News KDE 4 to use much less RAM

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/12/14/kde_4_to_use_much_less_ram/1

KDE 4 will use far less memory and will run its "Aero" equivalent on older hardware than you'd expect. Another excuse to switch to away from Microsoft?

 

while i'm glad to see that this system is getting better milage, it brings up one reason why I haven't bothered trying linux, what the heck is KDE and how is it different from the other programs out there.

 

KDE is a window manager and desktop manager. Like Gnome, xfce, e10, e11, open/black/flux-box and the likes. Think of it as your explorer.exe, but seperating the taskbar from window managing from compositing from filemanager etc (meaning, more foolproof).

I honestly don't like KDE and KDE 4 just looks like a mix between gnome and aero *grabs shield and pitchfork*, but its good to know its optimized. Kubuntu 8.04 will probably use it? Lets hope so!

 

That's what Linux is about, choice and freedom... But with that also comes that you can choose from a lot of different things...

OT, still, Fluxbox rules!

 

this does it.. next time I have to fork my setup I'll switch to linux

 

well i am quite content with XFCE11 and Blackbox/Fluxbox Although i wouldn't mind trying this out.

 

let me see if i understand this then, linux is kind of like the base operating system, and then things like kde are the interface that we use?
sort of like how dos had dosshell if you didn't want to use the simple text interface?

 

Linux is even lower then that... Linux is the kernel... The thing between the hardware and the software, that handles the devices and such...

On top of that system utilities are built, and above that user interfaces (like CLI). KDE is a graphical desktop environment. You can best compare it to the think you look when you are looking at your wallpaper in Windows... The start menu, the icons,... (and a lot more), that's KDE Well, KDE is one of the many desktop environments/Window managers (gnome/metacity, xfce, fluxbox, busybox,... are others)

 

Pretty much, yeah. But think about it as having a fully functional DOS, and then having a more stable, more secure, much better performing version of Windows Vista.

Linux at its core is a command line operating system, just like DOS - but the GUIs you can add to it are MUCH more full featured than anything that DOS used to have. They're like running a full-on Windows machine (albeit faster, more stable, and MUCH more extensible).

The great thing about Linux is that anything you can do in the command line, you can usually do in the window managers. And everything you can do in the windows managers, you can do in the command line - the two are completely complimentary, unlike DOS and Windows, where one always wanted to steal control from the other.

 

That has cost you a new keyboard! Well said Dego!

Andy

 

As a matter of fact, what a lot of people think is "linux", turns out to be only kde/gnome.

 

What's the point of having all that cheap RAM just sat there doing nothing?

 

This is actually symptomatic of one of the biggest problems in Linux - they're chasing the look and feel of Windows, which to many people isn't even a plus point, which distracts from work towards solutions to any of the problems endemic to the platform.

Nobody is doing any big-picture thinking on Linux. In some ways, that's down to the way opensource software works, and I believe that until we see more community acceptance of commercial software releases this won't be fixed. In many ways, though, it's because there's simply a refusal to accept that many of the problems exist. Making prettier desktops that run in 2K of memory doesn't help. I don't want the desktop to be pretty, and even if I did, RAM is so cheap I really couldn't give two hoots.

P

 

so that when you run something that does need it, you don't have crap clogging it up.

 

Huh? How is using 40% less memory chasing the look and feel of Windows?

Also with the changes of KDE 4, KDE now looks less like Windows than KDE 3 did, it now looks a hell of a lot better than windows. KDE 4's new look "Oxygen" has a very different feel to Aero, IMHO it strikes a wonderful balance between being clean and clear, and also looking fancy and sophisticated.

Yeah, KDE does have many simmilarities to the windows look and feel, but it wouldn't help anyone for it to be completely strange and alienating to new users. What KDE does so well is being accessible to anyone who's used a GUI before, and at the same time cater to the enthusiast crowd by being very flexible, so you can make it look exactly as you want.

 

linux is great in a lot of ways, but it fails in one point, major developers (both productivity & games) are still in windows , I think rather than pushing linux to be greater than what it is, alot should be done to convince major developers to shift to it,for example give me a native photoshop install on linux-me loves you big time (and come on linux people stop telling me to shift to gimp )

 

are there any decent screenshots of KDE4 yet, last i looked there were about 5 that some tit had taken at like 800x600 and you couldn't see anything

 

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071213-afirst-look-at-kde-4-0-release-candidate-2.html

 

and the problem there is that the devlopers dont see that theres enough people on linux to bother with a linux version and that stops people like you wanting to use linux, so it comes down to the age old question "what came first the chicken or the egg"

 

using less ram means i can install this on a craptastic pc and still make it look nice.......