Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 16:52:18 +1030 (CST) From: Kris Kennaway <kkennawa@physics.adelaide.edu.au> To: Joey Garcia <gummibear@mediaone.net> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Regarding Promoting KDE - Wait, why not GNUstep? Message-ID: <Pine.OSF.4.05.9902021632300.25770-100000@bragg> In-Reply-To: <36B69584.F80FA433@mediaone.net>
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On Mon, 1 Feb 1999, Joey Garcia wrote: > Okay, so KDE might be easy to use for newbies coming from Window > 95/98/NT because it sort of looks alike, but why add an enviroment that > slows down the system? I used to use KDE as my main window manager and > enviromnet, but I have since then switched to Window Maker which seems > to be a nice setup because of it's small memory usage and it's slick > looks. I don't like or use KDE, because I consider myself a "power user" with enough technical skill to not need a WM which buries everything behind a GUI (and includes things I don't need). However, this is precisely what (a large percentage of) UNIX/FreeBSD newcomers _do_ need. You and I may never make use of this option, but if we were to use UNIX for the first time under such a system, would it be any better than being dumped into a console prompt, or twm (as today)? Of course it would be. You're looking at this from the wrong point of view: it's not intended as an all-encompassing master solution which will be expected to be used by all users of FreeBSD, and in fact won't have any impact at all on people who don't "opt in" by selecting to install the environment from sysinstall. The intended audience is for people who are new(ish) to UNIX environments, and who are uncomfortable having to whip out vi and edit WM config files, or type pathnames at a shell prompt. In time, perhaps they'll decide they've outgrown the protective surrounds of KDE and are ready for something more hacker-oriented. A quick 'pkg_delete kde;pkg_add windowmaker' and they're ready to play with the big boys. > GNUstep, which uses Window Maker as it's defualt window manager, seems > to be making some advancement adding Gnome and KDE support (with Window > Maker), and creating it's own OpenStep-like API. GNUstep doesn't use > third party (at least not that I know of) software in order to create > it's enviroment. You're missing the point. This isn't about which WM is cleanest, smallest, fastest, or "best" (if there is such a thing). Sure, KDE may be big and/or bloated, and WindowMaker + a dozen other things can do the same thing as the KDE distributions, but the point is it's signficantly more complicated to either a) set up into a seamless whole for Joe Newbie to instantly be able to start using, or b) too disjointed for Mr. Newbie to use without a steep learning curve. KDE is the only such integrated desktop package currently available - there are a full suite of applications published by the same people, with a standardized interface across the lot. _That_ is all the newbie cares about; once they have matured and learned, they will be ready to experiment with other choices, and/or customize things to their liking. Remember, nothing is forcing people to use KDE if they want to do the same things they do now - they just don't check the little box in sysinstall saying "Default desktop environment". > The NextStep look is really nice can clean and now with Max OS X coming > out soon, it might get very popular with the Mac crowd. > > I guess all GNUstep needs is a killer file manager, a suite of > applications like KDE, methods of making the rest of X more Next-like, > and other tid bits to make it more like a common desktop GUI. KDE is > probably alot farther ahead than the GNUstep team, but with more help > maybe it will move forward faster. Exactly. "Might", "needs X", "maybe". A year down the track, this might be a viable option. However cool the GNOME/GNUstep/WindowMaker stuff is, it's just not an integrated newbie-ready desktop environment (and for the latter two, doesn't even try to be one). Having said all this, the last time I tried KDE was the 1.0 release, which I found to be terribly unstable. I assume from the lack of comments in this direction that the code has matured a lot since then and this is no longer a problem. If so, I think this is a superb idea and not one which can be reasonably objected to. If only I had some free HD space to reinstall KDE, I'd jump in and help get things underway. Kris > Joey ----- (ASP) Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) announced today that the release of its productivity suite, Office 2000, will be delayed until the first quarter of 1901. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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