Quickies: Yangchunbaixue, libkdegames, KDE Release Updates

In a commendable flurry of submissions, Anonymous wrote in with a link to an announcement from China-based Dynasoft on a "sophisticated Chinese
KDE desktop environment, hybridly-licensed, and based on Red Hat Linux 7.1". Looks promising (English, Chinese), although the screenshot section is a bit wack. Andreas Beckermann wrote in with an announcement for KGame -- the short is that KGame is part of libkdegames and provides a sweet API to make the life of the game designer that much easier. Jono Bacon wrote in to tell us about the first interview on enterprise.kde.org; it's with Shawn Gordon of theKompany. Moritz Moeller-Herrmann pointed us to an indepth perspective on CDE, KDE, GNOME featured on ZDNet. Naturally, they like KDE. Finally, George Russell wrote in with the latest updates on all of two (2) upcoming KDE releases: "The developer site has a preliminary release schedule for a 2.2.2 release - incremental bug fixes over 2.2.1 - details are here on the KDE site. The KDE 3 Alpha 1 release will be on Friday. Release coordinator spells out the reasons for the 1 week delay in this email on the core development lists." Thar you go, thanks to all.

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Comments

by Justin (not verified)

"Trolltech licensed [Qt] under a different public license (BSD-type public license) than the Free Software Foundation's (GNU Project General Public License [GPL]) used for Linux."

This could cause some confusion for anyone reading about this for the first time on ZDnet. QPL is not BSD-style.

What? GNOME folks are unhappy that people can develop closed-source apps with this "BSD Qt" so they create their own LGPL widget set? LOL

A bit of a clueless statement on the part of ZDnet.

by Anonymous (not verified)

> A bit of a clueless statement on the part of ZDnet.

Well, of course! This is ZDNet, remember?

Useless bashing apart, the article has many problems, some technical, some trivial, and most because they're biased towards GNOME. "GNOME is rapidly catching up" is one of those examples. (Note that I don't say it's false per se) No basis for their statements, no sources, no nothing.

GNOME is catching up? Yes, of course it is. It suddenly has adopted arTs, has managed to cool down from its "We're LGPL'ed and better than you" position and has been told humility in the most direct way: It's been badly beaten in terms of quality, and has lost its licensing 'superiority'. Eazel has gone under, with its only product being criticized violently across the board. Ximian still shows no sign of anything save for going the Microsoft way and outputing a PIM(P).

GNOME is catching up? Yes. Is there anything else it did? Well, it was probably the main reason behind GPL'ing Qt. Has GNOME outlived its usefulness? Yes.

But you won't see that in ZDNet.

by Wiggle (not verified)

>GNOME is catching up?

No, GNOME is already ahead in everything but the final bit of polish on the desktop - something that GNOME 2.0 will bring.

As for aRTS... it's not part of GNOME, and probably never will be. Who wants something so complex, bloated and full of horrible latency? There is no official GNOME sound system, it's not considered an important thing (and before you start screaming about that, try thinking it through).

by Roberto Alsina (not verified)

* GNOME is already ahead in everything

Comgratulations, you substantiate your opinion even less than ZDNet.

by Wiggle (not verified)

>Comgratulations, you substantiate your opinion even less than ZDNet.

No, congratulations to you. You selectively edit extremely well...

by Roberto Alsina (not verified)

"Selectively edit" as opposed to what? accidental edition?

by Niftie (not verified)

For all of you who didn't read the huge "discussion" about QCom:

Wiggle is a troll.

A troll is a person who dumps shit in debates for the only pupose of disrupting the discussion. The only thing we can do about such persons, is to ignore them. Then they will go away.

Therefore, please ignore Wiggle and his so called "opinions".

by Carbon (not verified)

Perhaps dot kde should implement a login system, similar to freekde.

We've got to do something about trolls before we get like Slashdot. Plus, as it stands, anyone can adopt anyone's name and email, which can seriously cause flamewars.

by not me (not verified)

A site needs a fairly large dedicated readership before it can start requiring memberships to post. If not enough people register, the discussions die off and the site goes downhill. I don't know if the Dot's readership is high enough to make a required membership system work.

Plus, usually making an account is a matter of minutes and it won't stop the more determined trolls. The only permanent solution is a Slashdot-like moderation system, which I would hate to see the Dot have to adopt. I like the approach that's been taken so far.

by Joergen Ramskov (not verified)

Yes! I would like to see a login system on "The Dot". I don't want to enter my name each time I want to post anything.

It would be cool if there was an option to NOT display anonymous posts and/or even more cool, be able to hide posts on a per user basis.

As an example, I should be able to hide/ignore all posts from user "Wiggle". That would make the page load 10 times as fast too :)

by Navindra Umanee (not verified)

You shouldn't need to enter your name each time you want to post -- cookies should take of that.

-N.

by Wiggle (not verified)

>Perhaps dot kde should implement a login system, similar to freekde.
>We've got to do something about trolls before we get like Slashdot.

Yeah, and look how successful slashdot logins are at stopping trolls!

by Flagg (not verified)

They are not supposed to stop them, just make them invisible.

by Wiggle (not verified)

You don't need a user system to moderate posts.

by Carbon (not verified)

Translation : "Yes, don't try this! It certainly won't stop me. There is no need to try this method at all!"

by Evandro (not verified)

Stop trolling.

by Graphite (not verified)

Sorry, but I just found it kind of amusing that in a discussion about how to stop trolling, the guy who had trolled in the first place was talking about how a particular method wouldn't stop trolls. Kind of M.C. Esher-ish.

by C. Evans (not verified)

I posted a suggestion about this on the GNOME website a while ago, after someone started posting comments under Miguel de Icaza's name talking about the wonders of Qt (a bit of an extreme case, I must say).

It would be best to have a partial login system. In this way, people could register and that name and email would become reserved, so people could not post under a false name. However, all other names and emails would be allowed to post in the current way.

In this way, registration could be limited only to developers, etc. and the post header could be a different colour to notify people that that comment was from a credible source.

Constantine Karastamatis

by ik (not verified)

hey guys calm down ... apart from some articles, we dont really have a troll problem
on the dot. only once upon a time something bad happens, but it doesn't really disturb
the normal discussion. So the current policy of adding '[troll]' to the subject or remoiving the posts
(with a 'troll removed' message) seems perfect to me ...

by Evandro (not verified)

The QCom discussion is the QCom discussion and it's not in this thread.

If what Wiggle posted in this thread is trolling, then a guy trolled against GNOME before him. Is that allowed?

by Carbon (not verified)

No, the guy before him made a point of being reasonable about the topic. A troll isn't just someone who posts about liking GNOME on dot.kde. It has to do with the fact that he's obviously not trying to contribute to the discussion, but from his lack of evidence and insults, is just making a point of trying to piss people off.

by Wiggle (not verified)

Oh really? There was nothing reasonable in the first message, nor was there any evidence. It was rabidly pro-KDE and rabidly anti-GNOME - which is the "done thing" around here, apparently.

by Graphite (not verified)

There was evidence. Mostly, it was not about being anti-GNOME, but rather talking about how ZDNet did not use any evidence. The only anti-GNOME thing I noticed was the part at the end, where he said it had outlived it's usefullness, which I would say is an opinion, not a fact. Somewhat opionated, but I would say it's not trolling.

On the other hand, saying things like GNOME will not use aRts because it's blah blah blah is attempting to pass of your opinion as fact. Not to mention being off-topic.

by Wiggle (not verified)

>The only anti-GNOME thing I noticed was the part at the end,
>where he said it had outlived it's usefullness,

Oh, is that all... no, of course that's not trolling! Not to mention he supplied absolutely no evidence for that.

>On the other hand, saying things like GNOME will not use aRts
>because it's blah blah blah is attempting to pass of
>your opinion as fact. Not to mention being off-topic.

No, I said that aRTS will not be used because it is bloated, slow and has horrible latency. "bloated" - an opinion, slow is not and neither is "horrible latency" - as you will find if you do a bit of checking.

I also supplied information stating that GNOME has no standard sound system, since the developers happen to believe it is simply not necessary. Quite how this adds up to no evidence is a bit of a mystery, since it contains consierably more detail than most pro-KDE posts... and OFF-TOPIC? Excuse me, but the original post was about aRTS use in GNOME!

You know those peril-senstive sungless in The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy? Do dot.kde.org users wear GNOME-fact sensitive ones... it sure seems like it.

by Marko Samastur (not verified)

For someone, who likes GNOME so much, you do spend a significant amount of time here? Do you also visit www.microsoft.com regularly?

Just wondering...

by Wiggle (not verified)

As a matter of fact, yes... microsoft.com contains a great deal of useful information.

Anyone who does serious software development runs up against Microsoft software at some point. So if you are too ideologically pure to suffer any contact with their website, you have a lot of problems.

Why do you ask? Is it some bizarre notion of territory... or some completely idiotic idea like that?

by Marko Samastur (not verified)

This may come as a shocking surprise to you, but some of us do have jobs that are completely unrelated to Microsoft's software and therefore NEVER get in contact with them. Your answer though suggests that you have misfortune of being forced to deal with KDE or was that comment just a smoke screen?

But it's very hard to take you seriously and regard you as anything but provocateur, if you can't answer a simple question without being offensive.

And if you really want to know, I asked because I don't really get the idea of spending my time on community sites of software I dislike.

by TROLL (not verified)

I WILL TROLL THIS SITE TO FUCK

by reihal (not verified)

Here is a nice article about the new gnome:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/22025.html

I particurarly like this quote:

"The software is accompanied by a note warning that this initial Alpha build "does not include anything of use to end users," which at least makes it consistent with all the previous versions of GNOME Desktop we've used."

The world have found consensus.

by Wiggle (not verified)

I don't see any troll warnings attached to this post!

Could it be... yes I think it could... that you are a bunch of hypocrites.

by Navindra Umanee (not verified)

Wiggle, however funny some people may find you, dot.kde.org is not your platform for gratuitous flamefests. Consider this fair warning before we take any actual measures.

As to the person imitating Miguel, please consider yourself warned too.

Later,
-N.

by Wiggle (not verified)

>however funny some people may find you, dot.kde.org
>is not your platform for gratuitous flamefests

Excuse me? The first time I posted here I was called an idiot (and a number of times after that), simply for having an opinion your cronies didn't like. Roberto Alsina and friend also called me an asshole. Are you surprised that I reacted in a robust manner (silly question really, but I have to ask).

Will you be taking action against those people? I doubt it somehow. So quite frankly, you attaching a warning to my post calling dot.kde.org a bunch of hypocrites is rather amusing.

by Roberto Alsina (not verified)

> Roberto Alsina and friend also called me an asshole
AFAICR, I was the only one who called you an asshle, kid.

> Are you surprised that I reacted in a robust manner
You were already acting in a robustely annoying manner before I replied.
That is why I called you an asshole.

Believe it or not, I don't call people assholes if I don't believe their actions make them deserving of that label, asshole.

by Wiggle (not verified)

>AFAICR, I was the only one who called you an asshle, kid.

Wrong, chum. Perhaps you'd like to go back a read it again... carefully this time.

>You were already acting in a robustely annoying manner
>before I replied. That is why I called you an asshole.

Because I was annoying you. Oh how precious... thank you for proving my point.

>Believe it or not, I don't call people assholes if I don't
>believe their actions make them deserving of that label,
>asshole.

Oh I believe you. It's just that your definition of deserving is a little different from most people. Something along the lines of: "Doesn't think the sun shines out of TrollTech headquaters."

by Roberto Alsina (not verified)

> Wrong, chum. Perhaps you'd like to go back a read it again... carefully this
> time.

In case you have not noticed, those posts are not there anymore. That is why
I wrote "AFAICR".

> Because I was annoying you. Oh how precious... thank you for proving my
> point.

Well, yes, indeed I tend to insult a larger percentage of those who annoy me, as compared to those who don't annoy me. Do you find that peculiar?

> Oh I believe you. It's just that your definition of deserving is a little different
> from most people.

Well, you just said I was not the only one. Wanna make a poll?
If a man says you are a donkey, you are not a donkey.
If three men tell you you are a donkey, check the length of your ears.

You are one donkey away, pal.

by Wiggle (not verified)

>In case you have not noticed, those posts are not there
>anymore. That is why I wrote "AFAICR".

No, I hadn't noticed - and you seem to have a problem making yourself clear. "AFAICR" indeed.

> Because I was annoying you. Oh how precious... thank you for proving my
> point.

>Well, yes, indeed I tend to insult a larger percentage of those
>who annoy me, as compared to those who don't annoy me. Do you
>find that peculiar?

I find it precious that you behave in exactly the way you criticise others for.
Every message from you just further confirms that you lack the sense most people
are born with.

>Well, you just said I was not the only one. Wanna make a poll?

What would that prove?

>If a man says you are a donkey, you are not a donkey.
>If three men tell you you are a donkey, check the length of your ears.

You are fond of getting all philosophical aintcha?

If I ask a thousands Christian fundamentalists whether God greated the Earth
in six days, what would their answer be?

You now have you answer

>You are one donkey away, pal.

And you are a rampaging ignoramus - and you were told so by half a dozen different people (that I can directly recall) on Linux Today. So there. Nyah, nyah. You're it. And all that.

BTW: the software used on this board is appalling.

by Roberto Alsina (not verified)

>>In case you have not noticed, those posts are not there
>>anymore. That is why I wrote "AFAICR".
> No, I hadn't noticed - and you seem to have a problem making yourself
> clear. "AFAICR" indeed.

You would have noticed, if you had followed your own advice. And sorry if you don't understand what AFAICR means. Everyone was an internet newbie once.

> I find it precious that you behave in exactly the way you criticise others for.
> Every message from you just further confirms that you lack the sense most
> people are born with.

There is a big difference between insulting an annoyance, and being an annoyance. Your lack of discernment only shows, like Talleyrand said, that common sense is the least common of the senses.

> >Well, you just said I was not the only one. Wanna make a poll?
> What would that prove?

Well, so far, it has proven that you are quite illogical. You claimed my threshold before calling someone an asshole was different from that of the majority. Perhaps you have a better way to guess what opinion is held by a majority than a poll? How antidemocratic. Or perhaps you were just saying stuff.

> You are fond of getting all philosophical aintcha?

That is not philosopic. That is epigrammatic.

> If I ask a thousands Christian fundamentalists whether God greated the Earth
> in six days, what would their answer be?

Pretty much an accurate approximation to the opinion of the population of christian fundamentalists, of course, assuming they are a representative sample. That is just an example of how polls work. Or perhaps you wanted to make a different point?

> You now have you answer

Me now have me answer, indeed.

> And you are a rampaging ignoramus - and you were told so by half a dozen
> different people (that I can directly recall) on Linux Today. So there. Nyah,
> nyah. You're it. And all that.

If that makes you happy, revel in your delusions, just as I revel on mine.

> BTW: the software used on this board is appalling.

It is squishdot, same as used in news.gnome.org, IIRC.

BTW: IIRC means "If I Recall Correctly". See, you take the initials and use them together in uppercase. Once many people do it for a long period of time, readers are expected to understand it. If they don't understand it, they should lurk for a while until they start getting the jargon. Or impatient newbies such as yourself can simply read the Jargon File. Try that at home.

by Idunno (not verified)

well, you are all nobs. And so say I. Please don't hurt me :'(

by Yama (not verified)

That article was pure troll material. The author may prefer KDE (probably because he uses to, or still does, use Windos), but that's no reason to bash GNOME. Both are great environments, with different ways of going about things. What you choose is YOUR opinion. Free software is all about choice. People who criticise others for their desktop choices are pure bigots. This guy doesn't even try to substantiate his arguments (which he cannot), a sure sign of a troll.

Besides, it's obvious that the author of this piece of flamebait masquerading as an article didn't properly read the press release. It is a release of the GNOME 2.,0 Alpha PLATFORM, not the desktop environment. Hence, it is of use only to developers, not to end users.

As for the ZDNet article, I'm not surprised at the result. ZDNet is a Windows site (everybody knows that the Mac and GNU/Linux sections are really just there for show) staffed with Windows users. In a desktop comparison, of course they will choose an environment that is similar to what they are used to, namely KDE. GNOME can be just as user-friendly once one gets used to it.

Hmm... from the discussion here and on LinuxToday.com, I think that you lot really aren't used to a British sense of humour... you need to take stuff like that on The Register a bit less seriously.

We all know it's a non-serious, opinionated and slightly factually incorrect piece. Relax a little.

by Yama (not verified)

I see British humour all the time (and I love it :), but I wouldn't classify this as "humour" at all. It is simply a piece of flamebait. Well I guess they've got my flames now. I normally like The Register, and I read it all the time. However, sometimes I feel that they go too far over the top.

by Marko Samastur (not verified)

"... can be just as user-friendly once one gets used to it."

I find this amusing :-) Don't you think this is a contradiction?

It's not a contradiction. 'user-friendly' does not mean 'stupid-user-friendly'. Both Emacs and VI are very user friendly, they are just picky about whom their users are :)

by Yama (not verified)

No, it isn't. The concept of "user-friendliness" is heavily based on past experiences. Most computer users are Windows users. KDE is deliberately targeting these people, and hence has a Windows-like interface. GNOME is, for the most part, unlike any other interface seen before (AFAIK). There is nothing people can migrate from that would make GNOME feel like 'home' to them. You really need to keep an open mind while using it, just as you should keep an open mind about using WMs like Enlightenment, Blackbox or FVWM. The same can go for editors (vi vs emacs), and even for religions. Would you criticise someone for their choice of religion?

by Evan "JabberWok... (not verified)

I wouldn't quite say that - Blackbox has a nice level of "intuitive" and "easy", but suffers from being simplistic (not bad if you don't want a full blown "environment". I would call it userfriendly in general. Enlightenment, otoh, has a decently hard learning curve (lots of subtle bits), but is powerful. I'd call it very nice, but not very userfriendly. FVWM is "chunky" and not-intuitive, despite similarlities to other Windowing interfaces, and doesn't seem to have a common feel in various parts.

KDE, otoh, has a nice simple level, and deep features that can be found. A few bits (like the new sidebar in Konqueror) aren't quite intuitive, and others (like the new tearable frames) aren't quite userfriendly - but the former is powerful, and the latter is similar to things currently in use (tearable toolbars). I would call it nicely positioned between powerful with a steep learning curve and simplistic with a low learning curve.

And the icons can use a bit of work, too - they confuse people. I've gathered these observations from about 15 people who have sat down and used my computer (generally to poke through CDs, surf the web, or IM somebody). Three of those fifteen are perfect - complete computer novices with no experience whatsoever (in their 40s-50s) who picked up KDE nearly instantly. Incidently, Kinkatta is judged to be "really cool, I wish Windows had an AIM like that".

--
Evan

by Marko Samastur (not verified)

Yes, intuitiveness of user interface is hardly anything but how much you are able to use past experiences to work in new environment.

So environment, which discards those experiences (and I don't particularly mean GNOME here because that would be a debate I'm not all that qualified for), can hardly be described as intuitive. Hence it's not user friendly, because it means a whole lot of learning and possibly grasping completely new concepts. That's just not friendly.

However, it doesn't mean that it's useless. With some luck, it might be worthy to invest all that time in learning a new paradigm, but just because people can learn and get used to practically anything it doesn't mean everything is user friendly. Neither does it mean everything should or could be.

As a vim zealot I can certainly testify that some things are just powerful without being all that friendly.

by Yama (not verified)

Not at all. The concept of 'user-friendliness' hinges upon past experiences and teachings. When a Windows user (about 95% of the user population) sits at a computer, they expect a Windows GUI and they expect to be able to do things in a Windows-like manner. KDE is designed to lure these people by being similar to Windows, so it is only natural that they see KDE as more 'user-friendly'. They can see KDE as more of an 'upgrade' than a 'switch'.

GNOME doesn't have that luxury, and neither do the other X environments/WMs. For a Windows user, using these would be more of a 'switch' than an 'upgrade'. Despite this, GNOME and the others have fairly strong support bases.

This is a testament to the idea that free software = freedom to choose. One needs to keep an open mind when trying something new, and not be influenced too much by past prejudices ("Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by the age of eighteen." -- Albert Einstein). If people were not open minded, everybody would still be using Windows/MacOS instead of *nix.

by Wiggle (not verified)

No.

There's a quote about the nipple being the only instinctive interface, everything else is learned. I've probably butchered it, but the point is clear enough.

by Carbon (not verified)

Just because you can quote it, doesn't make it true!

Really though, in terms of User Friendliness, I suppose it all has to do with an interface making sense. However, different UI's have different audiences. Both Vim and KDE are very user friendly, because their UI's are fairly consistent and powerful, even though there are people who use Vim but don't use KDE (Console junkies) and people who use KDE but never use Vim (KSpaceDuel junkies :-) This is just my opinion though, I don't have any research to support it other then personal observations.

Instinctiveness is just the effect of a well designed interface immediately making sense to its intended audience.

by Evandro (not verified)

GNOME 2.0 will have a wrapper to the user's preferred sound server. Applications will use a generic API, not getting tied with aRts or esound or any other sound system. This way, the user can choose the sound server.