I love KDE.

One of my friend uses Mac and is big fan of Mac. I have not used Mac OS X.

Can somebody guide me on -

1> In which areas KDE is better than Mac OS X?
2> Where KDE is lagging behind Mac OS X?

Thanks.

chetankhona wrote:I love KDE.
1> In which areas KDE is better than Mac OS X?
2> Where KDE is lagging behind Mac OS X?

1> freedom to customize most ui elements, the freedom to download the source and change it, the freedom to install KDE on any kind of computer.

2> all other categary. mac osx has a very solid code base, integrated development, HIG for ui design guidline, the globalmenu, and lots of really wonderful applications.

I got following information on Mac. Please guide which of these features are better in KDE. And where KDE is behind. Thanks.

Mac OS X Overview -

http://developer.apple.com/macosx/overview.html

pansz wrote:2> all other categary. mac osx has a very solid code base, integrated development, HIG for ui design guidline, the globalmenu, and lots of really wonderful applications.

KDE has a HIG as well.

Mac is better in terms of the number of quality applications available.
Other areas where Mac is "better" (realise it's very hard to define, but I'm using the average individual here) is not really because KDE is bad, but because Linux itself has faults. Eg: package management and upgrading, hardware compatibility (sound, peripherals, wifi, etc).

In my opinion KDE's benefits lies in the ability to freely configure almost everything. You don't have window decorator/plasma/colour themes in Mac (if I am not mistaken), you don't have the freedom of plasma and its many activities, panels and widgets (which I am trying to find more uses for), and you don't have a lovely rapid development cycle for everything.

What quality apps are we talking about?

Creative apps. A GUI music notation software (Lilypond is excellent, but not GUI and some people can't handle non-GUI stuff), DAW and other music remixing software, Adobe's entire creative suite, iLife's awesome office suite (which honestly OpenOffice just doesn't cut it in terms of both aesthetics and functionality).

Okay, fair enough. I do wish that there was a Linux-compatible Pro Tools (and no, Ardour doesn't even come remotely close and probably never will). Also a fair point about Adobe apps; it's always boggled my mind that the free software community can develop operating systems but can't come up with a decent web development app or a pro-level photo editor.

On the other hand, neither Windows or Mac has anything that can touch the everyday working man's tools available to Linux users; apps like Konqueror, Kate, and Kontact.

That's true. That's why I only mentioned "creation" apps, instead of "consumption" apps. It'd be wrong to debate on consumption apps because it's really subjective.

With respect to nitpicking on webdevelopment apps, honestly as a webdeveloper I find that good webdevelopment is always hand-coded. It's just the way it is. Nothing beats a good IDE or editor for this, and no GUI website creator will replace it (sorry Quanta fans!)

In a more general sense, the reason why we simply can't produce such high class creation apps is because commercial companies have the money and resources to put developers on creating creation apps. Once they become industry standards (like they all already have), all the professionals only use that tool and thus development accelerates. Nobody really wants to relearn everything by moving to another tool.

In case you missed it, the main reason is because the "professionals" have moved. How would a programmer develop a music creation suite without being an expert in music and knowing second-nature what the music industry needs? Since I doubt most of the rest of the Linux community lead double lives as professional musicians it's not that we don't have the developing potential, it's because we don't understand the industry enough and aren't interested.

Luckily artists are one step up on that ladder and I believe that artistic apps have a brighter future ahead of them (being an artist myself), but music creation apps still are ages behind (also speaking as a musician myself). Say, have you seen Adobe's feature demonstration for their upcoming Photoshop? Context-aware fills, rigging bodies ... wow.

I agree with moult and 2handband.

Once stong base is created automatically users will be attracted to use it and demand will force commercial developers to port their software on Linux.

Intention of my question is to understand the roadmap of KDE to get ahead of Mac and Windows in the basic OS functionality.

You're right about web development of course; my own website (see my sig) is all hand-coded. Not that it's anything special; I'm a half-assed web developer at best. But most people I know who do it professionally are using Dremaweaver because it saves them time, quality coding be damned.

You've got another point as well. I'm a musician; used to do it for a living. But I don't know the first damn thing about programming. Even if I was a master coder (something that takes years to learn) it would take a very large team of very hard-working people a very long time to come up with recording software (for example) that could touch Pro Tools; I couldn't do it alone. And then... well, the pros would go right on using Pro Tools. Ardour is the best free recording app and frankly, it sucks.

For specialized pro-level apps I really think there's only one answer... for companies like Adobe to port their stuff for Linux. They don't seem to be in a hurry, do they?

Here's one thing that does need to happen within the community... we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that M$ is never going to port it's stuff to Linux, right? Linux is never going to be competitive until somebody comes up with an office suite that's comparable to MS Office in all respects. I wonder how we go about making that happen? It seems that considerable effort has gone into OO.o over a very long period of time... and it's still lagging. I really like the overall design of Koffice 2.x, but with a very small development team is it ever going to achieve feature parity with M$ Office? I doubt it. How do we address this issue?

This question is an old one, unfortunately. The true answer is not a happy one either.

The facts are that unless you get artists (whatever type of artists they may be, eg: graphical, musical, video, whatever) working closely with the development of a creative program, that program is unlikely to ever be seriously considered a commercial competitor. For this to happen the program has to prove its potential to developers.

The only one successful story of this happening (or that I'm aware of) is Blender, used for 3D modeling and animating. There is an amazing amount of artist interest happening in it. One thing I believe that really separates this app from others trying to do the same is that the developers (working full-time on it) along with a team of artists every so often create a 3D movie with it to the best of their abilities, following an industry workflow. Each time their needs are communicated directly to the developers sitting in the other room and the artists themselves push the app to its limits. You can search up "Elephant's Dream", "Big Buck Bunny", and "Yo Frankie!" (a 3D game, not a movie) for an idea of their projects. In fact, they're working on one now called "Sintel".

Going back to the original point, I don't know of any winning formula for an app to be considered to have potential by an artist. What I do know, is that a markup language for writing music scores, no matter how amazing Lilypond is, is not what mainstream professionals want. It may be powerful, but in the end interface and usability really seems to be the selling point in this day and age.

I am happy to see apps like The GIMP to be taking a step in the right direction, and I know that Krita is being used by the Blender guys on their movie projects for visualisation (I think the artist BenDansie registered here too!), I don't know a lot about the state of music creation suites, but I suspect it'll come all in time as Desktop Linux matures further (it still has long to go!) and artists use the platform, and in time, its apps.

One strategy I do know that's always good is to make artists proud of their apps. If an artist labels their artwork as "Made with Krita" or such, other artists will get curious.

Once again, I think the only possible answer in the near term is to get the software companies to port their stuff to Linux. It may not satisfy the free software purists, but it's practical. Do I think it's going to happen? No. Microsoft will just pay them under the table to not do it.

And again, I think that all of these things need to be secondary to creating a free office suite that's 100% competitive with MS Office. How would we go about accomplishing this? It does seem that a great deal of effort has been expended towards achieving this goal without success; does this mean the job is impossible? I'm quite convinced that desktop Linux will NEVER take off until this hurdle has been overcome.

Moult wrote:What I do know, is that a markup language for writing music scores, no matter how amazing Lilypond is, is not what mainstream professionals want. It may be powerful, but in the end interface and usability really seems to be the selling point in this day and age.

I'm no musician but I'm curious...those of you who are, have you tried Rosegarden? It's supposed to be both a sequencer and a notation editor (using lilypond as a backend if I've understood it correctly).

Well, if you have tried it: is it useful even if not as good as the commercial counterparts?

I am a traditionalist musician and so I rarely touch the computer except when to transfer my handwritten scores to digital format. Being decently familiar with markup languages and knowing some programming it was an easy choice to pick Lilypond.

Even though I have been exposed to music remixing apps I wouldn't be the right person to judge it as that's simply not my area of interest. Rosegarden seems to be more for track mixing than simply score notation. So no, I haven't tried Rosegarden. However having friends who have tried working with Linux apps in the music industry who are interested in that field, I've always heard that it's underdeveloped. Honestly I'm unsurprised.

... and going back at 2handband, I actually agree that a good Office Suite is probably the best starting point before we seriously start considering creative apps again. Blender was a one-off, and note that Blender is available for Windows too, so there was no "switching" tradeoff.