich stand against GNOME/GTK+ dont give some contribute to redhat ? huh ? not enough stomach for it ? Give me a break, thats because all of this elitism that Linux didnt took over the destop, too much intelectual capital being wasted in stupid holy wars like this one... Den

Re: RedHat Null KDE App Screenshots - Mike - 2002-09-20

I've been a linux user for quite sometime now. I've been using it for about 7-8 years when it was still in it's early stages and prior to the days of KDE and Gnome. All I can say is that I think that linux has always needed a more streamlined GUI. Well I have not downloaded NULL yet, I am in the process of doing so right now. From what I have seen from screenshots, I'd have to say that I like what RedHat has done for the most part. However, I can understand some of the arguments for and against what RedHat has done with NULL. One thing I wish that RedHat would do which would make this a non issue is, during the install, to have a KDE and GNOME -only install. And with the Gnome and KDE only installs use the default themes used by each desktop environment. For those who choose to install both Gnome and KDE on their system, then RedHat's concept of a common desktop theme and design makes plenty of sense. That way users will still have the option to do what they want to do. Or alternatively, it would be nice if they at least asked during the install if you wanted to use the default themes or the common RedHat look. Another area where I agree with others is RedHat's poor support of KDE. Although I have always been more of a Gnome user, I have recently started to take more interest in KDE once again. While I personally don't really care if RedHat chooses to use Gnome as it's default desktop I believe it is still in their best interests to also ensure that they keep KDE up to snuff as well. I am a firm believer in choice. I do not see how RedHat's decision really impacts all that much on choice. True diehard linux users should have enough intelligence to figure out how to make things look and work the way they want anyway. If you can't change a few themes and change which programs are used as the default then maybe you shouldn't be using linux? On the otherhand, if you are a newbie then I don't see why you would even complain about this as it is to your advantage. The changes RedHat are making don't really have any negative impacts on newbies. They have more of a negative impact on the die hard linux elite. And if you are of the linux elite then why don't you quit whining and just change things in NULL to the way you want them? After all, if you are of the linux elite you should know how to compile things from source. You should know how to compile a kernel. You should know how to do trivial changes such as changing your themes. If you don't know how to do any of the above changes to your system then you are really not an elite Linux user. And most elite linux users would consider you a newbie in which case you shouldn't be complaining about these changes but rejoicing.

Re: RedHat Null KDE App Screenshots - Mike Luczkow - 2002-10-05

Amen to that

Re: RedHat Null KDE App Screenshots - Anonymous O - 2003-07-22

Luczkow? Where is that last name from?

Re: RedHat Null KDE App Screenshots - Corlette - 2003-09-30

It's Hungarian for Lester.

Re: RedHat Null KDE App Screenshots - Mike Luczkow - 2003-10-19

Is it? Never knew.

Re: RedHat Null KDE App Screenshots - Johan - 2003-01-17

quote: "Now I see some guy saying that KDE should import ideas from XP, cool, in what it concerns to me, the guy should use XP 'cause I dont think we want a wimpy desktop MS alike or a XP clone, do we ?..." The GUI isn't really a good reason for switching to XP (Nothing else either btw even if you, I'm sure, find some advantage with XP). Many people do like the XP look. Using a similar theme in Linux doesn't turn Linux into Windows.

Re: RedHat Null KDE App Screenshots - scott turner - 2002-09-18

There is nothing holy about any of this.

Re: RedHat Null KDE App Screenshots - Albert Rogers - 2003-02-10

All Holy Wars are unholy. But Microsoft must be destroyed. But the thing I really noticed about this thread is, that it totally destroys the assertion that standardisation would benefit Linux, KDE, or any of the free software principles. So far, I have found Glade / GTK+ easier to play with than KDevelop /Qt , but I'm far too new to it to be dogmatic even to myself.

2 Environments? - OI - 2002-08-24

It does not make any sense to me having two desktop environments if you want to make a desktop OS. So if RedHat likes gnome more why don´t they just use that. Two different desktop is just perfet for confusing users.

Re: 2 Environments? - blub - 2002-08-27

Well a newbie that is confused by the concept of multiple desktops, is probably also someone who will continously click "Next" during the installation procedure without looking at any prompts :-) And by default only Gnome is installed, and no KDE.

No Confusion - Andrew - 2002-08-24

When you install the system you have to click on advanced or custom setup to install KDE. Gnome is very much the default. It takes a special effort to get KDE installed. So they provide OPTIONS for those few that want them. No confusion. Also it is really is supported for those who want KDE. They have not just thrown it in there as kind of a half hearted gesture like SuSE does with GNOME.

Re: No Confusion - ac - 2002-08-24

Then why did they cripple KDE anyway?

Re: No Confusion - Spark - 2002-08-24

They didn't. Why don't you just try it? Testers say so far that KDE integration is fine. Don't tell me that removing the help->about box will cripple the desktop. And all other changes can be reverted with a click of the mouse (by switching themes and/or placing launchers to the panel).

Re: No Confusion - OI - 2002-08-24

Usually the support for a standard is better. This will of course be the case for gnome/kde in RedHat as well.

Kernel Cousin dot.kde.org - antialias - 2002-08-24

Ian Geiser: It has been whispered in the trees... Navindra Umanee: What, what? Ian Geiser: RedHat's new beta includes a KDE version that is made to look like GNOME. Icons, widget-style and kicker apps have been replaced... Navindra Umanee: Oh dear god, that's horrible. Ian Geiser: Whats even cooler is they removed the about KDE, so you dont know you are running KDE... Roberto Alsina: It is like Stalin removing his dead enemies from official pictures. Ian Geiser: They are destroying KDE... Roberto Alsina: It is a violation of section 6 of the LGPL ! Ian Geiser: It time to take a more agressive stance on packageing so we can keep some control how KDE looks. Navindra Umanee: Can you give me full details on the changes? Have you tried this beta? Ian Geiser: Mostly off of what I have heard on IRC. I was planning on downloading this weekend... Ac: Cripping the KDE DESKTOP is not okay. Ian Geiser: It's pretty obvious they are looking to shut down KDE for good here. Roberto Alsina: As for the reason... I don't care about the reason all that much, in abstract. Ian Geiser: Our liberal packageing policy has allowed them to fork KDE and trash it for the world to see. Ac: RedHat has turned KDE into a cheap and broken rip-off of GNOME Roberto Alsina: Until they explain, I am pissed. Navindra Umanee: This is bad. Why are they doing this? They seem to be actively trying to destroy us by making us look bad. What is the point of all these stupid changes to cripple KDE and make us look like (or worse than) GNOME? Roberto Alsina: Red Hat puts Red Hat icons on the desntop, that take you to the Red Hat site, a Red Hat icon from where you start all apps, and generally puts that silly guy with the hat everywhere. Branding. Ac: RedHat has replaced Konqueror and KMail by Mozilla and Evolution in the default KDE desktop. Who will *want* to use KDE after this? Dr_lha: Hey - I've done that myself. Personally I believe that Mozilla and Evolution are better than Konquerer and KMail for their allotted tasks. I'm still a staunch KDE user - does using the best tools for the job make me a bad person? Jordy Potman: So Konquerer does not have an About KDE dialog, KDevelop does have an About KDE dialog. Janne: Red Hat has done the same thing to Gnome as it has to KDE, i.e. replaced the default look'n'feel, menu system and so on with their own designs. If you're worried that KDE now looks like Gnome, rest assured that it doesn't. Indeed, the most common complaint among Gnomers is that it makes Gnome look far too much like KDE. :) Cheers...

Re: Kernel Cousin dot.kde.org - Josh - 2002-08-24

Well done!! The silliness and hysteria is a hoot! This reminds me of the Charles Samuels fret about RedHat at a tradeshow a couple of weeks ago (http://www.ofb.biz/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=148). It took the intervention of Kurt Granroth to sort that mess out. Perhaps Kurt will be called on to sort this one out as well. It's probably just the inexperience and limited worldview of the younger KDE developers that gets them into such a spin. I'm 100% certain that RedHat wants to give credit where credit is due. Start a frickin' dialogue instead of wetting your pants everytime that a distro does something. The beauty of open source development is that we can see everything, but we may not understand the motivations of what everyone else is doing in their derivative works from our original work. But that's OK...that's why dialogue closes potential gaps in unfinished open source products. We are co-dependents -- the distros need good products like KDE just as much as KDE depends on the distros to continue to get onto hardware. The distros bear the cost of support -- so the RedHat move to provide similarity between its Gnome desktop and its KDE desktop will cut into its overall support costs. As this Linux phenomenon grows, even the KDE developers have returned to focusing on the apps and being selective with how they interact with the KDE users (i.e., support). Linux and KDE are growing exponentially and the support costs will grow that way too. I see this RedHat effort as a good step. Redhat will provide credit/attribution, but the KDE developers need to provide some give and take in how that is most practical given the support issue I mentioned above. Most developers are focused on a single app rather than the overall desktop solution and may feel overly strongly about the "About ..." dialog box. Perhaps some negotiation ending up with a documented solution through the KDE style guide will provide a common means for distros to provide support information as well as providing the attribution that the KDE developers 100% do need.

Re: Kernel Cousin dot.kde.org - Charles Samuels - 2002-08-25

> This reminds me of the Charles Samuels fret about RedHat at a tradeshow a couple of weeks ago... Excuse you, I didn't make any decisions in that event minus asking my fellow KDE developers. I replied with the collective the decision of those developers.

Re: Kernel Cousin dot.kde.org - Spark - 2002-08-25

Maybe he meant the webpage you created ("Linux for idiots") if this was you.

Re: Kernel Cousin dot.kde.org - Josh - 2002-08-26

I didn't make any decisions in that event minus asking my fellow KDE developers. I replied with the collective the decision of those developers. Hey, thanks for the update Charles - "I didn't do it, they made the decision for me". It is always a challenge as a leader to set the example. If you f*** up, take responsibility. People respect you more when you're humble and a contributor than when you blame others. You're a star programmer in the Noatun project -- but in dealing with business folks, you're at square one. Learn from it, profit by the experience. Take a quiet off-line moment and think about where you could have stopped the train. Kurt saved the day, but you could have too.

Re: Kernel Cousin dot.kde.org - Anonymous - 2002-08-25

> It's probably just the inexperience and limited worldview of the younger KDE developers that gets them into such a spin. You should make a list who holds such view and then look who is actually a KDE developer. You won't find more than two or three, far away from being representative for whole KDE team.

Re: Kernel Cousin dot.kde.org - Brett Foster - 2002-08-25

If you develop open source software (depending on the license, in this case LGPL) of course some people are going to do things with it that you don't like. I think this is one of those little things that people don't (and should) consider before choosing a license for their products. The above poster, Josh, is right when he says that KDE should talk to RedHat and address their concerns.

Re: Kernel Cousin dot.kde.org - anonymous - 2002-08-25

It would be very silly (and reminiscent of Microsoft) for KDE developers to clench up and try to stop Redhat from doing what is needed by changing licenses.

Re: Kernel Cousin dot.kde.org - Ben - 2002-08-25

You all seem really pissed, but what for? You want KDE to look a certain way, then YOU make it that way. Don't like Red Hat's pre-packaged version? Don't buy Red Hat then; it's as simple as that. There's billions of linux distros out there (as well as other operating systems), and you're more than welcome to get off your lazy arses and find one that you like better.

Re: Kernel Cousin dot.kde.org - John - 2002-08-25

"get off your lazy asses" I'm not concerned about the productivity of my ass other than making me full of stuff. I'm concerned about lazy minds. It would appear that everyone is operating from just two views 1)this is horrible 2)this is OK get used to it. How does one show support or lack of support about a program? One buys and uses or doesn't buy and use it. If this is horrible, the distribution will reflect it, if it is a pretty good deal the same will apply. But I would stand with those who feel that expressing concern before a release is more appropriate than complaining after the release.

Re: Kernel Cousin dot.kde.org - Chris Parker - 2002-08-25

If you are REALLY concerned with people changing around the look of KDE, make it a proprietary desktop. Until then, people can do what they want to it. Yea, RH should put back the About KDE box, but other thatn that, I really do not see anything wrong.

Re: Kernel Cousin dot.kde.org - Anonymous - 2002-08-25

Not to nitpick, but if I'm running WindowMaker, Enlightenment, or any other environment than KDE, what is the advantage of the "About KDE" dialog being available from KMail?

Hysteria - zoyd - 2002-08-25

Why do the KDE folks have to get hysterical every now and then. Those who think RedHat's KDE mod looks like GNOME, are out of their mind. Both, KDE and GNOME have very distinct looks. And this RedHat thing looks like neither. Now, Ximian Inc. has their own GNOME distribution with their own Rupert logo, icons and themes everywhere. No one seem to bother, because they're done very well. I love Ximian GNOME. Unfortunately KDE doesn't have anything like that. I think The Kompany could do something about that. As far as RedHat's mods go, I bet no GNOME/KDE user is going to like that. I hope RedHat wakes up and makes sure that the default look is available as an option. RedHat is entitled to make such changes, there's nothing wrong with that. Remember, In the Free Software world the developers and users are King.

Re: Hysteria - Spark - 2002-08-25

"I bet no GNOME/KDE user is going to like that. I hope RedHat wakes up and makes sure that the default look is available as an option." It _is_ optional! Besides, I'm using most of RedHat's themes right now as they are simply excellent (on a Gentoo system, I'm not a RedHat user). Not the icons though. I like the default GNOME icons better but the RedHat ones aren't _that_ terrible either.

Re: Hysteria - Florian W. - 2002-08-25

Well, I like this ... I don't care about KDE and GNOME stuff, I want to get my stuff done ... I like evolution more than ... what was the name ... yes KMail and so I want to use that. But I don't like it, that starting KDE brings a complete different desktop than GNOME ... that's bullshit. I want to have a common configuration dialog, where I can configure my web-browser, my file-manager, my email, etc. I like having a choice, but I hate if I have to reconfigure my hole stuff after changing. Why have I to configure Evolution and KMail ? Why doesn't get KMail it´s data from an central place, common to KDE & GNOME ? Regards Florian

The default look IS available (at least for GNOME) - David - 2002-08-25

At least in GNOME, the default look is supposed to still be available by chaning a GConf key. I'm not as familiar with KDE, but presumably there should be something similar. Whether or not it will be available from a menu or gui configuration dialog that typical users are likely to find is another question.

Re: Kernel Cousin dot.kde.org - Jeremy Martin - 2002-08-25

I really dont like gnome and it looks like my favorite distro is pushing gnome. I have been checking kdes ftp site for a while now and i have noticed that there is not any kde rpms for red hat. I know that red hat does make the rpms for its distro and is supposed to ftp them to the kde ftp server but perhaps kde employees could do this instead seeing red hats view on the issue. I would love to continue using kde and i wish red hat would keep the kde rpms current. I could use another distro but the sad thing is Red Hat is the north american choice for a gnu/linux distro. I really dont like mandrake much for many reasons. That pretty much leaves me with SuSE. (im basing my distro choices on the availablity of current updates and applications that you dont have to work with much to get to work with the distro) I never really had any problems with SuSE other than its outragous pricing. I dont want to pay nearly 80 dollars for a linux distro. I was basicly wondering if it would be possible for someone to keep us Red Hat users current on kde rpms since Red Hat has no intention on doing so.

Price of SuSE - Imaginative Python Lover - 2002-08-25

SuSE is made in Germany; Germany has high wages and a strong currency. Notice that many other German products (which are of quite high quality mind you - but *still* vastly overpriced) are outrageously expensive: BMW, Hugo Boss, Mercedes-Benz, etc. Just be glad SuSE is not made in Geneva - it costs 5$ for a glass of orange juice there! A Swiss Linux distro would likely cost 200$ ...

Re: Price of SuSE - Living in Geneva - 2002-08-25

OOpppsss stop !!! I live in geneva, and if you have had a orange juice for 5$, you have been in the wrong place, like the Noga Hilton or something like that! The price is more 2-3$. And I HATE to hear that Geneva is expensive, because other city are more expensive (London for exemple...). so don't begin to move out of the discussion. All the people here are talking about kde/gnome/redhat stuff. And next time you are going to drink a bottle water in geneva for 10$, tell us please that you were in a 5 star hotel... A geneva's advocat :-D

Re: Price of SuSE - David Pastern - 2002-08-25

Suse 8 pro is crap. Total crap. Their service and support is what I strongly consider pathetic and i'm less than impressed with the product - to the point where I strongly considered taking it back to the Australian Fair trading tribunal. In the end I said *uck it, I just won't ever buy an Suse product again - and I will NOT recommend their products to friends/family/relatives. If anyone wants to query my problems with Suse 8 pro, feel free to email me at david@dia.net.au and I'll fill you in. Dave

Re: Price of SuSE - Denis B - 2002-08-26

I strongly disagree with you. I have tried the following distros so far : - RedHat (5.2 -> 7.3) - Mandrake (7.x -> 8.x) - Gentoo (1.1) - Debian (2.2 & 3.0 / Potato & Woody) - Slackware (8.0) - SuSE 8.0 Currently I find Debian the best suited production server distro by far. Nothing beats the stability and thoroughness of debian when it comes to a server. The extensive package base is a great boon, and well.. apt / dselect are just great ! For my working desktops however I am currently running SuSE 8.0 and RedHat 7.3. The latter is simply around still because I havent got myself to replace it with SuSE.. The SuSE 8.0 Pro package is possibly the best software purchase deal I ever did. Highly polished installation, but gives you flexibility anyhow. Great KDE packages, great rate of updates for KDE, nice update tool (apt would've been even better though ;-) I liked the bleeding edgeness of Gentoo, but it's not for my everyday desktop.. SuSE is better suited to that, because it works just like it should, as a great _tool_ .. d9s

Re: Price of SuSE - jmk - 2002-08-27

> nice update tool (apt would've been even better though ;-) http://linux01.gwdg.de/apt4rpm/ It works.

Re: Price of SuSE - David Pastern - 2002-08-26

This is for John, who emailed myself privately but I wasn't able to reply to him via email, as his address was showing as localhost@localdomain...might as well let the rest of the forum see it - *warning* excuse my language - this was originally intended as a private email to John and i'm too lazy to edit it. John, Firstly, 1. RPM is broken. All the major distributions make RPMS now, none of them cross compatible with each other. Depencies are regularly failing now as well with RPM based distrobutions, which is why source based (ie Gentoo linux - http://www.gentoo.org ) and APT based distributions (ie debian - http://www.debian.org/ ) are becoming so popular. As for software applications missing, i'm surprised. Redhat usually offer a reasonable number of software apps with their distrubion from my experiences. 2. a. Onto my problems with Suse. Firstly I found their online registration site a joke - i'd entered in my registration key found in the Suse packaging incorrectly and accidently pressed enter. No chance to confirm that key was right, it accepted it outright. Result? I wasn't able to properly register my product straight away. I had to email Suse and wait 36 hours for a reply. Although this is minor, it got me off to a bad start with Suse as far as i'm concerned. b. I wanted to test Suse 8 pro on my laptop, a compaq Armada 1750 before moving from Redhat to Suse on my desktop PC. I was not able to get the install process to work past a certain point - I was getting an APM interface error message. Now i'm no linux geek, but i'm a not a newbie either. Firstly Suse has been touting this version of Suse as a "answer 3 questions and it'll do it all for you" install for some time now (with YAST2). For those totally new to linux (which will be a lot of Suse buyers) they'd be fucked. I read thru the manuals - absolutely nothing on this issue. I went thru Suse online database - nothing. I did google searches...nothing of relevance. So after a week and a half of trying to solve the issue myself I emailed Suse for help. I got a very cryptic one line reply, no explanation on how to solve issue, just an answer. I was even less impressed. I work on the principle if I can't get quality service, then a product isn't worth my money. I work on a helpdesk, and if I gave that sort of answers to my end users i'd be sacked. Yet - I still persevered. Now *please take note*. I've ran Redhat 7, 7.1 and 7.2 on this same laptop without a SINGLE installation issue. It appears that Suse do not enable the APM support as standard in their linux kernel. I'm even less impressed. Considering they advertise pictures of laptops running Suse on their packaging, that's misleading as it denotes that it is easy to install Suse onto a laptop. Well let's just say that as far as i'm aware, no laptop install will work out of the box with this linux kernel. Correct me if i'm wrong (as I said i'm not a linux geek). c. Sound on aforementioned laptop. Like most linux distributions, sound is practically ignored. If you aren't using a soundblaster live (or clone thereof), then you're fucked. Well not really. I tried to install the onboard soundcard (which has *always* been installable via Redhat) - no go. *great*. NOT. It wouldn't auto detect settings. Hell it wouldn't even auto detect my onboard soundcard chipset (which Redhat does without any issues) - I had to manually select it (it's an ESS chipset and has been supported by the linux kernel for some time now). So, being the good boy that I am, I went to Suse database site and searched for the problem. Eureka! They had a text file for install tips for my very laptop. I rubbed my hands in glee, forgave Suse for all previous sins and went to work. Mmmmm, I knew it was too good to be true. The settings that they had specifically indicated for my laptop/soundcard combination did NOT work. I fiddled, did some google searching, no luck. So, I emailed Suse support...again...this is 3 times now and I still haven't got the damn thing working properly (something that I got working perfectly with Redhat in like 45 mins without having to get support involved). Now I wasn't exactly kind to Suse in this email, by this time i'd had enough. I let rip. Well, it took them 5 or 6 working days to reply to me (I honestly can't be bothered to go find my emails to be totally accurate on this) and when they did reply it was "sorry can't help, sound is not covered by installation support - If you want that, pay us more dollars for extra support" (with no guarantee we'll fix problem)! Well fuck me. Imagine Microsoft saying that. Microsoft might offer shit products, but fuck they have excellent support. That is why I will NOT recommend Suse products. I have a long memory, and a dislike for poor service. Suse 8 pro is double the price of Redhat 7.3, for a lot less as far as i'm concerned (I haven't used 7.3 yet and I don't intend to for different reasons). There's a reason why Redhat is the #1 linux distribution - unparallelled support for their products (and I can vouch for this first hand) and their softwork works. Installs go thru without a glitch. Now, i've played with Slackware, Suse, Redhat, Mandrake and Debian and Redhat is the easiest, most idiot proof distribution to install. By far in my honest opinion. Mind you i've moved my desktop PC from Redhat to Debian. Several reasons (APT packaging system shits on RPM, Debian is more stable and secure out of the box, sheer amount of packages available for Debian), *most* serious users of Linux use Debian as their distribution of choice. I can see why now. Still, i'm not impressed with Debian' install method - 4 hours (3 of them sorting through dselect, selecting packages and dependencies) to find that X is not working. No explanation of how to fix it. Great. NOT. Since i'd installed the nvidia packages, and xfree86, as well as KDE and Gnome I wasn't happy. These things should work out of the box. Personally, even though i'm an avid supporter of open source and GPL licensing, I think linux will fail. It's too geeky, and is not user friendly. Worse, the top dogs that develop linux realise this but don't seem to give a fuck - they have the mentality of it "if you can't learn how to use it then go back to Microsoft products". MAN pages are pathetic, and if I have another linux geek tell me to RTFM i'll have a major dummy spit. I've been using linux since redhat 5.2 on and off, so...i'm not dumb. Examples of non ease of use - ever tried setting up a network printer? Setting up shared network drives (ie mapping them)? That's about it. Dave PS sorry if my aussie (australian) mannerisms or sayings confuse you - if you're not sure what a phrase means ask me and i'll give you a lesson on aussie slang lol.

Re: Price of SuSE - Stof - 2002-08-26

> RPM is broken. This isn't a problem with RPM, it's a problem with distributions. They provide different library versions and different compilers, and have different directory structures. That's why a lot of RPMs for OtherDistribution causes so many (dependency) problems on YetAnotherDistribution. If there are 5 distributions using Deb, and they all have a slightly different directory structure/libraries/compiler/etc. then Deb would have the same problem too. The directory structure problem can be solved if all distributions conform to the LSB. C++ linking problems can be solved if everybody upgrades to GCC 3.2 (which, hopefully, has no more C++ ABI bugs left). Not sure about how to resolve library dependency problems... Oh, and APT is available for RPM too. http://apt4rpm.sourceforge.net/ APT != Deb! > c. Sound on aforementioned laptop. Like most linux distributions, sound is > practically ignored. If you aren't using a soundblaster live (or clone > thereof), then you're fucked. Try ALSA. No autodetection yet, but luckily ALSA will be integrated into the 2.6 kernel, so I believe that distributions will provide an autodetection tool which supports all ALSA drivers.

Re: Price of SuSE - David Pastern - 2002-08-26

the onboard soundcard was auto detected by rh 7, 7.1 and 7.2 via sndconfig utility. As to RPM you are totally right, my apologies if my previous post was innacurate in its content regarding RPMs. As yes I know that apt is available for redhat. But why run apt on redhat when you can run it on Debian? :-) now all I need is someone to help me get X running on Debian lol (hey I said I wasn't a linux geek :P) Dave

Re: Price of SuSE - Chad Kitching - 2002-08-31

Well, getting X to run on Debian depends on if you think you answered a question wrong during installation of xserver-xfree86, or if you just don't know what your configuration needs to be. It's a good idea to install read-edid (to read monitor timings), discover (to autodetect devices), and mdetect (to autodetect mouse type) before installing the xserver, as these utils will help answer some questions the configuration script may ask. If you need to re-run the xfree86 configuration, you can use 'dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86'. Unfortunately without the XFree86 log (from /var/log), it's hard to say what the problem might be.

Re: Price of SuSE - David Pastern - 2002-08-31

Thanks Chad, I've had a horrible time with getting X to run on Debian - I did have another user/poster from the KDE forums say read-edid, discover and mdetect but he only mentioned them, not what they were etc. I tried emailing him back but my mails bounced on his email address :( . I've since been working hard at trying to get it to work and I suspect it is because of the video card (geforce 4 ti4200). I've looked at the Debian forums (4 entries) [yes to others that have read my previous posts I DO check out forums thank you, despite what has been said). I've tried the 'dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86'. I've also d/l both the glx and kernel src from nvidia' website and ran them. kernel src has an error, and i'm not sure what to make of it (when ran). Module NVdriver isn't being loaded as a module when I check via lsmod either (something a mate on irc told me to check). I've manually edited the xfree86config file in /var/log with what is on the README from nvidia, and it seems to get a somewhere, but still fails. I also had to apt-get install x-window-system (despite telling tasksel to do this). Somehow I think tasksel was screwed on my system (even after a reinstall). I would scan all the Debian CDs (all 7), it would say, "insert disk 1 to install file", which i'd do. Then it would go open failed. Please insert disk 1. Most stuff installed off the CDs fine. It was only when trying to select the X system, desktop environments, games, scientific stuff, languages and latex from tasksel that it would fail. I ended up reconfiguring apt-get to just retrieve from http (which initially did not remove the CD entries from the sources.list file - I ended up deleting it and letting apt-get reconfiguration make a new one correctly). The guy on irc who's helping me (and has debian 3 running on his system and is experienced with debian and linux) has said that it should be working, and shouldn't have caused me this much problems. And he feels i've done everything right. Pity he lives in Brisbane and i'm in Sydney. I'm very disappointed in Debians' install manual - nothing on this of any relevance. Also - bash won't recongise xfree86Setup or anXious (X setup programs). Apt won't get them either (I read about them in a debian user file linked from the debian help webpage). XF86config doesn't work either from bash. I find that all very odd. At least I got a crash course in vim lol, when editing the sources.list file the other day (i'd never used it before). For all those that made those comments about my comments about Suse *bite me*. And for those that made comments about my intelligence/perseverence you can *double bite me*. I spent a full day working on X yesterday (7 hours or so), and that doesn't include the numerous hours doing 2 installs of Debian, plus other time spent working on getting X working. I 100% stand by my comments on Suse and their services. Unreservedly. Anyways, Chad thank you for having the time to reply. Might be best if I email you the various logs/errors etc privately (I shall do so shortly) for your perusal. If you don't mind that is. I'm getting somewhere, the log file is doing more things now lol. many thanks, Dave

Re: Debian X server with geforce - Kym McGain - 2003-08-26

Hi, I am 15 and using the same geforce 4 ti4200 as you and the first time i installed debian i had the x server problem.. but a recent worm has had me format my computer and start again, but this time it worked straight away. I would suggest re-installing and when it gets to the video section use the default options. Choose the Generic SVGA compatible card. My debian works fine now. I hoope this works for me, because I had tried all the things you did the first time and it had caused me a considerable amount of time. It seems that the worm I got was a help rather than a hinder lol. bye.

Re: Price of SuSE - Tet - 2002-08-26

"RPM is broken [...] Depencies are regularly failing now as well with RPM based distrobutions, which is why source based (ie Gentoo linux - http://www.gentoo.org ) and APT based distributions (ie debian - http://www.debian.org/ ) are becoming so popular." Nope. If you think apt is a cure for the problems of RPM, then you're sorely mistaken. Aside from the fact that you should be comparing RPM and dpkg, the main problem with RPM is that it's so widespread, and everyone uses different naming conventions. If dpkg was as popular, then it too would suffer from exactly the same problems as RPM.

Re: Price of SuSE - David Pastern - 2002-08-26

mmm funny, but a lot of people are moving away from redhat, suse and mandrake and going to either gentoo or Debian. And yes I know it's dpkg, but it's commonly referred to as apt by end users, and I used its common name. :-) In fact nearly all of the users in my local linux user group use Debian for those reasons (as well as security and stability). Redhat etc are good, don't get me wrong. I like Redhat. They have done a lot of good for linux (despite the people out there that are bitching about them being the Microsoft of Linux). Yes the RPM naming conventions are troublesome. I realise that. But, seriously, have you ever tried to resolve dependency issues with RPM recently? It's a bloody nightmare. You need to install this package...oops can't do that, you need that package to install this package...you cannot deny that the dependencies are not being resolved as they should be. Dave

Re: Price of SuSE - David Walser - 2002-08-26

No, you're not getting it. dpkg and apt are two different things. RPM is actually better than dpkg, but when you don't add something like urpmi or apt on top of it, you get frustrated users (like yourself).

Re: Price of SuSE - Chad Kitching - 2002-08-31

Okay, how do you come to the conclusion that RPM is better than dpkg? From my perspective, each has it's own share of problems based on how each tried to approach the problem of installing software. DPKG package-based dependancies make it a lot easier to figure out what packages you need to fulfill the dependancies of a package, but has created some areas where boneheaded packagers specify that their package needs libwhatzitdo (=1.0.2-3), and when package libwhatzitdo gets updated to 1.0.2-4, the previous package becomes useless. RPMs, on the other hand, sometimes have a tendancy to install on systems that don't have proper dependancies, because the library requirements LOOK correct. RPM lacks an interactive configuration process, so packages that have configuration files that must be customized before the program can be run are installed in a broken state until the initial configuration can take place. Dpkg, on the other hand, supports a number of interactive configuration options. You have debconf, which is the standard and most popular. Take the X server, for instance. It's installed in a broken state on RedHat, unless you install it during the intial install. Debian packages, on the other hand, are capable of configuring it during installation, even after the initial OS install. IMO, the biggest drawback to RPMs is the fact they can't be assembled and disassembled using standard UNIX tools. Debian packages are just ar archives of two tarballs, one containing control data, the other containing the program. If I have a problem with a brain-damaged Debian package depending on a wrong version of a library, I can usually fix it myself without resorting to rebuilding the package from source if I don't want to.

Re: Price of SuSE - Maarten - 2002-08-26

Re: your point about APM. I don't know why your particular laptop doesn't cooperate but your generalizations are just BS. SuSE 8.0 prof installs out of the box on, for example, an IBM thinkpad 600X and it sure as hell supports APM and will standby, suspend and wake again without a hitch. Re: your point about sound. Sorry to say but this is more of the same BS. In my experience, SuSE 8 recognizes and auto-configures a LOT of cards. My two laptops have _real_ obscure cards, they are recognized. Throw an old ISA pnp card at it (your worst nightmare), flopp, it gets recognized. Hell, it's no soundcard but SuSE (to my astonishment) even recognized a pre-historic IBM ISA token-ring card. So you bought a laptop that is perhaps less than optimally supported ? Big deal, that don't give you the right to publicly diss SuSE. Maybe, just maybe, when you installed SuSE on dozens of different hardware, like I did, ranging from state ot the art dual P4 2GB, 6disk raid systems to old P75 laptops that you can truely give a non-biased view on how bad or how good SuSE is. Until then, if your review is based on just one laptop (for all we know you might have f*cked-up some BIOS settings yourself!) and a self-mistyped number, why don't you try to be quiet.

Re: Price of SuSE - David Pastern - 2002-08-26

I beg your pardon wanker? I didn't diss anyone publicly idiot. And for your matter, that particularly soundcard has been recognised by the linux kernel since the 2.2 series - idiot. If you'd bothered to read my 2nd post you'll see that I named the soundcard chipset (ESS) and if you had half a brain you'd have done some background to check that it is supported by the linux kernel). And for that matter Redhat 7, 7.1 and 7.2 installed on that laptop perfectly, first go, no problems. Sound installed and worked fine as well. And no - Suse actually advised me in an email that APM is not turned on for installs via yast2 (I did a manual install instead in the end run). I'll diss Suse if I like thank you very much - I found their product and service less than desirable. And no it wasn't some mistyped number either mate. So go fuck yourself. Idiot. I'm not going to let Suse 8 near my desktop system at all. I am NOT recommending it to my friends, nor family either. It simply does not deserve it. You decided to take my post personal and flame me, so i'm going to return the favour.

Please Leave. - Moritz Moeller-Herrmann - 2002-08-26

People like you are not needed here. I don't care about the problems you inflicted on yourself with linux. You are rude and impolite and blame others for your own stupidity. I have installed SuSE on ~10 systems now and have hardly ever had problems (including an ancient cheap laptop). Please consider posting somewhere else. If you are happy using Redhat - great, keep using it.

Re: Please Leave. - David Pastern - 2002-08-27

No - people like me aren't needed here because you don't want to hear about situations where your fave distribution has been shite. If you like Suse fine, use it. I don't. And i'm under no obligation to like it, or recommend it, based on my experiences with it. I'm also under no obligation to leave the forums. As to your line "I don't care about the problems you inflicted on yourself with linux" what a load of rubbish. Read my post carefully. I did everything possible to try and get Suse working. I did not inflict them on myself, but rather the poor quality of Suse did not allow it to work. I'll consider posting elsewhere when I goddamn feel like it and if you don't like it tough shit. Ever use IRC? Ignore me. You don't have to read my posts, or threads related to my posts. Dave

You are OT here! - Moritz Moeller-Herrmann - 2002-08-27

This is about KDE and maybe about linux distribution's KDE support. This site is not for distribution wars, especially for unfounded attacks. Please go somewhere else.

Re: You are OT here! - David Pastern - 2002-08-27

Firstly, I didn't make any personal attacks on anyone else. Someone did me the discourtesy of that first. I'm merely defending my statements as I have every right to do so. And if you don't like my comments here, tough shit. Whilst they are not KDE based per se, they are linux based, and KDE wouldn't be anywhere if it wasn't for linux. On that note, i've noted that the default install for desktop for Suse 8 pro is KDE, rather than most other Linux distributions which give you the choice of installing both KDE and Gnome and then switching between the 2 to suit your needs. Judging by what i've seen, having seen a fair amount of what appears to be "loyal" Suse supporters here maybe Suse and KDE have a *insert paranoid gasp here* deal going. At least Redhat allows you to choose between installing either, or both desktops during the install process (i'm talking YAST2 here). Maybe Suse is a good distribution and i've just had a bad run. If the support had been better, i'd have been more forgiving of them. But...God help the German parliament (which has recently done a deal with Suse). I sincerely hope they get better support than I did. Dave

Re: Price of SuSE - Maarten - 2002-08-26

Another reply from me with more info. http://sdb.suse.de/en/sdb/html/laptop_daten_compaq_armada-1750.html Take a look at that link, because by the look of it SuSE supports the exact brand and type of laptop you have quite nicely, thank you. It _claims_ to recognize the soundcard, for instance... So, back to you then...

Re: Price of SuSE - David Pastern - 2002-08-26

Did IQs just drop??? Read my posts idiot - I mentioned this in my 2nd post (I didn't quote the link of the page as it was irrelevant - I stated that I found a reference in the Suse database for my laptop and the settings. FFS, don't some of you idiots read posts??? *quote* So, being the good boy that I am, I went to Suse database site and searched for the problem. Eureka! They had a text file for install tips for my very laptop. I rubbed my hands in glee, forgave Suse for all previous sins and went to work. FFS

Re: Price of SuSE - Maarten - 2002-08-26

Name-calling, are we ? Respected be, you will not. First off, you created this whole mess yourself by stating 'there was nothing in the SDB'. Now if you retract that statement in less than 12 hours there is something wrong with your memory, not my reading skillz. Either you didn't bother to look until after your first posting (when people disagreed with you) or your memory works very weird indeed. So what is it ? Now I read your 'second post' up to the very end this time (sorry, it was just too boring on first read so I stopped about one paragraph shy...) and it strikes me that you A) blew your chances at suse support yourself by virtue of your attitude and B) you might want to try sending an insulting email to microsoft demanding support and see what happens then. I'm not interested in flamewars with newbies who proclaim themselves NOT to be newbies. As a matter of fact I lack time to start a flamewar with anyone. However, your attitude just begs and screams for a reciprocation, so here goes: Quoting you directly here: "...and Redhat is the easiest, most idiot proof distribution to install" Well... maybe that is not a coincidence in your case. Have a good day, Sir. (note that I call you "Sir" here, despite the overwhelming desire to call you a wanker and an idiot too, which you are.)

Re: Price of SuSE - David Pastern - 2002-08-26

whatever - read my posts *right*. There was nothing on the suse database about the apm error message - that is what i stated. I indicated that I found a reference page referring to my laptop model, but that the details on that page were wrong and did not work. My reading skills are fine thank you, english is my native tongue, i'm semi fluent in a second language and learning a 3rd language to boot. There is indeed nothing wrong with my memory, but I suggest maybe you *read* properly. I don't need to send a rude email to Microsoft as their support is vastly superior to Suse'. I don't get Microsoft telling me "oh sorry we don't support that [getting a soundcard to work]". Computers are multimedia devices, and sound is an integral part of that experience. Considering that Redhat managed to auto find and configure said soundcard without *any* issues makes me wonder what Suse is doing. If redhat can do it, why can't Suse? For that matter also, I proclaimed myself to be a newbie, but not a total newbie: *quote* "Now i'm no linux geek, but i'm a not a newbie either." As for my email(s) to Suse, I, as a consumer am well within my rights to be disgusted in their pathetic attempts at support. I have a perfect right to start to get pissed off with the supposéd service that is practically non existant. And I think it'll will be pretty plain for other readers to see, that my original posts were showing my extreme disappointment with Suse and their service (in fact, my 2nd post was originally intended as a private reply to someone who emailed me in reference to my original post - I clearly state that). It was yourself you decided to take personal offence at that 2nd post and flame me in your original post. So then I thought "well fuck you then, i'll let rip" and you copped what you deserved. A good what for. As to service, I just happen to live with someone who's been in the IT industry for nearly 20 years and his comment about linux and Suse in particular was along the lines of "this is why the linux project is so poor - it lacks quality service". I don't totally agree with that statement, i've had wonderful support from the Australian Redhat support team. And finally, as to your line in reference to Redhat, and inferring that I am an idiot, and therefore can only install Redhat, funny...most people that use Linux got into it via Redhat. As i've stated previously, Linux would be fuck all if it wasn't for Redhat. Sure slackware was around, but it wasn't mainstream. It wasn't touted as being mainstream. It was an odd thing, that as someone I knew put it "a cunt to get working, as its hardware supported is totally fucked". Redhat dominates the current linux scenario because it had foresight and it made it more user friendly. Please note that i've installed Slackware and Debian with less trouble than Suse. Both are not noted for their ease of installation. So that sadly negates your argument I feel. Oh and please don't call me sir. I haven't been knighted by her majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. I might be a wanker, and an idiot, but jesus, I can at least read. I suggest you read my original and 2nd post again. Oh...and I don't have anyone else flaming me about my posts or getting upset about my *rightly* bagging Suse. Sure a few have posted about my RPM/Apt comments, fair enough. I smell a rat here, and it wouldn't surprise me if you actually *work* for Suse, hence your strong support/defense for them. Dave

Re: Price of SuSE - Maarten - 2002-08-26

First off, regardless of the fact whether you need or don't need to send rude emails to microsoft, can you please just try to imagine what WOULD happen if you did ?? Secondly, you made a general statement about the quality of SuSE 8 based on your limited experiences with one piece of hardware, and their support. The quality of the SuSE 8 DVD is not dependant on your experiences neither the support they give. Most of SuSE buyers never even use their support. Granted, maybe because it sucks indeed, but then again maybe they do not need it because they have no problems. In either case, I can guarantee you there are many, many very happy SuSE users, as there exist undoubtedly also happy redhat users, albeit not in my vicinity. SuSE 8 is a rock stable distribution, and young as it may be (a few months) I used it to build more than a dozen boxen with it, including one running on linux software-raid which I previously had to build by hand. Suse 8 does it automagically. Name me one distribution that can do that ?? Name me one distribution that offers crypto filesystems in its installer ? In conclusion though, it may well be that SuSE support sucks, but the SuSE 8 distribution itself is amongst the very best (and definitely better than redhat) Re: support; You also tend to forget that the extent to which microsoft's commitment goes is way less than that of SuSE. Try to get support from microsoft for their OS, they refer you to the dealer (Yes, it's OEM, remember?) Try to get support for your SB audigy, they refer you to Creative Labs. Try to get support for Office (you didn't buy the OEM version, did you ?) they will tell you to call a phonenumber that is more expensive than my own consultants fee and keep you on hold for an hour. In other words, name one software distributor that has to try to support ALL hardware currently known to mankind and do that free of charge as an after-sales service. Yeah, Redhat does, and so does SuSE, but definitely not Microsoft. No, I don't work for SuSE, I just use it. I started with slack, went on to Redhat (4.2 / 5.0) and that(5.0) was such a disaster that, had you started using redhat a few months earlier than 5.2 you would surely have suffered the same fate (redhat 5.0 has been proclaimed worst distribution EVER) and sworn you would never use Redhat again. I did. Well, Sorry if that bothers you. I have used SuSE ever since, and it just works beautifully. I think you just lack some perseverance linux users really need. Because, be it soon or be it late, be it redhat or debian, be it a simple soundcard or an immensely complex firewallscript, there WILL come a time that 'the wizard' won't be able to do it for you and you'll be on your own. At that point you can call support and whine and curse, or you can go googling and lessing howtos and stracing PIDs. We do divide the two groups of linux users; the latter ones being called the users with a future in linux, and the others that do not.

Re: Price of SuSE - David Pastern - 2002-08-27

Firstly, how do you know that I sent Suse a rude email? You are making a presumption there, based on NO evidence whatsoever. Yes I have made my decisions on the Suse distribution based on one piece of hardware (i'm not letting it near my desktop and if I had a business I surely would NEVER allow it near my business machines). Ever heard the saying "first impressions count"? Just revolve back to my point - why did I not have a single installation issue of said laptop with Redhat 7, 7.1 and 7.2 (remember 7 uses an older 2.2 kernel with poorer hardware support than the 2.4 stream). Why did I not have any problems setting up soundcard on said Redhat software? For that matter, I remember reading one post prior to purchasing Suse where a person had immense problems installing Suse on a laptop (including APM issues if memory serves me correctly). Yes I could go and try and find the review, but that takes time and I don't particularly feel like fart assing around. As to support from Microsoft, let's see....Suse 8 pro was counted as supporting around 4000 hardware devices, Windows XP around 11,000 devices (windows ME around 9,000; Windows 2000 around 7,000). I think that says it all. I should not have to pay a premium price for service to get a soundcard working. Let's be realistic here. Take into account that Suse 8 pro is approximately au $160 - that's a lot of money as far as i'm concerned, and I expect better service than "sorry we don't support soundcards". You either offer support, or you don't, you don't offer some half cocked up halfway point form of support. As stated earlier, PCs are multimedia, that means sound is an integral part of them. If Redhat can install said soundcard without an issue, then I surely have a reasonable right to expect Suse 8 to do it (especially since hardware support is built into the kernel - that means it shouldn't make a difference on what distribution it is, if they're all running the same kernel and one detects it, then all should). I've used Redhat 5.2 to a smallish extent and yes it was a nightmare. Linux is getting better. You've touched on one subject in your last paragraph - howtos etc. Linux help is extensive yes. Howtos and MAN pages ARE pathetic however. Ask any newbie. Go on. They'll tell you blatantly what they think of it. I can see here there are some old linux users here, people that are used to manually tinkering with config files, and through years of usage of man pages etc are used to their format. I'm telling you straight (and i've had at least 5 fellow linux users all at novice-intermediate stages) that it is poor. I'd considered re writing the MAN pages they were that bad, but to do so requires extensive knowledge of said topic. As to you disliking Redhat, that's fine. I don't have a problem with that. If a product is sub standard, then fine, bitch about it. Don't use it. I don't have a problem with you not using Redhat, or disliking it. Hell, I don't have a problem with you liking/promoting Suse either. All i've done is express my opinion on that product and the service/support that I received. No matter what your opinion/liking, you cannot change the problems that I had with Suse, nor the absolutely pathetic service that I received. They are FACT. Yes it might be in this one instant, and everything else works fine. That MAY be the case. But I cannot justify a recommendation of Suse 8 pro to anyone based on my experiences. I'm a pretty thorough person, and I double checked details before applying them. I'd skimmed thru the manuals, then read them thorougly, and yes I did look at the Suse dbase. I even went to the trouble of spending an hour google searching. That's above and beyond the requirements as far as i'm concerned. You should NOT have to go to that extent. Fine I can understand non supported hardware - ie my Diamond MX300 soundcard on my desktop (hell it even won't work in a VIA motherboard on Win2k)due to manufacturers not providing drivers or details on drivers etc to Linux developers. That actually really pisses me off. For those that think i'm a Microsoft person, no, I'm not. Like a lot of linux users I use Microsoft as it is so prevalent these days, it is a necessity to do so. I personally don't mind the software, it is incredibly buggy and unreliable. Support from Microsoft is top notch (personal experiences here). Pricing is outrageous. And they are monopolistic bastards. As to your last sentence, I might not have a future in Linux as a user, but neither do I have that sense of geekism either. Do you realise at how many newbies are sick of the line "RTFM". Let me tell you nearly all of them. Whilst elitists like yourself have that attitude you will turn more and more people away from using linux. This idealism is prevalent right to the top of the linux developers as far as i'm concerned and it is bad for linux as a whole. Keep this up, and you will turn that many people away from it, that linux will be totally dead on the desktop and only used in server applications by IT professionals. The only reason why IBM is interested in linux is because it has implications as a high performance, cheap server o/s. Nothing more. IBM has no intent of using/selling linux as a desktop o/s. Why? Go figure it out. I like linux, it has many good things. It has many bad things. I just speak my mind on them, and if that makes me unpopular then so be it. Microsoft is only lightly putting the squeeze on linux now, if mac os, unix, os/2 warp can be pushed over by microsoft (and remember these had large corporations behind them) then so can linux. I hope not, but whilst experienced linux users have such bad attitudes towards newbies and ridicule them, rather than help, then linux will shoot itself in the foot. Don't like what i've said? Tough. It's true. Maybe you are so experienced you forget what it is like to be a newbie. It's just not me that has noticed this, most of my friends actually work in the IT industry, all of them have had exposure to linux, and all of them have independently came to the same conclusion. But all of that is beyond the point...I tried Suse, had a bad experience with it and cannot endorse it. Plain and simple. Dave

Re: Price of SuSE - Maarten - 2002-08-27

Note: This is my last contribution to this discussion that is going nowhere. Also I note that we are starting to bug the other users here... "Firstly, how do you know that I sent Suse a rude email? You are making a presumption there, based on NO evidence whatsoever." I quote you: "Now I wasn't exactly kind to Suse in this email, by this time i'd had enough. I LET RIP." (emphasis mine) This is enough evidence. Coupled with the manner in which you write here, even more so. "I've used Redhat 5.2 to a smallish extent and yes it was a nightmare." You missed the point completely. RH 5.2 was really okay (maybe not for nitwits though). The 5.x versions before suffered not from unrecognized-soundcards or some other trivial issue, but were really BROKEN since redhat tried to implement the so-called Glibc a bit to soon. As a result, it was VERY unstable, everything seemed to break, from RPM through the compiler to the desktop and to -by definition- the libc (which is the building-block of everything else save the kernel). It crashed on me several times weekly. Mind you, that was a PRODUCTION server. If you think 5.2 was bad you really have no idea what 5.0 was like... "MAN pages ARE pathetic" No, manpages are not pathetic. They tell you what a program does (NOT how 'linux' works mind you) and do that in a standardized, easy to browse manner. Windows' help by comparison, is pityful. I have NEVER ever been able to find a solution to any problem in the windows help. What is wrong with you guys ? Nowadays if your text is not in a nice graphical browser window it's not useful ?? It's still the content that matters, not how flashy it looks. I rather have a manpage where I can easily see what the "-f" switch does than wade though endless troubleshooting wizards that couldn't shoot a Trouble if it was 10 feet wide and sitting in a corridor at 4 yards. Fuckin' windows wizards... "Maybe you are so experienced you forget what it is like to be a newbie." Yeah well, you'd like to believe that. It is true that I learned while you bitched because yeah, most of the time when I had a problem (believe me I've had my share!) I dug into it and tried to fix it myself instead of mailing the manufacturer. Because like it or not, THAT is how you learn things. Even on windows. Don't even dare telling me that windows always works, cause it don't. I still remember my very first month, sifting through the inn / news-Howto, and even bursting out in tears over it because it was all gibberish to me (that'll teach you not to aim too high...) but my boss wanted me to setup a local newsserver. Satisfied ? I've come a long way from there, sure. Maybe that is why I am so appreciative of SuSE's new 8.0 baby since everything I had to do the hard way over the years is now integrated into the distribution and the installer. That is just beautiful. Maybe there is some truth to the fact that you can only _really_ appreciate what an athlete or sportsman does until you have tried it yourself (with less success of course, but that ain't the point). Indeed, I can almost do a blind setup, no matter what hardware, I'll have it running. Mostly in half an hour (pop DVD in, click 6 times and...) sometimes in 3 or 4 hours if the piece of trash is particularly stubborn with having noncooperative hardware. Yeah. Shit happens. Give me an OS and I'll give you a piece of hardware it won't recognize. And RedHat neither Windows is an exeption. Nevertheless, I don't get bugged if I have to tail -f messages or play around with modules.conf. Or build a new kernel, if necessary. Or even patch a kernel, and so on. But the truth is, I haven't had any reason to build a kernel myself since suse 7.x, so things are starting to look up for newbies. In any case, newbies let themselves scare way too easily since building a kernel is just trivial. Just try and type 'make clean dep bzImage modules' and there is not much more to it. The rest is in one of those docs you seem to hate so much. Read it or don't, I couldn't care less. Use linux or not, but if you DO, don't bitch about it so hard. And if you don't, think back to that decision when you have another issue with the DRM in the new windows media player that invalidated all your mp3s in one go. You know, as in real life, freedom comes at a price. The price for freedom (in this case we're meaning Linux) is that you are eager to learn, that you do not _demand_ that someone else fix it for you (you can _ask_ though) and that you are willing to put in some effort and time. Unwilling / unable ? Then good bye 'till next year when windows DRM comes out... That's all Folks.

Re: Price of SuSE (Debian) - c. - 2002-08-26

You say about Debian: "I can see why now. Still, i'm not impressed with Debian' install method - 4 hours (3 of them sorting through dselect, selecting packages and dependencies) to find that X is not working. No explanation of how to fix it." There's is a faster and better way to install it: Choose minimail install (do not use deselect), type tasksel (in case not install "apt-get install tasksel"), install. When you need something just apt-get it. Minimalist, less crap, and fast. If you just want to install X without tasksel: install discover, read-edid, mdetect before xserver-xfree86. Your mouse, videocard and monitor will be automaticly detected. Yes, I know, this shoud have been detected on the install and we're working on a newbie friendly distro. However, what most people blame debian for isn't really an issue: all the autodetect software is on the distro, e.g.: apt-get install discover or apt-get install kudzo Regards, C.

Re: Price of SuSE (Debian) - David Pastern - 2002-08-26

Thank you C, much appreciated for your help, i'll take your advice. PS I like Debian and the concept. I like dselect a lot as well. Dave

Re: Price of SuSE (Debian) - Chad Kitching - 2002-08-31

I'd suggest trying out aptitude instead of dselect. It's a bit easier to use, has nearly all the same features, and automatically tracks automatically installed packages that were installed because you selected some dependant package, so they can all be uninstalled if/when you stop using that original package. It can make for a much cleaner and compact system. With dselect there's no real easy way to tell what packages are orphaned on the system.

Re: Price of SuSE - oboltyo - 2002-11-24

Funny thing your article. Although I will agree on some points, But - the date on the Price of Suse article is dated 2002, and if this is correct I wonder if you tried any of those distros that you mention, why ? Because I have tried all the distros that you did mention and find that your remarks are somewhat uncalled for, hell, actually I would say that they are not at all true. I currently use Mandrake, Windows 2000, FreeBSD, debian, and RedHat ( yea alot but I mingle with mutiple systems). And I would have to say that the most user friendly, easiest to set up, and solid system by far would be Mandrake. Debian just plan is a pan in the arse when it comes to setting up. Redhat is good, but lags behind these days compared to Mandrake. As for Suse, I quit using them since they joined United Linux. Now how is it that setting these things up ( printer and such ) is such a problem ( provinding you actually did try these systems) ? Oh and by the way, Mandrake also runs on my laptop and server. Seems to me that once again someone is seriously misleading others. I find it odd that I run into users such as your self, and often wondered if they tried at all, why ? BECAUSE MANDRAKE SETS UP IN 25 MINUTES WITH ALL PROGRAMS LOADED ON A 1 GIG MACHINE COMPARED TO 25 -40 OR WINDOWS (and remember windows does not load anything but the OS and a few tools). I would be curious to hear from you. Maybe you just need a little help in the right direction. It really should not be so hard ( except for debian). oboltyo

Re: Kernel Cousin dot.kde.org - Jack White - 2002-08-25

> perhaps kde employees could do this instead seeing > red hats view on the issue. KDE does not have any employees that I am aware of. Some distributions hire developers to contribute to KDE (e.g. MandrakeSoft and Suse), and I would be just flabbergasted if they went to the trouble and expense of building packages for their competitor. If you look at the press release for KDE 3.0.3, you will find RPMs for RedHat 7.3 from an unofficial contributer. As long as you use a distro that doesn't support KDE, you will have to compile the code yourself, or wait for someone else to make an RPM available for you. Alternatively, you could hire someone to build a Red Hat RPM for you. Or you could start up a company to sell Red Hat RPMs. Of course, as soon as the business takes off, Red Hat will realize the error of their ways and build their own RPMs.

Re: Kernel Cousin dot.kde.org - Anonymous - 2002-08-25

Funny, I always thought of RedHat as the expensive one. Cost of SuSE: (http://www.suse.com/us/private/products/suse_linux/i386/index.html) SuSE Linux Personal 8.0 $39.95 SuSE Linux Professional 8.0 $79.95 From the appropriate pages linked from http://www.redhat.com/soho/: Red Hat Linux 7.3 Personal $59.95 Red Hat Linux 7.3 Professional $199.95 As you can see, a SuSE CD set costs two-thirds the price of a Red Hat CD set.

Re: Kernel Cousin dot.kde.org - Anonymous - 2002-08-25

That is, the SuSE Personal set costs two-thirds of the price of Red Hat Personal. Of course, the SuSE Professional set is only two-fifths of the price of Red Hat Professional. The main difference, of course, is that Red Hat has ISO CD images available for download. SuSE does not, but you can still download and install the distribution at no charge.

Re: Kernel Cousin dot.kde.org - Anonymous - 2002-08-25

RedHat also provides freely downloadable ISOs of their Personal distribution. SuSE does not provide any ISOs on their site. I was looking for a distribution that had XFree86 4.2.0 (because I had a Radeon at the time) and I was having a devil of a time getting the X upgrade to work right on my SuSE 7.2 distro. I wanted to stick with SuSE but I was poor (dot.bomb refugee living hand to mouth at the time) and needed it fast, so I downloaded RedHat's ISOs. Simple. Free. Easier than getting my CD-R to work under Linux (which I still haven't gotten to work right), figuring out mkisofs, and downloading a billion seperate files.

Re: Kernel Cousin dot.kde.org - Anonymous - 2002-08-25

> SuSE does not provide any ISOs on their site. Therefore get a *legal* copy from your friend or favorite file-sharing network.

Re: Kernel Cousin dot.kde.org - machin - 2002-08-25

but Yast is not freesoftware

Re: Kernel Cousin dot.kde.org - Anonymous - 2002-08-25

Read the YaST 2 license: 3. Dissemination It is forbidden to reproduce or distribute data carriers which have been reproduced without authorisation *for payment* without the prior written consent of SuSE Linux AG or SuSE Linux. [..] Making YaST 2 or works derived thereof available *free of charge* together with SuSE Linux on FTP Servers and mailboxes is permitted if the licences on the software are observed.

Re: Kernel Cousin dot.kde.org - machin - 2002-08-25

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#NonFreeSoftwareLicense The YaST License This is not a free software license. The license prohibits distribution for a fee, and that makes it impossible for the software to be included in the many CD-ROM free software collections that are sold by companies and by organizations such as the FSF. There may be another problem in section 2a, but a word seems to be missing there, so it is hard to be sure what meaning is really intended.

Re: Kernel Cousin dot.kde.org - Anonymous - 2002-08-25

The initial controversial subject was if it is legally allowed to copy it for free. I'm not really sorry, that you are not allowed to make money with SuSE's work without permission.

Re: Kernel Cousin dot.kde.org - machin - 2002-08-25

SuSe make money with Linus's Apache's gnome's( etc ) work !

Re: Kernel Cousin dot.kde.org - Anonymous - 2002-08-26

You cannot IMO make money by creating a free software product. Apache folk makes money with their service around Apache. SuSE is making money with their service to create a distribution from free software products. Why should they been obliged to allow others to make money with their service? They don't want to bust.

ahahahahah - machin - 2002-08-26

????? Do you know seriously what is freesoftware ??? you can buy freesoftware , the best exemple --> https://agia.fsf.org/ all (redhat , mandrake connectiva) developpement are GPL , Suse is the only one who make proprietary software !

Re: Kernel Cousin dot.kde.org - jmk - 2002-08-27

> SuSE does not provide any ISOs on their site. Who needs them anyway ? Just do FTP install - it will install and download packages you selected, nothing more, nothing less. With .ISOs you end up downloading bunch of crap you don't need anyhoo.

Re: Kernel Cousin dot.kde.org - Mike Collins - 2002-08-25

Well, IMHO they both suck so I could care less.

Re: Kernel Cousin dot.kde.org - anonymous - 2002-08-25

I dont care about KDE or GNOME, because they are trying to make linux be like microsoft.

Consequence to Redhat Desktop Environment? - ac - 2002-08-24

Ximian are doomed. KDEs' nemesis has finally been defeated, but not by KDE, but by Redhat! Where can I download Redhat Evolution? LOL! To Ximian: So long, and thanks for all the icons.

Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated - Mark Twain - 2002-08-25

"Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated" No Ximian isn't doomed. It's gained it's market by: * selling Ximian connectors * providing a consistent desktop for all distributions * software distributed on RedCarpet * adding "the Ximian touch" to it's desktops RedHat's desktop hasn't changed that. If anything, it's likely given Ximian some new ideas for it's upcoming GNOME 2.0 desktop. Long live Ximian. Long live theKompany. Long live TrollTech!

Negative comments - delete - 2002-08-25

Unfortunately some of the negative comments on this page seem to have (undeservedly IMHO) gained a lot of publicity. Articles on Slashdot, GnomeDesktop & PCLinuxOnline seem to have shown the KDE community in a very bad light. Anyway, I downloaded the redhat-artwork package to see what all the fuss was about, and having compiled it on my LFS system, I got: - surprisingly good matching GTK1/GTK2 styles - a below-par KDE style meant to match the GTK styles (I'll stick with Qinx!) - an very incomplete KDE icon set - an excellent XMMS skin - wallpapers, GDM themes etc. I didn't check the other KDE packages, so I wasn't able to determine what (if any) patches were applied to Konqueror etc. In my opinion, if RH want to brand their KDE, so be it - that's the nature of open source development. Their target is mainly corporate customers for servers etc, so a plain uniform style like Redhat's BlueCurve might be more suitable than a style like Keramik. Desktop users looking for eye-candy can always use Mandrake/Suse/Gentoo. I think that if the situation were reversed, and a distro such as Mandrake produced a GTK theme mimicking Keramik (to help Gnome apps fit in with the default KDE desktop), I'm sure many people here would be applauding the move. Hopefully this whole episode won't result in our community being alienated from the Gnome community & commercial Linux distros, just because of the knee-jerk reactions of a vocal minority.

Re: Negative comments - Spark - 2002-08-25

Yes, the Qt style seems sub-par so far but (mostly lack of highlighting and a boring progressbar) I guess it's pretty new as it wasn't there in an earlier beta. They do a lot of progress right now and I'm sure they will ship with a better one (AFAIK the developers working on this style are actually KDE users theirself like Bero, so I wouldn't expect any bad intentions). Also as for the icons, Havoc stated that those are quite incomplete yet. I'm sure they will wait until they have a really complete set of icons before they ship.

Oh please - borg - 2002-08-25

Judging from reading a *lot* of knee jerk reactionary responses from the self appointed desktop gestapo about Red Hat changing KDE's look N feel to look more like gnome, I say tough. Granted RedHat _DOES_ need to ensure that proper credit is given to the KDE team and to the developer of the program. Hey can you say B*E*T*A?. Perhaps a bug has left out the "About" part of the program. At anyrate, its RedHats choice to make KDE and Gnome look anyway they please. Maybe later you will not like the way my KDE desktop looks. SO I say take the clothes pins off your testicles and get a grip. RedHat is not out to destroy KDE. There is no big compsiracy. Its just code thats put together to get input from testers. Thats what beta's are for. I dont even use RedHat. So I really could care less what they do. I do use KDE however, and take exception to the immature rantings of numbskulls who feel they have to critise RedHat and others over every little thing. Please get over it and move on. Life is too short.

Re: Oh please - Sad Eagle - 2002-08-25

A bug added a patch to packages to explicitly remove the "About KDE" entry? Wow, never knew the little critters were so good with keyboards. Maybe I can train one to help me type faster? ;-)

Re: Oh please - David Walser - 2002-08-25

"SO I say take the clothes pins off your testicles and get a grip...I... take exception to the immature rantings of numbskulls" hmm, ok...

KDE = Bunch of Fat Heads - Chris Stone - 2002-08-25

I cannot believe you people are complaining that RedHat is changing the look and feel of KDE. You people have egos so large they could occupy mount rushmore! Oh no!! RedHat is making KDE look good and easy to use! The world is coming to an end, how dare those bastards! Personally I think finally for the first time _ever_ KDE actually looks good. Now please grow up and stop giving a damn about what RedHat does.

Re: KDE = Bunch of Fat Heads - Tim Gollnik - 2002-08-25

That's unfair. It's okay to make KDE look like you or like RedHat want it to. To remove the "About KDE" menu item is another thing. And don't put all the people who love KDE into one corner. Maybe you are a fat head? :-)

Re: KDE = Bunch of Fat Heads - Morten Bendix - 2002-08-26

I never really understood why there's a need for an "About KDE" menu item. I mean, you don't see an "About Windows" in every window app. It's not that I don't appreciate the developers work. I just think it would be better to have it in one place, like the K menu or something.

Why there is an 'about kde' menu item - Thomas - 2002-08-28

It's simple: People who've never seen a KDE desktop before and don't know the software they are surfing the internet with is called Konqueror... (standard windows-user reaction: konqu-what? What is this? Does ist work?) Well it works (mostly).. So maybe someone likes to dig deeper into the free part of the software-world... And there is this wonderful 'about kde' menu item. What impression does he get? Ah, there is a bunch of developers, they must be proud of their baby, otherwise there won't be an 'about kde' box..... Hm.. This program seems not to be the only one. Hm... What the hell is a desktop environment?... Let's surf the KDE web-page... and so on.... This is how new people get to know the project! So I have two points against RH removing this special menu item: o KDE-programmers are somehow proud of their work. Removing the about-box does hurt (a little). RedHat knows the world of open source very well. They _know_ when they remove the about box it hurts. o The 'about kde' box is a small but maybe effective approach to get new users exited about the whole project. Is it possible, RH does not want anybody to get exited about KDE?

Re: KDE = Bunch of Fat Heads - Will - 2002-08-30

I mean, you don't see an "About Windows" in every window app. You used to, back in the heady days of Windows 3.x. When Microsoft had serious competition in the desktop OS market, lots of the little desktop doodads (clocks, calculators, etc) were prominently branded as being part of Windows. Now that OS/2 and the like are gone, MS would rather imply that all software runs on windows, so there is no need to brand software as being part of windows. KDE still needs to differentiate itself from GNOME, that's why they're unhappy about RedHat's hacking out the about dialogs.

Re: KDE = Bunch of Fat Heads - fault - 2002-08-26

> I cannot believe you people are complaining that RedHat is changing the look and feel of KDE. You people have egos so large they could occupy mount rushmore! Unfortunatly, they made an incomplete style for Qt, and a incomplete icon set for KDE. Of course, it is only a beta. > Now please grow up and stop giving a damn about what RedHat does. Well, nobody cared when other companies did it (Lycoris, Lindows, etc..) But not many people in the KDE community like redhat (history, history).

Re: KDE = Bunch of Fat Heads - Anita - 2003-05-21

I am completely baffled as to what this site is about. Can you please fill me in. Thanx a bunch. Anita :)

Re: KDE = Bunch of Fat Heads - standsolid - 2002-11-01

damn bitch! just reboot into your windows partition and everything will be okay... that's right... green start button, uh-huh... peacefull, calm. BTW, wait until 3.1 is out

Re: KDE = Bunch of Fat Heads - kris newby - 2004-02-06

i think its great well in lads i think boss keep it up

The developers pout, the users rejoice! - Dev/User - 2002-08-25

This had to happen sooner or later. GNOME and KDE have in the past made some efforts to make their environments interoperate, however that work was not quite enough. The teams did unify the window management specification and the desktop environments' application menus do read each other's shortcut files. That's all very well, but even then the applications did have a seamless look and feel nor were the application menu hierarchies unified (which makes it difficult for users to use applications from the other desktop, because equivalent programs are classified differently for each desktop). There were some talks about implementing Gtk+'s default theme in Qt and vice versa but nothing really happened. The developers lacked the time to integrate further or they simply never came to a consensus. It's the thought that counts, I guess. But nevermind, Redhat just fixed the look-n-feel and menu problem for you! Now each KDE and corresponding GNOME application can compete against each other on their own merit. No longer are users forced into an ultimatum of selecting either the GNOME or KDE desktop environment. It's about time. Maybe now it's time to start looking at unifying clipboard, printing, and application association functionality.

Re: The developers pout, the users rejoice! - Stof - 2002-08-26

> Maybe now it's time to start looking at unifying clipboard, It's been there for ages! http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/clipboards.txt The only problem was that QT 1 and 2's support were broken. It's fixed in QT 3. GTK+ 1.2 and up supports the clipboard properly. > printing kde-print and gnome-print. Both support multiple backends so it doesn't matter what printing system you're using. And Common Unix Printing System (CUPS) is becoming the standard.

KDE has won - this confirms it - My Left Foot - 2002-08-25

Look at it this way: KDE has built up a sizable lead technically over the last few years. It has a simpler, more flexible object system and scripting system (Compare KParts/DCOP to Bonobo and you'll see what I mean). It has a far more capable multimedia subsystem (aRts versus... what, esd? laughable. GStreamer is a long way from full integration with GNOME). It has better development tools (KDevelop/Qt Designer versus Anjuta/GLADE? No contest). It has better end-user tools (Konqueror and KControl are so far ahead of the competition it's untrue). It is stabler, far less buggy, and actually mostly faster than GNOME 2. KDE apps are similar, and benefit immensely from the consistency, usability and flexibility that XMLGUI provides to an app, and which GNOME has no equivalent to (GLADE gives an XML-based GUI, but there's no system to automatically enforce style guidelines like XMLGUI can). So for many end-users at least, this means that there's really only one reason to stay using GNOME, and that's the look and feel, which some people prefer to KDE's. Red Hat has just removed that advantage, by providing a consistent look and feel across both desktops. Soon many Red Hat-using people will be wondering why Red Hat went with the desktop they did, when if they dig a little deeper they will find another desktop that looks the same, works very similarly, runs all the same apps, but is faster, more user-friendly, and less buggy (although I don't know about that if Red Hat's KDE packaging is up to its usual standard - no offence to bero, your packages used to be much better when you were less overworked). In the long run, this is a huge boost to KDE - it is an acknowledgement from Red Hat that KDE does actually matter, and amounts to an upgrade from not-really-supported to supported. It also means that, in the future, Red Hat is perfectly positioned to dump GNOME and go with KDE by default, and because of the consistent look and feel, the end-users won't notice much. An unlikely scenario, perhaps - Red Hat has a lot of commitments to GNOME. However, as important as Red Hat may be, the technical superiority and utter dominance of KDE outside RedHatland may simply force their hand if they want to be successful in the Linux desktop space. I have absolutely no doubt that SuSE/UnitedLinux, Mandrake and any number of the up-and-coming desktop distros like Lycoris will simply eat Red Hat alive if they make the wrong moves. I think the replacement of Konqueror with Mozilla as the default web browser is a very dumb move - I think Konq is the better browser for end-users: it renders IE-mangled sites considerably better than Mozilla, has better anti-aliased text, is in the same ballpark as Moz when it comes to standards-compliant rendering, and has a way way simpler, cleaner and easier to use GUI. But judging by past performance, Red Hat is going to make a few mistakes. Evolution probably is the better option for a mail client, due to its Outlook-style integration. Although I think the KDE approach of a suite of PIM applications that talk to each other is perfectly valid, and perhaps is actually the better solution, I don't think this will wash with ex-Outlook users used to a single application that does everything. Although... many Windows users prefer Outlook Express to full-blown Outlook if they just want mail, and KMail is much more like OE than Evolution is - indeed Evolution is quite likely to confuse the hell out of these users. Anyway, I think this is actually a really good day for KDE, bickering over About KDE boxes aside. What was previously almost a closed country for the KDE clan is slowly opening up. Whilst it looks like a rather strange place, and seems to be driven almost entirely by business interest and ideology rather than technical excellence, there are nonetheless many new opportunities to spread the word. Here's hoping KDE takes some of them!

Re: KDE has won - this confirms it - delete - 2002-08-25

Hmm, I think you're being a little bit optimistic. For example, all of Redhat's excellent new configuration tools are developed using Python + Gnome, and they've obviously spent a lot of time working on the Gnome look & feel - the KDE theme seems like a bit of an after-thought. I think RH is definitely still pushing Gnome as their default desktop (which they are perfectly entitled to do - it's their product!) - they just seem to want to improve the usability of their desktop by unifying themes. If anything, I think that KDE have lost out because of this incident - the negative publicity could make people think twice about taking KDE seriously as a viable choice on the desktop. IMHO it's a very embarassing moment for the community.

Re: KDE has won - this confirms it - drunkahol - 2002-08-26

I have to agree with certain points here. I'm no great follower of the KDE or GNOME desktops, but I know for sure that this action by RedHat has caused a stink. The fact of the matter is - KDE and GNOME are both Open Source. No matter how anyone grumbles about the "About KDE" item - you are only serving notice on your short mindedness. Both desktops are themeable - and RedHat have given KDE and GNOME a theme that look and feel very similar. So friggin what???? They've done it to make sure that users can switch easily between the two without having to learn new ways of doing things. The day that someone tells me what my desktop should and should not look like is the day I let them take me roughly from behind. Get over these KDE/GNOME issues. You obviously have a VERY large chip on your collective shoulders. KDE is a desktop package & GNOME is too. I have used both and I continue to use both. For what it's worth - my opinion has GNOME 2 running faster than KDE and some of the Ximian/RedHat apps provide better functionallity than the KDE equivalents. The bickering between the two communities is really quite sickening. And this little episode shows WAY more bickering going on on the KDE side. The WORST thing is that the VAST majority of the messages are clearly not thought out or written by idiots. I don't mean that in (exactly) a nasy way - but Jeez, get over it. The negative attitude rising from this is definately hurting the KDE cause. You guys obviously don't know how to play politics. You have to keep your friends close and your enemies even closer. The comments on this post demonstrate to the world how your minds work. Open your eyes - the world isn't against you. Nobody has WON. Nobody is WINNING. This is the Open Source environment - the more software is written the more EVERYONE wins!!!

Re: KDE has won - this confirms it - Evan "JabberWokky" E. - 2002-08-26

:: The fact of the matter is - KDE and GNOME are both Open Source. No matter how anyone grumbles about the "About KDE" item - you are only serving notice on your short mindedness. This is where the great split over the issue exists. And I think I can sum it up here. You'll find yourself falling to one side or the other. Yes. KDE and Gnome are open source. That means one of two things to people. To some people (the ones who see nothing wrong with the About KDE dialogs being removed), it is an interesting legal construction that allows code to be freely shared among developers and software houses. They think in terms of GPL, BSD, and can cite exactly where in the GPL it is perfectly legal to remove the KDE dialogs. And they are right. KDE and Gnome are open source. To a second set of people this means something entirely different. There is a sense of contributing to a community, one where your work gains you respect, and you can sit back and work with a smooth set of tools you like, and had a part in making, either large or small. This sense of pride and community is what keeps quite a few developers working. If you fall into the first half, consider this: It is perfectly legal to attend a wedding, and stand up during the reception and loudly announce "I think the bride is a fucking whore". It is totally legal, and can be done. It is, however, incredibly rude. There are no damages, other that to terribly hurt the people who have gathered together, spent time, money and effort to put together an event. Or a more apt comparison: if you make a movie, it is (unless contracts stipulate otherwise), quite legal to not list any credits. You can just have the movie and plaster your name as producer all over it. However, can you imagine the feeling in the stomache of the actor as he sees his name not in the credits? (I've seen this happen by accident in theater programs, and felt horrible for the person to whom it occured). Sure, it's legal. It's also rightfully labeled as totally against the spirit of open source, and an utter affront to the developers who have spent time working on KDE. Being an ass is not against the law. There exist many asses out there, and a company is composed of many people who make many decisions. This was an asinine decision that was a slap in the face to many. If you see nothing wrong with what Red Hat has done, still sticking on that "but it was legal" point, ponder why there is such a strong public sentiment against attorneys and people who think in merely legal terms. -- Evan

Re: KDE has won - this confirms it - Spark - 2002-08-26

You make it look like every person who doesn't agree with you is only thinking in legal terms but this is simply not true. I don't care for the legal issue (ok, I would if there would be an issue of course) and I still see nothing wrong with what RedHat has done and I believe this is true for many other people. Please allow everyone to form his own opinion, ok? To me it isn't immorale as there wasn't any credits of the applications removed, it even states that it's using KDE in the applications about box. The about KDE box is superfluous in a way and if RedHat removes this for usability and consistency reasons, I can understand it (as long as the About KDE is accessable from somewhere in KDE). Don't get me wrong, I understand the reason to put the box in there (getting more name recognition and developers) and I don't think it's bad that KDE has it placed there of course but I also don't see anything wrong with it's removal (I can understand that KDE isn't happy about this though, but not beeing happy and bitching are two different shoes). The intentions are also questionable as you will notice that the bashing already began before the removal of the about box was even known (just look at the several "they crippled KDE!" comments which are total nonsense). It just leaves a bad taste, especially as this wasn't the first time people are shaking their heads about KDE hysteria in a very short time. I hope this wasn't too inflamatory, if it was, please excuse me (and please don't shoot me :)).

Re: KDE has won - this confirms it - Tim Gollnik - 2002-08-26

Hmm.. to remove the "About KDE" box is not necessary, is it? So I can understand if someone gets unhappy with it being removed. If there's no necessity for it, then there might be some unfriendly reasons, and that's what I and many others think it is. Unfriendly. Unfair. To change the look and feel to get a consistent desktop is okay, to remove the "About KDE" box isn't. Best regards Tim

Re: KDE has won - this confirms it - Spark - 2002-08-26

It might be a bit unfriendly... Yes. :) But I'm sure they are doing it in the interest of potential users not to harm anyone (otherwise, would they have it made public in a changelog? They could have written "Screwed KDE! Yeah!" in this case as well ;)) and it certainly isn't unfair. Some of the reactions here do highly exaggerate, just talking with Red Hat would be easier. And they didn't remove the about box anyway but the link to the KDE about box from every applications help menu. This is a big difference! So the wording that many people use makes it seem worse than it is ("They removed the credits to KDE!"). I hope the about KDE box is still accessable from the desktop. If it isn't, this is a problem that could be fixed. It's a beta after all. Oh and about the "unfriendly" part, the actions of some of the KDE developers towards Red Hat lastly weren't exactly friendly either. :) It just seems that Red Hat and KDE won't become best friends anytime soon (which is sad), so both will just do what they can do best, providing free software that serves the user well.

Re: KDE has won - this confirms it - Evan "JabberWokky" E. - 2002-08-27

No, no... sorry to imply that if you don't think in legal terms you have to agree that removing the About KDE box was bad. Ironically, I think Red Hat is perfectly okay in doing this. I worry about it, because I think that Red Hat has such an influence upon the perception of Linux, and so I hope that KDE is showcased well - I'm tired of hearing "KDE looks ugly", etc. But an important point that I did *not* make (that I should have) is that Red Hat has yet to release this product, so I'm withholding my statement (note that I said this decision was asinine, but did not say anything directly about Red Hat the corporation). KDE has been incorrectly portrayed over and over again, so many users who have been around since 1.0 (like myself) are very sensitive to potential and incipent misrepresentation. After all, we all know: KDE is anti-GPL KDE is a Windows Clone KDE apps can only be coded in C++ KDE is a Linux desktop KDE forces you to use their Window Manager KDE is really slow, taking 20 seconds to launch an app. KDE is ugly and not themeable KDE is developed solely by Europeans KDE is used soley by Europeans KDE is based on a toolkit with a commercial license KDE apps can't share components KDE versions are incompatable with each other KDE apps have to be recompiled for each minor version All of which are myths, to the point that there is a Anti-Myth KDE site. I run into these over and over again. And I know that if Red Hat releases according to what this preview represents, people will say "KDE doesn't have an Email application - it uses Evolution" and "KDE looks really flat and boring". So I worry. And yes, it is rude to take something and chop off the credits. Picture someone getting a handknitted sweater, and yanking out the tag that says "Handmade by Nanna to John". It's just rude. It doesn't "cripple KDE", and it's not "illegal", it's just flat out inconsiderate, rude behaviour. -- Evan

Re: KDE has won - this confirms it - Alain - 2002-08-26

> in the future, Red Hat is perfectly positioned to dump GNOME and go with KDE by default Ah, yes, of course, it is simple and obvious, you begin by remove Konqueror and Kmail from the KDE desktop, replacing them with Gnome programs, and then you put Konqueror and Kmail on the Gnome desktop ! Thank you Groucho !

Re: KDE has won - this confirms it - My Left Foot - 2002-08-26

> Ah, yes, of course, it is simple and obvious, you begin by remove Konqueror > and Kmail from the KDE desktop, replacing them with Gnome programs, and then > you put Konqueror and Kmail on the Gnome desktop ! No. :p But it does make perfect sense if you think about it in terms of minimizing change and the associated inconvenience to the end-user. Red Hat 9 will be defaulting to GNOME/Mozilla/Evolution, yes? Then, with a consistent look and feel, a couple of versions down the line, Red Hat can easily switch to KDE/Mozilla/Evolution by default. The panel has changed, the desktop and file manager are a bit different, but it looks and feels approximately the same. Most importantly, the apps which Red Hat desktop users use most, the web browser and email client, are exactly the same as they were. People who were using KDE in Red Hat 9 notice no difference at all. Then, having got everyone used to the KDE panel/desktop/file manager, a few versions later they can swap Mozilla out for Konqueror, and a few versions down the line still, they can maybe swap Evolution out for some yet-to-be-finished KDE app that is a full replacement for Evolution. This minimizes inconvenience for end-users by staggering major changes to the end-user experience over several versions of Red Hat, thus reducing the amount of frightening 'new stuff' that needs to be learned. Most people don't mind slow, gradual change over a period of time, but they don't like sudden large changes. Whether or not Red Hat takes this route is, I suspect, largely dependent on whether GNOME 2.2 is up to scratch, whether it starts to catch up on KDE in functionality and usability or whether it falls behind. At this point in time I don't think anybody can say realistically one way or the other - GNOME 2.0 is now at least in the same ballpark as KDE, but it's simply far too early in the GNOME 2.2 development cycle, and KDE 3.1 has yet to be released either. I just find it interesting that Red Hat has created an escape route from GNOME to KDE that has minimal discomfort to their users. I can't tell you whether this is intentional or not, but it does now exist and it didn't exist before. You draw your own conclusions.

Re: KDE has won - this confirms it - Spark - 2002-08-26

It will rather be Red Hat 8. ;) I guess you are right in that it will be more about the actual quality and usability of the software instead of it's look. That can only be a good thing.

The identity of KDE - Alain - 2002-08-25

I see that the identity of KDE is attacked inside and outside. Inside, some ones of the KDE League want that Linux-KDE will be called KGX, with a G like Gnome-Gnu and a X like XP-MacOsX. Outside some ones want to remove the KDE about box (what a symbol !) and replace Konqueror and Kmail, the 2 most important KDE apps, by Gnome apps. I hope that KDE developpers and users will strongly defend the KDE identity.

Re: The identity of KDE - delete - 2002-08-25

If you're going to troll, at least be a little more subtle.

Re: The identity of KDE - Alain - 2002-08-25

Perhaps you are an example of subtility... I am surprised to see how many posts are here defending the Red Hat action and are trying to minimize the strange new KGX use (http://dot.kde.org/1029961632/1030031353/). If continuing, it is going to weaken KDE...

Re: The identity of KDE - Spark - 2002-08-26

"I am surprised to see how many posts [..] are trying to minimize the strange new KGX use" Maybe because not everyone thinks that forming a handy abbreviation for a common set of tools is reason enough for a conspiracy theory.

Re: The identity of KDE - Alain - 2002-08-26

It is said by somebody who also says "I still see nothing wrong with what RedHat has done". I don't think there is conspiracy, but there are big attacks against KDE, and those who don't want to defend are weakening KDE. KDE is born and has grown independtly of GNU-GNome. Now GNU-Gnome, by these attacks, and certainly others, try to break the independancy of KDE. On the same way, from some years, there are many attacks against Linux for chain it in something called GNU/Linux, however Linus and many users don't want it. If now, KDE people says nothing against the removal of the about box and the replacement of Konqueror and KMail by Red Hat, if some ones of the KDE-League continue to associate Gnome-GNU and KDE in KGX, the attacks will grow. It is time to say stop !

Re: The identity of KDE - Evan "JabberWokky" E. - 2002-08-27

If KDE has nothing to do with GNU, and has never had anything to do with it, then why has it always, from day one, been licensed under the GNU General Public License and all core libraries (like all GNU core libraries) under the Lesser GNU General Public License? -- Evan

Re: The identity of KDE - Alain - 2002-08-27

I spoke about the GNU project, not the GPL. I think that the GPL is a good thing, but too often there is a confusion petween the GPL and the GNU project.

Re: The identity of KDE - Evan "JabberWokky" E. - 2002-08-27

Uhh... you do know that the GPL is the GNU General Public License, and was entirely created by the GNU project? -- Evan

Re: The identity of KDE - Alain - 2002-08-30

Of course. And you know - Uhh... - that the GPL is used by projects out of the GNU project. So they are not the same thing... The GNU project try to "attach" Linux and KDE by calling them GNU/Linux and KGX or by things like Red Hat does. I wish that Linux and KDE will keep their identity, without being "eated" by the GNU project in the long time.

Re: The identity of KDE - Evan "JabberWokky" E. - 2002-08-30

Yes, but to say that GNU and KDE have nothing to do with each other and never have, when the legal terms of KDE's development and distribution was entirely invented by Richard Stallman and his GNU Project is quite disingenuious. Also, the GNU project never came up with KGX - a single, individual KDE developer did, and used it to refer to a particular application and combination of software, of which KDE is only one part, and does not refer to the KDE project in general. Going back to the incresingly commonly used LAMP convention - LAMP may have articles written about it, websites devoted to it, Sun saying that they are making it part of their strategy. Still, Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP have plenty of individual identity. Nobody thinks Linux can only be used to run Apache, and nobody thinks Apache runs only on Linux. LAMP is just a convention used to refer to a common configuration of four pieces of software. KGX is just a handy way to refer to a common configuration of four pieces of software to provide an inexpensive and powerful desktop, as opposed to, say, KDE + Xi + BSD, or KDE + AIX on an RS/6000. -- Evan

Re: The identity of KDE - Alain - 2002-08-31

> to say that GNU and KDE have nothing to do with each other and never have I did not say that. I said : "KDE is born and has grown independtly of GNU-GNome". And, of course, I simplified, it was not "absolutly independently"... > KGX - a single, individual KDE developer did, Hmm, it was not what was said in the Textar site. See http://www.pclinuxonline.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2855 "The KDE League is working on plans to promote the KDE desktop atop Linux as a combination they have named "KGX"

Re: The identity of KDE - Evan "JabberWokky" E. - 2002-09-01

I still disagree with you - I think that GNU had a fundimental effect upon, and was responsible for the concepts that created KDE. As for the website, that's a first for me. But it makes sense, it started off as a phrase the individual person invented (Andreas Pour), but since he's on the KDE League, it's been adopted by them. I disagree with the writeup - the site does *not* pitch KGX, but KDE. In the first paragraph under Proven Solutions, it uses KGX to show how KDE is sucessful. The next paragraph then mentions "the various BSDs, Compaq's Tru64, IBM's AIX, HP's HPUX and Sun's Solaris". Again, this is exactly what I like about the term KGX - it points out that KDE is more than just a Linux desktop, and allows KGX as a common software combination to be discussed. -- Evan

Re: The identity of KDE - Alain - 2002-09-01

> I think that GNU had a fundimental effect upon, and was responsible for the concepts that created KDE. Concepts ? The concepts of the desktop (or more widely the OS/desktop) were in the Microsoft or Apple side, not on the GNU side... The GPL was not a concept, the GNU tools where not concepts, they were realities, tools. The GNU project was at the beginning very opposed to the KDE project, you forget it ! Were the concepts too dangerous ?... However they copied and created Gnome for weakening KDE and they always try to weaken KDE (not directly of course, thru Red Hats, perhaps KDE league)... > it points out that KDE is more than just a Linux desktop Surprising answer... It is the contrary, it shows that KDE is just a desktop, a K integrated in a GNU project (or Solaris project..., but GNU at first). In the GNU project, there is only one desktop, Gnome, Red Hat works in this direction and KDE must become a satellite. I fear that many KDE developers don't undestand it. I came here 1 or 2 years ago, the speech was very different, it was said that KDE will create some exploitation tools for Linux. Few of them were created and it seems that you are regressing, so that KDE will only be a desktop... I only say that I wish that you defend your integrity, your independancy, your identity. You need to be clearsighted and a little politised, in front of the politised RMS & Co.

Re: The identity of KDE - Evan "JabberWokky" E. - 2002-09-01

:: Concepts ? The concepts of the desktop I was refering to the concepts of Free Software, distributed development, internet development, and releasing source to the world for free. :: It is the contrary, it shows that KDE is just a desktop KDE *is* just a desktop environment. That is, a desktop plus fundimental applications plus the tools to quickly and easily make additional applications. That's all it is. And it does that very well. It writes to POSIX systems running X and Qt. It doesn't even have it's own widget library. It focuses on one thing, and accomplishes its goal very very well. It is a desktop environment. :: I came here 1 or 2 years ago, the speech was very different, it was said that KDE will create some exploitation tools for Linux. I have no idea what you're talking about. I've been using KDE and actively following it since before 1.0. I've been using *nix since 1981ish. :: You need to be clearsighted and a little politised, in front of the politised RMS & Co. Why bring politics into it? How will that affect me, other than annoy me and bait me to reply to you? WhizbangFooBar OS could own 99% of the market or 1% of the market. If I like it, I use it. I like KDE, I use it. I don't care about Gnome, I care about KDE. The KDE League are organized for people who like KDE, and want to use it at work - people who (like I used to) have to support hundreds or thousands of users. They make pretty words to convince people who know very little about computers that going to KDE is safe. It's hard, compromising work, and I applaud their efforts. I'd use it if I were still a sysadmin with a large desktop userbase. But KDE will go on and keep getting better with or without them. And their actions don't affect if KDE is my desktop, and it shouldn't affect if it's your desktop. But it's all about doing something. What are *your* 'political' actions that you want to do for KDE? I don't ask this rhetorically, I would like to hear your answer - it sounds like you have strong ideas. What are they? -- Evan

Re: The identity of KDE - Alain - 2002-09-01

> But KDE will go on and keep getting better with or without them. And their actions don't affect if KDE is my desktop, and it shouldn't affect if it's your desktop. When the name KDE is replaced/included by KGX, when the about box of KDE is removed, when Konqueror is replaced by Mozilla, when KMail is replaced by Evolution, you don't see it, you are not affected and you continue to say that KDE is going better and better... Many best software has been killed by worst one which won by marketing and political (= non technician, in my wide sense) actions... > What are *your* 'political' actions that you want to do for KDE? I don't ask this rhetorically, I would like to hear your answer - it sounds like you have strong ideas. What are they? No, I have not strong ideas, only simple things. KDE is KDE, not a part of some GNU-Gnome thing, the about box is as a copyright and don't have to be removed, the default kicker navigator and email reader are Konqueror and Kmail (or it is a fork that has not to be called KDE...). Only such simple and pragmatic things so that KDE will keep its identity...

Re: The identity of KDE - Evan "JabberWokky" E. - 2002-09-01

:: When the name KDE is replaced/included by KGX It already is replaced/included by terms such as Mandrake, SuSE, Xandros, etc. So there's now a non-distro, non-company specific term for it. Isn't that an advantage? :: when the about box of KDE is removed, when Konqueror is replaced by Mozilla, when KMail is replaced by Evolution, you don't see it, you are not affected and you continue to say that KDE is going better and better First off, no distro has ever released that. Red Hat is playing with the idea of that in a release schedualed for next year. KDE will be a few minor versions down the road at that point. And it won't affect me, as I use SuSE. The power of choice means that there will be some lousy choices along with the great ones. I don't see that as becoming a common configuration, and right now it's a nonexistant configuration. So, let's say that the worst happens - Red Hat chooses really ugly fonts, colors, messes up all the menus, and makes you drink battery acid before you can use KDE. That still won't affect my desktop environment whatsoever. If it's bad, people won't use it. If it's good, and people love it and start using it all over the place, then maybe KDE has something to learn from Red Hat's decisions. That's the point of Open Source. It's win-win-win. -- Evan

Re: The identity of KDE - Alain - 2002-09-01

> Red Hat is playing with the idea And Red Hat is happy to see the lack of reaction of KDE, it is possible to go further... > That still won't affect my desktop environment whatsoever. If it's bad, people won't use it. Being inward looking is not the good way. Bad or good, Red Hat users will not see the true KDE, they will use it less and less, so they will go to use Gnome (and Gnome is good, it helps). And when then Mandrake users, then others distros users will also go to Gnome and when you will be few to use KDE (the good way...), perhaps the number of developers will grow ?... See Netscape today, 3 or 4% of users, but for the elit using Netscape, it is far better than IE... IE is bad and people use it, Netscape and Konqueror are good and very few people use them. The technical quality of KDE is not enough for growing or, at least, for staying. By being too egoist and having only a technical vue, the best software will lose. > That's the point of Open Source. > It's win-win-win. Anybody he is good, anybody he is gentle, the open source is the paradize and we dance all together...

Re: The identity of KDE - Sick-of-Alain - 2002-09-02

> Red Hat users will not see the true KDE ... they will go to use Gnome Newsflash - it's always been this way! Gnome is the RedHat default, and their KDE support has always been second-rate. Most RedHat users use Gnome ANYWAY, so whether they see your version of the 'true' KDE. What is the 'true' KDE anyway - the version SuSE ships (and I use) with a SuSE-unique KMenu, the version Mandrake ships with binaries & libs in a wierd location, the version Connectiva ships with their own icon set, or the version RedHat will ship with their own window decoration and default apps? Only the source code from KDE is 'true'. "KDE Only Ships Source." The KDE project does NOT provide final implementation. Vendors provide the implementation. SuSE implements it SuSE's way (and I like it, so they earned my money), Sun does it Sun's way (on the Solaris Companion CD, and it's poorly done, so I compile my own for my company), RedHat will do it RedHat's way. If YOU want to provide a set of packages of your vision of the 'true' KDE for ALL Linux distros, then nothing is stopping you from doing so. If you honestly think you can set up a GNU-less Linux-KDE system, then DO IT and show us how. > Netscape, it is far better than IE... IE is bad and people use it, People use it because it renders pages properly, and has support for pretty much every plug-in that exists. > Netscape and Konqueror are good and very few people use them. I use Konqueror, and when it crashes or refuses to render a page properly with javascripts, then I launch Mozilla. When Mozilla refuses to render a site because it needs a newer version of Flash, or whatever, then I open a Citrix session to a machine a work and use IE6. IE is not 'bad'. It has some security holes, but it renders pages perfectly and quickly, and I have WORK to do, not time to waste on dogma. Fundamentalism in ANY form (Christian/Islamic/Hindu/Unix Desktop) is evil. Get some help. Seriously, Alain, SHUT UP! You have contributed NOTHING to KDE that we can tell, except for trying to tell everyone (loudly, over-and-over-and-over) that we have to use KDE according to YOUR philosophy. You're speaking about things that you DO NOT understand, and are making yourself look incredibly foolish to the extremely intelligent, dedicated and hard-working people who have created KDE out of nothing, and to the users, old and new, who will be confused by the illusion of legitimacy that your rantings have by being posted in this public (and Google-cached) forum. Please GO AWAY!!!! Everyone else: Alain is a TROLL. PLEASE stop responding to him (I know, do as I say, not as I do....sorry.) I really wish the admins could/would kill this entire thread and delete it out of memory, but that would juse be more /. fodder.

Re: The identity of KDE - Alain - 2002-09-04

Who is this Mr Anonymous who so trolls ? It seems he wants to forbid the liberty of speak, certainly because he is too intelligent and understands everything more than anyone else... Poor fundamentalist ! Nota : when I said "IE is bad", it was of course a simplification, bad in the sense of closed sources, security and standard.

Re: The identity of KDE - DJGM - 2002-12-22

> Netscape, it is far better than IE... IE is bad and people use it, => People use it because it renders pages properly, and has support for pretty much every plug-in that exists. NO, IE renders pages properly if they are specifically written for it. Which is bad. Web developersd should write their webpages to recommended web standards, not to the malformed standard of one obsolete, and insecure web browser. "Write once, read anywhere . . . " as I believe the saying goes . . . And NO, IE does not support all plugins. Take Java for instance, MSIE6 did not ship with it, and whenever an IE user comes across a web page that contains Java, they are prompted to download the Microsoft JVM, which is nothing more than a 4 year old (obsolete) version of Java that has been corrupted, diluted and polluted with a ton of Microsoft proprietary junk code so that it only works with Windows. As for the early contributor that said IE has a few security holes is severly underestimating IE's poor security. Recently, there were 32 unpatched security holes in IE. Just over a month ago, MS released a cumulative security patch for IE, and there are still 19 holes in IE that remain unpatched. And this is just in the versions of IE made for Windows. God only knows how many unpatched security holes there are in the versions of IE made for Macintosh!

Re: The identity of KDE - Evan "JabberWokky" E. - 2002-09-02

:: IE is bad and people use it, Actually, it is my second favorite browser after Konqueror. :: so they will go to use Gnome (and Gnome is good, it helps). And when then Mandrake users, then others distros users will also go to Gnome and when you will be few to use KDE (the good way...) Or maybe I'll go over to Gnome. I haven't used it in quite awhile. Primarily the reason is the same reason most people stick with Windows - it works for them. KDE works for me right now. What is so wrong with Gnome? I'd hate to tell somebody they shouldn't use it. -- Evan (am I being trolled? Yes. Intentionally? I don't yet think so).

Re: The identity of KDE - Alain - 2002-08-26

Kde had it coming... - Vindicated - 2002-08-25

Reading many of the comments posted here, mostly by Kde enthusiasts, I'm once again confirmed about how insolent and arrogant your community can be. At least kde is consistent. Kde has never wanted an integrated desktop for linux, only promotion of it's own stuff as "the" desktop and application framework for Linux. Actually Linux has had an integrated desktop for years. You can run almost any application with any window manager. But Kde denies that to promote its own agenda. Kde places a heavy, crashy subsystem on top of X to imitate Microsoft Windows and more recently Mac OSX. One could say that Gnome is trying to do the same but Gnome does not sit heavy on X like Kde does. It blends in, seeming to be a native and natural part of the Linux experience. Kde messed up right from the start by using Trolltech's Qt toolkit for the sake of immediate convenience regardless of licensing problems this created for linux distributions packaging Kde. Although licensing issues have now been resolved, Kde and the Qt subsystem still seem "foreign" to Linux. Even worse, Kde remains completely dependent on a commercial software company which maintains tight control over its own products, including the free version of Qt made available for Linux. Forking is possible but impractical, so Kde remains dependent on the good graces of Trolltech to provide what is needed, even if this might run contrary to Trolltech's business interests which must come first. That's a Sword of Damocles hanging over Kde's head. Kde will not have its way. RedHat's initiative to produce a more integrated desktop experience will be followed by other distros on which Kde is currently the default desktop. Gnome will tend to become the default, providing a shell which will also run kde apps if users want that. Time and time again Gnome has offered the olive branch to Kde and kde has bared its teeth. Now Redhat has invalidated or made "null and void" Kde's agenda for a Kde desktop to replace the Linux desktop. We're getting back to basics, a linux desktop. Actually the integration Redhat is attempting is a simplification of the whole mess which should come as a great relief to applications developers who have been unsure of whether their choice of a toolkit is the right one. The point is that it doesn't matter. We are coming back to the desktop environment being more like a shell, which can run a variety of apps built with a variety of tookits. As opposed to that Kde insists on tight integration among all its components which must use Qt and Kde libraries and conventions. How is Gnome different? Gnome also allows integration and embedding but doesn't make that so much of a requirement as Kde does. Gnome has always been "mix and match". That philosophy will prevail, not Kde's imitation of the Microsoft Windows "one size fits all" philosophy. So long as I can use any window managaer I want to use and run any app on the desktop a window manager provides I'll be happy. So will most current linux users. Those desiring more uniformity will have that option, as will corporations desiring a more customized look and feel for thier specific needs. But the Kde desktop as a separate subsystem sitting on top of Linux is something that never was meant to be, even if it has succeeded in attracting a number of users who want their Linux experience to be more like Microsoft Windows. Linux can do better than that, and will!

Re: Kde had it coming... - Colin - 2002-08-25

All I can say is well said. I have just installed the latst RedHat beta on my laptop, it has a few bugs but I think it really does make it easier for new users. It gives that uniform look but it is still easy to customise to your own tastes. Well done RedHat we need all parties to co operate not argue amongst our own forces if Linux is to suceed. I prefer kde to gnome but I am behind RedHat on this one, they have done an excellent job. One thing for them is they are totally comitted to open source and can still manage to make a viable business from it all, keep up the good work.

Re: Kde had it coming... - Alain - 2002-08-26

> how insolent and arrogant your community can be. ... > Gnome will tend to become the default Of course, I understand you are happy. And You are enough cynical to post here... Who is insolent and arrogant ?

why bother posting? - delete - 2002-08-26

Still churning out the same dull myths about KDE/Qt/whatever? License issues, imitation of Windows, blah blah. Are you somehow unable to form opinions of your own, or must you repeat the same crap peddled by those trying to create divisions in the Linux community? Why did you bother wasting your time with your post? Feel better about yourself now?

Re: Kde had it coming... - kervel - 2002-08-26

please don't confuse 'some people' with 'the community'.

Re: Kde had it coming... - fault - 2002-08-26

Wow, you waste quite a bit of time considering less than 1% of readers will read past your first paragraph ;)

Re: Kde had it coming... - KDE User - 2002-08-26

> Gnome will tend to become the default On RedHat it already is. On other distros it is not. So nothing has really changed, who uses KDE on RedHat anyway? Qt or KDE-libs are definitely not "crashy". Where did you hear that?

Re: Kde had it coming... - Justin - 2002-08-27

Did you really have to bring up Qt and licensing? Good Lord, it's over man! It's over!! <<< Kde messed up right from the start by using Trolltech's Qt toolkit for the sake of immediate convenience regardless of licensing problems this created for linux distributions packaging Kde. Although licensing issues have now been resolved, Kde and the Qt subsystem still seem "foreign" to Linux. >>> I'd have to say choosing Qt was KDE's best choice ever. What else were they going to use, Motif or Athena? Do you even know KDE's history? Gtk didn't even exist back then, and today it just plays catch-up to Qt. The reason KDE got so good so fast was because of the powerful Qt foundation they developed. KDE is ahead of GNOME, there is no question. But don't feel bad, KDE had a year or so of a head start on GNOME, and their foundation library (Qt) was handed to them on a platter. Of course, this doesn't mean that GNOME won't catch up. As for "foreign", I'm not sure what you mean. While Qt is cross-platform, its home is unix. Is it "foreign" to you because it is written in C++? I mean really, what are you trying to say here? <<< Even worse, Kde remains completely dependent on a commercial software company which maintains tight control over its own products, including the free version of Qt made available for Linux. Forking is possible but impractical, so Kde remains dependent on the good graces of Trolltech to provide what is needed... >>> GPL == GPL. It is also possible for me to fork the Linux kernel, but it is just as impractical. What's your point? Regardless, Trolltech _does_ deliver. That's what you get when you have KDE developers paid to work on a GPL library. Surely you know that quite a few KDE people are employed by Trolltech, eh?

Re: Kde had it coming... - Philippe Fremy - 2002-08-28

This is the common blah blah about people that dislike KDE. > Actually Linux has had an integrated desktop for years. Then I wonder why you run Gnome ? Try runnning xfig, xview, lyx and mozilla in a row and tell me how much it looks integrated and similar ?

Many Gnome trolls ... - Anonymous - 2002-08-26

... around since Gnome 2.0 release. Are these in majority ex-KDE trolls? :-)

Re: Many Gnome trolls ... - ac - 2002-08-26

GNOME2 users don't have any apps so they come here to KDE to pass the time...

Re: Many Gnome trolls ... - Spark - 2002-08-26

No, but gnotices, gnomedesktop and the gnome user forum where all down. ;)

Re: Many Gnome trolls ... - Stof - 2002-08-26

There are no Gnome trolls. Likewise, there are no KDE trolls either. There are only anti-Gnome and anti-KDE trolls. DO NOT COUNT THE ANTI-KDE TROLLS AS PART OF THE GNOME COMMUNITY!

RedHat Null Beta - Steve Bergman - 2002-08-26

I am writing to you from a newly installed and absolutely beautiful, KDE desktop, under RedHat Null. Sure, the default KDE install is bland, boring, grey, and, well, depressing really. Then again, the default RedHat desktop install excludes KDE. (So what else is new?) However, the totally default install, with Gnome, does look exceptionally easy for the new, and not very technical, user. The menus are super simple, and uses descriptive names (e.g. Email) rather than program names. Aside from it's ugliness, it is probably easier to learn than any other default desktop I've seen under Linux, if a bit limiting for the seasoned user. The new user can even change the desktop resolution effortlessly. And what's more, it actually works without breaking your X configuration. (Hear that, Mandrake?) However, I did reinstall, selecting the "Everything" install, and without too terribly much tweaking (and absolutely ZERO xterm or console editing sessions), had a gorgeous KDE 3.0.3 desktop running Keramik with the Crystal icon set. This is the first time I have seen keramik/crystal outside of screenshots and I must say, I'm impressed, guys! RedHat *has* done a lot of things right, here. And this is just their first attempt at a desktop distro. Certainly the default theme is far from perfect. The only logical conclusion to be drawn, is that RedHat is really serious about the desktop now, but that their entire staff, from chairman of the board to the housekeeping crew are legally blind. This is good new for anyone with normal eyesite, as I expect they'll be hiring! ;-)

Re: RedHat Null Beta - Spark - 2002-08-26

Hehe... ;) Nice to hear you like it (funny thing is most people trying it do like it, many people only seeing screenshots or hearing about it hate it ;)). But I would say their style is a matter of taste, as I like it so much that I tried hard to get it working in Gentoo (with success) and my eyesight is pretty good. ;) While it doesn't look very fancy, it's still of a very good quality (the Qt style is a bit lacking yet) and a "boring gray and blue" look might be the better choice not to piss anyone off. ;) Especially as they are targetting for the corporate desktop.

Re: RedHat Null Beta - maKKus - 2002-08-26

I also think the 'boring grey' is a matter of taste. I also installed it on Gentoo and I enjoy a integrated gtk+ 1.2 gtk+ 2.0 desktop now (the metacity-theme is beautifull). But coming back on matter of taste, Look in the windows newsgroups, how many people prefer the windows 2000 look above the windows XP shiny thingy look.

RedHat's Bluecurve-theme in Gentoo! - Per Wigren - 2002-08-27

I just submitted an ebuild for redhat-artwork from Rawhide, so all of you who are running Gentoo will soon be able to use RedHat's themes with a simple # emerge redhat-artwork :)

Re: RedHat's Bluecurve-theme in Gentoo! - Scorchen - 2004-02-14

Thanks, That is much appreciated! Scorchen

About KDE reverted - Perra - 2002-08-28

* mån aug 26 2002 Phil Knirsch <pknirsch@redhat.com> 3.0.3-5 - Use LANG env as default if available - Fixed general language handling problems * sön aug 25 2002 Than Ngo <than@redhat.com> 3.0.3-4 - revert about KDE, use preference * tor aug 22 2002 Than Ngo <than@redhat.com> 3.0.3-3 - Added katetextbuffermultibyte patch from Leon Ho (bug #61464) - build against new qt

Re: About KDE reverted - Andreas - 2002-08-28

But this is in Rawhide's newest kdebase: * Tue Aug 27 2002 Than Ngo <than@redhat.com> 3.0.3-5 .... - Set help_about_kde to false as default ....

[O.T] Nothing happened to KDE the whole week? - Bug Powder - 2002-08-30

Where are the news?!

Re: [O.T] Nothing happened to KDE the whole week? - Anonymous - 2002-08-30

All developers went to contribute to the different flame wars out there ;-)... http://www.linuxandmain.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=202 http://osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1637 http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2002-08-29-017-26-PS-KE-RH http://www.pclinuxonline.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3110 No, I don't really think that there are many KDE or Gnome developers contributing. :-)

Re: [O.T] Nothing happened to KDE the whole week? - Evan "JabberWokky" E. - 2002-08-30

KDE 3.1 is in a pretty good push for release. Before any semi-major release, things get quiet other than Beta reviews. Other than the Red Hat story, which has not (as far as I've seen) had any definitive facts related about what is going on, and which is covered ad nauseum in the dot already, there really is not much going on. All of what you linked to is rumors, speculation, editorials and positioning. Until Red Hat comes out with a statement or release, I'm not interested in the guesses by people - the only facts that I'be seen were three terse CVS commits. And out of those few notes has risen a panoply of wild gnashing of teeth and a backlash to that reaction. KDE 3.1 interests me far more. YMMV, IANY, F@11. -- Evan

Re: [O.T] Nothing happened to KDE the whole week? - John - 2002-09-01

http://kdenews.unixcode.org/ and http://kdenews.unixcode.org/?node=queue

Another take? - Chris Bordeman - 2002-09-01

Any chance they're blurring the line between KDE and GNOME to ease a transition TO KDE, not away?

Re: Another take? - Navindra Umanee - 2002-09-01

No, absolutely none.

Re: Another take? - Stof - 2002-09-01

And did you know RedHat is actively trying to kill GNOME too? Hell, they've set Mozilla as the default browser instead of Galeon or Nautilus with GtkHTML! And, *gasp*, they've even changed the standard GTK+ 2.0/GNOME stock icons! Oh my god that's horrible!

Re: Another take? - ac - 2002-09-02

It's funny how Mozilla is both a non-GNOME project and a GNOME project, depending on what's convenient for its propoments.

I never liked KDE or Gnome - Inachu - 2002-09-26

Both had this fragmented feel with the interface after a new install. You could find the same icons under several sub menus layered deep inside... So stupid! The modem feature under 6.2 and 7.1 and 7.2 really sucks and it even sucks more so now! But I do love it's plug and play ability........... But I will not use 9.0 as it left out the ability to use play MP3. But back to KDE and GNOME. Both are so badly fractured that it is counter intuative and makes you have that lost feeling everytime you have to go to a submenu was it here or over there???????? STUPID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Re: I never liked KDE or Gnome - standsolid - 2002-11-01

gah... can't we block users with the Operating System Agent "Windows xx" redhat=linux, but linux<>redhat