J_K9 @ Linux

Kiba-Dock—The Interactive Dock Toolbar Redefined

Anyone who has used a Mac will be familiar with the “Dock.” The Dock is a toolbar that sits at the bottom of the screen, allowing for quick access to your favourite applications and fast switching between them. Icons in the Dock represent the different applications or links and may even change colour according to their status—the Adium X instant messaging client is an excellent example of this. A black arrow beneath an icon in the Dock signifies that that application is currently open.

But enough of this lecture—why is the Dock useful, and why would we want one on Linux? Well, first of all, you don’t have to navigate through a traditional tree-based menu to reach the application you are looking for; you can simply click on its icon in the Dock and it opens. It is also more visually appealing than other toolbars, particularly Gnome’s. As an extension to this point, not only do Docks look excellent but there is a certain Dock which takes this even further—it provides a physics engine (Akamaru), allowing you to hurl and bounce the icons around your screen, and if that’s not fun then I don’t know what is!

Continue reading Kiba-Dock—The Interactive Dock Toolbar Redefined…

Linux Foundation: A Couple of Links

As you may have heard, the LSB and OSDL merged recently to form the Linux Foundation. There a high hopes that the Linux Foundation will further standardise the main desktop environments and their underlying APIs, package management, and Linux in general. Here are a few links which may give you a better insight into the aims and goals of the Linux Foundation and why standardisation is required (particularly with the desktop environments):

• Linux Foundation: Corporate Lackey or Linux Savior? – This is an interview of Jim Zemlin, the Linux Foundation’s executive director. This provides a look into the future of the Linux Foundation and how it will support the growth and development of Linux. It’s well worth the read!
• Editor’s Note: Orphaned Desktop Environments — This is an article by Brian Proffitt, the editor of the Linux Today news website, concerning the topic of desktop environment/user interface standardisation and why it is required. Which desktop environment, GNOME or KDE, will get the guillotine? Hopefully neither.

Mandriva 2007 Metisse Edition

I’ve tried out Mandriva 2007 Metisse Edition and have discovered a few things which I would like to share:

• Metisse kicks ass, and there’s no doubt about it. The window-rolling copy and paste feature is beautiful in its simplicity and ease-of-use, and I just couldn’t stop playing with it
• It also offers transparency,
• smooth transitions between virtual desktops (there are nine of them by default in Mandriva 2007),
• and makes using Linux even more fun than it was before.

However, in my opinion, it’s still not ready for prime time: there are still a good number of bugs which need to be fixed. I encountered the following:

• A slight jitter of the whole screen when I dragged the bottom of the window beneath GNOME’s bottom toolbar;
• gnome-screenshot refused to work, which is why I have not included any screenshots in this post - first, it worked, but the screenshot ended up being a screenshot of the background alone (no windows or toolbars were included). I think this was because of Metisse running an X server over X, and so gnome-screenshot was taking a screenshot of the lower display rather than Metisse’s. However, all attempts to change the display used by gnome-screenshot were in vain. Then, gnome-screenshot stopped working altogether and kept exiting with a error.
• Not really a ‘bug’ per se, but the window folding is quite rough - it would be nice to have an option of setting the smoothness and thus the CPU-intensiveness of the folded edge.

The inclusion of proprietary drivers (and automatic recognition of your graphics card) makes this experience possible, but unfortunately brings with it its share of criticisms (and for valid reasons). While I do not condone the use of proprietary drivers, although I will freely admit that I use them on every one of my Linux installations, I highly recommend you give this live CD a spin, if only to waste make good use of your time by playing with Metisse’s features!

Metisse: A Work of Art

On first look, you would think that Metisse is just ‘another 3D desktop,’ like XGL/Compiz or AIGLX/Beryl. It goes beyond the static and unexciting desktops that most of us are used to and, like the previously mentioned 3D desktops, adds a bit of spice to the mixture. However, in the words of the developers themselves: “This is not a 3D desktop.” Instead of providing cool and arguably useless effects to show off the potential of the Linux desktop and to satisfy our thirst for eye candy, the Metisse project aims to allow researchers to “design and implement innovative window management techniques.” Metisse is currently being used to improve the user’s experience and increase their productivity: the copy-and-paste video shows one such example. While it could be argued that this feature could have been implemented in Beryl or Compiz, this is just one way in which Metisse’s developers are changing the way people use their desktops, for the better. It also differs in that it (apparently) runs as a secondary X server rather than on a modified one (such as in XGL’s case) or a patched one (like AIGLX) - I shall have to verify this though.

User Interface Façades are another example of what Metisse might allow: users will be able to radically customise the environment of many of their favourite applications to suit their needs, placing their most used functions or features in an appropriate and accessible place. As you can see, each feature of the Metisse project is a step towards the revolutionisation of the desktop experience.

Mandriva has always been one of the main newbie distros, focusing on ease-of-use and a complete environment. Why, then, would the team choose to integrate Metisse into one of their 2007 releases (available from one of their mirrors)? According to them, it’s because Metisse “differs from a classic 3D desktop (”the cube”) in the way that it offers innovative windows interactions, thus enforcing work efficiency.” Mandriva recognise that Metisse could revolutionarise the way users interact with the operating system and they’re enjoying the head-start. Let’s hope that any bugs get ironed out and that more excellent, intuitive and new features appear

I plan to test out the Metisse release of Mandriva later today, so keep your heads up for a review. But, in the meantime, check out the Metisse videos!

Linux That Looks Like Windows: Bad!

A few articles have appeared recently discussing the copying of the Windows interface to Linux to ease user migration, such as this one. This is nothing new - Windows-like Linux desktop environments such as LXP and xpde have been in existence for a few months/years. I think these projects are great because the developers are enjoying their work and I’m sure that some people use their products, but I don’t believe that this is the right way to attract Windows users to desktop Linux.

The main Linux desktop environments are KDE and Gnome and, although their user interfaces are substantially different, standards and projects are being introduced to make the underlying APIs and functionality more similar and ease the accommodation of a new user to desktop Linux. This includes the Portland project, which is bringing the KDE and Gnome developers together to produce a universal set of APIs. So, here we have two mature, polished and easy to use desktop environments which take the average user a few hours to grow accustomed to.

My problem with the comments made by the author of this article is that Linux was not created to be a Windows clone. I agree that a Windows desktop environment would allow someone migrating to Linux to get used to the new operating system far more rapidly, but this could just as easily be accomplished by providing an optional graphical tour of the main features of both the main Linux desktop environments to get the user up to speed with the new interface. To respond to the comments in that article, in order:

First: That is true, but as I said above, a comprehensive tour of the new environment would allow the user to adapt to the new environment almost as rapidly. Yes, the user will have difficulties doing so, but the same goes for a user migrating to Mac OS X, or a user trying out a new technology. A previously untried technology requires an element of user education, whether it be something as simple as locating the power button on a device or navigating what, at first, appears to be a complex filesystem.

Second: Linux was not designed as a Windows clone and so giving a new user a Windows desktop environment is not the correct way to introduce them to Linux. In my opinion, migration tools and graphical tours of the desktop environments would be far more useful. It may be outside their ‘comfort zone’, but the same can be said of any other technology which a user has not previously encountered. If they stick with it (and they should, provided they can get used to the new interface, which would be aided by the migration tools and graphical tours) then they will grow to like it. What Linux needs is innovation, not mimicry.

Third: I don’t see the need for a standardised interface across the main Linux desktop environments. What’s the point in having KDE, Gnome, Xfce and the others if they all look, feel and act the same? I agree that there should be some element of compatibility, such as a common set of APIs, but each desktop environmental was created with a different aim and so they should not all be merged into one or made to look the same. I like KDE because it’s full-featured, aesthetically pleasing and is a good all-round desktop environment. However, I also like Fluxbox, because it is fast and lightweight. Yet Enlightenment has beautiful effects and is also quite lightweight. As you can see, each desktop environment caters for a different demographic. Some users prefer fancy effects, others prefer minimalism and simplicity and others prefer a customisable desktop with some eye candy. Merging all of these desktop environments would remove the element of diversity for which Open Source software is celebrated.

Conclusion: Linux already has excellent mainstream desktop environments which have a unique look and feel which differs from that of Windows. That’s not a bad thing: Linux doesn’t need to look like Windows. If a user wants to make their Linux distro look like the OS they left behind, that’s perfectly fine - all they need to do is install xpde or LXP. However, what we cannot do is mimic Windows’ interface, as that would destroy one of the Linux desktop’s greatest advantages - its beauty, difference, innovation and ease of use.

Previewing KDE 4

Recently at a Linux show, John Littler saw a preview of a new version of KDE running on a KDE developer’s laptop. The interface looked cleaner than before, and apparently there was a whole raft of new stuff under the hood. John recently interviewed KDE developer Aaron J. Seigo about the forthcoming KDE 4 (due in the fall) and also a little about the recent controversy surrounding the porting of KDE to operating systems other than Linux.

KDE 4 is set to rock the Window Manager world, and the new release really is going to have a myriad of new features - as well as vast speed tweaks on the old ones. In fact, so much is changing and being added that it’s almost impossible to summarize the new addons in this post!

In my opinion, these are the most important/flashy ones:

• Switching to Qt4, which brings a host of new capabilities when it comes to visuals (via the Arthur paint engine, which also allows hardware acceleration where available) and application design (improved threading, model/view), as well as having a smaller memory footprint and allowing us to write non-GUI apps that don’t require an X server
• Selecting a new multimedia system (aRts is unmaintained and not providing what we need) - GStreamer is the most probably candidate
• Replacing the desktop and panels with a new application called Plasma
• Introducing a new set of artwork (Oxygen) and bringing an updated human interface guidelines to bear; we will be making extensive use of the SVG format for these items
• Improvements to Qt’s memory footprint (a lot of effort went into making QObject and QWidget, the base classes for most of Qt, lighter in Qt4)
• Redesigning applications so they are able to be optimized better. For example, the desktop and panels are being merged into one app, which also provides for functionality now only available in Superkaramba. The resulting design allows us to much more efficiently share application launch, graphics, and geometry coordination data while also avoiding the overhead of multiple processes where just one will do quite fine. This will allow people to have quite flashy desktops (or even simple plain ones) that are snappier and take fewer resources.

I foresee a prettier, lighter, faster KDE desktop than ever before - and boy will it be nice! Pity there aren’t any pre-release screenshots yet…

Read the article: Previewing KDE 4

Torvalds Chooses KDE Over Gnome

As you may already have heard, Linus Torvalds (see Wikipedia), the creator of the Linux kernel and still the most contributing developer towards it, has sided with KDE in the sempiternal conflict between Gnome and KDE aficionados. For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, KDE and Gnome are the two most popular Open Source desktop environments, and you will find that a huge number of Linux distributions run one of these as default. In his usual ‘cut the bull-talk and get down to business’ fashion, he told a developer on the Gnome mailing list:

I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE.

This ‘users are idiots, and are confused by functionality’ mentality of Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it. I don’t use Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long since reached the point where it simply doesn’t do what I need it to do.

Please, just tell people to use KDE.

And his reasons behind his decision are not feeble: he claims that the Gnome developers will excuse themselves from adding extra features by saying that ‘it would confuse users’ rather than ‘it’s too complicated’, whereas KDE has far more options and the developers work diligently to show their flare in this desktop environment.

In my opinion, Gnome is far less bloated than KDE, but I can see why Linus has said this - because KDE is much more configurable than Gnome, and it shows this in every menu and application.

Read the article on OSNews.