Dare I start a third thread?

Story: A KMail Breakthrough.Total Replies: 6
Author Content
dotmatrix

May 01, 2016
1:07 PM EDT
I haven't really ever used KDE. I generally don't like Qt applications, and have never really enjoyed the look and feel of KDE. So I have avoided KDE and Qt as much as possible.

Well... after reading the story, I had a look at Akonadi. I gotta say, it looks scary. The systemd folks over at Red Hat are behind the times when it comes to gobbling up everything. It looks like Akonadi got there first...

Here's someone's blog post about Akonadi:

http://www.dvratil.cz/2016/01/kde-pim-still-alive-and-rocking/

It's funny how much it parallels the systemd folks. It's definitely all about uniformity, conformity, and "my binary data stove pipe is better than yours" ... whatever happened to flat plain text files?

/end mini-rant

penguinist

May 01, 2016
2:06 PM EDT
I'm feeling a common thread here with KDE, systemd, Android, iOS, Windows, Chrome....

It's all about asserting control.

He who gains control of the most users wins.

With closed proprietary software the battle is already won (or lost depending on your perspective) since those users have never had an expectation of controlling their own systems.

The battle for control inside a Linux environment is a bit more difficult to win. Google does it by combining closed/secret software along with their open kernel, and by using vendor configured selinux to lock systems even to root users. KDE and systemd gain control by "gobbling", moving configurations to binary formats, and by cloaking secrets through complexity. What users don't see, they don't control.
dotmatrix

May 01, 2016
2:41 PM EDT
>What users don't see, they don't control.

Yeah -- I agree that seems to be the main objective. For myself, I like to know how everything works. I greatly dislike 'hidden' complexity. Unfortunately, many younger developers seem to be under the false impression that choice is bad and so try to hide the 'difficult' configuration items from users. I tend to think this is not the correct direction. What's the harm in leaving all the configuration items on the list and having an 'advanced' tab to reveal the less common choices?

But, then again, I'm just a lowly end-user for the most part... and like the current US political primaries... who cares about the end-user, 'we' don't need them, and they don't know what's good for them...
Ridcully

May 01, 2016
9:15 PM EDT
Take a look at my comments on the thread "Untitled"..........

http://lxer.com/module/forums/t/36176/

gary_newell

May 05, 2016
4:19 PM EDT
I agree with the KDE thing. It feels very cartoony. If Disney made desktops it would look like this. Even the supposedly world beating Plasma feels clunky.

I like GNOME as a desktop environment but it also has to be said you can't really beat a well configured XFCE or LXDE.
gus3

May 07, 2016
7:23 PM EDT
@gary_newell, Funny you should say that.
CFWhitman

May 10, 2016
2:05 PM EDT
You know, I have noticed that Qt doesn't necessarily look exactly like KDE apps or pull in as much overhead. When I install Kid3-Qt instead of the regular KDE version of the application, it pulls in fewer dependencies and looks much better on a non-KDE system. Also, I have a live Linux USB stick with an LXQT desktop, and I don't have a problem with it, while KDE tends to be too heavy for me to really like it.

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