Abhay Kedia schreef: > On Friday 20 January 2006 19:59, Holly Bostick wrote: >> more comfortable with a more Windows-like environment, and >> Windows-like assumptions about what a user wants/needs from their >> desktop, KDE may be just the thing; that is, after all, what it's >> designed to do to a great extent. > That statement is extremely unfair to KDE. Every DE needs to make at > least some assumptions to present a working environment for the user > > > > > That may be true, but it assumes that I want a "Desktop Environment" in the first place, which I don't, particularly.
As I said, after finding even GNOME too heavy, I switched to Openbox 3, which basically presents *no* working environment, and now use fvwm-crystal, which presents a relatively minimal one, certainly by comparison to KDE. You may see it as "unfair" (like I care; KDE has no feelings, and I was actually being positive about it, given that I don't much like DEs in general and KDE in particular), but the very concept of a Desktop Environment is very similar to the Windows design of the OS being indistinguishable from the GUI (or rather the OS functions being as concealable within the GUI as possible), so I'm not quite sure why that's so terrible to say. > and KDE is not alone in doing that. The quality comes in when the DE > not only makes some choices for you but also gives you an easy access > to editing/changing those features. As far as I can see, you can edit > every choice that KDE has made for you with minimal fuss. I myself don't see it as "minimal fuss", not least because KDE makes so many choices for me in its "feature richness" that I have to spend two hours (I'm being kind) finding all the bloody options that I don't want and change them or turn them off or whatever. And of course this has its limits; suppose I don't *want* my file manager integrated with my browser (didn't want it in Windows, don't want it now). I don't *want* to figure out how to tell KMix not to override my Alsa mixer settings, and I don't want to have to decide whether I want drive icons but not application icons (or no icons at all) on my desktop, and then tell KDE my decision. I don't want to name my desktops, or put a separate wallpaper on each one. I have no interest in going through 6 tabs to specify Window Behaviour (I'm looking at the KDE Control Center right now). And I certainly don't care to be bothered with the problem of how to make KDE play nice with my GTK apps (I do have some GTK 1 apps, which are much more problematic than GTK 2 apps in this respect) simply because I might happen to want to use some program whose name doesn't bloody start with "K". You can say that I don't "have to" do any of this, or change any of the settings, but if I don't, then I'm stuck with KDE's sane defaults, and in that case then all these settings that I *could* change (but don't bother to) become "bloat" -- features I don't need, since I'm not going to use them. If I don't like KDE's default choices, then I have to fix them, within the parameters that KDE allows me, which is no longer "minimal fuss". Certainly not minimal fuss when I want to use non "k" apps for certain functions that KDE would "prefer" that I use their provided applications for... I have several K-apps installed that I actually don't want, because the K-app I do use (Krusader) won't open files from within an archive using GTK apps like eye of gnome or Open Office. karc can't pass the file to these apps.... but it works fine with KView or KWord. Because K apps like other K apps. That makes perfect sense, since it's all supposed to be an integrated environment, but to me it feels like a prison. > If that is being Windows-like, then you can not be more wrong. Insofar as Windows doesn't allow you to "customize" as much as KDE does, you're right. But in the idea that you give the user everything up to and including the kitchen sink by default unless the user themselves whittles the list down (within limits), then no, I'm not all that wrong. But I simply don't like DEs. If I'm going to spend time fine-tuning my desktop, I want exactly what I want, exactly the way I like it, not "as close to how I like it as the DE supports". That's why I use "build-it-yourself" WMs like OB3 and FVWM. Each to his own taste, and if your taste is KDE, then more power to you. I accept that it's very good for what it is. I just don't happen to like what it is. Holly -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
