Ring-KDE 3.0 Released To Use The GNU's Distributed Communication Platform

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ring-KDE 3.0 Released To Use The GNU's Distributed Communication Platform

One of the interesting GNU projects that doesn't receive as much attention as others is GNU Ring that is a decentralized communication platform vying to be like Skype and WhatsApp but for open-source and privacy-minded users. The related Ring-KDE project put out their version 3.0 release that is a significant rewrite to this KDE/Qt interface to Ring...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ring-KDE-3.0-Released

[llort_lemmort]

Are all KDE apps this ugly?

[ElectricPrism]

Looks like the interface is clunky and has bad anti-aliasing from that picture.

And the "test "test" test" messages make it feel like a proof-of-concept more than a actual working product.

I feel like I'm looking at a college finals project or something.

The send button has all this space below, the message box looks like it's permenantly 2 lines high, what happens when text overflows the space.

The user avatars collide with the left and right out of bounds area and are insufficiently padded.

There is a weird white line on the left, bottom and right that look terrible.

Some of the grey text on grey background is difficult to read and insufficiently sized.

The textbox uses a "Monospace" font while the rest of the app uses highly condensed non-monospace font.

The Stars in the upper right corner of the boxes on the middle left are insufficiently padded.

The search box collides with the avatars.

The location tab is a dark background with inactive tabs a lighter background -- usually this is the inverse of standard. Active tabs are usually lighter and darker tabs inactive.

"Test Profile" username makes it feel again like a proof-of-concept at best.

[cybertraveler]

ElectricPrism: Some people just don't have an eye for design work, ergonomics and aesthetics. I think they need someone on their team to take care of this. Probably the whole thing will need tearing out and rebuilding though. I expect there is far more wrong with the design than just that. People who don't think about ergonomics will do things like make blocking calls in the GUI main loop causing the GUI to freeze for over 300ms at a time. I've worked with people like that and they just don't see these problems. It's like asking a deaf person how a music track sounds.

[V1tol]

That is not a problem when you don't have an eye for design work. Just look at the existing applications, damn it. Skype, Wazzup, Viber, Telegram etc - just get basic ideas from there and build an app that will look better than 3 yo child paintings.

[andyprough]

I feel like I'm looking at a college finals project or something.

Looks fine. Relax. That person was just using crappy settings.

[Kver]

Looks fine. Relax. That person was just using crappy settings.

I wish that wallpaper would die already.

[boxie]

Looks fine. Relax. That person was just using crappy settings.

Yeah, that interface still needs work - I don't think it does a good job of making a complex system simple to use yet. I hope the VDG are asked to get involved!

[cybertraveler]

Looks fine. Relax. That person was just using crappy settings.

That screenshot you provided doesn't look like a screenshot of Ring-KDE. Not even the title bar text matches the screenshot provided by Michael. I think that might be a screenshot of an older version of the official Ring.cx desktop software.

[linuxgeex]

I used twinkle for years as a chat / voip client on Linux. The one thing Ring has going for it is the DHT-based (Kademlia) de-centralized peer-to-peer networking. The big thing against Ring is that it's GNOME. If you want a VOIP client that doesn't let you configure 95% of VOIP features but uses literally 100x the resources of a fully-featured VOIP client, Ring is the product you have been dreaming about. Oh... and the obscene memory use - that's not so it can run faster. It's so it can run radically slower along with that greatly reduced feature set. GNOME - proving the addage that as computers get faster and have more resources, programs will expand and slow down to waste those resources. But the chat is good. Can't wait for a re-implementation to show up that runs in under 1GB after exchanging a dozen messages and placing 3 2-minute phonecalls.