noahadavis

Joined 10 years ago

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Nov 15

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Every library is overhead that you need to first understand. There's no "just writing a JS file" or just writing a C++/C#/Java/Python/etc. file.

Comment · 2 years ago

This comes from different libraries being used for different things. KConfigXT uses XML to generate settings classes. Qt Widgets UI files are also XML based, but that comes from Qt and is separate from KConfigXT. I don't know what uses the metadata JSON files, but I know it's not Qt Widgets or KConfigXT.

Comment · 4 years ago

Android started off being its own thing, except for the kernel. The Steam Deck is built on desktop Linux tech, so they would have to start over if they wanted to move away from that. That doesn't make their path guaranteed to be the same in the future, but it does make what you describe less likely.

Comment · 4 years ago

KDE still uses QQC2 and Flickable. However, we do workaround Flickable's deficiencies by filtering mouse wheel input on QQC2 ScrollViews and setting the content X/Y values so that it moves more like a view in Qt Widgets. It's not ideal. I hope one day I or someone else will be able to fix Flickable's behavior upstream.

Comment · 4 years ago

If KDE and GNOME are stuck, it's not because they can't innovate with their UIs enough with traditional ways of interacting with a computer. In fact, I don't think innovating in a way that doesn't involve new ways to interact (such as VR/AR) is very desirable to most users.

The truth is, most people don't want to install operating systems, even if they're free and easier to install than Windows. The only way to go further is to ship with hardware and for that combination of hardware and software to be in demand. On top of that, when the operating system/desktop environment has reached a decent baseline of general usability like KDE Plasma and GNOME have, the software ecosystem around the OS/DE is more of a limiting factor than the UIs of the OS/DE.

The fact that System 76 sells laptops could actually give their DE a significant advantage over other small DEs if they ship their own DE. It's unlikely to overtake KDE and GNOME since System 76 doesn't sell tons of laptops like Dell or other big hardware companies, but I guess never say never.

I don't expect instant world domination, but I hope the Steam Deck (which will ship KDE Plasma for its desktop mode) will greatly boost the popularity and developer community of KDE. With success, there is a chance at a snowball effect where new users who enjoy the product contribute and bring attention, which brings more new users, etc. All things considered, the share of people using the Steam Deck isn't going to be that big compared to Windows or even MacOS, but it is getting a lot of attention.

One of my friends from the KDE community (which I am also a part of) has written multiple articles about this on his blog. Here's one: https://pointieststick.com/2021/12/09/what-desktop-linux-nee...

> A desktop environment isn't that difficult to make, that's why we have so many.

We actually don't have that many and they actually are pretty difficult to make. Linux has quite a lot of window managers, but not complete desktop environments. The 2 most popular ones require a lot of maintenance. Even GNOME, which has gained a bit of a reputation for dropping features is very large in scope.

Comment · 5 years ago

And now that we have PipeWire, getting low latency audio is extremely easy too.

Comment · 5 years ago

> I mean, what are you going to do, use a 3rd party client for Google's services? You're not allowed to - at least not on the same service level.

3rd party Google Drive clients have been the only type of Google Drive client on Linux for a long time.

Probably the only good graphical client is this one and it's actually pretty good: https://www.insynchq.com/

Comment · 5 years ago

Sorry, but I completely disagree. If what you were saying was true, then physical synths would have the same problems in live performances. I think the problem is not the instrument, but rather how people are used to using the instrument. If you're used to mixing synths for stereo, then your ideas for how to make a synth sound good beyond stereo are much weaker.

Also, there's so much you can do to the sound of a synth and so many powerful synths out there. If you're complaining about the sound being too smooth or simple, you just haven't played around with powerful synths often enough.

Comment · 5 years ago

You don't see the side-effects of destabilizing a government as potentially disastrous for an economy? Governments and economies can have many different forms, but there are clear cases where destabilizing one will destabilize the other and ultimately lead to mass suffering for a period of time. Imagine what would happen if a government in a place like the Middle East or parts of Africa collapsed. History has shown that a new government often doesn't rise up from the ashes without lots of tears and bloodshed. What do you think happens to people's standards of living? How much of their time and money do you think it will take just to get back what they used to have?

Comment · 5 years ago

Does making governments less stable really not make economies less stable?

Comment · 5 years ago

Apparently they are not associated with Andrew Lee anymore. They were sold to Kape (formerly Crossrider) in 2019.

Comment · 5 years ago

The apps are already individual things that don't depend on each other, except in some cases where KParts are used. A KPart is kind of like an application turned into a library. Usually, this is not something users need to be concerned about. The integrated terminal in the Dolphin file manager is a Konsole KPart. openSUSE (and probably others like Fedora and Ubuntu) actually split Konsole into `konsole` and `konsole-part`, so it's not a problem.

That sounds like an Arch packaging issue, a misunderstanding of what the packages actually do or you're installing a metapackage and not realizing it.

Comment · 5 years ago

Which group would a DAW and plugins developed by a FOSS community like KDE or GNOME belong to?

Comment · 6 years ago

Only KDE devs can merge MRs. We review, say that the patch looks good in a comment and then merge.

Comment · 6 years ago

Affinity Designer also lacks features compared to Inkscape, so paying more (than nothing) does not necessarily get you a better product.