KLyDE - K Lightweight Desktop Environment

[HalationEffect]

Just spotted this over at Planet KDE - http://blogs.kde.org/2013/04/11/hack...roject-updated

As has been repeated on Planet KDE over the past decade, KDE is not intrinsically bloated. At its core, it jumps through a lot of hoops for memory efficiency and speed, and is modular to a fault. But most packagings of KDE take a kitchen sink approach, and when you install your KDE distribution you get a full suite of desktop, applets and applications. The other major criticism of KDE is that it is too configurable. The KlyDE project applies KDE's modularity and configurability to the challenge of making a lightweight desktop. However, what I don't want to do is a hatchet job where functionality is crudely chopped out of the desktop to fit some conception of light weight. Read on after the break to see how we're doing it.

Do people seriously criticise KDE for being "too configurable"? And by people, I mean people other than GNOME devs and fanbois...

[Teunis]

Besides, because most configs are done via text files that are an intrinsic part of an app I can hardly believe they are pulled, so where would be the gain?

[SteveRiley]

The other major criticism of KDE is that it is too configurable.

Do people seriously criticise KDE for being "too configurable"? And by people, I mean people other than GNOME devs and fanbois...

A member of our fine forum here wondered how to change the size of the triangle tree expander. Had this poor soul been stuck with Unity or GNOME, the only answer would have been, "Not possible, because our sane defaults obviously work for everybody, including you. Now go away." But because our member is not a poor soul but instead an intrepid adventurer, s/he made the wise assumption that KDE must obviously have a configuration setting for this, because people are different and like to make adjustments. And lo! Indeed, such a configuration is possible.

When Alice criticizes Bob's thing because Bob can do a thing with his thing that Alice isn't interested in, whose fault is it? The developer of the thing Bob likes? Nope. Bob? Nope. Alice? Yep. So shut up, Alice. No one's forcing you to do anything with Bob's thing, so why do you care?

[HalationEffect]

My mind literally boggles at the very notion that a DE can be criticised for being "too configurable". To me, that would be analogous to criticising cars for letting you steer wherever you like, while praising trains for being on rails. I seem to remember a fairly successful marketing campaign from Burger King about how you could have it *their* way and damn well like it... oh wait...

Sane defaults are fine and dandy. Sane defaults that you can change to suit your own needs are even better. GNOME has the former, KDE has the latter.

I just wish somebody could explain to me how more configurability is somehow worse for the user. I'm quite prepared to believe that it's more work for the devs, especially if they have to maintain GUI interfaces for all that configurability. Perhaps GNOME's devs are just lazy, and that's the root of their ivory tower attitudes.

[dmeyer]

My mind literally boggles at the very notion that a DE can be criticised for being "too configurable". To me, that would be analogous to criticising cars for letting you steer wherever you like, while praising trains for being on rails. I seem to remember a fairly successful marketing campaign from Burger King about how you could have it *their* way and damn well like it... oh wait...

Sane defaults are fine and dandy. Sane defaults that you can change to suit your own needs are even better. GNOME has the former, KDE has the latter.

I just wish somebody could explain to me how more configurability is somehow worse for the user. I'm quite prepared to believe that it's more work for the devs, especially if they have to maintain GUI interfaces for all that configurability. Perhaps GNOME's devs are just lazy, and that's the root of their ivory tower attitudes.

I love KDE but the defaults aren't always that sane e.g. restore session on by default which can sometimes lead to issues. What KDE needs is some spit and polish. Recent releases have provided more of that but its not enough. Lastly, we need some serious alternate looks with GTK adapters. But then again, this has nothing to do with configurablity.

[jlittle]

My mind literally boggles at the very notion that a DE can be criticised for being "too configurable".

Do you use QtCurve? The KDE default widget style is Oxygen, I think, and I often see references to Oxygen here at KFN. QtCurve has on my rough count 280 different options, about 10 times as many as Oxygen. I make this point to suggest that it's unsurprising most people prefer Oxygen, and hardly mind boggling.

(Me, I really like QtCurve, mostly because its blast everything approach means it hits a few things that I desire, f.ex. narrow, coloured-thumb scroll bars. It has a GTK style, too, that harmonizes my GTK apps with KDE somewhat. Firefox 20 just got proper GTK scroll bars, so they're now narrow and coloured. Every pixel counts, I say.)

Regards, John Little

[dmeyer]

Do you use QtCurve? The KDE default widget style is Oxygen, I think, and I often see references to Oxygen here at KFN. QtCurve has on my rough count 280 different options, about 10 times as many as Oxygen. I make this point to suggest that it's unsurprising most people prefer Oxygen, and hardly mind boggling.

(Me, I really like QtCurve, mostly because its blast everything approach means it hits a few things that I desire, f.ex. narrow, coloured-thumb scroll bars. It has a GTK style, too, that harmonizes my GTK apps with KDE somewhat. Firefox 20 just got proper GTK scroll bars, so they're now narrow and coloured. Every pixel counts, I say.)

Regards, John Little

Qt Curve does not have an adapter for GTK+ (or GTK3 whatever the proper naming is) only GTK2. This means many newer gnome apps look like death with QtCurve.

[HalationEffect]

Do you use QtCurve? The KDE default widget style is Oxygen, I think, and I often see references to Oxygen here at KFN. QtCurve has on my rough count 280 different options, about 10 times as many as Oxygen. I make this point to suggest that it's unsurprising most people prefer Oxygen, and hardly mind boggling.

(Me, I really like QtCurve, mostly because its blast everything approach means it hits a few things that I desire, f.ex. narrow, coloured-thumb scroll bars. It has a GTK style, too, that harmonizes my GTK apps with KDE somewhat. Firefox 20 just got proper GTK scroll bars, so they're now narrow and coloured. Every pixel counts, I say.)

Regards, John Little

I've tried QtCurve, and didn't find the plethora of configuration options to be a problem. In fact, I liked that they were there, even if I didn't tinker with many of them.

TBH, I'm not sure I understand why 280 configurable options would be a problem for anyone; nobody is forcing people to customise those settings if they don't want to.

[Teunis]

nobody is forcing people to customise those settings if they don't want to.

That's the important part, sane defaults.
Now we only have to agree what's sane

[dmeyer]

That's the important part, sane defaults.
Now we only have to agree what's sane

Linux users agree on anything? Yeah, that's never going to happen especially with KDE users because KDE users generally all like to customize their workflow to suit themselves.

[Snowhog]

"Decide for none. Give choice to all."

[SteveRiley]

Linux users agree on anything?

Well, we might all agree that Bug #1 is a real problem. But the universe of potental solutions is vast, indeed.

[dmeyer]

Well, we might all agree that Bug #1 is a real problem. But the universe of potental solutions is vast, indeed.

Actually not. I've met many people who are linux users that use linux for servers but disregard it as a desktop OS (strange but true.)