Pain and Glory from the Trenches of the IT World

KDE 4.0 was released several days back, and thanks to the KDE Four Live CD, I was able to give it a try with very little effort. Having used it for about a day and a half now, I’d like to share some of my impressions of this new release of KDE. Specifically, I will be focusing on the Konqueror 4.0 Web browser. But please keep in mind that I have not performed any formal studies or benchmarking, and what follows is merely my opinion.

Kubuntu 7.10 RC was announced as available several days ago. I installed it immediately, and I have to say, I’m very impressed! Although it’s still just a release candidate, it has all of the necessary ingredients: stability, responsiveness, innovation and coherency.

While other articles will no doubt focus on the many benefits that Kubuntu 7.10 will bring, I’d like to look forward into the future. Namely, this is because of the upcoming release of KDE 4, which is currently planned for December 11, 2007.

About a month ago, I considered the factors that were holding back one open source project with much potential, Parrot. Today I will do the same for another open source project: .

I was disappointed today to hear that the release of KDE 4.0 will be delayed by two months. The delay is caused by the insertion of two extra betas.

But this isn’t a bad thing at all. In fact, I think it shows quite clearly how the KDE crew has a great grasp of the balance between releasing a product as soon as possible, but also releasing it with a reasonably high level of quality.

Those who follow GNOME have probably read about the GNOME Online Desktop. After reading about this concept, I find myself very confused at what it is they’re actually trying to accomplish.

Take what is, at the time of writing, the second paragraph under the “Philosophy” section: Imagine an OS that keeps all its information online, so you can use a live CD as easily as a full installation. When you start up a newly-installed computer, or visit a friend’s house, your whole environment will be waiting for you, with no setup to redo. For the techies, think Stateless Linux Desktop; your files and settings are somewhere else.

I’m very happy to see that Ubuntu has been a major force in bringing Linux to the masses. Those users get a better desktop experience that they would likely have gotten using a different operating system, while also benefitting from the low cost and the better security Linux offers. Unfortunately, I see a bothersome trend forming: Ubuntu users who seem to be under the impression that GNOME is the only desktop for Linux.

As has widely been reported, Ubuntu 7.04 is now available. While I know a great many people use Ubuntu as their primary GNU/Linux distribution, I have usually avoided it as I prefer KDE over GNOME. Because of that preference, I have leaned towards Kubuntu instead. Kubuntu essentially takes Ubuntu, and replaces the GNOME desktop environment with KDE. And when there’s a new version of Ubuntu released, soon after we get a new version of Kubuntu. In this case, that version is Kubuntu 7.04.

Today I heard about a Linux distribution called Linux Mint. More specifically, I was interested to read about their release of a KDE Edition of their distribution. On the page talking about their KDE edition, they mention the software that is included with their distribution. But something seemed out of place. It took me a moment to realize what it was: … the default Web browser is Firefox 2.0.0.3.

I felt the need to clarify some things with this article that discusses so-called “Ubuntu Web Browsers”. The fact of the matter is that those browsers are in no way tied to Ubuntu. Likewise, Ubuntu supports browsers other than those.

Browsers like Firefox and Opera run on many different operating systems, from Windows, to Linux, to Mac OS X, to Solaris, to FreeBSD. Check out the Opera FTP site for proof of this. Look at the wide range of platforms they support. And don’t forget that some of those directories, like the “unix” directory, themselves contain several platforms.

The actual benefits of 3D computer desktops is a topic I have written about in the past. And today I’d like to revist it, specifically after seeing an article linking to a YouTube video of Beryl in action. In short, the title of the article challenges Bill Gates and Microsoft to exceed what is shown in the video. Except I don’t think that there video really shows anything remarkable.