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Open Source Business Desktop – Gnome or KDE

Matt Hartley posted an nice article about Linux Desktops in Businesses. http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/entdev/article.php/3717261It really is an interesting read.

GNOME, both on the user and development side of things, believes in the integrity of GPL-based code and ease of use. Applications developed in this realm tend to be rather vanilla in appearance, yet will work as advertised.

 

KDE on the other hand, is a product that provides the end user the freedom to choose how simple or complex their desktop ought to be with regard to access and configurability. On the development front, the developer is free to choose their path to create open source software or that of the proprietary nature. It just depends on which direction the software developer wants to go. 

 

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KDE 4.0 Release Event

Today the KDE Promo Team announced some more details about the KDE 4.0 Release Event in Mountain View, CA.

It will be a three day Event with BoF sessions and talks all around Open Source and KDE itself.

On friday there will be keynotes, speeches  and a release party at the Google Campus.

I hope that there will be some live coverage via Blogs, Live Streams a.s.o.

All informations are gathered together on a special Release Event Page.

Travel and Lodge infromations are summarized on this page, too.

We will have a Linux on the desktop day at our university on january the 18th and we try to establish a local event there.

We will have speeches about KDE 4.0, Amarok, Linux Desktop in Businesses and a talk about the OpenMoko project by Markus Schlichting.

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Kubuntu … makes your life easy

On the weekend, I installed the latest Kubuntu release onto my desktop PC. I must say the distribution is getting better with every release.
The first thing I noticed, finally Kubutu got a “Blueish” KDE 3.5.8 theme, which makes the desktop really beautiful (I didn’t like the old themes very much).
The setup went on pretty well and it recognized all my hardware without having to select something manually.
My on Euro Webcam, the wireless card (which has no drivers for vista), multimedia keys on the keyboard, dual head xinerama view, headset….. absolutly everything worked out-of-the-box, even on the Live CD, which holds the setup. Nothing is cooler, then browsing the web, while installing a new operating system (ask any other windows / mac / … guy to do this).
After rebooting for one time, the setup was finished and I was ready to start. When I say ready, I mean ready, the setup installed the latest updates, added my old OpenSUSE settings for Mail, Instant Messaging and wallet…
And everything in under one hour!!!

So what’s new inside Kubuntu 7.10?
GDebi – A tool to easily install .dev packages like Skype, SecondLife,…..
Dolphin – Made into KDE 3.5.8 and after having read many complaints about taking something out of Konqueror, I must say, the decision was right, Dolphin is the best Filebrowser I have ever used, even in its current shape (it is some kind of KDE4 preview version). I think, it will become a killer application on Windows, when it takes the step in some months/weeks/days…
Propritary Drivers – under the system settings, there is a new tool, which lets you easily install restricted drivers for your installed hardware. For my NVidia card, the tool made the driver setup really easy.

What I didn’t like is, that KMail still has its nasty IMAP code, which is so slow…. I hope, that with the next step towards KDE4 and with using the new Qt4 libraries, it will get a boost in the next months. Another thing I

There are many other cool new features inside the Gutsy release, but I dare you to download the Live CD and try it on your own. You even can start some nice tools from it, when running Windows.

While I’m waiting for Mac OS Leopard to be released and hopefully shipped on friday, I’m getting the latest SVN sourcecodes of KDE4 at the moment. I hope try to get a full running KDE4 session until tomorrow.

May be you can also visit http://www.rodereisen.de, where you can find my fathers travel agency, I finished a new design yesterday.
I would be glad if s.o. writes a comment about the look.

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operating systems and kde4.0

Today I decided to start a small series of posts about KDE (Kool Desktop Environment) and its Version 4.0.

KDE together with Linux is something you would call an operating system. Linux does the stuff down at the Hardware level and KDE ist the Graphical User Interface
You can compare it with Windows or Mac OS X. They give us a bunch of applications, we need in our daily life.
Windows is known by everybody, Mac OS X iss nice and Linux is just something nerds might use.

Last week I’ve read a comment which said “Most people and enterprises have not noticed, that they use their operating system just to start up their browser.”.
So I tried to count which applications I really need at home.

  1. Mac OS X – Operating System – to have something on my Screen
  2. Mail – Apples mail application
  3. Adium – a chat application to connect to ICQ, Jabber, …
  4. Safari – to browse the web
  5. iTunes – to hear and organize my music/videos
  6. iPhoto – to organize my pictures
  7. NeoOffice – a copy of OpenOffice which is compareable to Microsoft Office
  8. Calendar
  9. Addressbook – for my PIM Data

Thats it…
Now it is your turn. What do you really need at home 99% of your time? I don’t think, that you will find many other things…

Why I have choosen a Mac last summer?
It is cool, sexy and has 7 of those applications out of the box installed. Everything is really good integrated. So i have alle the same contacts on my Addresbook and on my PIM Contact list, I can use drag and drop everywhere and so on…

What has Windows XP?
It is not cool, sexy and comes with only a few useable applications. Minesweeper and Solitair are the best I think ;). It has most applications available to install, because it is the mostly used operating system out there. It’s biggest advantage is, that everybody knows how to use it. The problem is, that the applications are not very good integrated with each other. So you always have redunand informations. (p.e. no centralized addressbook, which keeps all you contact information)

What has Windows Vista?
It is cool, sexy and has some cool applications on board. But I have to get a new computer to enjoy alle those nifty effects. As far as I could test it, it has many problems, espacially with drivers, unsupported file formats,…. It is build on XP and so many people should feel familar useing it. On application side, they copied nearly everything from Apple, so they made a big step forward, but they are still far beyond Apple, who will release his new operating in octobre 07, where they will take the next step.

What has KDE?
It comes with all applications you need in your daily life. You don’t have to get one application at all after installation. I will introduce the 4.0 Versions in the next few weeks. You may customize it like you want to in many cases (not just colors or the background picture…). The applications are really good integrated into each other. But they lack some kind of coolness. The GUI looks some kind of childish and unprofessional in Version 3….

So thats the point why I will introduce the Version 4.0 to you, the nerds out their who did a great job in last years to build a rock solid basement user interface got help from some great artists and usability experts. So together they are building some kind of new desktop experience you may like I hope….