KDE, KMail Voted Best of Breed by Linux Journal Readers

Linux Journal has announced the winners of its 2002 (8th Annual) Readers' Choice Awards. According
to Linux Journal, [a]lmost 6,000 Linux Journal readers visited
the Linux Journal web site and voted on their top choices in 25
categories
. KDE took the honors in the Favorite Desktop
Environment
category, and KMail
in the Favorite E-mail Client category. Grab the November
2002 Linux Journal issue (#103) from your nearest newsstand
to read more.

Dot Categories: 

Comments

by Guenter Schwann (not verified)

kwav?
This program is dead for 4(?) years now, and only available for KDE 1.

ciao

[about the now dead Kwav]
Argh... Is there another similar KDE program ? Or even a Gnome one, or else... ?

by Guenter Schwann (not verified)

Have a look at audacity:

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

ciao

Thank you, it's interesting, however limited (for a windows user of such a tool) and not very ergonomic (for a KDE user). It lacks such a KDE tool...

by Saurabh Nanda (not verified)

I've tried KBear myself. It sucks big time. The interface is too cluttered and compilcated. The whole thing kept crashing left and right. Still searching for a decent KDE ftp client. Have to open console and use ncftp everytime. For me ncftp rocks!!

Nandz.
http://home.iitk.ac.in/student/nanda

I prefer Kasablanca, very clean and lightweight - http://kasablanca.berlios.de/

using suse9.3 whick comes with kbear for some reason. It sucks. crashes etc. I use gftp which just works. Wish there was filezilla for *nix

KBEAR!!
yeah it sucks big time. its in suse 10.
IT CRASHES, IS MESSING UP WITH POLISH FONTS (GETTING SOME SQUARES INSTEAD OF LETTERS) AND IT'S MESSING UP WITH THE KICKER AND BAGHIRA STYLE. THIS SOFTWARE IS CRAP INDEED.

THX
TIGGY

by Somebody (not verified)

Hey, why does dot.kde.org still use GIFsinstead of PNGs ??

--> http://www.burnallgifs.org

by Stof (not verified)

Yes, and PNGs are smaller too.

by Evan "JabberWok... (not verified)

Not always - I preferentially use PNG, but don't have a horrible problem with using GIF. Sometimes the GIF is smaller.

Now if only all browsers supported a full range of alpha transparancy rather than thresholding it - then I'd be happy. :(

--
Evan

by Navindra Umanee (not verified)

Practically all graphical browsers support gifs, even the free ones, and even the extremely old ones. Why don't you write them and tell them to stop supporting gifs?

That would be better and if new browsers came without gif support, I would ditch backwards-compatibility in favour of forwards-compatibility. Another reason for ditching the gifs of course is if they pose a real practical problem. Is there any reason to claim that our gifs are not legitimate?

In any case, it is easy to fall back on the original PNGs.

by Alain (not verified)

> Why don't you write them and tell them to stop supporting gifs?

It is explain here : http://burnallgifs.org/

(but I have a site and I keep the gifs, I only use png for new images... Perhaps when I will do a big reorganisation... I remember there is an easy program, gif2png...)

by Mike Hill (not verified)

I'm a GNOME user but respect the work that is/was put into KDE. But I have to say, I almost fell out of my chair when I read that Kmail was voted best email client. Was Evolution not reviewed? Even with Evolution being a complete Groupware product, it's email client was far superior to Kmail (from where I'm sitting). Please don't take this as flame, I'm just a little confused/stunned...

by fault (not verified)

> it's email client was far superior to Kmail (from where I'm sitting).

I don't think this is necessarily so with recent versions of kmail.

> Was Evolution not reviewed?

I beleive it was one of the choices. It's a shame that LinuxJournal didn't list second and third like last year (http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=5441)

by ac (not verified)

I find that evolution has a cluttered and complicated user interface. Kmail's is much nicer. I find Kmails pop support to be good and the imap to be average. As I mostly use pop and rarely imap, I think Kmail is pretty good for me. Maybe evolution is a good choice for groupware or imap (never tried evo imap). I think in the future (3.2), kde will catch up on the groupware and imap support, so things will even up on those fronts, which is good.

by rkm (not verified)

I have tried Evolution and even upgraded it twice to see how fast it was growing. I can compare it with Outlook and kmail (a little). To start,
1. Evolution delivery and/or read confirmation.
2. Cutting and pasting from calendar to email (or vice versa) is not in the menu or right clickable. It can be done with keyboard shortcuts but isn't documented.
3. Evolution will not offer you to receive mail from any single source. just all or nothing. The work-around is to disable the ones you don't need.

Outlook simply surpasses Evolution but Ximian is doing not so bad job. They just need to put out an upgrade with some 'wow!' to it. Kmail has more (so far) and as far as the term 'Groupware goes', isn't KDE in a sense Window Manager 'ware'? It really shouldn't matter if the programs are all under one roof. In fact, to me 'groupware' means that you have to put up with other things that you don't need while you are checking your email or calendar.

Also, what's 'Red Carpet' all about? Does your RPM need an RCM?

by Mike Hill (not verified)

Okay, I had to check this out. KMail has improved a lot since the last time I saw it. It supports HTML now I see (that should tell you how long it's been, or is that new with KDE3?). I see it's still using KDE's address book, which leaves a lot to be desired when compared to evo's contact manager. The UI is nice and simple...I like that (agreed evo's could use some cleaning up). I guess I'm just partial to having my calendar, contacts, task, and oh yea...the most excellent Summary page all within one click. But for an email client, KMail has come along way. Good job KDE team!

by TIC (not verified)

KMail is just a mail client, and a very good one. If you want something that acts like evolution you should check out kontact that is using different clients as KParts and will give you a better end result: Summary (Kontact), Mail (KMail), Contacts (k address book), ToDo (Korganizer+Kontact), Calendar (Korganizer), News (Knode) and Notes. It is much better than evolution and you have the same single interface... you don't need to use separate applications in separate windows. KMail also facilitates access to groupware functionality for IMAP or other.
I think that even kaddressbook is much better than evolution.
And best of all... kde always compiles without problems. Evolution needs packages that are considered obsolete since gnome-2.4.
It's true, there are still problems with kmail (panic when something's going wrong with the remote IMAP folders) and I haven't figure out exactly how to use the IMAP Resource Folder Option but I think that kontact beats evolution by far... There was no visible evolution in Evolution lately while kontact applications went through a radical transformation.

by me (not verified)

me too - evolution rocks

by Jeff (not verified)

I noticed that evolution is done by Novell, which creates SuSE. Doesn't SuSE use KDE by default? I wonder if evolution maybe doesn't have as much attention as it could get? Maybe that's what did it.

Anyway, Kmail is actually now part of a KDE groupware client: kontact.

by John (not verified)

1. Kaddressbook sucks. No way to sort by last name that will stay. And, your preferences dont stay. What I mean is, in Kaddressbook you get a list of all your contacts with the "file as" "email" "business phone" columns etc. all squished together. So, I resize them but they don't stay. Are either of these things addressed in KDE 3.1? Please, someone tell me.

2. No reply button when you open up a message. Yes, I know you can right click or type "R" or whatever, but I like buttons. No reply button.

3. No way to eliminate the preview pane.

by Anonymous (not verified)

Much of kaddressbook has been rewritten for KDE 3.1.