KDE SC 4.6.2 Codename Is Dedicated To GNOME 3.0

[Awesomeness]

Because they care about their users?

And the GPU manufacturers should not care about their paying customers?

I wish KDE developers would fix KWin's (notice that I said KWin and not radeon driver, as in "fix kwin", not "fix driver") bad performance on radeons.

It is a driver issue. KWin does not use some magic NVidia OpenGL. KWin uses OpenGL. Early NVidia drivers (pre v160.xx) also had bugs that caused performance regressions with KWin but obviously NVidia fixed them faster.
KWin and Compiz do not work identically. Some effects (eg. shadow) may look the same but the methods to achieve them can be different. I heard Compiz uses more OpenGL 1.x while KWin uses more OpenGL 2.x (though I can't verify whether that's true or not). So one method can be buggy on one driver while another method may work well.

That said, the radeon driver that ships with openSUSE 11.4 works fine in conjunction with KWin on my desktop PC at work.
Even before the upgrade from 11.3 to 11.4 we used SC 4.6 with KWin 4.6. Under openSUSE 11.3 it was sluggish at times with some effects (esp. the 'fade to gray' logout effect). Now under 11.4 it works very well.The KWin version didn't change ? 4.6.1 in both cases. The underlying operating system incl. Xorg and Mesa changed to newer versions.
Whatever distribution you're using: Switch to a more recent one that has newer Xorg and Mesa packages.

[liam]

BTW, congrats to the GNOME camp, and may their growing pains be less painful than those of KDE 4!

There are some nice ideas behind GNOME shell, and new ideas are always good.

Now this was more in the spirit of the KDE devs who decided on the release name.

BTW, I really don't understand the complaints about old Gnome's lack of configurability. Sure, it didn't expose a gui, but by hacking on a combination of configs, gconf, and xml, you could get it to look pretty much how you wanted (within limitations of gtk, of course). If you look around you'll see gnome desktops that are just unrecognizable. The idea, I would imagine, is that the devs had some choices to make. First, according to Jeff Waugh, they think if you need to add an option you've made a design mistake. Second, there are just so many devs available and Gnome is the main corporate desktop (I believe even SLES defaults to it) so above all else they had to make sure it worked.
The first point is laudable but may not be practical, and can certainly lead to problems when they decide to remove options before a design solution appears (IMHO, the problem, unless very serious, then gets back-burnered and a fix may be a long while coming, if ever). The second point is practical and nothing can be done unless they decide to maintain something like Gnome-unstable where they test various ideas over a long period of time, but even that would require more man-power.

[Joe Sixpack]

BTW, I really don't understand the complaints about old Gnome's lack of configurability. Sure, it didn't expose a gui, but by hacking on a combination of configs, gconf, and xml, you could get it to look pretty much how you wanted (within limitations of gtk, of course).

Do you even realize what you just said? Hacking several different configs in several different places, AND you're limited to what you can do because of the toolkit - and you said it so casually like that's just the norm.

By those standards any desktop environment or operating system is "highly configurable".

[liam]

Do you even realize what you just said? Hacking several different configs in several different places, AND you're limited to what you can do because of the toolkit - and you said it so casually like that's just the norm.

By those standards any desktop environment or operating system is "highly configurable".

If someone wants to consider themselves some kind of 1337 superuser then hacking a few files should be no big deal. If you aren't, then you might want to stick to things that require a gui and stop complaining that gnome isn't providing you with a gui that exposes all 80 000 options for your WM.

BTW, any toolkit has limitations that you have to work within, so lets not make a big deal about this.

[mugginz]

If someone wants to consider themselves some kind of 1337 superuser then hacking a few files should be no big deal.

If they want to consider themselves uber 1337 then maybe they should be on the command line.

If you're garden variety user wants things a little different in their GUI environment asking them to learn the intricacies of its internal workings would seem a little heavy, especially if there's alternative GUIs that allow you to easily customise stuff the way you want without having to resort to config files, etc.

If you aren't, then you might want to stick to things that require a gui and stop complaining that gnome isn't providing you with a gui that exposes all 80 000 options for your WM.

But wasn't the point of his post that if you want to customise things a little, and there's alternative GUIs that allow you to do it with out resorting to hacks, maybe it demonstrates one way in which those alternatives are superior.

BTW, any toolkit has limitations that you have to work within, so lets not make a big deal about this.

Again, if the alternative is superior maybe it's worth switching to.


This folly of removing all options isn't supportable. At the end of the day whether to provide an option or not will always remain a judgment call. The fact that Gnome provides a minimal set demonstrates that they believe there's a place for them.

I agree that thoughtlessly providing an option for anything and everything as a mechanism to avoid making necessary design decisions isn't great and can lead to clutter, but the opposite end of the spectrum also has its downsides and can leave you with a restricted, inflexible and hamstrung software environment.

Until Gnome removes absolutely every single option they're doing what the KDE guys are doing. Making judgment calls as to whether this or that benefits the user experience. To argue that there is no place for options and they must be eliminated at all costs and then turn around and provide them would show they don't really believe in that position.

So, the fact that Gnome provide some options demonstrates they believe there's a place for them, and this leaves them open to the criticism that they don't provide enough of them. The options for end users is to submit feature requests, switch to other environments, and complain on on-line forums.

[kraftman]

KDE is bloated.
KDE is ugly.
KDE's usability sucks.
KDE is overengineered.
KDE is unpolished.
Qt is cool.

Wonderful proof of gnome mentality. Any single evidence.

[kraftman]

KDE 4.6.2 got released, and the bugs keep piling up. None of the bugs were fixed, and new have been added (now it's impossible to shutdown the machine from KDE; it just brings you to a console.)

How classy is that?

Some idiot changed shutdown option to "/sbin/shutdown -p now" which is used on freaking bsd I guess.

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=270228

Stop lying none of the bugs were fixed while it's enough to look at the change log.

[RealNC]

Well, none of the bugs that affect *me* for a long time now were fixed They just keep accumulating, lol. And I've reported them all.

What can I say, what's important to me is what I care about.

[kraftman]

LOL!!! That list actually brought back some memories..

1) Gnome USERS: So what that KDE looks better - it's just useless eyecandy

Then:

GNOME looks just as good as KDE

2) GNOME Users: What do you need a menu editor for anyways?

Then:

We have alacarte now... so you can't say we don't have a menu editor anymore!!!

3) GNOME is so much faster than KDE...

a) KDE 3.1 acutally ran better on systems with low memory than GNOME did.

b) GNOME 2.12 was slow as hell...

c) KDE 3.5 was more responsive than GNOME.

Response:

What difference does it make? The average computer now is fast so why build around old hardware? People just need to upgrade their PC..

You're reading my mind. And when you ask for examples of so called 'over engineering', bloatness etc. they're becoming shy.

4) GNOME Users: KDE3 is crap!! It's too buggy and unstable!!

then:

GNOME 2.0 has it's issues but it's a new platform with new technology people. Be patient and they'll get the bugs out. It's a little rough, but you'll definitely see the benefits in the long run.

(I'm sure you can figure out for yourself why that last one is interesting...)

Yep, when KDE 4.0 arrived (it even didn't matter KDE developers said it's not ready for production use yet) many of gnome boys (including some devs which proves how immature they are) were bashing it over the net. Some gnome users blindness and fanaticism isn't explainable. It's exactly the same situation as with iphone and other apple's toys. It probably happens when people stop analyzing and starts to follow their masters to the death. Masters can beat and sell them, but their loyalty is endless.

[kraftman]

If someone wants to consider themselves some kind of 1337 superuser then hacking a few files should be no big deal. If you aren't, then you might want to stick to things that require a gui and stop complaining that gnome isn't providing you with a gui that exposes all 80 000 options for your WM.

BTW, any toolkit has limitations that you have to work within, so lets not make a big deal about this.

Usually KDE vs Gnome flame wars are about usability. If someone has to edit many configuration files to tune basic options such DE isn't so usable for newbies. Pro's don't have any problems with this (if they like it, it's other thing), but Gnome isn't so good for beginners. Simplicity is not about cutting features off, but about achieving goals in a simple way.