I keep hearing from people that the "old desktop metaphor" is dead, and that computers need to move beyond this 30 year old idea. The feeling seems especially strong in the KDE community, and especially when someone criticizes KDE4 for not allowing them to do some traditional desktop thing very well.

Well, I will admit to being a skeptic. Yes, I have heard about ZUIs and semantic desktops (I watched all of Aza Raskin's "Death of the Desktop" talk), I've read the "anti-mac interface" piece and several other classic pieces on alternate interfaces, and I'm honestly quite interested in seeing some different things. But I still don't have a clear picture of what the new metaphor behind KDE4 is.

So the question is, for you guys who are running down the "traditional desktop":
- What is the great new metaphor behind the GUI?
- How does it relate to what is going on in KDE4?

Have you read the Plasma article on Userbase? Maybe that will make things clearer to you.

KDE4 is not really there yet, but it strives to go in that direction. That's the goal, but it will take time to reach it.

Ironically, the current implementation is mostly a "traditional desktop" (a desktop and a panel except that the icons are kept in a Folderview box), so the reason people are complaining is mostly not because it's Plasma, but because not even all the features from the traditional desktop are complete yet.

Hans wrote:Have you read the Plasma article on Userbase? Maybe that will make things clearer to you.

I just read it. An no, it doesn't really answer my questions.
AFAICT it just expands on the current metaphor. The ZUI is nothing of the sort, as far as I can tell. Seems like just an evolution of virtual desktops. My understanding of a true ZUI is that zooming is key to the user's interaction with files & apps (e.g. -- zoom in on a document to view it, zoom in on an app to run it). Zooming in this instance seems like just a way to switch between plasma profiles. Seems to me like any other switching metaphor used with virtual desktops or workspaces would have served just as well.

Maybe what I'm seeing is that KDE has been redesigned to be more flexible and generic at an infrastructural level, so that when a new compelling metaphor comes along KDE will be able to adapt to it instead of being hardcoded to the WIMP model. But I don't see the metaphor quite yet, so far everyone is just trying to recover the old desktop model and running into limitations.

Is that it or am I missing something?

admoore wrote:But I don't see the metaphor quite yet, so far everyone is just trying to recover the old desktop model and running into limitations.

Is that it or am I missing something?

Read the first sentence of the post I posted wrote earlier

Alec wrote:KDE4 is not really there yet, but it strives to go in that direction. That's the goal, but it will take time to reach it.

What direction? That's the whole question I'm asking.

admoore wrote:Maybe what I'm seeing is that KDE has been redesigned to be more flexible and generic at an infrastructural level, so that when a new compelling metaphor comes along KDE will be able to adapt to it instead of being hardcoded to the WIMP model. But I don't see the metaphor quite yet, so far everyone is just trying to recover the old desktop model and running into limitations.

Is that it or am I missing something?

That is close to my impression. (I'm not an active developer though... yet) When I first fired up KDE4 I was expecting some really new paradigms - from a user perspective. But really all the components are still coming together. I can see some pretty cool flexibility and potential but also a lot of re-engineering and catch-up.

Use it for a while without the expectation of "big new metaphors" and you will start to notice the bits that have improved and the odd new handy gizmo. It grows on you. I know this is not what a lot of the pages on KDE4 say but it worked for me