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

KDE 4: the ultimate business desktop? (Computerworld)

Posted Dec 20, 2006 5:49 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: KDE 4: the ultimate business desktop? (Computerworld) by mrshiny
Parent article: KDE 4: the ultimate business desktop? (Computerworld)

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.

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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 (subscriber, #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?