Re: Time for some Clarity (KDE, Qt, Open Source...)
On Sun, 28 Jun 1998, Kevin Atkinson wrote:
> [Qt/KDE license stuff]
>
We knew and know all that you say here. At least I did. This argument has
happened a million times if you check DejaNews or search Slashdot.
> The orignal reason I even brought the topic up is becuase I would like
> to see Debain get more user friendly. In fact I wanted Debian to be
> THE model for a complete user friendly system.
>
People seem to think this requires KDE. It does not.
See www.gnome.org - scheduled to be the recommended Debian desktop for
ease-of-use. It's in CVS on cvs.debian.org right now.
There are at least a couple big advantages to Gnome that open up lots of
ease of use possibilities. The first is that the code is all open source.
The second is that the libraries are in C.
What does this mean? It means that Gnome can be integrated with the rest
of Linux. The libraries can be bugfixed and changed to work perfectly with
Debian; there's no requirement, for example, that the library also work on
Windows. Since they're in C, the libraries can be used in other Unix code,
even non-GUI code, which is also in C. The libraries can be customized to
work with different window managers and their look can be changed to match
those wms.
An example: gnome-config is a simple API to store configuration data in a
way that's quickly adaptable to GUI configuration. It's easy to use this
API with any program, even if it's not a Gnome GUI program. If necessary,
it could be moved out of the Gnome libraries into a separate library for
this purpose. With a C++ or non-free library, this would not be possible
(most Linux programs are not C++ programs).
Anyway, Gnome is rapidly improving and will be as good as KDE soon enough.
Red Hat is paying 7 full time people to work on it, and there are over 120
people with write access to the CVS repository. The Debian system stays
fully free with Gnome. Using KDE instead at most speeds things up a few
months - not worth it. It's not a matter of a desktop vs. no desktop.
> An extremely easy to use install program that groups things not by
> the particular program names but buy there functionality. For example
I think it's planned to have "install packages" based on the intended
purpose of the machine - web server, workstation, whatever. This will
serve a similar purpose.
> Once installed an extremely easy to configure system. Linuxconf
> sounds good here. The system needs to be easy to use but powerful
> enough to get the full functionality out of the programs. Ie, not just
> some cheap configuration scripts/utilities.
People are planning to use linuxconf I think - check the debian-devel
archives. There is also a Gnome frontend to linuxconf.
> A coherent documentation section. No more of this info, man, html,
> plain text, etc documents files all over the place. The system will
> orignise all documents in a logical fashion under one system. HTML
Debian has a rather ambitious documentation indexing and organization
plan. Gnome documentation is all written in DocBook for multiple formats,
then made available online as HTML. Integrating the Debian and Gnome
schemes may be a remaining challenge, but people are indeed working on
the problem of documentation organization.
The Gnome help browser (already written and working) presents a unified
interface to info, man pages, HTML, text files, etc., so that all the
documentation can be viewed from a single program.
> A easy to set up X windows system. When setting up the display the
> system will automatically get the appropriate server with out the need
> of the user having to chose which one.
All the user has to do is refer to their computer's documentation and tell
xf86config what kind of card they have. As I understand it this is
basically the best that can be done, due to hardware limitations, without
limiting users to cruddy 640x480 standard VGA modes.
Users who can't manage this (and it's not that hard) can buy a machine
with Linux preinstalled.
> Once set up the X desktop should be so nice that users will never
> want to go back to the Windows 95/98 again! KDE sounds really good
> here.
Gnome will be just as good; though both have a solid couple of years
before they're Windows killers for the average user.
> However unlike some other distrubation the OS should not have to use
> X to get the full functionally of the distrubtion. This way it can be
> easially used where the primary point of the machine is a server.
>
Already true.
> Now does Debian have the same goals?
>
Debian as far as I know has no official goals relating to most of this.
It's more a matter of individual volunteers putting in the time and effort
to implement it, or not.
Historically, Debian has favored stability and the Right Way over getting
things out quickly. This may mean that EZ Debian will be a few months
behind EZ Red Hat. Nonetheless, I'm fairly confident that it will happen,
and due to Apt and some other Debian features I expect the Debian result
to be nicer.
> If not I might just consider creating a distribution of Debian that
> has these things.
Just volunteer to work on some of the relevant projects. You will not be
able to put ease of use ahead of stability and open source, but this
should not make any difference if you think in terms of a year or two from
now rather than next week, because there will not be any conflict.
It's important to think about the overall state of the system, and the
long term implications of technical and licensing decisions. KDE is
tempting today, but really not worth the long-term cost.
What if Minix had been a good enough short-term solution for Linus 6 years
ago? I'm pretty sure it's only been six years. Look where Linux is now.
But Minix was a far better system when he started, since Linux didn't do
anything but print letters on the screen. Fortunately, Linux was open
source, so it could grow and prosper; where is Minix today?
Havoc Pennington ==== http://pobox.com/~hp
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