This article explores where the KDE community currently stands and where it is going. Frameworks, Plasma, KDE e.V., Qt5, KDE Free Qt Foundation, QtAddons – you heard some of these terms and want to know what all the fuss is about? A set of articles on the Dot aims to bring some clarity in the changes and constants of the KDE community in 2014 and further. This is the first article, diving into the technical side of things: Plasma, applications and libraries.
An update on where KDE stands today.
From the mentioned article:
“A very fast release cycle?
Experiences in the world of mobile and web applications have shown that users are far more likely to start using features and appreciate small batches instead of large dumps. Short release cycles can bring bug fixes and improvements to our users much faster.”
WTF! Mobile and web applications!!??
What about the “Release early, release often”?? Wikipedia says: “This philosophy was popularized by Eric S. Raymond in his 1997 essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar, where Raymond stated “Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers”.”
1997… 17 years ago.
In practice, “release early release often” didn’t really happen in DEs in the past. Part of the reason was their monolithic structure. Making KDE modular helps updating its parts in their own pace which makes overall updating process more gradual and often.
Edited 2014-06-27 05:19 UTC
I read the article and all I can think of is “another pointless rewrite?”.
I’m a refugee to OS X… from Linux/KDE. I still think KDE 3 was good enough. But they had to rewrite it…
Edited 2014-06-26 14:48 UTC
Me too. Same story. Happy user of KDE3, now happy user of OS X.
Similar here. Devout KDE 3 user obsessed with software freedom… now on LXDE because Trinity hasn’t been updated to match modern desktop standards and even the “it’s better and less sluggish now” releases of KDE 4 are full of papercuts.
(And Konqueror 4.x is apparently bit-rotting in the parts not used for web-browsing while Konqueror 3.x, in its role as a generic, tabbed, splittable, network-transparent KPart harness, was central to my use of KDE 3.)
Not me. Although I’ve found KDE perfectly usable, there’s always been something about a KDE desktop, going back to KDE 2, that doesn’t quite fit whatever it is I want in a desktop. Be that as it may, bring on the progress!
That is an odd place to go. Are you sure you were not just following a trend?
Nothing could be more dimetrically opposite to KDE than OS X. From freedom to tyranny.
I left Ubuntu/Gnome for Windows 7 and 8. Although I understand the concern, a lot of people that used Linux did so for reasons other than software philosophy. It could be that they switched because OSX works better for what they wanted.
Although I don’t use Apple products, I respect them and the ecosystem they built, and it works great for a lot people.
You may be using Linux because of ideological reasons, but I switched to it back when you were still supposed to compile your own kernel – only because it worked better than Windows.
It still does… in the command line. OS X is useless to me without a bunch of command line stuff from MacPorts or Homebrew, most developed on Linux.
However, I’ve had enough of every desktop environment being replaced by another “improved” desktop environment while the indexing daemon still takes 100% CPU all the time. I’ve had enough of the application icons moving around a few pixels every time one of them decides to redraw.
But I only switched when Canonical dropped all financial support for KDE and announced Unity. Life’s too short for all that craziness.
OS X is an Unix with a GUI that works. Good quality hardware too. Even on hackintoshes
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get on with my work, while the operating system just does its damn job without annoying me.
Btw, a good part of my work is customizing embedded linux kernels
Edited 2014-06-26 16:22 UTC
You may be using Linux because of ideological reasons, but I switched to it back when you were still supposed to compile your own kernel – only because it worked better than Windows.
It still does… in the command line. OS X is useless to me without a bunch of command line stuff from MacPorts or Homebrew, most developed on Linux.
However, I’ve had enough of every desktop environment being replaced by another “improved” desktop environment while the indexing daemon still takes 100% CPU all the time. I’ve had enough of the application icons moving around a few pixels every time one of them decides to redraw.
But I only switched when Canonical dropped all financial support for KDE and announced Unity. Life’s too short for all that craziness.
OS X is an Unix with a GUI that works. Good quality hardware too. Even on hackintoshes
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get on with my work, while the operating system just does its damn job without annoying me.
Btw, a good part of my work is customizing embedded linux kernels
[/q]
I think I must’ve worded my post poorly; I actually don’t use Linux anymore, and never used it due to ideology. I just liked the customization options back when I used to use XP, because I had a much older computer that ran better with Linux with lighter weight software. As I got older and got more in to computer gaming, I switched back to Windows.
I have to say, I’ve never compiled my own kernel. I was one of those people that would’ve genuinely struggled before distro’s like Ubuntu! Not quite Joe Six Pack, not quite intelligent enough for nitty gritty. What can I say, my username fits.
My bad, sorry. I was replying to the tyranny guy, not to you.
Edited 2014-06-26 17:25 UTC
You do realize the Kubuntu while not supported by Canonical is still 100% fully funded, right?
And that Kubuntu is, as far as KDE goes, still fully vanilla installs of KDE?
yep, still a KDE user. Looking forward to the greatness to come, from the platform that is leading the edge.
Yeah, being able to use apps like Logic, Final Cut, Photoshop, etc… now that’s REAL tyranny
and Opera 22
If you follow the dev blogs for the KDE discussions, you’ll find whole sections like
Wow, kde2 rewrote this, kde 3 re wrote this, kde 4 re wrote this. Now for kde frameworks 5, I *don’t* have to re-write this *because* we did it right for kde 4.
If KDE had stayed at 3 – people like yourself would say I switched to OSX because there is no progress in the Linux Desktop… Damned if you do damned if you don’t.
KDE 4 when it first came out was bad – They released it too early and had about a year of turmoil but since then its far surpassed KDE 3.
This is a video I did of Kubuntu 11.10 (KDE 4.7)
http://youtu.be/5AIgyGmHH50
Ignore the desktop effects – notice how easily dual monitor support works – notice the snap to feature for window management. Dolphin has supported tabbed windowing since it came out (this was something apple was showing off recently for finder – like its some how impressive) – Dolphin supports split/tabbed/network browsing – simple clean does everything I need when it comes to file management.
To the guy complaining about dolphin being a downgrade to Konqueror – Dolphin is a massive upgrade compared to the crap that is finder.
Drag a window to any corner and you get the window instantly at a quarter of the screen – drag it to the side and its half screen – no messing about with the mouse trying to align the various applications / windows.
I have a macbook pro running osx and it just feels like such a downgrade, its opengl stack is old, its window management is complete shite cant modify the look and feel – there is nothing I have seen osx do that is better than what KDE offers.
You surely mean a GUI that has terrible window management have you tried making any changes to the underlying os / system ? some of the modifications apple have done is just plain horrible.
You mean after installing macports and a load of other utilities that a typical linux distro offers out of the box … Yeah really time saving, I’ve been there wowed by the Shiny apple macbook pro – ooh look its unix it looks pretty – used it for a couple of months got annoyed by the utter shite apple defaults – natural scrolling ?? The terrible window management and ended up straight back on Linux, I detest their uk keyboard layout as well.
I really don’t see the hype – I don’t get why people with an apple product feel like they are superior, its just the general smugness and the elitism that it tends to produce as well – like your part of some exclusive club…
http://www.dell.com/uk/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd
To add:
The apple FS what is that horrible HFS+ shite ? Seriously please stop with the Apple glorification, some of the underlying technology powering osx is just crap. The Linux kernel destroys Darwin when it comes to performance – there is a reason why Apple is so restrictive when it comes to hardware ports its because its plug and play / hardware support is just rubbish.
All of this said – I dont think OSX is bad – I just dont think it deserves the hype, the hype is just another FAD I haven’t seen anything from OSX to explain the level of hype produced – it really isn’t that great.
Also to hijack a KDE thread about the advancements coming to talk about OSX is frankly just bad form to begin with. KDE has to advance it has to change Linux has to advance has to change has to evolve, X.org is soon going away and the move to wayland will begin (very soon in fact), there is a lot of change coming in and most of them are for the better.
When NetworkManager first came in I really disliked it, it was buggy / horrible to work with and an absolute pain – I love it now, I manage all of my connections through it including the various cisco and openvpn connections its fast and just works.
I am quite excited about all of the underlying developments incoming I think everything being developed really will help to solidify the future of Linux – Plasma does have its uses the idea behind it is solid KDE 4 is fast – I can only see KDE 5 improving in speed BTRFS will soon be mature enough to take over from EXT4 everything coming in will help desktop Linux to get better QT5 is great and its mostly thanks to the KDE Developers. Dont forget about KHTML – they truly do develop some great stuff.
All of the advancements that makes Linux King when it comes to Servers also benefits the Desktop. Then there is Companies like valve pushing Linux for Gaming which again has a knock on effect for the Linux desktop as it helps to improve the graphical and audio stack.
I am disappointed in Google because of Chrome OS and Android as they really dont help the Linux desktop ecosystem where they could really be pushing advancements, but I digress anyway.
Network Manager works? I still run desktop Linux in VMs and no, it doesn’t. It may work on boot, but when they come back from suspend they’re not connected to the network.
Customize the desktop? Why would I care, it’s under my application windows where I do real work – or play.
Qt 5 is another pointless rewrite and buggy. Don’t get me started on the QML stuff, it’s fine if you want to throw two buttons and an edit box on screen, but if you work on complex apps it’s worse than Borland Delphi in 2000
Gaming on Linux? Yes, it’s improving. And it was better than OS X even when all you had was Wine. Wine for Mac is far worse than on Linux. However, I still can’t run most full screen games on my dual monitor system, because they either think I have one huge monitor, or decide for themselves where they run – which is 99% on the monitor I don’t want them to be on.
As for linux vs OS X performance, you’re right. However, performance on OS X is good enough. I don’t know what you do with your systems, but I’m a software developer and I spend most of my time either typing code or thinking about what code to type. Both tasks require what – a 60 Mhz Pentium 1?
I must agree with you about Linux on the server too – I wouldn’t think of running anything but Linux on a server. That’s because software that runs headless is by now very stable and doesn’t get rewritten for the sake of rewriting.
And the reason I whine about KDE is because I’d LIKE to still run KDE. When they make it work, that is.
This works every time for me (various different laptops and desktops), in fact I have intentionally disabled this behaviour in the settings as I am forever disconnecting / reconnecting to different networks and want to choose what to resume to when I resume my laptop. (Create the connection go to network manager settings un-check automatically connect to this network when it is available)
Here is a couple of neat tricks I’ve learnt with network manager:
/etc/NetworkManager/system-connections
All of your configured connections get stored here copy them onto another machine and all of your connections follow you including the vpn connections.
/etc/NetworkManager/01ifupdown
Use this to start anything you want on different connection states – I use it to start/stop iptables – you can execute custom scripts to do various things like disable all services you don’t want to be used during specific network connections – This is why I love Linux btw and just cannot use anything else, everything else is just dumbed down shit.
Criticism is all good we are all entitled to our different views and its just a bit of fun most of the time – I don’t think you deserved the down votes – I am not going to talk about anything else just wanted to share some useful stuff you can do with network manager, but also you mentioned performance and admitted to using VM’s which really cane resources
Also it’s not that the KDE devs are perfect they do some really dumb shit sometimes like this:
http://vhanda.in/blog/2014/04/desktop-search-configuration/ — one of their most recent mess ups (The dev listened after the amount of bollocking he got and 4.13.1 now has a enable desktop search option) Its a good community to be part of – The dev is obviously very talented but a bit misguided.
I never used KDE 3, and switched from Gnome to KDE 4 around the time when Gnome started moving to 3.0. Never regretted it, KDE 4 is great. May be I just didn’t see the glory of KDE 3, so I can’t compare, but I never understood most of these refugees’ complaints about KDE 4.x. Part of the reasons I’ve heard was rather rough experience in the early KDE 4.0 days, but that is improved since long.
KDE 3 did a lot of things really well, but a lot of it is over glorification of kde 3, it was good but it wasn’t better than 4 as 4 stands now its better than 3.
I actually like the changes in Gnome now as well but I wont go into that.
KDE 4.4 or 4.5 was functionally equivalent to KDE 3.5.10 – that is, that was when it really became good to switch over. Prior to that was a little problematic.
The big issue was distros (f.e Ubuntu) forcing users to switch from KDE3 to KDE4 when KDE4 was still in its infancy. KDE made it very well known that KDE 4.0 was being released only so others could start to get familiar with it and build applications on top of it; they did not expect people to use it in place of KDE3 at that point. (I’d say it was really advocated as a full on replacement for KDE3 until about KDE 4.3 or 4.4.)
I switched stuff over when KDE 4.4.3 was released and haven’t regretted it. KDE3 was, in terms of UI, aging and I was looking forward to the advances that KDE4 had. I tested earlier versions at different times but didn’t commit to every-day-use until the 4.4 releases.
And honestly, current KDE4 is lightyears beyond what KDE3 could do.
I don’t remember it that way…
especially with how 3 was seemingly abruptly abandoned.
Yeah, I loved KDE 3 and used it everywhere. However after KDE 4… Well I`ve switched to Gnome, and 2 years ago to Unity (except Eee pc 900, where LXDE is) and I love Unity!
Unity is nice… if you have a single monitor system with one hard drive. For more, it still needs work.
It also meant no more Canonical funding for KDE
Kubuntu still has full funding; and it’s probably good that Canonical is out of the picture outside of the base distro.
http://www.kubuntu.org/news/kubuntu-to-be-sponsored-by-blue-systems
Me too. I used to use Fluxbox, then Gnome 2, then KDE 3, tried KDE4, then Gnome again…now Unity is quite mature and I just don’t care anymore. Unity it is.
This is computing. Not architecture. Our technology base changes every 5 years, so its only natural that the OS changes with it. We get new system service software, new file systems, new platforms like mobile. Do you really want to stand still and have a system that never changes? You should have stuck with Windows 3.1 then.
If you look at KDE 4 it is very similar in functionality to KDE 3. It took a while to get there, but its there all the same. Some things have been added, some have probably been removed. But they at least have a consistent target. They also made the right move to split mobile from the regular desktop.
At least KDE isn’t like Gnome, where they change things just for brand recognition and close minded UI design choices.
So explain how Plasma is useful? I still don’t see the point.
Plasma is quite useful.
From providing a consistent framework to provide different UIs in, to the all-out-widgets, etc.
Honestly, they’re targeting Netbooks, Tablets, Desktops, Mobile, and more with the same system (Plasma) while providing UIs dedicated to each. Some things I read about is the possibility that they may do things like taking the a tablet with the Tablet UI, plug in a keyboard and have it autoswitch to the Desktop UI, etc.
Plasma itself is just a framework of technologies. What you normally see as KDE4 is Plasma-Desktop. Plasma-Netbook is pretty neat, and really good for a touch interface (last I tried to use it).
No, our technology base doesn’t change. We’re still clicking file and program icons, moving things between folders, and surfing the web, on x86 compatible machines.
The bits and pieces might change, but it’s mostly just the rearrangement of pixels to suit the current fashion of UI design.
Last year, glassy surfaces and reflections were in– this year, flat “metro” is in. Multi-document interfaces were cool– Now it’s all about full screen task switching, much like it was with DesqView.
Since the graphical desktop and the mouse became pervasive, computing hasn’t really changed in the last 20 years.
Touch screens are here (but they were here then, too, just too expensive), and certainly make phones and tablets more responsive– but those of us who used a stylus on a Palm PDA aren’t really that impressed by the app drawer, or tapping to select.
It’s all evolutionary, nothing revolutionary.
Note, I don’t necessarily mean there’s a better way, just that it’s a bit disingenuous to imply our technology is changing rapidly, when we’re running operating systems based on Windows NT (1993) or Linux (1991) or OSX (FreeBSD – 1993).
Actually it is more accurate to say VMS (1975), UNIX (1973).
I guess we have wildly diverging definitions for the term “accurate”…
If you ever spent any time delving with Windows internals and know VMS, there are quite a few things there from VMS.
Linux and BSD derived OS are nothing more than UNIX clones.
There are other OS out there, with architectures not based in just cloning VMS and UNIX, but since you only mentioned those, I only made reference to them.
While it’s arguable that VMS heavily influenced WNT (and shared developers), and it’s a given that FreeBSD traces it’s roots to UNIX, and that Linux is a rewrite of Minix, those are separate and largely incompatible development forks.
Windows NT –> Windows 8 is an unbroken line of development.
Same with Linux.
The chain is most tenuous with OSX and FreeBSD, since OSX is derived from FreeBSD rather than a straight copy, but even so, OSX goes back to 2001 and was a heavy mashup of NexT functionality implemented in FreeBSD.
<quote>… and that Linux is a rewrite of Minix …</quote>
Since we’re being accurate – Linus wrote Linux because he could not afford the source license for Minix.
So, how could he rewrite something he couldn’t work from?
That could be argued.
Windows NT to XP, yes most certainly. Though even there, XP introduced much of Win9x/Millenium into the codebase.
WinXP->Vista was quite a major refactor so it could be questionable there.
Meh, ever since the first hominid started walking in a bipedal fashion, everything has been the same really… scratch that, ever since the first self reproducing RNA strand appeared on earth… little has changed.
Yeah, the PC experience hasn’t changed a whole hell of a lot. Of course, I’m all for trying out new ways of doing things, but if KDE is like just about everything else, it probably gets ‘prettier’ with every new release, while removing a feature or three in the process.
Because of things I didn’t find usefull in KDE4 after many attempts to switch to it.
Beagle, killed my cpu with 100%
Same overusage of of cpu with file indexer (on multiple machines)
Over emphasis on “nice” and “cool” transitions, compositions and effects. These only slow the user, too much of a eye candy is waste of electricity.
Message POPUP’S (one reason I dislike windows)
Plasma for what? Super Karamba was on its way allready by the time plasma appeared.
Drop of features developers seemed redeem useless like horizontal split of konqueror window (or was it vertical) no matter KDE3 did have both. It was developed by a reason why drop it half of it?
That was just an example.
I could go on and on with my rant about the KDE4 so I just end it saying it’s not my piece of cake.
Edited 2014-06-26 19:49 UTC
As I understand it, nobody wanted to maintain the file manager side of Konqueror so someone stepped up to reinvent it as Dolphin (Konqueror 4.x’s folder views are provided by DolphinPart).
He refuses to support embedded preview of files in Dolphin despite the KParts architecture making it trivial… probably because the HTTP KIOSlave (KIO is already used for network transparency in Dolphin) plus a few lines to look up a KPart from a mimetype is all you need for the most barebones of web browsers in KDE.
(In other words, allowing file preview in Dolphin would show that the emperor has no clothes by revealing it as just an inferior clone of Konqueror with stuff like HTTP cookie policies removed… sort of like starting with Plan9 and redesigning as UNIX because you feel nobody needs that much network transparency.)
???? Beagle isn’t part of KDE4. That’s GNOME functionality.
There was an issue early on, but I believe that the issues with Strigi and Neopmuk have since been resolved. I honestly haven’t noticed either of them on any of my machines – including my Pentium M 1.4GHz laptop.
Which can all be disabled, and which are all OpenGL implemented, so energy efficient.
Pretty much all are done through the notification widget which you can easily ignore. I think I get may be one window pop up elsewhere, but even it’s from the notification widget. And you can remove the notification widget from the tray if you like.
FTW.
Seriously, Plasma runs on top of numerous platforms, not simply X11, but can replace the Windows Explorer Shell (windows.kde.org), and more.
And it’s pretty much all built on top of Qt’s QML instead of having to reimplement everything inside KDE.
You’d have to ask the Konqueror folks about that.
Seems your information is a little dated (at best) and wrong (at worse), but yes it’s not for everyone. Use what you like and best fits your needs.
I wish they put more effort on the applications that come with KDE. For example the editing capabilities of okular are just substandard. And this is just one example, among many.
But I guess this is boring for the developers.
Edited 2014-06-26 20:03 UTC
Okay, I’m a big KDE fan, and I’m really excited for KDE 5, but “KDE is People”??!!! Honestly, that just sounds incredibly gimmicky. KDE is software written by people – good software, but still software, not people. I don’t know about you, but I don’t run people on my computer. I run software on it.
KDE is people! Gnome’s got a history with Bonobos.
(In my best Charlton Heston impression)
The PC’s dying, the desktop’s dying… it’s people! KDE is made out of people! You gotta tell ’em! Listen to me, Hatcher. You gotta tell ’em. KDE is people! We gotta stop them some how!
KDE is people that write software (and perform other tasks) . That software can be libraries (like KDE Frameworks), programs (like KDE Applications), environments (like KDE Plasma Desktop, Plasma Network and Plasma Active), etc.
Since many years ago, we can see the official description in http://kde.org/community/whatiskde/
KDE. All the best infrastructure, to create a bad copy of the Windows UI, and then muddle with tablets.
This is why I’m watching the Hawaii desktop which stands to build atop the best of Qt5 and could inherit the lean, helpful parts of KDE. There’s a middle way between KDE and Gnome a lot of us have been dying to see. Just because Gnome went too far in stripping out options didn’t mean they didn’t have a point in streamlining the UI.
In recent releases I have come to like Unity on Ubuntu, but I’d really rather have that kind of interface with Qt5/KDE libraries under it.
IIRC Unity 8 (“the next”) is written with Qt/QML.
“If you ever spent any time delving with Windows internals and know VMS, there are quite a few things there from VMS.”
I was a big fan of VMS so thanks for the comment, I will be digging into windows internals and hope to have the same experience.
For KDE, 4 was released premature but the later versions are OK, I use it every day.