Re: My Article on KDE 4

On Tuesday 07 September 2010 05:23:11 Kunal Deo wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 2:31 PM, Stuart Jarvis 
<[email protected]>wrote:
> > On Friday 03 September 2010 22:34:58 Justin Kirby wrote:
> > > On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 3:15 AM, Kunal Deo <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Anyone know if Kunal is subscribed? Or did you put him in bcc? Anyway,
> > ccd here.
> 
> Yes I am subscribed.
> 
Ah, so you'll see we're having some discussions about SC etc. Part of that is 
making it easy for people like you to talk about our software - we know it 
hasn't been ideal because "KDE Software Compilation" has become a drop in 
replacement for KDE, but no one is going to waste all those extra keystrokes 
typing out Software Compilation each time. And no one would want to read that 
either.
> 
> > For example, you stated "KDE SC is the new name for the KDE desktop
> > environment". It's really not :-( The term you were looking for was
> > 'Plasma Desktop'
> 
> This is kind of confusing. Not just for me but for many out there. K
> Desktop Environment was a great name and could be easily referred inside
> documentation. This has changed recently. As per wikipedia "*KDE Software
> Compilation 4* (*KDE SC 4*) is the current series of releases of
> KDE<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE>'s
> desktop environment <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_environment> and
> an associated range of KDE Applications" .

That's not bad. Could use a little tweaking perhaps (add Plasma Netbook and 
the Platform - I'll try and get around to that sometime)

> Now I understand that desktop is
> Plasma Desktop, this doesn't actually refer to the complete KDE. Platforms
> like Mac and Windows doesnt even have KDE plasma desktop so how do I refer
> it there. 

'KDE software'? 'KDE Applications'?

If you can give some example sentences, I'd be happy to suggest options.

You actually kinda hit the original problem we're trying to address here: KDE 
software runs in a lot of places now, including Windows. But it's not wise at 
present (and most people wouldn't want) to run Plasma Desktop on Windows. So 
this thing that we used to call "KDE" doesn't exist on Windows really - if we 
stuck with the old "KDE 4.3" terminology then that would mean a different thing 
to a Windows and Linux user. We announce cool new KWin effects in KDE 4.3, but 
the guy who installs it on Windows finds his windows still don't wobble and 
feel cheated.

We also package stuff for Windows (e.g. Digikam) that isn't in the SC or, in 
the old wording, KDE.

> It is all two confusing. Hope the marketing team will understand.

Yep, you're not alone in making that point ;-) We're working on it...

> When you say KDE Software Compilation, it makes it looks like a Software
> Compilation rather than a complete product.

Again, this is actually intended. We'd prefer people to decide whether they 
like out workspaces and whether they like our apps. It's quite possible (as 
you know) to use KDE Applications in a Gnome environment and vice versa. 
However, a surprising number of people believe that it is not or at least that 
it is sub-optimal.

> In other words it makes KDE
> looks like another Linux distribution.

I not sure if I understand this, partly because I'm not sure if "KDE" here is 
KDE as in the people or KDE as in the Software Compilation. If viewing the SC 
as a distribution - well, that's not that far off in some ways: just as a 
distro picks some software for you to install by default, our SC is a basic 
set of useful stuff. And just like you don't use all the software your distro 
installed and you add other applications, you probably don't use everything in 
the SC and you add other applications. So if that's what you meant, then it's 
not a bad analogy at all.

> > Regarding the articles, I found them interesting, but I'm not sure about
> > linking from KDE.org. We tend to do that (from dot.kde.org) when there
> > are reviews of new KDE software releases, particularly when they are
> > saying very
> > nice things ;-) Your first article is a balanced comparison but has a few
> > things that we'd see as inaccurate (still and implication that GNOME is
> > the choice for people who care about free software) and as Nuno
> > mentioned the screenshots are not really representative. Also, we tend
> > to steer clear of GNOME vs KDE debates - we'd rather just let people
> > know about the great stuff
> > we're doing. As you note, our philosophies are quite different and to
> > some extent we serve different audiences.
> 
> Agreed. I am a KDE fan (and developer) myself and wanted to present what I
> have gathered. Eventhough the article title says "GNOME vs KDE: which is
> right for you?". I am really not declaring a winner. I ended the article
> with "we recommend installing both – doing so requires less than 5GB of
> disk space, and you can use all your applications from either of the
> desktops."

Yes, it depends on the user. It doesn't stop people wanting to read these 
articles though :-)

> BTW: If you look at the comments on the website itself lot of people do
> have more love for KDE. (Specially in pro audience).
> 
> > As for the second article, it's good for a general audience magazine, but
> > I think most of our people would know about that already and I'd be
> > surprised if
> > it isn't in our documentation somewhere (I'm no developer, so stating
> > that a
> > bit blindly).
> 
> Thanks a lot. The information is covered in porland project documentation.
> I want to do more on cross-desktop app development. If you have any more
> ideas about this please let me know. I am also talking to GNOME developers
> about the same.

As I said, I'm no developer. I wonder if something about the new system tray 
might be interesting though? Isn't that supposed to give us nicer integration 
of non-KDE apps? (where they use the new protocol)

Cheers,
Stu
 
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