KDE Looking for Google Summer of Code Students
Friday, 21 March 2008 | Jriddell
Google's Summer of Code will begin accepting applications soon and KDE will be participating for this fourth year. If you are a student over 18 and want to work on KDE this summer take a look at our ideas page. You are not restricted to what is listed there, other projects are welcome. Take the opportunity to talk to potential mentors over e-mail & IRC to see how feasible your project is, then write a project proposal for your application. You will have a week to apply starting from Monday, March 24.
Comments:
The Crushing Truth: Linux - Anonymous Coward - 2008-03-21
Althouth I really like Linux and the free software, I think that we all have to accept the crushing truth. In these times it really doesn't matter if is launched KDE 35.0 or Gnome Vista, because while both environments (and others with less weight as IceWM) were worrying in confusing the user with a completely different aspect, Microsoft was consolidating his position as leader in the field of the operating systems of office, first with the operating system Windows XP (that have approximately 90% of the client operating system market) and with its advanced successor, the recently Windows Vista, that offers a new form to interact with its PC. Is faster, friendlier, and more secure. The reality is that Linux has little to offer to the inexperienced user. The same novice that is seen disconcerted by the impossibility to do a simple one copy-paste between QT and GTK applications. Go out and ask to the people how they install a program that does NOT have packages for its distribucción (because each one has its own packege system, completely incompatible with the others and that requires the use of complicated commands). Still the packages of the same format as RPM, they cannot be installed equally in Mandriva or Suse. Then what we suggest to this user (that is just beginning in the Unix Word) is that he need to download the source code, go to the console, decompress it and compile it. How many they managed to do this? One of each a million, I have to say. We persist in THAT is the normal thing. ..nothing more further from the reality. Explain him why in his Ubuntu, Kubuntu or Fedora cannot see many web pages: he must download the Flash and the Java plugin, in order then to install them with complicated commands. Also make him know that he won't be able to listen its MP3, WMA and WMV files. Tell to the flaming buyer of a new AMD64 how he can play flash games.A shit. And the gamers? Obviously they'll return to windows, because even God can't use the hardware acceleration of the most modern graphics cards (besides, the drivers don't come in the distributions. ..becuase of the fucking freedom) and that games...just a few ones. By each Linux videogame we have 500 that run on Windows. And the few ones that run on Linux...Oh! Surprise!...Just Windows binaries on the CD, and you have to download the Linux version from a website. Finally the user return to the best option, the OS most used on home (all we know what OS is). The proof of the free software failure is seen also in the professional world, either in areas like electronic design (doesn't exist anything similar to Protel), architecture (the standard CAD -all we know wich one-only works on Windows), web design (something similar to Dreamweaver? Don't mention something like NVU, that not only is full of bugs, but also just have the 5% of the Dreamweaver features. Neither Bluefish, Quanta or similars...no one would face a complex project with such a primitive tools). DTP? Scribus is a good try (very immature) but Quark or InDesign are far batter. Flash content creation (A standard, and a flash player installed in the 99% of PCs)? It cannot be done on Linux. In the software development industry there's not a single decent RAD tool. Gambas seems to promise but for now is shit, Eclipse is a RAM eater (thanks Java) that only can be used with 2GB RAM, Kylix promised give the potential of Delphi to Linux, but it was discontinued because the developers hate to pay for licenses and they prefer to use a primitive tool, like KDevelop. And now that we talk about Borland tools, is not rare that programming gurus like Ian Marteens abandoned Delphi and C++ Builder and now prefer the most powerful system for software development: Microsoft Visual Studio.NET. A computer game developer would never develop free (as in free spech) games, because they have to eat and there's not a business model compatible with free software. The Linux users don't want free (as in free spech) games, they just want commercial quality without pay a single buck. Administritive management? In Linux? There's not software in this area. The businessman wants to have something standard, something friendly, something mature. He doesn't want to be fighting with a console, compiling sources for in the end (if he finally get it compile) obtain a half-finished application. If Linux is free (in both senses)...Why the high computers-makers don't preinstall it (just a 1% make that)? Or at least dual-boot? Others, in other hand, opt for FreeDOS. The PC Battle is loss...because it never exist. Linux with it's chaotic development (instead of boost existing applications or create new ones to supply the lacks, we have thousand clones of each one but without finish or that directly just make us laugh) just has dug it's own tomb. The user don't want a degree in Computer Science: He wants to insert the Game CD, make a few clicks and have all installed and running. He doesn't want headaches. He wants visit XXX sites and watch the video correctly. He wants to install his webcam without recompiling the kernel. Keep defending the console. Keep defending LaTeX as if it was something that a secretary or a lawyer have to use with the same simplicity of Microsoft Office. Keep defending Vi as the best tool for software developmnet a web site design.Keep believing that new users need to get close to Debian or Gentoo, taking days to configure a USB modem. Keep insulting distributions like Ubuntu or SuSE because are trying to be friendly. Keep just like this and in the end there will be just three frikis using Linux, while the rest of the world will be using what is already mature and functional: Windows. And You? Where do you want to go today? Thanks for you attention.
Re: The Crushing Truth: Linux - panzi - 2008-03-21
There is some frustrated user who can't handle Linux. Yes its is much more complicated as it has to be. But I like the power of KDE: kio slaves (fish!), virtual desktops, per window/application settings for things like always on top etc., configurable short cuts for everything, a nice quake like terminal (yakuake), a usable shell (bash), an awesome music db application (amarok), an awesome open source burning application (k3b), the ability to script/automate almost all kde/gnome applications (through dcop/d-bus) or just simple things like to move your window with alt+mouse, kill a applikation per ctrl+alt+esc+click, very fast user switching with ctrl+alt+f*. I for myself want miss those features. "A computer game developer would never develop free (as in free spech) games, because they have to eat and there's not a business model compatible with free software." [sic] At least the engine is open source but used in several commercial product: http://www.radonlabs.de/gamesdrakensang.html Speaking of games: One thing you didn't rant about are open formats like ogg vorbis. Commercial games often use ogg vorbis, well because of no license fees. But you see, open source might be used by your favourite game. So if you hate open source so much, uninstall all your games, just to be sure. ;) "The Linux users don't want free (as in free spech) games, they just want commercial quality without pay a single buck." [sic] Not true. Here is a fully open source game for which people already paid even though it's not finished yet: http://apricot.blender.org/ Ok, there could be more buyers, and I hope there will be when more updates will be published. And the same is true for movies: http://peach.blender.org/ For that more people did pay more money in less time than for the game. Maybe movies are more popular in that certain community?
Re: The Crushing Truth: Linux - Keith Bowes - 2008-03-21
And this has what to do with the original post? The truth is the web runs on free software. Ever heard of Apache? PHP? Perl? WordPress and Drupal are free, and there's a free version of Movable Type. Wiki programs are free... IMHO, Flash sucks. And I don't know why everyone gets so up on video games. Sure I loved video games... when I was 12. Vim rules, by the way.
Re: The Crushing Truth: Linux - panzi - 2008-03-21
Don't forget BIND! Without it there would be no internet (not only no web).
Re: The Crushing Truth: Linux - it doesn't matter - 2008-03-21
>And I don't know why everyone gets so up on video games. Sure I loved video games... when I was 12. Maybe becuase they still love them.
Re: The Crushing Truth: Linux - Spanner - 2008-03-21
You're not entirely wrong. The battle for the desktop happened before KDE 1.0 was released. We will never have the same breadth of desktop software (even if much of it is rubbish - I give you BonziBuddy) that Windows does. It does not matter though. If we have enough good software that most users who chance on KDE are happy, or better, are delighted, we will survive. If we survive, we will win. We don't have to make money to keep going, our goal is to make the best environment there is. We don't have shareholders directing how our desktop works, we have people who use our system every day, who are passionate about it, making the decisions. No adverts, no sales pitch, no nonsense. Our brethren who work with embedded systems every day already use what we create and already outsell Microsoft with it, making a lot of money. Our sisters who write web applications also reuse our work daily in preference to anything else, also making serious money. Our work in combination with our web partners is more popular than Microsoft by a ratio of 4 to 1. We give our work away to anyone who wants it, whether they are poor, sick, or otherwise needy, or rich, able-bodied and greedy. Microsoft doesn't. Your profits are bigger with us leading the way, because we don't charge you an entry fee. We work with more hardware than Microsoft, we are faster and more efficient than Microsoft. We scale from watches to supercomputers. Microsoft doesn't. You can trust your data with us because you can see what our programs do: you can't with Microsoft. Let's not forget what Microsoft did for us - we wouldn't have the personal computer as we know it without them. However, Microsoft was the pinnacle of the last century. We are the future, and increasingly, the now. Get used to it.
Re: The Crushing Truth: Linux - Piotr Petrov - 2008-03-21
I agree to an extent with the OP. Steve Jobs looked at Ed Roberts (of MITS) Altair and realised that for every person who had the skills and inclination to build one from kit parts, there were 20 who would buy a finished device just to use it. Turned out he was right. Same thing applies in the mass market for software. To expect all users to develop certain OS skills in order to install and use apps and hardware is wrong headed, like expecting people buying a car to know how to service it and change parts, any project with that attitude will remain niche. Right now, for tech users, the free software world offers far superior options and will increasingly do so, there are no constraints on what you can do with your system. Also, mainstream office needs are well met for the masses. It's the "power users" in the middle who are comparatively under served. The trends are all important. Free software is growing and maturing and in time the apps will get better, and hardware support too. It's a bit crazy to expect to match the MS and Apple stables very rapidly, but looking at what's available now versus five years ago it's clear to see that things are headed in the free direction.
Re: The Crushing Truth: Linux - Alibegovic - 2008-03-21
Shall we compare: HP 2710p laptop/tablet, 1GB RAM, dual-core Intel processor. I reinstalled Vista because the HP pre-install had so much additional crap on it it doubled the time it took to become usable after boot. Incidentally, both installations supported all of the hardware out of the box, except the fingerprint reader, which needed drivers for both OS. I tried to install XP on this machine to make it 'fair' but the XP video drivers were so buggy as to be unusable (kept coming up in different resolution to what was selected, bluescreened after about 20 minutes). Vista: 7 minutes 10 secs until usable (i.e. start menu would respond in under a second), 760MB used after initial login. Battery life 4 hours 45 minutes. I had to switch Aero off because it was too slow to be usable (3 secs+ to fade in start menu after clicking immediately after login). Kubuntu 7.10: 2 minutes 15 seconds until usable (same criteria, though it's the K menu this time), 280MB used after initial login. Battery life 8 hours 5 minutes. Installing Compiz added about 2 seconds to the boot time and reduced the battery life by about 30 minutes. Launching MS Word 2003 (in Crossover 6.2.1 on Linux, all tests no Compiz, no Aero on Windows, immediately after cold reboot and initial login): Vista: 12 seconds Kubuntu 7.10: 9 seconds Launching native Firefox 2: Vista: 7 seconds Kubuntu 7.10: 3 seconds Launching native OpenOffice.org Calc 2.3 Vista: 42 seconds Kubuntu 7.10: 11 seconds Text entry speed (including errors/corrections) in tablet mode Vista: 28wpm (cursive handwriting recognition, fastest unless dasher is installed) Kubuntu 7.10: 57wpm (dasher) All good reasons to be using Windows, yes?
Re: The Crushing Truth: Linux - JRT - 2008-03-21
As we should all know, when competing against a monopolist, having a better produce is not sufficient. :-) Although it is possible that Vista was a bridge too far for MS.
Re: The Crushing Truth: Linux - renoX - 2008-03-21
>All good reasons to be using Windows, yes? Note that for a reference, on a Celeron333 MHz with 128MB of RAM, the time from the GRUB screen to a responsive BeOS desktop was well under 20s. To compare with the time you measured, one need to add the BIOS initialisation time, but 20s+BIOS is a priori much smaller than 2 minutes 15 seconds. And BeOS's applications felt much more responsive that either Windows XP or Linux. Sure BeOS is dead, but it still show that Linux has still a lot of potential progress to do: Linux is way better than Vista but unfortunately still way worse than BeOS was..
Re: The Crushing Truth: Linux - ac - 2008-03-21
I regret that dot.kde.org doesn't take any measure against that kind of troll. A moderation system, hiding the most negatively rated comments, would prevent such irrelevant offtopic posts from hijacking a whole story's comments section.
Re: The Crushing Truth: Linux - Mark Kretschmann - 2008-03-21
Indeed, a moderation system is badly needed. Maybe just use Slashcode?
Re: The Crushing Truth: Linux - Erunno - 2008-03-21
The problem with such systems is that not only blatant troll postings get voted down but also more often than not unpopular opinions will get voted down as well. For this reason alone I always read hidden comments as well which kinda makes the whole system absurd in the first place. A voting system is nothing more than mob justice and that is something that has been abolished in most modern societies.
Re: The Crushing Truth: Linux - jackuess - 2008-03-21
"Explain him why in his Ubuntu, Kubuntu or Fedora cannot see many web pages: he must download the Flash and the Java plugin, in order then to install them with complicated commands. Also make him know that he won't be able to listen its MP3, WMA and WMV files. Tell to the flaming buyer of a new AMD64 how he can play flash games.A shit." I call BS. Last time I ran Windows I indeed had to install both a flash plugin and a java plugin in order to get those things going. While I didn't have to install an MP3 codec, I sure had to install codecs for a lot of other media formats (xvid to name one). Furthermore I my self have an AMD64 and I can play flash games just fine, since I have 32bit installation. Sure flash and a few other things are holding me back a bit, but I hear 64bit Windows isn't all that perfect eighter.
Re: The Crushing Truth: Linux - Anonymous Coward Too - 2008-03-21
The fact that you replied an off-topic rant in a post entitled "KDE Looking for Google Summer of Code Students" proves that Free and Open Source Software has reached a wider audience than yesteryears since people like you are now coming to KDE Dot News.
Re: The Crushing Truth: Linux - Stefan Majewsky - 2008-03-21
If FOSS is such bullshit, I wonder why nearly all my fellow students switched to Linux in only one year (only two of about twenty remaining).
muahahaha - Thomas - 2008-03-21
> The Linux users don't want free (as in free spech) games, they just want commercial quality without pay a single buck. Well, from my experience... that's exactly the habit of most windows users. The license for the OS comes with buying the PC (they don't feel it, cause the dealer is not telling 'em how much of the buying price is license fee to Microsoft)... Anything else is going to be ripped, pirated... whatever... The usual windows users has MS Office Pro, has Adobe Photoshop, has full Acrobat Pro, several pirated games, WinZip full... crackz and serialz are the business in the windows world.... the number of cracked Vista installations is inreasing rapidly (cause nobody wants the "home edition", which is rather cheap and is what you usually get as consumer) We have several OSS alternatives on hand in the Linux world. But if you want to have CAD and ERP solutions (as I do) on Linux, there're several commercial offers available. Usually people in the OSS world do care a lot more about licenses and the charges for using commercial software, than you obiously expect. There's no need to install Linux just to get something "for free" (as in free beer), because software piracy is a flourishing business in the Windows world. You're going to give Linux a try for various other reasons. First, you want to do more than just playing games on your machine. Second, you freak out with this Vista-thingy, cause it just gets on your nerves... You feel like banging your head against a wall all the time when using Vista (honestly, this really is how a lot of people who just want to work with their PCs are feeling atm...) You start to look for something else (in the hope it might suit your needs better). You can try Apple and Mac OS X... and you can try Linux. _That's_ what's happening atm.... Most people will like what they see when trying Linux, some won't... I just spoke to someone who tried Linux after his personal Vista desaster. He told me, he feels "free" now. It's like you're loosing 20 pounds of weight. It's slick, it's powerful and it's full of nice nifty (and actually useful) things (he was speaking of KDE).
Re: The Crushing Truth: Linux - JRT - 2008-03-21
There are some valid points here, and some things that are totally wrong. But first we need to make clear that KDE IS NOT LINUX. We have MS to blame for that comfusion, I suppose. They "Bolted" a GUI onto DOS and called the package Windows (even illegally registered "Windows" as a trademark -- I suppose that this is possible because X used the term "Window" [no 's']) but I digress. KDE is not Linux, but rather a GUI that will run on any OS that uses the X-Window system and also KDE applications will run on some that don't. KDE applications will even run on windows although we can not yet run KDE on the OS that underlies MS-Windows. MS has not consolidated its position in the field of operating systems. Last time I checked, the server market is still open and a lot of it is held by UNIX variants including Linux. To measure this market, we need a metric other than units sold. They had won the browser wars although they used clearly illegal means to do it. Now they see the handwriting on the wall: IE8 will be standards compliant. I expect some remaining problems with this, but the EU Commission will probably take care of it -- competition will be restored in the browser market. Where they have really consolidated their position is in the office suite software market and the desktop OS market followed. Again, they didn't hesitate to use illegal methods to finish of their main competitor. But, this is still an open issue. We don't know how many Billion dollars that Novell will ultimately receive in the WordPerfect case which is still open and still in the US court system. The wordprocessor market does tend to be a natural monopoly, or rather the file format is a natural monopoly. A natural monopoly means that government regulation is inevitable. The US DOJ has been reluctant but the EU Commission is not. Will OOXML and ODF be merged? Will the next version of MS-Word use ODF as one of its native formats? I don't understand about the cut and paste issue. This is not KDE and it is not Linux. Cut and paste is handled by X11. It it doesn't work correctly, there are bugs that need to be fixed. You are quite correct about fragmentation of Linux (the RPM problem). This is the problem that hobbled UNIX for many years. This must be fixed and those that are supposed to be working on it are not addressing the issue. Installing from source is one solution for this problem. If every piece of software built with no problem, it might even be a viable one. I have (mostly) a LFS installation and I can tell you that lots of stuff installs perfectly -- it could be done by a script -- there are some things that don't. :-( I say mostly LFS because I found that it is (or was) a good idea to use some Fedora stuff for compatibility (unfortunately -- more fragmentation problems -- this doesn't work very well anymore although I do have the system set up like a Fedora system). This is not good. Just because I studied EE/CS in college and can do this doesn't mean that it is simple -- and is should be simple; there is no reason for it not to be simple. Browser plugins are an important issue. But, it is not as you state. IE does not come with Java. Firefox will install plugins on Linux just as on Windows -- if they can do it, we should be able to as well. The KDE browser plugin software has languished. This is partly due to the KDE tower of babel syndrome. We tend to have something other than a useful engineer's argument (they soon develop into flame wars) about how to fix things and the result is that, eventhough we agree that the current code is bad, it doesn't get fixed because there is no agreement on how to fix it. This was (or is) so bad with Konqueror that a new application was developed (Dolphin) rather than add needed features to Konqueror. I have no problems with MP3 (an obsolete format that should be deprecated), WMA, & WMV files. But you are correct that there are issues with including this in a distro. RealPlayer (free Linux version) will play MP3 files (at least it will on my system). Just download it and stop complaining that everything wasn't included -- having the InterNet is a good thing. If you have an x86 system, you can download files from somewhere in Hungary and then play WMA & WMV files, it is important to understand what is happening here. MS made these file formats to deliberately be incompatible with everything else. We can all help here by refusing to use these non-standard formats. It is more likely that the EU Commission's recent actions against WMP will have a greater effect by breaking the monopolist's food chain. AFAIK, it is possible to run 32bit Flash on a 64bit system. A distro should come with this already set up. With games, there is nothing about X11/OpenGL that makes it in anyway inferior as a platform for commercial games. Games made to run on the KDE desktop do not have to be free software. Qt is available with a commercial license and the needed KDE libraries should be LGPL. Have you considered that Windows games are still sold on CDs because they figure that there are lots of Windows users that are too stupid to download an ISO and burn it on a CD? The InterNet is a good thing -- having to order plastic disks is less good. There is just that one small problem: the proprietary graphics cards. So, do NOT buy one. Either buy an Intel system with the GPU in the NorthBridge or get a Radion 9200 and wait till ATI graphics is 100% free again (documentation is being distributed as I write this). I admit that setting up the graphics system for the 9200 was not simple, but then I have an all from source system. I must presume that with a distro that it would be no problem as long as you have a GPU for which a free driver (actually a module) exists. But yes, the GPL is too restrictive when it comes to using GPL software with other libraries. These other libraries are often needed and this restriction is detrimental to the growth of Linux. > The proof of the free software failure is seen also in the professional world ... Yes, and most true professional engineering software runs on UNIX, but it is NOT free. Most actual professional EDA (electronic design) is available for UNIX/Linux. If you want personal level tools, gEDA is available for free. The same is true of REAL CAD, it is almost all UNIX. The only exception is Auto-CAD which did seem to find a market niche and get a high price for Windows software. As with EDA, personal level CAD is available free for UNIX/Linux. I use Q-CAD (qcad.org). The personal version is free. An interesting issue is whether Auto-CAD is really better than VeriCAD? Or, is it just the Chavis Regal effect? I don't know why Adobe hasn't released Dreamweaver for *NIX other than OS/X yet. Perhaps it is because they don't think that there is a market for it. After acquiring Macromedia, they did release a new version that is supposed to be totally W3C compliant (the previous versions which weren't would not sell well at all for Linux). Currently, it does offer what no other web development tool does. It is integrated and simple to use yet it will produce standards compliant code. OTOH, you need to realize that many web developers write things by hand because they prefer this method. I also noticed that you didn't mention WebSphere. Do you have a specific complaint about Scribus? You say that other applications have more features. Some consider MS-Windows applications to suffer from feature bloat!. Don't people that do DTP still use Apple systems? What you say about Flash content creation makes little sense. Flash is a proprietary format. There would be little market for software to create Flash for Linux. The W3C standard is SMLE and I am disappointed that applications to create SMLE content are not available. Actually, Adobe would really need to add good SMLE support to Dreamweaver before releasing it for Linux. I am not a fan of RAD, but here is a list of what is available for Linux: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Rapid_Application_Development_tools You now seem to be veering off from the valid points when you suggest: Microsoft Visual Studio. If you use any MS development tool, you will find that it contains proprietary extensions and your work will be useless for anything but MS-Windows. I don't see the power in an IDE. I write code, I compile it, I try it and if it doesn't work, I use the debugger. If you want to do this with a GUI shell, there are such packages for Linux. Have you tried Eclipse? You really miss the point here: > A computer game developer would never develop free (as in free speech) games, because they have to eat. Nobody said that games for Linux, UNIX, OS/X, Solaris, etc have to be free at all. There is nothing to prevent anyone from writing a non-free game for *NIX and charging money for it. It is just that this is driven by the market. That is why there aren't a lot of games for OS/X either. It is not in any way a limitation of the system. > Administrative management? In Linux? There's not software in this area. Do you mean System Administration? KDE has GUI tools for most of this. Kuser. KSysV & Kpackage for example. And yes, somethings are better done with the command line. I think that even MS-Windows system administrators use it. > If Linux is free (in both senses)...Why the high computers-makers don't reinstall it (just a 1% make that)? Or at least dual-boot? Others, in other hand, opt for FreeDOS The Linux market is perceived as being made up of people that would rather install it themselves. > Others, in other hand, opt for FreeDOS. Yes, that evil monopolist is still on the loose and committing extortion. Why are systems shipped with FreeDOS? Because it is a loophole in the Faustian contract that computer companies are forced to sigh in order to ship systems with MS-Windows. In case you don't know, they have to agree not to sell any system without an OS. Sad isn't it. And you probably thought that the antitrust action settled this. Well it didn't. You are correct in a way that there is no PC battle. The evil monopolist is still out there. I don't see it as a battle; I see it as competition and till we have full time Court supervision of MS (something that seems to be coming in the EU), there will be no competition except for the niche markets. > Keep defending ... There is no need to defend any of this. People use them because they like them better. Microsoft Office is anything but simple to use for complex documents -- ever wonder why lawyers still use WordPerfect? The GUI gives the impression of simplicity, but WYSIWYG wordprocessing is not as simple as using a markup language. And no you don't have to use LaTeX directly, there are several nice GUI frontends for it -- for KDE, it is Kyle. Same with editors, people use their favorite editor because they like it and I have no reason to debate that with them. People, such as me, develop from the command line rather than a GUI/IDE because we like it. Same with HTML, people write it by hand because that is the way that they like to develop. I use SeaMonkey or OpenOffice for basic stuff. They are more than sufficient for basic web page stuff. And finally, there is the USB modem. There is no such thing as a USB modem. It is, like the WinModem a fraud where most of the modem is in software and must run on your processor. You would NEVER want to use such a product on a multitasking OS because the advantage of being able to download while you are doing something else is lost. I am on DSL now. That was really simple. I told the system to start the dhcpcd (yes you can use a GUI to do that). When I used dial up, I installed a REAL modem and never did anything except use the configuration GUI for KPPP. I never did any other sysadmin. The OS found the modem and configured it on boot with no problem. Where would I like to go today? As far from Bill Gates as possible; where I am free to do what I want the way I want. I bought a PERSONAL COMPUTER because I wanted my own computer. That does not mean a system dedicated to running only MS software. Yes, it is currently not as simple as OS/X, but don't compare a Linux distro to MS-Windows. Walter Mosberg (WSJ) compared Ubuntu. OS/X, and Vista, he rated Vista third for non-techies (as he calls them). Yes, OS/X came in first and it probably always will since Linux software will always give up some ease of use to gain power. Perhaps you don't understand that yet.
Re: The Crushing Truth: Linux - OC - 2008-03-21
Are you the same who posted http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2005-12-13-013-26-OS-DT-GN-0004 two years ago?
Let me get this straight - T. J. Brumfield - 2008-03-21
You're ocmplaining that free software written by volunteers isn't always better than commercial softwae, and you're upset about it? It is free. If you don't like it, then don't use it. You don't like that Ubuntu is OSS only? Install Mint or Sabayon. You prefer In Design, then dual-boot, or install it via Wine, or whatever. Last time I checked, Linux has made HUGE strides in working out of the box for most uses for most users. It doesn't always work for every use, for every user. It is a different beast that is designed for a different market to do different things. It isn't Windows, and thank God for that!
Re: Let me get this straight - JRT - 2008-03-21
> You're complaining that free software written by volunteers isn't always > better than commercial software, and you're upset about it? Well, I complain about that and although many have disagreements with me, nobody has accused me of being anti-Linux. In fact I just installed another Linux system today -- yes folks, my new Sony TV runs Linux and came with a GPL license statement. So, no matter what is said about desktops for Linux, the Linux OS isn't going away any time soon. IAC, I don't think that it is fair to the people that write OSS to call them mere 'volunteers'. They are hobbyists, and many people take their hobbies seriously. Some of these hobbyists are IT, CS, EE professionals (you know the people that the self taught hackers like to denigrate :-)) My complaint is a little more specific. I think that if people would take the personal responsibility to fix the bugs that OSS would easily be superior to commercial software. Yes, I know that it isn't as much fun, but we also take satisfaction in a job well done -- in the final project. You learn this contingency of reinforcement in engineering school. I don't know how to teach it to others. So, that is my manifesto on how to achieve world dominance. :-D
Re: Let me get this straight - T. J. Brumfield - 2008-03-22
I avoid terms like hobbyist because it takes away from the professional caliber of many of the coders. I use the term volunteer to reflect that most of them aren't being paid, though corporations like Novell, HP, IBM, Google, etc. do pay for coders to release OSS code.
Re: The Crushing Truth: Linux - ac - 2008-03-21
Why do you keep spamming forums with the same lame article all over the place? http://www.linux.com/?module=comments&func=display&cid=1185655
Re: The Crushing Truth: Linux - it doesn't matter - 2008-03-22
I just wanna say something. Why lame article? It sure have errors but, IMHO, it's not completly wrong. PD: I'm not the article writer.
Re: The Crushing Truth: Linux - kwilliam - 2008-03-22
All of you! Shame on all of you! I don't know which is worse, that we have no moderation system to bury such off-topic rants, or that you've fed so many lengthy posts to the troll. And just so I'm not merely feeding the troll myself, here's a Google Summer of Code suggestion for KDE: Create a simple moderation system for the Dot comments section.
Re: The Crushing Truth: Linux - MamiyaOtaru - 2008-03-22
Obvioustroll is obvious. That said, "becuase of the fucking freedom" GTFO. Linux is obviously not for you.
Funny - ethana2 - 2008-03-21
We're picking up resent from windows users. I find this funny. In the meantime, I have like 4 converts within the last two months, I'm starting to run into other people who have heard of Ubuntu, one distribution has finally begun to seriously defragment desktop linux, and brainstorm has come. Drivers are getting so much more awesome every day it's scary, and Dell is offering Ubuntu Gutsy on some systems. Will they roll out Gutsy on more systems? I hope not. ...they need to be making sure their whole line works well with Hardy, it's out soon. And so far, my Dell hardware does. (Thanks, intel!) In short, give that boy a year or two, and he'll be eating his words. Why spend money on a mac? Ubuntu is better anyway. Besides, linux already has more games than OSX.
Original Subject., or should we start a new page? - JRT - 2008-03-21
I really hope that we don't have another problem with a SOC project like we did with Okular. People are still unhappy about it and we lost not only some good developers but their work that is now orphaned. So, I hope that SOC can produce something new that is not a replacement for an existing application. My suggestions are: Karbon & Kocoa. For those that don't get it these would be toolkits to run Mac OS/X applications on any system that runs KDE. A way for KDE to manage local printers without having to use CUPS and with PPD files like OO uses. I would really like to see a KPart that will correctly render SVGs that are a little more complicated than the basic ones we use for Icons. Remember when we had the SVG background contest and KDE software wouldn't properly render many of the entrants. This could be done by adapting Apache Batik (which is Java). Either use JNI or see if GCJ will actually work. We need a SMIL player (a KPart). But, what OSS really needs is a SMIL development program that can produce content as good as Flash. SMIL is almost up to version 3.0 and it is going nowhere due to a lack of software support. IAC, please try to think of things that are missing rather than starting what can only be called an ego trip to make a new app that is better than an existing one, as opposed to making an existing app better which is a good thing. KDE is missing many XDG desktop integration features. These don't seem significant -- just little things, but they are very important to implement.
Re: Original Subject., or should we start a new pa - jospoortvliet - 2008-03-21
Karbon & Kocoa. Aside from possible legal issues and the fact it's probably hardly possible, it's way out of scope for a SOC (in terms of size, I mean). The printer thing: why duplicate work which is done in a well-maintained underlying system within a desktop environment? Would love a better way of viewing SVG, but then I'd rather see it in Gwenview so it can show SVG's like any other picture (and it already provides a KPart). SMIL is coming, partly, in kmplayer. Maybe someone wants to help there... Maybe the XDG stuff is interesting as well. As you seem to know a lot about it, why not take that on yourself?
Re: Original Subject., or should we start a new pa - Dan - 2008-03-21
Any improvements to svg should go into ksvgrenderer, this will ensure that all applications using svg's get the benefits, not simply an application to display them.
Re: Original Subject., or should we start a new pa - Dan - 2008-03-21
Err make that qsvgrenderer.
Re: Original Subject., or should we start a new pa - JRT - 2008-03-23
WINE more or less works and it is an attempt to reverse engineer a totally closed system. As I said, Cocoa and Carbon are well documented and a lot of Cocoa is based on code that is now opensource (gnuSTEP). There is an old expression about using a sledge hammer to kill a gnat. I see no duplication of work a simple print system; there isn't a lot of work to duplicate in any case since I am suggesting a *simple* system for a single user to drive one or two printers. If GwenView doesn't use the same code that SVG Part uses, perhaps there are architectural issues that need to be addressed. Yes, whatever is done it should be available in all apps.