csrins

Student. Teacher. Softsmith.

Archive for the ‘Desktop’ Category

Blogpost: Who ate that byte of apple?

Posted by csrins on May 14, 2009

Posted in Apple, Culture, Desktop, Distros, GNU/Linux, Human Interface Guidelines, KDE, KDE 4.0, OS X, Opinion, Panther, Pop Culture, Ubuntu | Leave a Comment »

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS released

Posted by csrins on April 25, 2008

The second Long-Term Release (LTS) of Canonical’s GNU/Linux distribution is officially released. You can learn more about it here.

This version will receive updates for 3 years.

Ubuntu follows a regular 6-monthly release cycle.

The next release is scheduled for October 2008.

Posted in Desktop, Distros, GNU/Linux, Quick Takes, Ubuntu | Leave a Comment »

Ripping one’s guts out…

Posted by csrins on April 14, 2008

Dramatic title?

Perhaps so, but KDE 4 development seems to be following this paradigm to the fullest — enough to make Stephen King proud!

KDE 4 has a laudable goal of revitalizing the internals, making the underlying framework robust and extensible. This is a reworking of function, perfectly acceptably and a valid developmental goal. KDE 4 also went the bling-bling way of oooh– shiny new interface at the same time.

The result?

It’s a dog’s lunch at the moment, stretching developer resources and skewing schedules. Notwithstanding a grand launch of KDE 4.0 which is ready yet not ready for general consumption (go figure!). After all, we’re real software developers and not language lawyers!

This is not a commentary on the state of KDE 4, but rather on the simultaneous reworking of form and function which resulted in neither being complete for a general use… yet.

Of course, the oft-repeated refrain is… KDE 4 will rock with release 4.1!

Yeah. Right!

Replace KDE 4 in the above commentary with Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows or any but-it’s-going-to-change-computing-forever software system… the end-result is the same!

Posted in Desktop, GNU/Linux, Human Interface Guidelines, KDE, KDE 4.0, Opinion, Pop Culture, Quick Takes | Leave a Comment »

One Step Forward, N Steps Back?

Posted by csrins on May 12, 2007

This is one story that’s as old as time.

What is it with technology and progress, that it must ultimately lead to retrogradation?

Is such the story unfolding with the File Manager component of KDE 4: Dolphin versus Konqueror? Only time will tell!

The Konqueror Interface

The Dolphin Interface

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Posted in Desktop, Dolphin, GNU/Linux, Human Interface Guidelines, KDE, Opinion, Usability Engineering | Leave a Comment »