my friend andy came over the other day and told me a rather nice little kde related story that i thought i'd pass on:
a client of his has some linux servers that are sitting in a local colo centre. the isp running the colo messed up some internal routing and half his servers could no longer talk to the other half inside the colo (though everything was visible and reachable from the outside).
his client tried with great frustration to get the isp to fix things but they couldn't figure it out. so the guy figured that if just changed the ip addresses on the system that couldn't talk to the other system to be on the same internal subnet, things should magically fix themselves. sounds logical enough. only the guy had never touched linux himself before; he was a windows guy and was apparently unaware of the nice gui's we have these days.
knowing that the client was an otherwise windows-only shop, andy had the foresight to install kubuntu on the servers complete with kde available should it ever be needed. so when the client walked into the colo and flipped on a monitor connected to his server, he saw a nice kdm screen. he logged in and changed the ip address using the guidance tool that comes with kubuntu.
not bad for a windows guy who'd never even logged into a linux machine before. his comments? "everything was exactly where i expected it to be. i just went to the applications menu, clicked on 'system settings' and set the ip." he was impressed by how obvious and simple it all was and was very happy that he could get what he needed done himself when it came to crunch time.
these kinds of stories make me very happy, as it just goes to show that the kde project is doing a lot of things right. we can debate and philosophize all we want, but when these events occur it removes all doubt.
i'd also suggest that those working on unix-y server operating systems need to seriously consider how important interfaces like kde are to those who are used to (and even like) system such as windows. just because the focus is web, mail, database, ldap, etc.. doesn't mean a graphical interface is unnecessary. in fact, having a good one, such as kde, available to your users will broaden your reach.
anyways ... enough soapboxing ;) i'm off to merge changes i made to kdelibs while away in brazil from the laptop to the faster and nicer to use desktop system ... which means i'm pretty much caught up on communication i missed while on my mini-vacation. huzzah!
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In my opinion, the GUI and easy-to-use utilities aren't what suck about Windoze. Pre-Vista, what sucked were the insecurity and the crappy (GCC-less, Make-less) programming environment and the antiquated DOS shell system (with Vista, the GUI really does suck; it looks like a bad KDE rip-off and it is treacly slow with 512Mb RAM, for which there is no explanation other than bad programming). Actually, a lot of Unix GUIs have not moved too far from the Windows paradigm, and this is especially true of KDE although you can customise it so that it looks more like a Mac.
I just tried to replicate the path that user took, on my Feisty Fawn (upgraded from Edgy, upgraded from Dapper) Kubuntu installation. So, K menu, System Settings, Internet & Network, Network Settings.
Everything is greyed out, I need to click the Administrator Mode button. There is no AM button (http://www.cricalix.net/~dhill/kde/network-ip-1.jpg). There's also no graphical hint that the window can be resized (other than maximize). Once I work out that I can grab the bottom right corner (and yes, that's experience telling me to try that), I can see the administrator button. However, if I change tabs, the elements on the canvas change size, and force the administrator button off of the page! Hopefully KDE 4 will sort all of that foolishness out.
Oh, and for whatever reason, the blogger.com captcha refuses to display in my Konqueror :(.
The problem with linux is that hardware settings are mostly done in a distro-specific way. The guy you told us the story about was happy to find a kubuntu distro. On suse things would probably be a little more complicated with the yast settings module. On gentoo, the distro I am using, he would be forced to edit /etc/conf.d/net and restart the appropriate init scripts to get networking done.
Even worst, if he will be sitting in front of another distro next time, he will be quite confused to find out that there is not guidance module there. The Kubuntu knowhow he has aquired is meaningless and lost there. So this actually a very very messy situation we have under GNU/Linux.
Two things would drastically improve the situation. For one, KDE needs to be in charge of all kind of hardware (I hope solid will make this possible) and their settings. The only thing that should be ensured by the distro is that the driver is loaded.
The next important thing is to have a mainstream distro that the majority of users work with. I myself am a Gentoo guy, but I would like kubuntu/ubuntu to take off and become the de facto standard linux distro. So we have kubuntu for the ordinary users and the other distros like Gentoo for powerusers or people with specific needs...
His know how is not lost and meaningless. This is not comparing a complete desktop environment to a headless server without X.
Being how heavily Aaron is involved with KDE ... I figured he would like to know of how a person so unfamiliar with "linux" in general didn't even know there were desktop environments. His experience with linux / unix was actually PuTTY to headless OpenBSD boxes. So when he told me that _he_ changed the IP address himself, I probed him and he told me what he did.
You can either be positive about something ... or negative. Saying his experience was meaningless, and saying this is a problem with linux, and speaking of how difficult it would have been on another distro does not help anyone.
However, being excited that because of KDE, a windows user's first experience was a great success on the linux desktop is something to jump up and down about. He'll go out and tell 3 friends how easy it was in the next linux discussion he has. "I changed the IP on one of our production servers in like 1 minute ... it was so easy".
The more people like Aaron who share success stories about people the better. The more people who try out KDE and find it easy, the better. More people trying linux and finding encouragement and help will be more enthusiastic about sticking with it.
Saying his experience was meaningless, and saying this is a problem with linux, and speaking of how difficult it would have been on another distro does not help anyone.
It is helpful. Now that the KDE-4 libs are being completed and the development of the actual userinterface is being more and more tackled, we need to think about a unified mechanism to deal with hardware. KDE-4 will probably have a lifetime of 6-10 years. Discussing the needs of the computer users of tomorrow helps us to find better well-thought solutions for them.
I am working with Linux exclusively at home and a lot at work. I know its virtues and it's shortcomings. If We remove a few obstacles, this will greatly accelerate mass-adoption of the penguin. Yet, I didn't even need to tell you all this. I am sure the KDE Developers are already doing the work.
@mehdi: your intention was to be helpful, but i must say all it did was make my day a little more negative.
if someone has a really good experience, as this guy did, and in return it is met with, "no way, it sucks!" messages, i'm really not interested in continuing conversation with this community.
what you seem to have been missing here is that kde was indeed "in charge of" the hardware in this case and it worked out very well. that was, in fact, the entire point of the post. "success when we have gui's for system level tasks!"
moreover, you missed the point that tools used, guidance, are not operating system specific. which sort of puts the whole "distro specific" grump in an odd place.
yes, somehow you decided to find some way to find fault with this positive event. amazing.
we need to look critically at what we're doing and find way to always improve. but sometimes we also need to step back and say, "hey, we've done pretty good up to this point. nice." it's important to realize one's successes to date, both for moral purposes but also to ensure that the path continues to be followed where it works and abandoned where it doesn't.
@duncan: yes, the zeroconf page is too tall and pushes the bottom off the screen at lower resolutions (e.g. 800px height). this can be improved.
that said, the fellow still got his work done with zero help. he did it all on his own. i hope you agree that that is a nice indicator that we're on the right track. compare and contrast with, say, 5 years ago.
so do you think you might be able to step back for a few minutes and offer a "cool!" instead of yet another critique? or is this leading up to a patch from dhill@?
'helpful, but i must say all it did was make my day a little more negative'
hi man i like your language, you make my day, by the way, i hope you did not lost control with all those se.. girl in brazil
At this juncture, some smart Alec would likely step in and ask "My God, why are you running a GUI on a server!?" painting over the reasons why people like Andy's client do use GUIs. Quite frankly, if someone knows they want to change an IP address or a subnet mask then they should be able to do it without looking up the exact syntax of a command, a set of switches or finding what config file to alter. Doing any of that stuff does not impart some mystical, oracle-like knowledge as some people seem to think it does.
I installed a RHEL box the other day, and discovered that there was no way to readily disable the ability to shutdown or reboot from the GDM screen, or lock it down to root, and no way to easily do so from a GUI. No, I wasn't editing a GDM config file (I had installed a GUI environment, right?), and when I have to come up with some reproduceable instructions for other people, that's important. Solution? Install KDE and use the login manager options to customise the KDM options screen - like I've been doing for years. Quick, easy and it's all there.
Bravo for GUI tools, that's what I say. KDE has more than its fair share of them (ask yourself why). They're essential, and even useful. Yes. Even on servers.
Let's try this again by rephrasing Mehdi comment in a positive way... =)
What's really cool is that with KDE4, the hardware settings will be completely distro-neutral since it will be done using the Solid interface, which enables the user to edit the proper configuration settings and restart the networking deamon if needed.
Even though, currently it might be different in some distro, Solid goals is to reunify all the configuration hardware settings
to maximize the user experience to the highest levels!
Moreover, it could be possible for Solid to start the proper kernel module or deamon to ensure that the driver is loaded via special DBUS hooks, if needed.
Finally, the ultimate goal of KDE4 is try to reunify most distro differences, by taking the best changes and user interface of each one and come up with a brilliant
set of tools to please our user base by making it easier, better and more uniform.
Aaron, This is off topic but I have had an idea that is in your line of work. How about making the desktop just like a "basKet" in the kde programme "basKet" also a unification of baskets abilities with the file browser would be nice for your home directory.
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