KDE 4: the ultimate business desktop? (Computerworld) [LWN.net]

KDE 4: the ultimate business desktop? (Computerworld)

Posted Dec 19, 2006 12:02 UTC (Tue) by fergal (subscriber, #602) [Link]

Gah! Accidentally posted the comment above which got rewritten to:

You could equally say that managing files and directories is not the job of your desktop. They still need to be managed whichever desktop you are running, or even with none at all.

There are 3 interpretations I can think of for "manage" here. One is deciding the names and logical locations (what file in what dir). That's not done by the desktop, that's done by me. The other is managing how the files are stored on disk. Again, that's not done by the desktop (there is no Kext3 or Gext3 thank god). The final interpretation is managing communication between me and the filesytem but this is managing in a very loose sense. Basically giving me a nice interface into the system that does all the work.

That's exactly what the desktop should do, it should give me an interface into the system that does the work. It should not be doing the work itself.

And of course it's not the desktop environment's job to display available wireless networks;

Display and configure is fine (by configure I mean alter the stored configuration and possibly request it to be made current). Managing my network interfaces is not my desktop's job.

nor to provide a button to shut down or hibernate the computer.

KDE doesn't run my shutdown scripts, it shuts itself down and then tells init to shut down my computer. It's an interface to a more general system that is desktop-agnostic. Similarly for hibernation. There is no khibernate or ghibernate, nor should there be.

KDE 4: the ultimate business desktop? (Computerworld)

Posted Dec 19, 2006 13:58 UTC (Tue) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]

There actually are sort-of gnome and KDE file-systems: gnome-vfs, and "file-systems" acessible via various kio-slaves.

KDE 4: the ultimate business desktop? (Computerworld)

Posted Dec 19, 2006 14:46 UTC (Tue) by ekj (subscriber, #1524) [Link]

Yes there is. And it's a horrible idea. It means a specific resource is available, or not, depending on what desktop-environment -- or not -- you happen to be logged in to.

Changing from /path/file to method://path/file is probably worthwhile at this point, but it *royally* sucks that that is all implemented at the graphical-desktop-envionment level.

It means, if I save something from koffice to a certain adress, it's not a given I can open it with the same adress, or at all, with a Gnome-program, not even if said program happens to be running under KDE. fish://ekj@remoteserver/file.txt should work everywhere where /home/ekj/file.txt will work. But that's not the case today. I can open kedit and save a txtfile to the fish-adress, but I can't open Konsole and do:

grep "somestring" fish://ekj@remoteserver/file.txt

Currently, what "paths" are valid depend on which application you're asking. That's a stupid idea.

KDE 4: the ultimate business desktop? (Computerworld)

Posted Dec 19, 2006 21:37 UTC (Tue) by mrshiny (subscriber, #4266) [Link]

Currently, what "paths" are valid depend on which application you're asking. That's a stupid idea.

The thing is, the KDE people have a bigger mission than just Linux. Their requirements are for a multi-platform Unix desktop. Thus, to support enhanced file locations, such as ssh, they need to be implemented in a library, as opposed to a kernel module. This is why grep can't access fish:// urls.

There really is no way for a desktop like KDE to add SSH support to grep. KDE can't add new network filesystems to Linux or Solaris or BSD. They can't add change the libc either. So they implemented their own library. The multi-platform nature of KDE will pretty much guarantee this for the foreseeable future, I think. What's better: KDE having features that don't work in grep, or KDE not having those features at all?

KDE 4: the ultimate business desktop? (Computerworld)

Posted Dec 20, 2006 5:49 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

What's better: KDE having features that don't work in grep, or KDE not having those features at all?

KDE not having this feature at all, obviously. There are a lot of people who are using KDE and grep on the same system. There are miniscule number of people who are using KDE on different systems. This maans currently KDE makes life miserable for 99% users to make 1% of users happy. That's stupid. They should have implemented the kernel module.

KDE 4: the ultimate business desktop? (Computerworld)

Posted Dec 20, 2006 5:54 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Sorry. Hit the wrong button.

Note: the kernel module is reality now and GREP can use it - so now you can use one syntax for KDE, another one for GNOME and third one for command line, KDE, and GNOME, but... distributions don't support it because there are supported "GNOME way" and supported "KDE way"...

KDE 4: the ultimate business desktop? (Computerworld)

Posted Dec 20, 2006 15:58 UTC (Wed) by mrshiny (subscriber, #4266) [Link]

The question isn't whether 1% of KDE users use KDE on two different platforms; the question is whether KDE can implement a feature on all its supported platforms.

KDE != Linux.

KDE must, as a stated requirement, work on more than one platform, some of which are quite different (I believe KDE4 is expected to work on Windows). This means that they can't rely on FUSE, since FUSE isn't present on all their platforms.

Anyway, I'm frankly quite surprised that you'd rather have KDE NOT implement network-transparent IO slaves. That's rather like saying that a web browser shouldn't be able to access the web because GREP can't. I suppose you don't like using SSH because you can't just grep a file that's on a remote SFTP server? Maybe we should stop implementing any new file storage locations until they can be implemented in a file-system on any platform.

KDE 4: the ultimate business desktop? (Computerworld)

Posted Dec 20, 2006 16:53 UTC (Wed) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]

So KDE can implement an incompatable filesystem later on all platforms and be wrong everywhere. Hooray.

This is like Mozilla chrome looking wrong on every platform.

When will developers ever learn? Never.

KDE 4: the ultimate business desktop? (Computerworld)

Posted Dec 20, 2006 6:58 UTC (Wed) by DarkPhoenix (guest, #42333) [Link]

And what you're asking is that the KDE developers change it so that you don't have to worry about filesystems, but they have to write versions of KDE for Linux, BSD, Mac, Solaris...

It's done this way so that they can abstract the differences between the kernels. If they rely on a specific kernel's features, then it won't work on other systems.

KDE 4: the ultimate business desktop? (Computerworld)

Posted Dec 22, 2006 8:55 UTC (Fri) by hein.zelle (guest, #33324) [Link]

> And what you're asking is that the KDE developers change it so that you
> don't have to worry about filesystems, but they have to write versions of
> KDE for Linux, BSD, Mac, Solaris...

I can see the problem for both sides, but I'm not sure the gnome or KDE approach is the right one. For people that want a single desktop environment that does everything for them, it probably is the most practical, since it's likely the only way to achieve file-system transparency in all KDE or GNOME applications, and yet remain portable across systems.

On the other hand, this is ignoring the fact that kde and gnome are most often used with operating systems that largely depend on command-line programs doing basic low level tasks. It's also used in an environment (X) with a whole slew of existing programs that are not focused on kde or gnome. This leads to the trend of replacing every program that is working perfectly well by at least two versions starting with g or k, most of which are effectively only a user interface shell around the original program. It's getting better these days, but I used to think that most of those cloned programs suck, too (take [kg]gv as an example, if you wish).

I myself pick the programs that I like best. That includes a mix of an XFCE desktop, gnome-terminal, gqview, gimp, k3b, kimdaba, gv, xpdf, a whole slew of command-line programs and a bunch of others that will likely never be converted to any desktop system, like ferret and matlab.

I don't see how the approach taken by kde or gnome is ever going to provide a solution for me as long as they build very nicely portable solutions that only work within kde or gnome. Although I have sympathy for the portability argument, on my machine I care about compatibility between programs.

I'm probably not the typical target user for which kde or gnome are designing their desktops, but it bugs me nonetheless. I think the energy spent on all this cloning could be better spent on designing more ground-level infrastructure on which all desktops could build. Hey - you might even take the code from kioslaves / gnome-vfs and offer to build a kernel-level solution ... I'm sure BSD and other systems would be interested in that as well.

KDE 4: the ultimate business desktop? (Computerworld)

Posted Dec 22, 2006 9:18 UTC (Fri) by fergal (subscriber, #602) [Link]

I'm pretty sure you are a typical user though. There are 50 or so Linux users in my office and I don't think a single one of them gives a hoot whether the app begins with g or k, they just want it to work. The same for my colleagues in other offices. If I hadn't been at an after-conference party for a KDE conference, I think I could safely say I've never met anyone who cares. The K and G people have a mission and they're doing the work so they're entitled to set their own goals but I don't really believe that (all of) these goals are in line with what is most useful for the people who actually use their software.

KDE 4: the ultimate business desktop? (Computerworld)

Posted Dec 22, 2006 9:55 UTC (Fri) by pointwood (guest, #2814) [Link]

It is getting better through the coorperation between Gnome and KDE on freedesktop.org.

In regards to the kioslaves and other similar. Maybe a solution would be to use the "ground-level infrastructure" if it was available and if not, use the DE solution?