[vox] KDE's Future?

[Bill Kendrick]

On Mon, Jan 12, 2004 at 11:02:44PM -0800, Robert G. Scofield wrote:
> As a computer incompetent, who for example probably couldn't install Debian 
> and then compile KDE;

After a few rounds, Debian's not _too_ hard.  The kiosk system I set up
last week was actually pretty easy to deal with.  I was wiping the existing
system (Win95?98?) clean, so that probably helped.

Admittedly, I had accidentally burned disc #2 of Debian 3.0, instead of
disc #1, so I dug up an ancient Debian 2.2 (Potato) disc, installed it, and
then promptly uncommented all of the "http" DEB sources, and did an
"apt-get update" followed by an "apt-get dist-upgrade", and then left for
dinner. :^)

When I came back, I had a Debian 3.0 system...


The hard part was tracking down how to get the wireless card to work.
That had little to do with Debian, and more to do with "I don't know WHAT
this thing needs... help me!"  I hopped on the #wireless IRC channel of
freenode, and fortunately got the help I needed!

I wanted to find a backport of a particular kernel module (wlan-ng), but
couldn't, so they recommended another one.  The only Debian package for it
was the source, so I had to actually untar something, read the README, and
run "make pci" and "make pci-install" ;^)  I was flabberghasted by how
little trouble I had, but I guess I've had back luck with some things in the
past.


As for KDE, there's a Debian Woody (stable, 3.0) backport of KDE 3.1.
It's what I use on my personal box, as well as what I installed on the kiosk.

Simply a matter of adding the right "DEB" line to my apt/sources.list, and
then doing an "apt-get install..."  I didn't want EVERYTHING for the kiosk,
and thankfully, I didn't need to install /everything/ just to get Konqueror
up and running. :^)

(Admittedly, my first thought was to kiosk-ify Mozilla, but it looks pretty
irritating, and the one 'kiosk' setup I've seen for it is a
_FORTY_ MB DOWNLOAD!  And that's ON TOP of Mozilla itself :^) )


> that is, as someone who uses Linux like the majority 
> use Windows, I feel like my freedom of choice might be affected by what the 
> big boys are doing.

It is kinda scary sometimes.  OTOH, I also fret over things like whether
a file browser should be part of an app, or only part of the desktop
environment.  Or maybe the app should INVOKE the desktop environment's
file browser, in a special way.  And ooh, how can they talk to each other?
And the user should be able to choose different file browsers...  UGH :^)

Then I fall asleep. :)


> IBM and Novell (and I guess Sun) are making these big 
> moves.  I suppose IBM at least is trying to counter Microsoft, and that's 
> good.  But when the companies that started giving Linux to the masses (Red 
> Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, etc.) start getting bought out as the big boys make 
> their moves, it seems like something's gone wrong.  I might again be 
> dependent on what these companies decide to do.  Linux might not end up being
> so revolutionary.

Well, to me, there's always the 'slow and steady wins the race' feeling I
get from projects like Debian and KDE.  Sure, they can be energized and
boosted by the likes of IBM and Novell and even the old SCO (Caldera, right?),
but when and if those companies die or change gears, it's not like the
software's going to go away!  That's the beauty of the Open Source licenses.

Among other things, I think that's what RMS was trying to do with the GPL.
(Looking back, and having a very vague sense of 'how things were' with Unix
back in the mid 80s, I can understand his frustration :^) )


> Now if someone wants to go ahead and bash this message, go ahead.  It will 
> make me feel better.

Meh, just fire up emacs and hit M-x doctor

;) ;)

-bill!
(i love that joke)