KDE SC 4.6.2 Codename Is Dedicated To GNOME 3.0

[TheBlackCat]

OK, instead of me trying all the distributions in the world before being able to claim that something is KDE's fault, why don't you go try all the distros in the world before you claim it is the distro's fault?

Because I know a bit about how the underlying software works.

[TheBlackCat]

You are mistaken. Ubuntu does not ship patent-encumbered codecs. It asks the user whether he would like to install them (and assume responsibility) as necessary.

I didn't say anything about shipping them. But Ubuntu does host them in their own official repositories, which it includes by default. openSUSE cannot host them in its own repositories, nor can it include the repository that does host them by default.

The main difference is that codec installation is painless in Ubuntu (click 'yes' and enter password), unlike in openSUSE (click 'yes', navigate to a website, enter linux version, click download, click run, enter password)..

Uh, in the repository manager you just need to do add->community repositories, then add the packman repository. No need to open a web browser at all, although you need to know to use the packman repo. Unfortunately it has been hard to do better than this with the legal limitations they have, although they are currently working to find a better solution.

[Remco]

Because I know a bit about how the underlying software works.

I do too. So now we're back where we started.

[mugginz]

By "pro-Gnomers" I assume you mean users?

Both those devs and users who can't see the other side of the argument.

Also, are you speaking primarily about GS? If so, I agree, but they had time constraints and they WILL add more configurability into the shell. I promise you you'll see a way to tweak fonts either as an update or for .2.

Actually mostly talking about G2 as I've not installed GS yet, only read reviews and seen screenshots of it.

Something that does bother me, though, is this idea amongst the main devs (Owen/Jon, mostly, IIRC) that Gnome should be recognizable like OSX. A product that people shouldn't be able to tweak(much). I think you'll see this somewhat even with the wallpaper fiasco on F15. That is simply going too far and is against a core principle of *nix-y design. Designing things to work BEST with each other is smart, but making it near impossible to change almost anything IS non-political fascism (again, I don't think for a moment that the devs have anything sinister in mind, but truly believe that this leads to the best end user experience).

I'd agree that there's nothing sinister in it, maybe just group think gone mad. This gets back to my view that you can take some things too far, like simplicity at all costs. There was a bit of criticism of OSX with regard to Apple making it simpler, but not easier. And there is a difference. I still don't mind OSX myself though.

Taking some ideas from OSX is fine, but some are just not well thought-out (like the new toggle switches used on the desktop -- when I first saw these in GS months ago I had never encountered them before and wasn't sure how to use them, or which side was on/off -- the later bit was mostly due to bad theming, but the fact is the metaphor is a sliding switch just doesn't work well on a normal desktop).

I'm probably a bit apathetic about the switches vs tick boxes thing. AS long as they're not absorbing too much screen real estate with them.

Again, I wasn't being serious. The desktop (gnome 2) was fine for almost any user, and the things that they wanted to change could be changed easily, but if someone is really complaining about, say, the position of the window title in the title bar, then edit the xml theme file, or install another theme.
One more thing, gconf-editor makes it really easy to change tons of things, but something that is annoying is that you can add key/values that are essentially undocumented. That really sucked.

Yeh, dispite its weaknesses, I find Gnome2 really pretty good over all. As an ex KDE user I was surprised how easy it was to get by without some of KDEs niceties. I'd say the biggest thing in Gnome2's favour was its stability in comparison to KDE. While in my opinion Gnome2 might not have all of the functionality of KDE, what functionality is there is quite robust. That's something the KDE guys need to get right. Running forwards and adding new functionality before getting the older stuff stable it a recipee for disaster. I haven't gone back to try 4.6.2, and I do intend to, but at this stage I'd likely switch to Unity or GS before going back to KDE.

Editing binaries and editing xml/css is about as far apart as things could be.

I guess I was trying to make the point that at the end of the day, anything can be changed. Be it via a GUI, by editing config files, or source and object code. From what I see though, any options that exist in XML and config files might as well not exist for the majority of users. That'd be the biggest take away from what I post on this subject. I generally advocate for the casual end user. The experts can fend for themselves

I won't argue about G2 with you, but peoples gripes with G3, as far as things like theming/fonts/etc) will be resolved, IMHO. If simply doesn't make sense that they wouldn't since part of the reason (if not the sole reason) for moving to css theming was the idea of bringing in more user/devs. Why do this unless you encourage modification?

I'd be shocked if it wasn't resolved. There are easy cheap shots to be made with respect to GS's lack of options at the moment, but at this stage I consider it a matter of prioritising what to do, and configurability isn't high on the agenda at this stage. If in 6 months things look like they're not going to change, perhaps we'd see devs external to the project come up with config utilites.

I have to say, having used KDE on and off for years, I loathe its way of exposing options. I don't think I am particularly dense (experiences with gtk3 switches excepted) but it appeared (both in K3 and K4) to be a mess. Supposedly OSX does a nice job of this, but I couldn't say for certain.

We differ here, but I can easily trade KDE's configurability for Gnomes stability. I of course wish to have both, but you can't have everything.

As for gconf, I really like it, but it needs to be better documented (even if it is only doxygen generated). If it were, it would be a nice intermediate option but currently, I am not sure they are going to maintain g(d)conf-editor. The commandline version is full of hateful suckage, IMO

I personally can live with gconf but it's not a pretty option to casual users. If I supply a PC for an end user and they want to change this or that, I'd rather not have to take them through this kind of thing. There's not very good discoverability of options available this way and it also perpetuates the view that Linux is hard to use.

When you know which key to modify in gconf though, it's pretty straight forward for anyone comfortable with PC's.

Lastly regarding Gnome's design philosophy, I think it a very good thing that they think deeply about problems, but they mustn't eliminate a hack (like user window management) until they have a solution. So, no, I don't think Gnome developers are making excuses, I think they are expressing a genuine belief. I mean, does anyone doubt that they couldn't hack up a monstrous tweak-tool that exposed almost all toolkit/kernel/driver/etc runtime options in a few months? The ability to make these changes are already there, all they would need is a gui to contain them and gio to handle file alterations.

Hopefully we wont need "MonsterTweak, the utility from hell". But if it's needed, I'm sure someone will come up with it.

With regard to the design philosiphy, I think they sit too far on the side of less configurability. While it might be a guiding principle, it still requires good judgement and a deft touch in aplication, so when they say they're going for ease of use, it doesn't really address the concerns raised regarding being too unconfigurabile in my view, for what it's worth. It's only re-interating one of their general design philosophies to me I guess.

[kraftman]

I'd expect such bugs in testing but not in the second revision of a stable release. It's embarassing, since 4.6.0 I haven't logged into a single KDE session without some random application crashing.



(a) Two wrongs don't make something right. (Bugs in Gnome don't make KDE any less buggy).

(b) I just tried reproducing this Evolution bug and it didn't crash.



But you know what? My Ubuntu/Gnome desktop is significantly more stable than my Arch/KDE one. I don't get random crashes, I don't get random compositor restarts and I don't get windows animations randomly moving to the wrong corner of the screen!

The point is you try to make KDE look more bad while the fact is Gnome is more buggy. My KDE desktop is far more stable than Fedora Gnome. I don't had issues you described here in Arch/KDE.

[kraftman]

Oh yes, that's right. I just upgraded to 4.6.2. This is how my desktop looks now:


Notice how the top panel is located away from the top edge of the screen, where it used to be. I have to push it up every single time I restart the computer. Luckily suspend/hibernation works! Also note how the cashew button on the bottom panel is covering the shutdown/end session icons, although the panel's max size is set to the maximum width of the screen. Sure these aren't show-stopping bugs, but they are irritating.

Have you ever considered this lower panel could mess things up? I'd like to know what distro are you using.

[mat69]

Have you ever considered this lower panel could mess things up?

Even if that was the case it would still be a bug.

[kraftman]

Conclusion is obvious - many bugs don't affect different configurations. That's why KDE 4.6.2 is rock stable for me. I hadn't single KDE SC 4.6.2 application crash, nor in Arch nor in Kubuntu. Compositions work excellent too. While on Gnome in Fedora I had crashes all the time. It was damn unstable and unusable. That's why I recommend to stop saying bullshit about Gnome being more stable, because from my experience it's far more unstable (both gnome 2 and 3) than KDE. We can stick to facts and the fact is KDE is much less buggy overall:

KDE bugs/KLoC - 0.019
GNOME bugs/KLoC - 0.508

http://scan.coverity.com/rung1.html

(Maybe it can be even concluded from those results Qt is more bugs proof than the language mixture used in Gnome.)

or we can agree many bugs aren't stricte DE's faults*, but also graphic drivers and other services, libraries (or dbus etc.).

* Ubuntu is much more stable on my computer than Fedora. It suggests Gnome and Fedora libraries aren't playing nice or just unmodified Gnome is such buggy and unstable.

[kraftman]

Even if that was the case it would still be a bug.

True, at first I thought it's some os x like panel not the one from KDE.

[devius]

True, at first I thought it's some os x like panel not the one from KDE.

I'm using Arch. It is a simple KDE panel that allows windows to pass over it and everything has always worked perfectly with this dual-panel configuration since this installation was using KDE 4.5.3, which was what was available at that time in the Arch repos. Now with version 4.6.2 this happens, but only when the internal laptop's screen is the only one being used. When an external monitor is also connected and used as the primary display, this doesn't happen, but instead the top panel doesn't resize itself automatically to fill the whole width of the screen.