Seigo: ++2009; [LWN.net]

KDE hacker Aaron Seigo has a lengthy retrospective of KDE in 2009 on his blog. "2009 was also the year that we finally got rid of the old system tray protocol and replaced it with one that is infinitely more flexible and allows us to better service users and software developers alike. At least some GNOME implementations will be picking this up in 2010 as well as an added bonus. For me this was one of those important advancements not only on a practical level but also symbolically: the system tray was one of those systems designed in the 90s for the reality of the 90s. We are committed to designing software for the 2000s, and doing the hard work even for the 'small' things (and being able to actually pull it off successfully) shows that those aren't just words." A look forward at KDE in 2010 is promised for later in the week.

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Seigo: ++2009;

Posted Jan 5, 2010 9:17 UTC (Tue) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

I've been using KDE4 for nearly a year now. Everything that I expect to see in other desktops is there and bug-free in KDE4 -- I don't miss GNOME at all (except that I use the GNOME network-manager applet rather than the KDE version -- it seems to work better). Kwin blows away compiz, and is the best window manager I've ever used. I like the "folder view" approach to desktop icons. Some of the new, advanced features are still rough and buggy, notably the "desktop activities" which is more powerful than workspaces/virtual desktops in theory, but always ends up messing up my screen. But I expect those to stabilise in 2010...

Seigo: ++2009;

Posted Jan 6, 2010 4:07 UTC (Wed) by jgd (guest, #19925) [Link]

With all due respect, I hope that the KDE system tray is there to serve users rather than to service them. You probably don't want to use service as a transitive verb, although marketing people always seem to!

_Greg

Seigo: ++2009;

Posted Jan 7, 2010 20:00 UTC (Thu) by sdalley (subscriber, #18550) [Link]

Yes, just as if one needed fixing like a faulty THX setup!