Operating Systems > Linux and UNIX
Linux = Ugly
slave:
I'm sorry but I must agree with Calum. I just re-installed Yoper and upgraded to KDE 3.1 to see what all the fuss was about, and it's very disappointing. The KDE developers must be applauded for trying to cram so many features into KDE, but they really need to test their product before they release a "stable" version. There are so many problems with it, usability-wise and more importantly bug-wise that I hardly know where to begin! It reminds me of running Windows XP (eww)
Here, briefly, are some problems I've encountered during the past day of using KDE 3.1:
1. Menu shadows are really cool, but when you move your mouse between menus the transparency goes away, which looks very ugly.
2. Menu transparency, also very cool theoretically but when you move between menus it doesn't redraw what's behind the menu correctly; you end up seeing ugly artifacts left over from the previous menu. What astonishes me is that this bug has been in KDE since 3.0 and they still haven't fixed it, making using transparency at all pointless.
3. Selecting text in Konqueror is very sloooooww, I don't know why this is.
4. When I drag icons around on the desktop, they frequently leave ugly text artifacts behind them and I have to move the icon over the artifacts to make them disappear.
5. Some text in web pages rendered by Konqueror are anti-aliased, others (such as this forum) are not. Go figure.
6. None of the style GUI options work as they should. Menu fade does *not* fade every time, in fact it only fades about 1/3 the time, same with animate.
7. The control center is very poorly designed, with many similar or redundant options hidden all over the place under different menus. It makes the Windows 98 control panel look elegant by comparison. For instance, the option to enable a desktop menu is located under desktop behavior, which makes sense, but there's also an "enable menubar on top of screen in the style of MacOS" is located under appearance and themes > style.
8. Clicking on a link in Konqueror creates an ugly selection artifact occasionally which won't go away.
9. the kicker is ugly. sorry for speaking the truth, but it is.
In general, there are way more bugs in KDE that I'd like, and the overwhelming number of options in the interface make it very hard to find what I want. GNOME may be a bit lacking in features, but at least it doesn't include broken features. (like kde does with its menu transparency and shadows)
Furthermore, none of the apps that I like are KDE apps! Xchat, Evolution, GIMP, etc. are all GTK+ apps. KDE has kSirc, kMail and so on but they aren't nearly as advanced.
One more annoying thing I seem to notice is that the KDE developers seem to take forever acknowledging bug reports. Whenever I reported a bug in GNOME, I almost always got some sort of response within 24 hours. I looked at bugs.kde.org and there are month-old bug submissions for the menu shadow redraw error, all of them marked "unconfirmed" and with zero comments!!
[ February 05, 2003: Message edited by: Linux User #5225982375 ]
Fett101:
February 4, 2003: Desktop Linux Consortium Formed
A consortium dedicated to improving the look and feel of desktop Linux distributions was formed Tuesday. eh?
solo:
HAHA you guys just wasted your time! i meant that i would make the kde LAYERS you should be able to switch what layer makes the gui, of course i want gnome and any other tk to be included!!
preacher:
quote:Originally posted by Linux User #5225982375:
I'm sorry but I must agree with Calum. I just re-installed Yoper and upgraded to KDE 3.1 to see what all the fuss was about, and it's very disappointing. The KDE developers must be applauded for trying to cram so many features into KDE, but they really need to test their product before they release a "stable" version. There are so many problems with it, usability-wise and more importantly bug-wise that I hardly know where to begin! It reminds me of running Windows XP (eww)
Here, briefly, are some problems I've encountered during the past day of using KDE 3.1:
1. Menu shadows are really cool, but when you move your mouse between menus the transparency goes away, which looks very ugly.
2. Menu transparency, also very cool theoretically but when you move between menus it doesn't redraw what's behind the menu correctly; you end up seeing ugly artifacts left over from the previous menu. What astonishes me is that this bug has been in KDE since 3.0 and they still haven't fixed it, making using transparency at all pointless.
3. Selecting text in Konqueror is very sloooooww, I don't know why this is.
4. When I drag icons around on the desktop, they frequently leave ugly text artifacts behind them and I have to move the icon over the artifacts to make them disappear.
5. Some text in web pages rendered by Konqueror are anti-aliased, others (such as this forum) are not. Go figure.
6. None of the style GUI options work as they should. Menu fade does *not* fade every time, in fact it only fades about 1/3 the time, same with animate.
7. The control center is very poorly designed, with many similar or redundant options hidden all over the place under different menus. It makes the Windows 98 control panel look elegant by comparison. For instance, the option to enable a desktop menu is located under desktop behavior, which makes sense, but there's also an "enable menubar on top of screen in the style of MacOS" is located under appearance and themes > style.
8. Clicking on a link in Konqueror creates an ugly selection artifact occasionally which won't go away.
9. the kicker is ugly. sorry for speaking the truth, but it is.
In general, there are way more bugs in KDE that I'd like, and the overwhelming number of options in the interface make it very hard to find what I want. GNOME may be a bit lacking in features, but at least it doesn't include broken features. (like kde does with its menu transparency and shadows)
Furthermore, none of the apps that I like are KDE apps! Xchat, Evolution, GIMP, etc. are all GTK+ apps. KDE has kSirc, kMail and so on but they aren't nearly as advanced.
One more annoying thing I seem to notice is that the KDE developers seem to take forever acknowledging bug reports. Whenever I reported a bug in GNOME, I almost always got some sort of response within 24 hours. I looked at bugs.kde.org and there are month-old bug submissions for the menu shadow redraw error, all of them marked "unconfirmed" and with zero comments!!
[ February 05, 2003: Message edited by: Linux User #5225982375 ]
--- End quote ---
I agree with you about a lot of these bugs, but I still use KDE, just because it is more usable than Gnome to me. My suggestion for you is to send this list to the kde developers. Maybe the next relaese will get these things fixed if they know that people are sick of the problems.
solo:
Here we go, we're about to start a war.
quote:1. Menu shadows are really cool, but when you move your mouse between menus the transparency goes away, which looks very ugly.
--- End quote ---
umm the transparency never goes away. unless you are talking about mousing OVER an item, and on the keramik style which i use, it makes it a 3D blue color
quote:2. Menu transparency, also very cool theoretically but when you move between menus it doesn't redraw what's behind the menu correctly; you end up seeing ugly artifacts left over from the previous menu. What astonishes me is that this bug has been in KDE since 3.0 and they still haven't fixed it, making using transparency at all pointless.
--- End quote ---
yes, this is a bug that they could quite easily fix, i agree. however it doesnt make transparency pointless... unless you have the transparency REALLy transparent, because i cant see the menus at all unless i look real close
quote:3. Selecting text in Konqueror is very sloooooww, I don't know why this is.
--- End quote ---
hmm i have a celeron 600mgz and selecting is perfectly fine for me... unless you have like a 100 mhz system
quote:4. When I drag icons around on the desktop, they frequently leave ugly text artifacts behind them and I have to move the icon over the artifacts to make them disappear.
--- End quote ---
never happens to me... are you sure you have kde 3.1 and not some rc?
quote:5. Some text in web pages rendered by Konqueror are anti-aliased, others (such as this forum) are not. Go figure.
--- End quote ---
say thanks to helvetica! helvetica doesnt seem to render antialiased in mozilla either, but i dont know about galeon
quote:6. None of the style GUI options work as they should. Menu fade does *not* fade every time, in fact it only fades about 1/3 the time, same with animate.
--- End quote ---
umm maybe you havent noticed but it only fades when you ENTER a menu window. when you switch between menus it wont and it wont if you click on a menu twice (so it appears then disappears) and then click it again. they definitely could make that more forgiving tho and make it animate in that situation. as for fading same thing, but i dont use it because i want the transparent menus (u cant have both! that sucks!)
quote:7. The control center is very poorly designed, with many similar or redundant options hidden all over the place under different menus. It makes the Windows 98 control panel look elegant by comparison. For instance, the option to enable a desktop menu is located under desktop behavior, which makes sense, but there's also an "enable menubar on top of screen in the style of MacOS" is located under appearance and themes > style.
--- End quote ---
yes but do you have any other examples? and dont you ever call the win98 control panel elegant.
quote:8. Clicking on a link in Konqueror creates an ugly selection artifact occasionally which won't go away.
--- End quote ---
you are talking about the selection box i presume and it DOES go away, all you have to do is click somewhere else...
quote:9. the kicker is ugly. sorry for speaking the truth, but it is.
--- End quote ---
the kicker is literally as beautiful as you want it to be. of course you can change it to be whatever the hell you want. for instance check out my desktop in the 'quest for linux desktop' topic. its quite nice. however im thinking of dewindows'ing it (right now it looks too windows-like). the only complaint i have is that you cant do something like lock it so the dragbars disappear because those look ugly in some themes
maybe this will help you understand the universal ui thing:
-----------------rendering layer----------------
V^V^V^V^ communication layer V^V^V^V^
--------------------api layer----------------------
the user would be able to choose what style they wanted (ie kde, gnome, or even Tk if someone made an output layer).
lets say a kde application is launched and the current rendering layer was gnome. ld tries to load the kde libs but instead loads the universal ui version of it. the uni-ui libs use the communication layer functions/objects to communicate with the active rendering layer, and the rendering layer renders the windows and widgets described in the objects/structures given to it (via the comm layer)
[edit: forgot to put quotes on]
[ February 05, 2003: Message edited by: Solo ]
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