the silence is deafening
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| tuxchick Oct 25, 2011 8:15 PM EDT |
So where are all the KDE4 fans who jump on every negative KDE comment? Do you not enjoy positive pieces that go beyond "I installed it, it's perty, it wobbles, w00t"? Really now. |
| Koriel Oct 25, 2011 8:55 PM EDT |
Sorry just can't work up any enthusiasm for something like Nepomuk, never use it, never will use it and its the first thing I turn off. |
| Grishnakh Oct 25, 2011 9:09 PM EDT |
Same here. I use things called "directories"; I don't need a search system to index all my data, and I certainly don't want the performance impact. |
| Grishnakh Oct 25, 2011 9:31 PM EDT |
I have a few more issues with this article. 1) Just because we have terabytes of storage available doesn't mean it's so much harder to keep all that data organized than 10-15 years ago. I don't have that many more files than before, it's just that a bunch of them are 1-5MB pictures (thanks to modern 5+ megapixel digital cameras), or 100MB-1.5GB videos (thanks to BitTorrent...). Unlike 20 years ago with stupid DOS, keeping these files organized is much easier thanks to long file names: (I tried showing some examples, but this comment section won't allow indentation or other text formatting.) 2) "Social: it supports the interconnection and exchange with other desktops and their users." Why do I want this? If I want to share a photo with someone, I can do this manually very easily. Why do I need some indexing and metadata-building system to do it for me? I certainly don't want anything that shares my data automatically, as this could easily release compromising or confidential data. This sounds like something the Facebook people would praise, but which anyone with any common sense would have no interest in. 3) The only way I can really see this stuff as useful is if the software is sophisticated enough where I can ask my computer, "find me the photo where I'm standing on the beach in Hawaii and there's a boat in the background", and it automatically shows it to me. This is basically right out of Star Trek, and isn't going to be here for a while. It might not take 300 years, but it's far enough ahead (like a couple decades), and the benefit is so minor, that it isn't worth burdening our PCs with all the processing necessary to make this possible. Right now, it's easy enough for me to find the photo myself by just doing "ls -lR /photos | grep -i hawaii", finding the directory where my Hawaii vacation photos are, and then manually searching through them. It's not like I do a search like that very often anyway. |
| Koriel Oct 26, 2011 12:09 AM EDT |
Once computers reach the processing powers of Orac, then I might just might consider using it. My photo and video collection takes up 40GB and growing spread across 5 DL DVD's all layed out by directories using year-month-day format, as long as i can remember the year I can pretty much find anything fairly quickly. |
| tracyanne Oct 26, 2011 12:11 AM EDT |
Carla, none of those things add, or subtract, anything to my experience of my desktop. I've read dozens, well 10 or 12, of articles on the Semantic desktop, and KDE 4's nepomuk Acondi and strigi, and I've spent time on each iteration of KDE4, and I still can't think where I would use any of that stuff. I don't have any trouble finding my files, and I'm not all that organised. The things that are important to me I've already commented on. I've got nothing to say positive or negative with respect to this. ::SHRUG:: |
| tuxchick Oct 26, 2011 12:34 AM EDT |
I said "KDE4 fans who jump on every negative comment." That's not any of you. |
| tracyanne Oct 26, 2011 12:47 AM EDT |
Well there's one here somewhere, where's Fettoosh? |
| Koriel Oct 26, 2011 1:01 AM EDT |
Removed my comment for being too harsh even by my low standards. |
| Grishnakh Oct 26, 2011 1:10 AM EDT |
@tuxchick: How many "KDE4 fans who jump on every negative comment" are there on here? Honestly, I think there might be one, if that. It seems like most of them are like me: we like KDE4 (now that the bugs are fixed) because it offers a traditional, configurable, and full-featured desktop, unlike all the others. The other choices are 1) Unity and Gnome which aren't traditional or configurable, or 2) the "lightweight" DEs which aren't full-featured. That's the only reason I like KDE4, and I think they should have just stuck with that, and making it as solid and reliable as possible, and left this semantic stuff for later (like the 5 or 6 series). The people who care about that kind of thing (especially the whole social-networking thing) don't want a traditional desktop, they want Unity and its high integration with Facebook and Twitter and total lack of suitability for real work. |
| Fettoosh Oct 26, 2011 1:53 PM EDT |
Quoting:Well there's one here somewhere, where's Fettoosh? I am right here TA busy with some work though I have to get done. I will make more elaborate comment when I get home. Tuxchick did a pretty good job introducing Semantic on KDE. Even I, who had a descent idea about it, learned something new about what how much is involved and understood the concept more clearly. I am not sure if TC is going to have a follow up, but later tonight, I will describe how Nepomuk could be beneficial to some users. I can't say much about its reliability yet because it is not at a stage where it could be called a productive tool. It still has ways to go. Its biggest potential is in organizations and most beneficial to people who have myriad of correlated information. I think of it as a Smart little Google search. Instead of giving too much irrelevant information, it will only give much related information. Exa. Schools, libraries, Malls, hospitals, and kiosk at many public facilities. |
| hkwint Oct 26, 2011 2:44 PM EDT |
TC: Not read the article yet, but I was there I guess when Nepomuk (and all other frameworks like Sonnet, Strigi, Akonadi etc.) were announced somewhere 2007 or so. In 2010 I guess (or was it S1 '11?) Nepomuk came to my desktop, caused lots of troubles because it kept changing backends (virtuoso or something, can't really remember) back and forth, and Akonadi caused even much more headaches because of all the MySQL-errors I had to fix manually. Not to mention dependency hell that KDE4 sometimes is during updates if you have to compile by yourself, Xorg crashing once a day on average (with some errors pointing in KDE direction) and kate losing lots of my data as it regularly segfaulted without saving my data. Also, Firefox crashed many times, usually when writing a lengthy FB message. And to prevent that, I used Kate - which segfaulted like just mentioned... What a mess. Not mentioned yet: many delays of the release of KDE-PIM 4.5 (guess it wasn't released?) and lots of trouble compiling it, as I had KDE-4.5 but then needed KDE-PIM 4.4.10 or 4.6-beta or so, and of course dependencies of those versions where biting each other. Of course Amarok was pretty nightmarish as well, same MySQL-errors Akonadi suffers from, some manual config editing and such (having to login to MySQL to fix things, while I never used it before!) and such. Complete mess, IMHO. Probably because I insisted on staying at Gentoo, also because other distro's were failing. Oh well, what else is new. Thing for Nepomuk was, as I wrote multiple times: It indexed, but back then (few months ago?) you couldn't use the giant index to search. So I turned it off, as it also ate lots of resources without being useful. I decided to put my money where my mouth is. Regularly I have been complaining about 'too much fragmentation' and 'duplicated efforts'. And that 'the world would be better if more people use the same'. So I made the rather unusual switch from Gentoo to Ubuntu, and everything works pretty fine. OK, I have to switch to another e-mail program yet again (after going from Kontact on Gentoo to Evolution on Ubuntu I guess I have to go 'back' to Thunderbird on which I was before 2004), and sadly Kontact didn't safe in 'default' maildir format. So I think I gave the KDE4 thing a chance for over four years, before deciding it made by whole system unstable, lost me many hours configuring / compiling the thing, lost some of my data, and messed up my mood many times with all those MySQL warnings, and 'blabla not registered at D-BUS' (was it Nepomuk?) any time I started. And also by migrating to some newer version of Kontact, my KWallet broke, and where it first always asked my password only upon closing Kontact (weird, isn't it?) it then plainly refused Kontact to start without PW-which I lost. Lots of frustration, even while I have been a KDE-excusionist for many years - in the classical sense as the many Windows-excusionists maybe. Mainly, I saw great potential in all those frameworks when presented to me at T-Dose 2007 (or was it '06?). I still do. But unless they're going to introduce something which actually works after 4 years, nah, thanks. I'm in the EU, so I financially support Nepomuk anyway, as all EU-citizens do (6th framework programme IIRC). Grishnakh: You can use code-tags between square brackets for monospace listings. Example: /home/foo/.Maildir /home/foo/.VirtualBox ed: Ah, turned out Sander actual wrote something about said introduction of KDE4-frameworks for LXer 4 years ago: http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/94042/index.html Look for 'Adriaan de Groot' and you'll get there. Which means I was there in 2006 or '05 (when T-Dose was held at Sinterklaas-time in early December), when Adriaan pretty much announced those frameworks I guess. So yeah, I waited five years for them to work. ed2: Ah, actually found it: http://www.t-dose.org/node/7 It was 'KDE4 Technology Preview' Sunday December 3d 16:00 CET 2006. |
| Grishnakh Oct 26, 2011 4:09 PM EDT |
@hkwint: Thanks for the tips on the code-tags. But I feel like maybe you abandoned KDE a little too soon, after looking at it wrong. To make a car analogy, it's like you gave BMW a shot, but not by buying a brand-new car from the dealership, but instead by buying all the constituent parts to make a BMW and trying to put it all together yourself in your garage, running into a lot of trouble, and then deciding that BMWs suck because of the experience, while all the other BMW drivers who simply bought their car pre-built from the factory are mostly happy. Gentoo isn't exactly a distro that sets everything up for you nicely, and apparently their integration of KDE left a lot to be desired. I've never run into any kind of problems like what you mention (MySQL issues?); but I've been using Kubuntu every since I switched to KDE4 (before that, I was using OpenSuse with KDE3). Kubuntu doesn't have the greatest reputation either, but I've never seen problems like that either. I suggest you give it a try. The other one to try is Linux Mint KDE edition, which seems to work quite nicely on my laptop. But again, I've always turned off Nepomuk and friends, so I've never had any problems that they might have caused, but I am a regular Amarok user and it's always worked fine, though the cover manager doesn't seem to let me select my own .jpgs in the 4.5.x version I still have on my desktop system (it might be fixed in newer versions). (And to make another parallel with BMWs, Nepomuk et al are sorta like BMW's iDrive system, which has received lots of complaints, just like Ford's MyFordTouch system. Using iDrive can really ruin your BMW experience, but having iDrive is not mandatory in a BMW, as most of them do not come with it, just like most Fords don't come standard with MFT.) Quoting:I decided to put my money where my mouth is. Regularly I have been complaining about 'too much fragmentation' and 'duplicated efforts'. And that 'the world would be better if more people use the same'. I still this is mostly correct, but it's not an either-or thing. Too much fragmentation is bad, as it duplicates efforts which can better be spent developing new and original stuff or fixing other problems, and it leads to too much chaos and confusion. However, too much standardization leads to stagnation, so you need a certain amount of diversity and competition so people have alternatives and can try out new things. |
| tracyanne Oct 26, 2011 5:02 PM EDT |
@Fettoosh
Quoting:Its biggest potential is in organizations and most beneficial to people who have myriad of correlated information. Then since it appears to not have much use on ordinary users' desktops why make it a default? |
| Koriel Oct 26, 2011 7:00 PM EDT |
@tracyanne I suspect the default settings are down to the distro. I now use PCLinuxOS and Nepomuk & Strigi are disabled by default on a clean install. PCLinuxOS used to have a bad name for including everything except the kitchen sink. Thankfully they listened to their users and now it is extremely good on resource usage from a clean install and fresh startup and by disabling Nepomuk they save about 50mb of memory usage. Examples: PCLinuxOS using KDE4 memory usage is approx 320mb and I can tweak that down to about 299mb this is pretty good for KDE4 but still not good enough for me to use on a regular basis as I don't have copious amounts of ram and the 2gb ram i do have is needed to run two virtual machines at the same time along with Netbeans without swap kicking in, which i can do using XFCE. PCLinuxOS using XFCE memory usage is approx 160mb with mysql running and 140mb without. And their is no way im spending money on purchasing outdated DDR Ram when XFCE solves my problem for free, im Scottish so this goes without saying :) |
| Fettoosh Oct 26, 2011 9:03 PM EDT |
Quoting:I suspect the default settings are down to the distro. True, but TA has a good point since some Distros don't change the defaults set by the KDE team. Early on, I believe KDE wanted as many testers as possible and that is why they activated Nepomuk by default. What they should have done, since the software was still in its early alpha stage with many problems, is to have semantics apps installed but kept disabled. Any user who is interested could activate them if desired. There were many users who were annoyed, me included, with all the problems that surfaced. The nice thing was, if disabled once, upgrades will keep it disabled. Currently, the KDE team leave it up to the DIstros to make a conscious decision, but that was what got them in trouble in the first place when KDE 4.0 was released. With so much new development taking place on the KDE Software, like the Activities concept, Plasma Active, Semantec search, OwnCloud, etc, the KDE team should do something to address the quality of the software. One thing they could do is to follow Debian's release process. They should have one stable and another experimental. I don't know how much work that would be, but it is something to consider and save themselves a lot of grief. |
| Grishnakh Oct 26, 2011 9:24 PM EDT |
Fettoosh wrote:One thing they could do is to follow Debian's release process. They should have one stable and another experimental. I don't know how much work that would be, but it is something to consider and save themselves a lot of grief." I completely disagree. I think they should have one stable release, and another experimental, where the stable release is one that's been thoroughly tested out and works reliably, and the experimental one is where all the new features get tried out before being moved over to the stable branch. As I found out recently on here, this is not at all what Debian does. Remember, the current Debian "stable" actually has some ancient version of KDE4 that's full of bugs and instability. To Debian, "stable" just means frozen in time at some arbitrary point, not actually tested to be reliable and stable. Stable, reliable software are important in many settings, such as workplaces, where people are relying on that software so they can do their jobs with it. Using these people as guinea pigs is a terrible idea, and only ruins your reputation and makes them switch to something else, never to return. |
| Fettoosh Oct 27, 2011 9:14 AM EDT |
Quoting:I completely disagree. Whether you are right or wrong about Debian, what I said is "follow", concept wise, not necessarily do the same. Stable means, when a computer is running, it stays operationally stable, meaning doesn't crash, meaning reliable. Similar to putting live stock (animals) in a stable, means they will stay in there and won't crash the gate and run amuck. But thanks for elaborating my point. So, what is it you completely disagree with? |
| Grishnakh Oct 27, 2011 12:13 PM EDT |
@Fettoosh: I disagree that they should follow Debian's release process. You said "stable" means "doesn't crash", "reliable", etc. But Debian Stable does not fit this definition at all; we had this conversation here on Lxer a week or two ago in an article where "DarkDuck" tested out Debian Stable with KDE 4.3.x. (or was it 4.4.x?). Anyone who knows much about KDE4 knows that it didn't really become "stable" until 4.5.x, better yet 4.6.x, and the earlier versions were very unstable, buggy, and crash-prone. Why would Debian "Stable" come with a crashy DE? Simple, because they don't use the same definition of "stable" that you do. To them, "stable" means "not changing for a long time", even if that means including very buggy alpha- or beta-quality software. To Debian, "stable" means "take the very latest version of all the programs in this list, package them together, call it a 'stable' release, and then keep supporting this release with security updates for a long time". It's basically the same thing as Ubuntu LTS. But this doesn't mean the software included (even very important software like the DE) is actually stable itself, or even tested in any way. They don't pick known-stable versions of the various software packages, they just pick an arbitrary version (generally the very latest version, bugs and all). So the stability of any Debian Stable release is really luck-of-the-draw. |
| Koriel Oct 27, 2011 1:14 PM EDT |
All Debian stable means is that its packages are older, it bears absolutely no resemblance to stable if i want stable I use Slackware. |
| Fettoosh Oct 27, 2011 1:39 PM EDT |
Quoting:But Debian Stable does not fit this definition at all; It seems I am unable to communicate my point and I wasn't discussing Debian. What Debian means by stable and what actually does in its process is Irrelevant. my point is, KDE needs to have a stable, in the normal sense of the word as I understand it, as in reliable release, and an experimental release, as in exploring and testing. I never used Debian and I am not about to. My guess is many people use stable because they believe it means stability and reliability. Whether that is true or not, I don't know, but I suspect there are people who disagree with you. By the way, is it not true that there is a better word for "not changing" than stable? something along the line of Freeze/Frozen? |
| jdixon Oct 27, 2011 2:24 PM EDT |
> ...is it not true that there is a better word for "not changing" than stable? Well, there's always unchanging. :) But that's not accurate either, as there are security fixes. |
| Koriel Oct 27, 2011 2:32 PM EDT |
Feature frozen would be a better term as that is truly what it represents, as like most other distros it does recieve security fixes throughout its support period. Stable is highly misleading in my view. |
| Grishnakh Oct 27, 2011 3:25 PM EDT |
Fettoosh wrote:What Debian means by stable and what actually does in its process is Irrelevant. my point is, KDE needs to have a stable, in the normal sense of the word as I understand it, as in reliable release, and an experimental release, as in exploring and testing. I agree with that completely. But Debian wasn't irrelevant, because you said earlier: Fettoosh wrote:One thing they could do is to follow Debian's release process. They should have one stable and another experimental. I just wanted to point out that Debian's release process wasn't at all what you thought it was, and that KDE shouldn't copy it, as it doesn't help anything, and as Koriel says, their use of the word "stable" is highly misleading. "Feature frozen" is absolutely the right term. Sorry if this all seems nitpicky, but I don't want anyone getting the idea that using Debian Stable will give them a stable and reliable system. |
| ComputerBob Oct 27, 2011 8:26 PM EDT |
Quoting:To Debian, "stable" means "take the very latest version of all the programs in this list, package them together, call it a 'stable' release, and then keep supporting this release with security updates for a long time". It's basically the same thing as Ubuntu LTS. That's not true. Debian Stable includes packages that have worked their way through the lengthy testing processes of having been in Debian Unstable and then in Debian Testing for awhile -- and they're as bug-free as possible at the time that Debian Testing becomes "feature-frozen" for awhile, to allow even more time for devs to fix even more bugs before "feature-frozen" Debian Testing becomes the new Debian Stable. Once that happens, the new Debian Stable only gets security updates from then on -- and then the entire process repeats itself, with the new Debian Testing eventually becoming the next Debian Stable, etc., etc., etc. As I said in that other thread a couple of weeks ago, to me (an Xfce user), Debian Stable has been extremely stable in both the "reliable" sense and in the Debian "unchanging" sense, but I understand why KDE users might want to avoid the current Debian Stable, since it comes with a relatively old version of that DE. I, for one, am glad that the Debian devs didn't wait for KDE to finally get its act together before "feature-freezing" what is now Debian Stable -- I doubt that anyone would have wanted to wait THAT long for the current Debian Stable to have been released. |
| Fettoosh Oct 28, 2011 11:11 AM EDT |
Quoting:That's not true. Debian Stable includes packages that have worked their way through the lengthy testing processes of having been in Debian Unstable and then in Debian Testing for awhile -- and they're as bug-free as possible at the time that Debian Testing becomes "feature-frozen" for awhile, to allow even more time for devs to fix even more bugs before "feature-frozen" Debian Testing becomes the new Debian Stable.. That is what I thought too, but I can't say for sure because I don't use Debian, not directly that is, since I use Kubuntu. [added] As I said before Quoting:Whether that is true or not, I don't know, but I suspect there are people who disagree with you. I would become a 'Fanboi" and defend Debian, but I can't do that since I am already a "Fanboi" of KDE. :-) :-).... |
| devnet Oct 28, 2011 12:24 PM EDT |
Quoting:One thing they could do is to follow Debian's release process. They should have one stable and another experimental. This is impossible...KDE is software that is written and coded....Debian is a consumer of different softwares and is not an engineering project like KDE is. Their 2 different entities and as such have two different methodologies for releasing products. When I worked for a software engineering company, there is NO possible way we could have even tried to emulate Debian release cycles...it would have been impossible....even conceptually. It would hurt customers, give your project a bad name, and make you look slow and non-agile. |
| Fettoosh Oct 28, 2011 3:04 PM EDT |
Quoting:This is impossible...KDE is software that is written and coded.... Debian is a consumer of different softwares and is not an engineering project like KDE is. Yes, KDE is an engineering project, but it is also a non-profit registered organization, see here. So, I wouldn't say it is impossible. Actually, there is nothing stopping it from forming a non-profit business group, which would be responsible for distributing, not only KDE products, but also a Linux distribution along with support for businesses and individuals. If Canonical and even individuals can do it, why not a good organization like KDE? I believe this could happen, and I hope it does happen. At least, it would generate some revenue to support its developers to produce quality products, and furnish good reliable support structure which businesses can rely and depend on. Why not? |
| Koriel Oct 28, 2011 4:29 PM EDT |
@Fettoosh I think this may be the first time i actually agree with you on something, I would love to see a KDE distro done by the KDE team fully optimised for KDE. I suspect it would give Canonical a run for their money. But one suspects i am but dreaming again. |
| Fettoosh Oct 29, 2011 10:39 AM EDT |
Quoting:But one suspects i am but dreaming again. Never know, some dreams could come true. :-) [Edited]: There is Chakra, it is maily KDE, although users can install Gnome. It is pretty good distro based, or used be based on Arch Linux. So far, they have limited resources and not officially part of or coordinated with KDE. It is pretty good fast and reliable Distro. Unfortunately, it is not Debian based, which I prefer for dpkg/Aptitude. |
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