[PLUG] Ubuntu Dapper Drake Officially Delayed

Michael M. nixlists at writemoore.net
Tue Mar 28 05:58:29 UTC 2006


On Mon, 2006-03-27 at 21:53 +0000, sofar wrote:
> 
> we first of all Xfce is a desktop with some structure - especially the later versions and
> 4.4 tops it with really good integration. On top of that most of it is modeled
> around freedesktop.org's standards and thus offers really good integration
> with apps that want some form of gnome or kde interaction (which kde does
> really badly - take dnd support for instance).

That's more or less the explanation I was looking for.

> gnome and desktop have tried to take over the desktop like a virus - they have
> a lot of people and fought really hard to conquer the virtual "market" around it.
> Apps like epiphany, galeon, konqueror, kmail etc are an example of how _BAD_
> open source can be at collaboration.

Well I know people *say* you can use KDE apps under Gnome and Gnome apps
under KDE, but in practice I have yet to find it satisfactory.  I
installed one qt app (not an official KDE app, but one built with its
widget set) under Gnome and it looked terrible.  It functioned just
fine, but it wasn't much fun to use.  From the screenshots on the
website, I gathered it would've looked much better in a KDE environment.
I should try it (or something else) again in a neutral environment like
XFCE, or a window manager.

> Xfce's standpoint is different - it aims to be a desktop environment, but not the
> -entire- desktop and certainly not all applications. Xfce leaves the choice to you
> whether you want to install mozilla or firefox or.... but still gives you a (4.4) a
> file manager that gets all the work done and can be operated by your
> mother-in-law ;^)

Yes, and while that has a lot of value for people with some level of
Linux experience, I still think the reason KDE or Gnome is foisted upon
newbies is to define the choices more concretely.  People like to say
Linux is about choice, which it is, but the overwhelming number of
choices can be somewhat paralyzing.  First, you have to figure out what
distro to try, then what DE/WM's you want to try, then what apps you
want to try.  If you're using KDE and you want to send an email, at the
very least Kmail is there, ready to go, with all the documentation you
need.  It may not be what you like in the long run, but if it wasn't
there, you search Google and look at various Linux websites and plow
through reading about two dozen different email clients, and you get
exhausted and boot back into Windows to use Outlook Express.

> if they would have adhered to the freedesktop.org "desktop file" standard then you 
> would have been able to send files directly from Xfce's 4.4 file manager as well!
> 
> Here you see what exactly is the problem - it's not Xfce who is stifling innovation
> by being the odd one out, but KDE by not integrating with other desktop
> environments - driving app developers to madness because they need to
> merge kde/gnome related bugfixes to keep their desktop-neutral applications
> supported or working.

I never thought of XFCE as "stifling innovation."  I just didn't
understand it's position as a DE rather than a WM.

> This is a misconception perhaps - Xfce is lightweight compared to KDE and
> GNOME, but if you compare it to enlightenment this doesn't hold anymore. fluxbox
> en openbox are not lightweight - they are *minimalistic* - a whole different
> range. Consider mozilla -> balsa -> /usr/bin/mail... :^)

The distinction between "lightweight" and "minimalistic" is lost on me,
I'm afraid.  I guess I don't understand how you can be "heavyweight" and
minimalistic simultaneously.  Maybe that's what Enlightenment is aiming
for.  :-)  But Openbox, while certainly minimalistic, feels very
lightweight to me, in that it's snappy and responsive.  XFCE might be
just as snappy, and not minimalistic -- that much I get, anyway.  I'll
have to try it out again once I get my new computer.  I can't remember
where it was the last time I checked it out, but it wasn't up to v4 yet.

-- 
Michael M. -- Portland, OR -- USA
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions
of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to
dream." -S. Jackson




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