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KDE 4: the ultimate business desktop?

computerworld.com.au — Since beginning as a one-person project over ten years ago, the fourth generation of the K Desktop Environment (KDE) is poised to be the most business-friendly open source desktop to date with a host of new features ideal for enterprises. KDE 4 is now in rapid development and is scheduled for release sometime next year.

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  • nxusername, on 10/12/2007, -150/+8KDE and business have nothing in common.

    KDE is for lamers.
    • schestowitz, on 10/12/2007, -7/+39[sarcasm] I guess that makes me a lamer because I use KDE exclusively, at home and at work.

      Everybody, bow to the greatness of GNOME, Tiger and Windows XP... the business-refined environments. La-la land wallpapers and purposeless eye candy for everyone!

      For the record, GNOME and KE are both valid. Birmingham, however, dropped GNOME in favour of KDE... for its governmental desktops. So have respect and stop flaming /acting like a towel. *smile*

      Best wishes,

      Roy
    • sanguinemoon, on 10/12/2007, -40/+13@ nxusername I was just noticing that you are a ***** and troll. Have a nice day :)
    • brundlefly76, on 10/12/2007, -22/+9gee another superlative headline to describe desktop linux gets frontpaged on digg.

      Before you know it someone is going to be telling us how awesome their mac is or how gnome was a the magical elixir that solved his grandmother's windows problems.

      its almost getting so i can write the digg headlines for tommorrow the night before.
    • raingrove, on 10/12/2007, -6/+31@nxusername,
      Linus Torvalds told us to use KDE... so, does that make him a lamer?
    • stmiller, on 10/12/2007, -4/+16Check out the new KDE4 start menu:

      http://home.kde.org/~binner/kickoff/sneak_preview.html
    • Excessive, on 10/12/2007, -23/+1KDE sucks. It is for idiots who can't make something on the console. I'm watching my favorite movies with mplayer (console output), listening mp3's with mpg321 & Orpheus, CenterICQ for messaging needs, BX for IRC, and browsing web with links (framebuffer mode --driver fb).
    • bsander, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9@schestowitz:
      First of all, I love KDE and been using it exclusively for a couple of years now. However, one of the reasons Birmingham chose KDE over Gnome was the bouncy cursor on application launch.. so one might wonder how thorough that decision was ;)
      (See also http://dot.kde.org/1165749075/ and the Birmingham report it links to)

      @stmiller:
      Kickoff is already available for KDE3, check out http://kde-apps.org. It's not even sure this will replace the K-Menu in KDE4, however it's seriously considered, yes.
    • glock22ownr, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6@nxusername:

      You sir are not only a nub! You are an ignorant one at that! KDE is by far one of the better desktop environments, and can be used effectively in a business environment.
    • bobbknight, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4I like KDE
    • msgyrd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2KDE vs Gnome is just a preference thing. I can install KDE and then run all those apps in Gnome, and vice versa. Personally, I prefer the more minimalized Gnome interface, and I think KDE tries to copy Windows too much....but that doesn't make KDE any less capable as a desktop.

      And.........Linus told us to use KDE because he prefers it, plain and simple. I disagree with his preference, and I don't think he has any control over it, but I understand his sentiments. Linux needs a unified desktop if its ever going to gain greater popularity. Windows switchers tend to be more comfortable in KDE because it usually behaves as they expect. Mac switchers tend to be more comfortable in Gnome. It doesn't make one better than the other.


      /I also dislike QT for personal reasons, which is another reason I use Gnome.
    • ldog, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@bsander

      The bouncy cursor is actually kind of helpful. Not the fact that it's bouncing, but that it is in the form of the icon for the app that you've just launched.
      If you happened to launch a large application that takes a while to load, at least you know that it is still loading and didn't die in the background.
    • bsander, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yes it is, but my point was that it's not really a convincing argument to pick KDE over Gnome :)
      You're right though, I really like having that icon near the mouse pointer, though I usually disable the bouncing part.
  • bigtomrodney, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17It's hard to say much about KDE4, we are still a long way from seeing it. Although there have been two developer releases we have not yet seen any of the front end changes.
  • mtzmtulivu, on 10/12/2007, -1/+22
    ultimate? i use KDE exclusively and i cant wait for KDE4 but ultimate? business desktop require more than a desktop environment ..what will KDE4 do that you currently cant be done with KDE3 business desktop wise?
    • GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Run on Windows and OSX maybe. Imagine when these ageing XP boxes are looking to be replaced. You could easily add in Cygwin and KDE 4 and get a new OS with the ability to run Win32 apps natively.

      Also they are dropping the k fascination so apps will have sensible names.

      Also death to Arts.
  • airencracken, on 10/12/2007, -1/+55I don't understand people that hate on KDE or GNOME, both are great.
    • sanguinemoon, on 10/12/2007, -3/+35Yeah. I use KDE, others use Gnome, XFCE, etc. I guess some people with empty lives have to get religious about desktops
    • wabbiteh, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11My only problem with large desktop environments is that some very excellent programs end up depending on them, meaning that I either have to use a desktop environment that I don't want, or avoid using a program that I do want to use. Other than that, I don't really care too much, sinc I prefer to use fvwm with rox or gentoo.
    • Ademan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I've got a box with KDE, my personal box is GNOME, and my server/backup computer uses xfce, oh and i ressurected an anchient pII with a distro with fluxbox
    • sanguinemoon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15@wabbiteh

      That's not entirely true. You can run a Gnome application on KDE desktop or vice/versa without problems as long as you have the libraries. When I ran Gnome for a while, I even made Thunar my default file manager, even though it's the XFCE 4 file manager (Yes, I know Gnome and XFCE are both based on GTK 2) Regardless of the desktop, I always prefered Amarok as my music program, just for example.
    • calande, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2It's simple: The human being is like this, if you are not in favor, you are against, if you don't love, you hate. There is no average. The human being doesn't have trade-offs. He chooses between Gnome and KDE, and whatever he chooses, he hates the other instead of feeling nothing for it. It's not just for desktop environments, it's everywhere everyday...
    • GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1FVWM. I tend to print off and burn copies of its source code. Serious Fluxbox is where it is at for lightweight boxes. If I was in a particular sadistic mood I'd install EvilWM but never the sheer ugliness that is FVWM.
  • phatmikey, on 10/12/2007, -15/+3http://www.duggmirror.com
  • aurifex, on 10/12/2007, -35/+6Meh, both environments are a long cry from OS X or even Windows. Not from a technological standpoint, but from a structure standpoint.
    • DarkDakota, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20Please explain because i do not understand you. How are they a long cry? and what do you mean by "a structure standpoint"
      Not trying to troll here but I think most of the *nix Desktops are fully compareable to windows. (desktops not just window managers).

      @aurifex

      if you have a point, please explain it.
    • Ademan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Is a long cry anything like a far cry?
    • biggbrother, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8No kidding, how can you compare things like the menu layout with lots of programs, for instance. XP sucks that way.
    • GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Of course the Windows tendancy to spawn a new category for each and every app is so much more sensible than KDEs tendancy to pull similar apps together into one category. Like who wants the launchers for their E-Mail client, Torrent client and Web Browser in the same folder, thats just stupid like.
    • superppl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@GMorgan
      So you mean it's better to have a new category for each and every application you have instead of categorizing them? Then you can have something like 100 categories so that you can't find what your looking for and you will have to categorize it anyway.
      Anyway, in linux if an application gets put in the wrong category then you could change it and put it in the right category.
      I guess for saying this I will have -1337 diggs. :)
  • Ratteler, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6KDE, Gnome, XGL,et all, none of this matters without the bread and butter application, or FOSS solutions SO much better than that they redefine the industry standard.
    • Chandon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12OSS applications are already sufficient to actually *do* stuff with. If some users want to throw away a bunch of money to use proprietary software they can do that, but there's no legitimate reason to anymore... unless you want to play video games.
    • JQP123, on 10/12/2007, -10/+2"... unless you want to play video games."

      Or unless you run a business and need something really obscure ... or not, like say US payroll.
  • thecheatah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10I use kde on my laptop and gnome on my desktop. Kde has the whole everything in one feel, which is confusing at first, but useful when you think about how you can use it.

    Just out of curiosity anyone else here besides me use kate?
    • metalhead3767, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I used to but now I use kwrite.
    • shakin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Kate is a spectacular code editor. It might be the best general purpose text editor on any system. Built-in ssh support means I can directly modify files on my dev server without mounting a directory.

      Quanta offers a bit more than Kate and it uses the Kate KPart for editing, so I use that when I wante a full IDE.
    • lengau, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I love Kate for any text editing where I need more functionality than nano (so sue me, vi/emacs fnaboys). I generally use KDevelop for development work (unless I just need to change a small number of things) and Quanta for Web design.

      Overall, I find that KDE works extremely well for almost everything that I do. In fact, Kino, Jokosher and Audacity are about the only reasons that I have GTK installed (besides the fact that I always try to keep an open mind and at least HAVE GNOME/XFCE/etc. to try when someone says "hey, check this out!").
    • GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1KATE is alright but personally I'm Vim zealot. One of the reasons I decided to give GNOME another chance was because KVim/Vimpart was dropped. I'm back as a sane KDE'r now but still want to see Vim compiled against QT.
  • Stonekeeper, on 10/12/2007, -24/+8Kde always seemed a bit fischer-price to me. I know I'll get dugg down coz most people will take it as an insult.
    • ascheinberg, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14Only because you offer no explanation for it. KDE has a fisher-price-y feel (to me) because the icons are cartoony and the default themes are always really rounded and soft. XP's Luna is the same way. However, KDE rocks, and with a Plastik theme, it's REALLY tolerable and the entire desktop is usable even for less technical users.

      I happen to prefer the look of the default Gnome themes of late, but I rarely use Gnome.
    • HonoredMule, on 10/12/2007, -7/+5Funny, to me Gnome exuded that quality more.
    • reldruh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13Check out the new Oxygen theme for KDE4: http://www.oxygen-icons.org/ It's supposed to end up as much more than an icon set. And if you want to get a preview of how that might change the feel of the desktop, check out http://developernew.kde.org/ . It makes a big difference and gets rid of any cartoony-ness that was in the desktop.
    • Ademan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Wow those icons look absolutely beautiful, it's a shame i use gnome. I dunno how icons work for DEs, but i ASSUME they're not interchangable (but i hope i'm wrong) I have to agree that i don't really like the look and feel of KDE (ie Qt) but i've never bothered themeing it or anything. My largest grip with KDE has always been the main menu. It always felt cluttered to me, and apps written for KDE don't resize like GNOME ones do, but I understand that was a design decision. But KDE has a far better configuration menu than GNOME, i really like the system config application, i was considering making something similar for GNOME in python, I may still do it actually. But anyways, the point is both GNOME and KDE have their strong and weak points, and you just choose what fits you, it's that simple, there's no reason to get pissed that someone chose a different DE than you...
    • knutert, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@reldruh

      Nice! That "cartoonish" feel is one of the reasons why I prefer GNOME at the moment...
  • dioscaido, on 10/12/2007, -20/+1No.
  • codemonkey2841, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10When I ran X on my BSD box, I used KDE. I enjoyed the way it looked and worked much more than Gnome or any other Desktops I tried.
  • siddhartha211, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13I also use KDE, and I really like it because of its slick appearance and refined interface.

    GNOME is also good. Trolling about desktop environments is pointless; both are great solutions and its simply a choice of preference.

    Not to say that KDE is slow, but the fact that the graphics of KDE will get better with version 4 and, as the article stated, it will be faster and better performing is great. Total win-win.

    Some people think both GNOME and KDE is bloated. I've never experienced that, maybe on really old computers...but either one should be fine for most post-2000 computers.

    Windows XP is not really that bloated because of the graphics, its usually the extra services you have running that hinders performance.

    KDE is simpler, that's true, but is that a reason not to use it? Many a time those who say something is simpler are just being an elitest and trying to act like their all that because they use the more complex desktop environment, programming language, etc.

    @Ratteler
    This does matter to many people. You want a good looking desktop environment...when you're working on your PC an ugly interface will make you not enjoy your time...
    Sure software is important and all but having a nice looking OS is an important factor...
  • zerocomm, on 10/12/2007, -21/+4gnome > kde
  • dgh1973, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10I've often found KDE to be a bit cluttered in it's feel. Lots of buttons that I have no need nor desire to use. Ever since GNOME 2.0 - when the crack smoking stopped and they finally got some direction - I've enjoyed that desktop a lot more.

    I think part of it is that I remember the nightmares of trying to configure things through the several pages and tabs of preferences they gave people, dear lord they gave you TOO much stuff to configure.

    Plasma does look like it's making some neat direction changes though. For the GNOME fans, they have their own next gen desktop planned code named ToPaZ (for Three Point Zero). I think kde 4 gets more publicity because it's closer to completion.

    Still in order for me to return to KDE they would have to make some real fundamental changes, streamlining the whole interface is a must for KDE IMHO... too many buttons and doo-dads.

    Good on the KDE team though, I'm looking forward to at least expirmenting with it.
    • mtzmtulivu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8
      a good thing about KDE is that, though, you have more buttons than most people will care to have, you can trim them off if you dont want them. I think the trick will be to show people what KDE can do without showing the per sieved bloatness. A example is when you freshly launch a new program and you have 20+ buttons upfront to choose from. Most of these can be hidden. Show a few by default, hide most, let people expose the ones they want and let them hide the ones they dont want. Just dont take the choice away from them.
    • mfearby, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I installed openSUSE 10.2 today with KDE as my default desktop (it's been a couple of years since I last checked out Linux) and would have to agree with you. KDE, by default, is still too bloaty, yet GNOME is the complete opposite to the point where I can't customise it enough to make it usable according to my own long-lived preferences.

      In KDE, if I could turn off things like the fading taskbar icons (which fade to the point where they're hard to distinguish), translucent selection rectangle on the desktop, and could generally find my way around the zoo of preferences much easier, then I might be able to get used to it and ditch Windows XP. As it is, if somebody creates a powertoy for Vista to *truly* strip it back to the classic interface, and if KDE still seems a mess from my perspective, there'll be no need to switch to Linux yet.
    • oobuntu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@mfearby
      KPersonalizer allows you to customize the eye-candiness of KDE
  • rowanjl, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8I just hope they can convince application developers to clean up their act. Some programs are particularly bad when it comes to menu organization. Whats the point in having a ***** load of features if you can't find them?
    • JQP123, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2"Whats the point in having a ***** load of features if you can't find them?"

      With Open Source, it's mainly about the code but it takes more than just code to produce well designed software that ordinary people actually want to use.
  • mikedoth, on 10/12/2007, -18/+1It's popular because it looks like Windows, heh.
    • webmathwiz1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8It does not look like windows. It can, but that is because of the massive configurability.
    • JQP123, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0"It can, but that is because of the massive configurability."

      For the primary desktop user interface, is "massive configurability" a good thing or a bad thing?
    • redhatcat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@JQP123
      [sarcasm] It is a bad thing, of course! Who wants to be able to configure how user interfaces look and behave when a large corporation can lock it into the form they decide is best for you? [/sarcasm]
    • JQP123, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@redhatcat
      [sarcasm] And of course, the good thing is that people never get too familiar or comfortable with any one interface because they're all unique. This helps when you hire new employees; they can be more productive right away without any training.[/sarcasm]
  • metalhead3767, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1The site is down and dugg mirror does not have it.
  • dbr_onix, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6How are people reading this article? Duggmirror has a "Sorry, I didn't cache this", Coral cache isn't working either.

    Anyway, continuing ths random-Gnome-vs-KDE-comments : A lot of people critisize Gnome for "Not caring about user-opinion, and just doing what they think they should", one thing I remeber is "not giving options for screensavers, and only giving the options they developers want!1", or something like that. *But*, that is why I prefer Gnome, there's only options that the developers thought people would want, and that's all it really needs - The few times I've used KDE, the one thing I remeber is there being lots of.. things.. Distros that come with KDE primarily seem to have many of the same things (Like 5 text editors, 3 feed-readers, 4 web browsers, 2 file mangers, etc), and a *lot* of configuration settings. (Yes I know that's more up to the distro-maker, but the way KDE's menu system is layed out, it seems to be designed to work with many applications that do similar tasks, with having a sub-menu for Text-Editors, for example)

    Admitedly, in a corporate enviroment, it's fine, since all the machines will have everything configured, and KDE is generally more like Windows than Gnome is - Seeing as how that's what most people are used to, using a similar layout is a good idea (Not an identical theme and such, since that will confuse people, since Windows and Linux don't work the same)

    Personally, I like Gnome and Ratpoison. If I'm using my laptop on my lap (I.e not on a desktop, with a USB mouse), I use ratpoison, since I prefer using the keyboard over the touchpad, but I like the "just enough to be functional" stuff Gnome comes with, like the Network Settings tools, text editor, a terminal, etc

    ...anyway, mirror?
    - Ben
  • antigoogle, on 10/12/2007, -24/+2kde ultimate childish desktop
  • rowanjl, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2Damn digg, damn me, stupid reply button...
  • JrGhoull, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2when i installed suse for the first time i used gnome instead of kde because i liked the icon for gnome more than the kde icon (yes thats how little i knew about the 2) i actually wound up uninstalling suse because i couldnt even figure out where the hell the shutdown button was in gnome much less than anything else. next time i installed it i had heard many more people sayin how much they had liked kde, and i figured since i had nothing to lose, i reinstalled it but this time used kde. couldnt get my freakin wirless card workin (which i hear is a rather common problem) but other than that i really liked it. had a unique setup and everything, even had a nice lil effect for when things are loading (ya know when it takes the icon of w/e ur loading up and bounces it up and down...thats what i'm referrin to)
  • cornfry182, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2http://www.duggmirror.com/
    • it888, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1I love this environment. just donot know how to get business users to use it.
  • wares, on 10/12/2007, -8/+4Geez, no one EVER mentions the license. You can't develop on KDE for business unless you pay $2,000 per developer per platform. That eliminates it from my stack until there is an open source replacement for Qt.

    (Pssst: $2,000 kind of erases most of the cost-benefit of Linux for me.)

    Replace Qt, long live KDE!
    • vixenk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6No one ever mentions the license because it's the GPL now. :P

      http://kdemyths.urbanlizard.com/topic/10
      "Only developers writing closed source software need to purchase Qt licenses for their development purposes.

      Users of Qt-based software, including users of KDE, are not required to purchase any licenses whatsoever (even if they use commercial Qt applications).

      Free Software developers also don't need to pay for a license, since they use Qt under the terms of the GPL."
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