He lost me
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| bigg Apr 06, 2009 6:20 AM EDT |
I really had difficulty understanding the point. The best I can come up with is, "They may not be making changes users want to see, but at least they're making drastic changes, and doing so quickly." How about an article that says this: what is wrong with Gnome, what is wrong with KDE, and what are they doing to fix those shortcomings. As a user rather than developer, I really do not see a lot of benefits from KDE 4 over KDE 3, beyond the fact that it looks better. It's about the end user experience, not the speed of change. Maybe Gnome and KDE serve different sets of users and what we've got now is good enough. |
| dinotrac Apr 06, 2009 11:03 AM EDT |
I suspect strongly that the changes made for KDE4 will, in the long run, benefit users because they will make development of good KDE applications better, but... KDE4 has improved things for developers so far without much thought for users. |
| DiBosco Apr 06, 2009 3:58 PM EDT |
I still think the problem with KDE4 (and its apps) is that it is essentially still beta standard software, but once it's stable it will be just fine. Admittedly I don't use it and am using a distro a year old so I can stick with 3.5, but I have no dislike of the principle of KDE4. |
| tracyanne Apr 06, 2009 6:32 PM EDT |
Quoting:I still think the problem with KDE4 (and its apps) is that it is essentially still beta standard software, but once it's stable it will be just fine. That's all well and good, but I want a usable desktop now, not one that has been eviscerated, and KDE3, at least on Mandriva doesn't seem to be a viable option (I certainly haven't managed to get KDE3 to work to my satisfaction, that is as well as it does on 2008.1, on 2009.0, there are too many KDE4 bits getting in the way) unless one stays with an older release. So I'm using GNOME, and it is indeed very usable. |
| herzeleid Apr 06, 2009 8:12 PM EDT |
What TA said. +1 another disenfranchised, formerly happy kde user who is now using gnome. We'll see how 4.2.x shapes up, but I've adopted a wait and see attitude, not at all eager to jump back into kde until it's good and ready. |
| tuxtom Apr 07, 2009 3:25 AM EDT |
KDE 4 is the Vista of the Linux community. I'm holding out for KDE 5 just as the Microsoft set is for Windows 7. 3.5 is my XP |
| DarrenR114 Apr 07, 2009 8:33 AM EDT |
XFCE4 rox!
KDE sux rocks! I bit the bullet last week and wiped my Ubuntu 8.04 because most EVERYTHING on the GNOME side was causing a lot of disk thrashing. It is NOT reasonable for it to take 5 minutes to log in from GDM. It is NOT reasonable for it to take 10 minutes (or longer) for firefox to start (and that was only if I waited for the disk activity to completely stop before attempting to start the browser.) So, I wiped Ubuntu 8.04 by installing the base system of Ubuntu 8.10 (using the Net install CD) followed by installing the xubuntu-desktop package. Now things are back to being as responsive as I remember back with doing a fresh install with Redhat 4 and fvwm |
| TxtEdMacs Apr 07, 2009 2:03 PM EDT |
Darren..., I guess you hesitated too long. We all know that Ubuntu can run on Windows, but you should have loaded it into its own partition, before the operational characteristics of my favorite OS* took over. Since you seem so opinionated, I would have thought acted more promptly, but no harm really with 8.10 you have greater performance and less compatibility issues. Your Buddy Txt. * Window Vista Max. (special edition) |
| herzeleid Apr 07, 2009 2:04 PM EDT |
Quoting:It is NOT reasonable for it to take 5 minutes to log in from GDM. It is NOT reasonable for it to take 10 minutes (or longer) for firefox to start (and that was only if I waited for the disk activity to completely stop before attempting to start the browser.)Did you check to see what was eating the resources? Out of curiosity, I just did a test on my 5 year old Dell GX270 here, running ubuntu - from the time I typed my password in the GDM login box to the time the desktop was fully ready, it took 6 seconds. Sure, xfce is lighter and more responsive, but come now, 5 minutes, compared to 6 seconds? You definitely had something else going on there. |
| TxtEdMacs Apr 07, 2009 2:35 PM EDT |
Darren..., Seconding herzeleid, what do you mean by Firefox "starting", just to appear or ready to use? I have about 40 to 50 tabs (estimate, but I tend to undercount) and my Ubuntu 8.04 is not so lackadaisical. Moreover, when I ran 6.06 with Firefox 2.0.x with nearer to 200 tabs it would not take as long as you observe. That is, in the latter case with all tabs loaded. Now I also tend to refresh slashdot upon startup while other tabs are still in the process of connecting. Either your hardware is very anemic* or you are indeed running atop my favorite OS. YBT * Mine is circa 2001 - 2003, and not top of the line for the period. I assemble from components and upgrade that way as well. |
| DarrenR114 Apr 07, 2009 5:26 PM EDT |
I agree about "something else" going on in the background - and I often ran top to figure out what it could be. The biggest user of resources when the disk thrashing was happening was related to Nautilus and the gnome-panel. And you two touched on another part of the problem - when I first installed 8.04 from doing the apt-get dist-upgrade, it wasn't having these problems. It just got progressively worse, and it didn't improve when I "cleaned" the Firefox cache. I figured there were probably some "cache" files somewhere that GNOME and/or Firefox were using that was causing the problem, and I wasn't going to waste hours of my time looking for the cause of a problem that shouldn't have occurred in the first place. I dumped KDE because it was bloated, and haven't gone back (this was when KDE3 first came out.) I've dumped GNOME because it has become too bloated and sluggish. And I'll probably do the same with XFCE if it becomes a problem - which it may as the xubuntu-desktop package brought in quite a few GNOME components. I tried fluxbox for a short bit before trying the xubuntu-desktop, but am not familiar enough with it to be comfortable - yet. |
| hkwint Apr 14, 2009 12:38 PM EDT |
Quoting:How about an article that says this: what is wrong with Gnome, what is wrong with KDE, and what are they doing to fix those shortcomings Really agree to that. However, I am only able to answer those questions for WindowMaker. So if somebody else could do the same for XFCE, KDE & Gnome we'll have a nice article. Here it goes: Why would you use WindowMaker? -Easier than BlackBox; doesn't need an external app to handle desktop background (the most important reason I started using this) -Rocksolid & stable -Fast -No dependency bloat -Restart window environment (if it 'hangs') while the apps keep running! -Once you make something work nicely, it will keep working nicely. -Small! -Almost no apps installed by default, meaning you can make your own choices and know everything which is installed; meaning no surprises. -Doesn't take long to compile (only if your distro does compile your software) -Only small steps between versions; you're never lost -Shortcut keys to applications / scripts work like a charm -No clutter at all (my desktop only has 4 icons on it, I never use any icons) -None of its users participate in flamewars; probably because they all know it's not suited for everybody. What's wrong with WindowMaker? -Looks outdated -Not very integrated, lots of DIY plumbing -GUI is not intuitive if you come from Windows, -No nice graphics, -The option to 'bind' certain apps to certain workspaces has some bugs, -Nasty session-file to edit by hand, -No Desktop Environment, meaning you have to do ALSA / Jack or whatever on your own, -No easy localization / keyboard manager so you have to reside to antique 'xkeycaps' or CLI, however PrintScreen works now flawlessly and even gives a beep to let you know it worked (!), EuroKey works now and same goes for dead keys. -Annoying maximize screen bug, which means you have both to unmaximize and maximize instead of just maximizing, -No rotating cube -No shutdown button (!), meaning you have to Ctrl+Alt+Backspace followed by $sudo shutdown -h now What are they doing to fix shortcomings? -Not much, the project isn't very active and most goals have been reached. So, who follows suit for other Window Managers / Desktop Environments? |
| Steven_Rosenber Apr 14, 2009 4:12 PM EDT |
I recently had a looooonnnng delay booting to a console — not even a GUI. What was happening was that the CUPS daemon was loading at startup and was taking a damn long time to do it. I added an ampersand after the line calling cupsd in my rc.local file (this was in OpenBSD). With cupsd loading in the background, I shaved a crucial couple of minutes off the boot time. All the other daemons were loading quickly ... just not cupsd. And since I'm not generally printing within 1 minute of logging in, I'm OK to have CUPS do its thing in the background. On another note: I just installed and am tweaking a new Xfce installation (again in OpenBSD) and it's looking and working pretty well thus far. |
| hkwint Apr 17, 2009 4:21 PM EDT |
Quoting:I added an ampersand after the line calling cupsd in my rc.local file (this was in OpenBSD). Freakin' good idea Steven. How would you do this in Linux? I'd like to do the same for NTP-client. |
| Steven_Rosenber Apr 18, 2009 3:16 AM EDT |
You've got to find the script that calls NTP during boot. I'd start with man ntp on your system; that should get you started. |
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