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What GNOME Can Learn from KDE's Recovery
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Comments (25)
Good article
1 earlier comment in the full thread.
He says that kde recovered? when did that happen? Last I checked (not too long ago) they were still trying to get 4.x to the same point of functionality enjoyed by users of kde 3.5. It appears that kde 4 remains a niche player with a small following - it's not like it was in the heyday of kde 3.5 when it was overwhelmingly the most popular linux desktop year after year.
@Grishnahk,
It seems to me that part of the problem with KDE4 as you sorta said is it's having to deal with its bloatware. Do any of you remember the same thing happening in the 1990's with all that new gotta-have-it shrinkwrap software for M$-windoze 9x?? When I HAD to use such bloatware, I CRINGED at having to always check the installation diskspace+memory requirements (also, always having to justify the EXPENSIVE upgrade costs, ugghhhh!) KDE4 might not have all its featuritis all worked out as KDE3 did, and KDE4 then _could_ drag down the whole KDE kit-and-kaboodle.
My 2c
It seems to me that part of the problem with KDE4 as you sorta said is it's having to deal with its bloatware. Do any of you remember the same thing happening in the 1990's with all that new gotta-have-it shrinkwrap software for M$-windoze 9x?? When I HAD to use such bloatware, I CRINGED at having to always check the installation diskspace+memory requirements (also, always having to justify the EXPENSIVE upgrade costs, ugghhhh!) KDE4 might not have all its featuritis all worked out as KDE3 did, and KDE4 then _could_ drag down the whole KDE kit-and-kaboodle.
My 2c
Quoting:He says that kde recovered? when did that happen? Last I checked (not too long ago) they were still trying to get 4.x to the same point of functionality enjoyed by users of kde 3.5.
I believe the quoted statement above would get more credibility if you cite some cases. As it stands now, KDE 4.7 has all the feature KDE 3.5.10 had plus a lot more.
Quoting:It appears that kde 4 remains a niche player with a small following
Purely subjective and no real evidence or proof.
Quoting:I believe the quoted statement above would get more credibility if you cite some cases. As it stands now, KDE 4.7 has all the feature KDE 3.5.10 had plus a lot moreSorry, I have no time to spoon feed you. This is generally known - you can ask any kde 3.5 user what they think of 4.x -
Quoting:Purely subjective and no real evidence or proof.Again, whether you've been living under a rock or just pretending not to know anything, I have no time to spoon feed you. I can only reiterate that linux user surveys in the mid-2000s showed that kde was the most popular DE with gnome a fairly distant second. After kde 4.0 was released, gnome became the favorite in desktop user surveys and kde has never again come near the popularity it once enjoyed.
For a gentle heads-up, let me just say that google is your friend here.
Quoting:Sorry, I have no time to spoon feed you. This is generally known -
This is nothing but a cop out.
Quoting:you can ask any kde 3.5 user what they think of 4.x -
I was a KDE 3.5 user and for a long time. I moved on to KDE 4.0 and now to 4.7. I would never go back to KDE 3.5.
I am sure many others have done the same.
I'm not what you would call a dyed-in-the-wool KDE user, but I use it often enough on various machines in my lab (which now doubles as my living room, but I digress). In any case, while herzeleid is right about KDE taking a knock in number of users with 4.0, I think the moral of the story here is that they've righted their ship with later upgrades in the 4.x series. Are they the top DE? Not anymore, but maybe soon . . . .
I've used 3.5 and 4.x, and until recently I was using 4.7 on Fedora 15 until I changed to Xfce to save resources -- yes, it's bloated, but in an era of 4GB RAM and 250GB HDs in laptops, that may not be an issue unless you have, like me, an old ThinkPad with 512MB RAM.
So I'm with Fettoosh here: I can see where those who once used 3.5 would be OK, or better, with the latest versions of KDE because it works great
I've used 3.5 and 4.x, and until recently I was using 4.7 on Fedora 15 until I changed to Xfce to save resources -- yes, it's bloated, but in an era of 4GB RAM and 250GB HDs in laptops, that may not be an issue unless you have, like me, an old ThinkPad with 512MB RAM.
So I'm with Fettoosh here: I can see where those who once used 3.5 would be OK, or better, with the latest versions of KDE because it works great
You younguns may not remember what Gnome was like before Ubuntu. It was all over the place; the painful migration from 1.4 to 2.x with wholesale feature removal and no backwards compatibility, Eazel, Ximian, and the early horrid incarnations of Nautilus. The Ximian Desktop was super-nice, all polished and flexible, and included the excellent Red Carpet package manager, Evolution and other nice stuff I forget now. Yes, that was when Miguel de Icaza was a hero for inventing all this cool Ximian stuff. Then Novell bought Ximian, and I don't remember what that did to it because I was liking KDE, IceWM and Enlightenment better. Libranet, Galeon...stuff comes, stuff goes.
Gnome 2 didn't get good until Ubuntu came along. The Ubuntu team brought order out of chaos, and streamlined and organized it in a very nice way. Fedora and Debian packaged vanilla Gnome and it was quite different from Ubuntu, messier and no nice font smoothing and all full of GTK jaggedies. Red Hat put a lot into Gnome, but it took Ubuntu to make it sleek and popular.
I've been torture-testing KDE 4.6.2 on Mint for a couple weeks and it's not bad. All full of endless configuration options just like old KDE, which is what I liked about it. It's still too many clicks to do some operations, and it's a resource hog, and sliders are for phones and tablets, not PCs, but it does a lot. Stay tuned for a review that digs into gnarly stuff like wtf are Nepomuk and Akonadi, and Activities.
Gnome 2 didn't get good until Ubuntu came along. The Ubuntu team brought order out of chaos, and streamlined and organized it in a very nice way. Fedora and Debian packaged vanilla Gnome and it was quite different from Ubuntu, messier and no nice font smoothing and all full of GTK jaggedies. Red Hat put a lot into Gnome, but it took Ubuntu to make it sleek and popular.
I've been torture-testing KDE 4.6.2 on Mint for a couple weeks and it's not bad. All full of endless configuration options just like old KDE, which is what I liked about it. It's still too many clicks to do some operations, and it's a resource hog, and sliders are for phones and tablets, not PCs, but it does a lot. Stay tuned for a review that digs into gnarly stuff like wtf are Nepomuk and Akonadi, and Activities.
Tuxchick........I'll be very interested to see your findings on KDE4.6.2.......Sooner or later, I will have to upgrade but I'll wait until the next edition of openSUSE comes out with that particular version of KDE.......Since I know my way around openSUSE quite well, it means that any glitches that occur have got to be either my frantically florid fingers fanatically flagellating false footprints in the software......or something in KDE that I don't know about. :-)
Quoting: frantically florid fingers fanatically flagellating false footprints
I’m not the pheasant plucker, I’m the pheasant plucker’s mate, And I’m only plucking pheasants ’cause the pheasant plucker’s late.
I've been waiting a long time for an excuse to say that :D
I positively refuse to say that one aloud.......possibly because my lamentably lethargic lips loudly lucidating libidinous language as typified by the words quoted above would totally destroy my pristine and snowy white character..... :-)
Kde4 is so darn good, that I just last week re-installed kde3 ( Pardus kurumsal2 )
Now I can do some real work
I am actually refering more to Konqueror than the rest of the OS
Oh, and I know my way around KDE4, don't worry about that.
Not to get all "way back when" on you, but tuxchick's musings on GNOME in Ubuntu made me think back to good ol' Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, which to me was a great example of GNOME on the desktop. At the time, and for quite a bit of time thereafter, I considered it the best way to run GNOME.
Ubuntu was very much committed to GNOME at the time.
Ubuntu was very much committed to GNOME at the time.
Has anyone seriously used Trinity KDE as an alternative to either Gnome3 or KDE4 ? I'd very much like to see their comments.
@ Ridcully
Mark Van Kingsley has remastered a KDE3.5.11 version for HeliOS. It is the Trinity version. Download link follows: Be warned...it's a big-un.
http://www.sidneyopensource.com/data_pages/helios/van71.iso
Mark Van Kingsley has remastered a KDE3.5.11 version for HeliOS. It is the Trinity version. Download link follows: Be warned...it's a big-un.
http://www.sidneyopensource.com/data_pages/helios/van71.iso
Has anyone seriously used Trinity KDE as an alternative to either Gnome3 or KDE4 ? I'd very much like to see their comments.
Ridcully Yes, I had the kubuntu-trinity kde 3.5.12 version on my computer for a few months. I was actually " shocked " to see how well it worked. However Pardus was installed and configured for what I wanted to do with it at that time , and I needed nothing more of KDE, so I eventually replaced it with some other distro ( to play with on a rainy day. )
But I am very much tempted to install it again on a spare partition and have another good look again
Ridcully Yes, I had the kubuntu-trinity kde 3.5.12 version on my computer for a few months. I was actually " shocked " to see how well it worked. However Pardus was installed and configured for what I wanted to do with it at that time , and I needed nothing more of KDE, so I eventually replaced it with some other distro ( to play with on a rainy day. )
But I am very much tempted to install it again on a spare partition and have another good look again
For Helios..........thanks muchly...........I have now downloaded your iso file (3.1Gbytes) and will be very interested in trialling the software......This is gonna be interesting..... I loved KDE3.5, but essentially, I work with KDE4.3.........there is a subtle difference. Again, my very deep thanks.
Helios
I am downloading as well.
Just curious what's the difference or what is special about it
Quoting:Helios I am downloading as well. Just curious what's the difference or what is special about itThat might have been a good question to ask BEFORE downloading its 3.1 GB iso.
it is geared to kids with a good number of games and apps. Many of the kids we install for do not or will not have internet for quite a while. The program selection gives them stuff to do without Internet. It also has all the prop stuff like flash and java already in there with the other "no-no" codecs and stuff.
hat might have been a good question to ask BEFORE downloading its 3.1 GB iso.
On a way yes, but,I have the time, I have the space, I have unlimited dowload, and I suspected it was kids orientated. And with Kids I deal a lot.Got 14 under 12's in the family. But a good remark anyway
@Helios Thanks. It completed during the night. Will try tomorrow
On a way yes, but,I have the time, I have the space, I have unlimited dowload, and I suspected it was kids orientated. And with Kids I deal a lot.Got 14 under 12's in the family. But a good remark anyway
@Helios Thanks. It completed during the night. Will try tomorrow
Here's hoping
Another great Byfield article I think.
I'd hate to see Gnome destroyed by development in a direction which from my impressions so far, the users obviously don't want. I don't use Gnome but a friend of mine does.....errr..... did. He has always used Gnome until Gnome3. He fought with Gnome3 over a period of a couple of weeks and then became so frustrated he simply dumped it. For a short period he went backwards to a distro that used Gnome2, but then investigated Unity.......His experience so far has been excellent and he took enormous pleasure in displaying to me how he has managed to make Unity do just what he wants. There is no way he will look at Gnome3 again while it persists with its current structures. He loved Gnome2 - he candidly detests Gnome3.
Here's hoping the development team takes notice very quickly of what I perceive to be a major problem. My advice ? For what it is worth, "pull Gnome3 off the shelves" until it has been restructured to conform with Gnome2 and then begin to improve that basic structure - with user options for the features......one small step at a time seems better than being thrown into a whole new and apparently unfriendly universe.
I'd hate to see Gnome destroyed by development in a direction which from my impressions so far, the users obviously don't want. I don't use Gnome but a friend of mine does.....errr..... did. He has always used Gnome until Gnome3. He fought with Gnome3 over a period of a couple of weeks and then became so frustrated he simply dumped it. For a short period he went backwards to a distro that used Gnome2, but then investigated Unity.......His experience so far has been excellent and he took enormous pleasure in displaying to me how he has managed to make Unity do just what he wants. There is no way he will look at Gnome3 again while it persists with its current structures. He loved Gnome2 - he candidly detests Gnome3.
Here's hoping the development team takes notice very quickly of what I perceive to be a major problem. My advice ? For what it is worth, "pull Gnome3 off the shelves" until it has been restructured to conform with Gnome2 and then begin to improve that basic structure - with user options for the features......one small step at a time seems better than being thrown into a whole new and apparently unfriendly universe.
Quoting:Another great Byfield article I think.
A great article indeed, and the following quote really summarizes why the KDE Team deserve much credit and an indication of how much they care about their users. It also shows how committed they are to bring more features and innovations by adding new interface styles but keeping the classical desktop interface intact.
Read the feedback/comments section under the link below to see a sample of good communication.
http://vizzzion.org/blog/2011/08/plasma-active-on-opengl-es/
Quoting:Just as importantly, although KDE 4.0 seemed to contain a series of radical changes, most of the actual changes were in the creation of back end sub-systems and largely invisible to users. What was placed in front of users were extended traditional desktop concepts such as icons and virtual workspaces, but in such a way that users could ignore the innovations if they chose, and -- aside from a smaller range of configuration options -- continue to work in much the same way as they had in the KDE 3 series.
With KDE 4.7, I can definitely say that most features that users had in KDE 3.5.x are now in KDE 4.7 plus a whole lot more than anyone can dream of having on classical interface desktop.
KDE 4.7 resolved the numerous issues that DKE 4.0 had, but it still have issues with some of the new features (Semantic Search/nepomuk, KMail 2.x, Amarok 2.x, etc), but those are being worked on and they are improved with every new release.
Some commentators couldn't continue complaining about missing features or lack of new ones, so they are attacking the character of the KDE team. This is unfortunate and I am not sure what they are trying or could accomplish with such an derogatory approach.
I guess people have opinions as different as their faces.
[Edited: Added link above]
> Some commentators couldn't continue complaining about missing features or lack of new ones, so they are attacking the character of the KDE team.
Not character, actions. Which may be reflective of character, but are not the same thing. And that's always been the primary point of complaint. Bugs and features pale in comparison.
Not character, actions. Which may be reflective of character, but are not the same thing. And that's always been the primary point of complaint. Bugs and features pale in comparison.
Fettoosh, I'd like to support Jdixon's comment on this as well. My impression has always been that the frustration, anger and complaints have been exclusively against the software and the direction it was taking, but not the development team itself. The biggest criticism I have seen leveled against the team continuously was the one of "not listening to the problems raised and going on with a direction largely unwanted by the user base". Even then, that is not strictly attacking the team but the path it is taking in software development.
Except for Aaron Siego, the KDE4 development team remains a group of "faceless men and women" to me, and I suspect it is the same to a majority of users. Apart from my wanting to pound a dirty great club over Aaron's head with the words on it "Please listen to the user's feedback", I have no axe to grind against any of the KDE team and I suspect that most other users are the same.
I said earlier and I repeat it again: there needs to be an alternative way to contact the team that is not exclusively in the realms of either being part of the software development team or submitting a bug. I have the feeling that the biggest organisational failure in both Gnome and KDE is the lack of a method of user feedback to the developers which allows subjective ideas to be put forward in plain language. Commercial firms have a Public Relations Officer but I am uncertain as to whether or not both Gnome and KDE have such a person and if such a feedback channel to them exists......or even if it provides viable feedback to the actual developers.
Except for Aaron Siego, the KDE4 development team remains a group of "faceless men and women" to me, and I suspect it is the same to a majority of users. Apart from my wanting to pound a dirty great club over Aaron's head with the words on it "Please listen to the user's feedback", I have no axe to grind against any of the KDE team and I suspect that most other users are the same.
I said earlier and I repeat it again: there needs to be an alternative way to contact the team that is not exclusively in the realms of either being part of the software development team or submitting a bug. I have the feeling that the biggest organisational failure in both Gnome and KDE is the lack of a method of user feedback to the developers which allows subjective ideas to be put forward in plain language. Commercial firms have a Public Relations Officer but I am uncertain as to whether or not both Gnome and KDE have such a person and if such a feedback channel to them exists......or even if it provides viable feedback to the actual developers.
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