[Gllug] Windows -> Linux

[Nix]

On Mon, 10 Dec 2001, Simon Stewart spake:
> On Fri, Dec 07, 2001 at 11:57:58PM +0000, Nix wrote:
>> Thus speaks someone who hasn't seen Galeon-1.0. 
> 
> Not so, I've used galeon quite a lot and love it to bits. Perhaps you
> haven't had a chance to use Konqi with the KMozilla KPart? :) In any

I ran some bits of KDE once and decided that I simply couldn't abide the
look and behaviour of the widget set. It looks like someone's gone mad
while holding too many crayons and on psychedelic drugs :(

YMMV, of course... but Qt is a widget set too far for
me. Horrible-looking, relies on fragile *and unnecessary* C++ language
extensions implemented using a somewhat dysfunctional preprocessor...

Thanks, but no thanks.


I keep KDE's sources around because they're a good C++ compiler torture
test (although I don't seem to have them here at the moment; I think I
let them get too obsolete and deleted them. Idiot, I'll just need to
download them again.)

> Well, this is part of the point. People are now getting used to being
> able to browse the web and manage their files using the same basic
> interface.

Jabber knows why; they're totally different tasks. I find it actively
*confusing* to have the same affordances for both; I can't keep the
tasks apart in my head anymore.

But maybe one who's `grown up with it' will find it easier; `the only
intuitive interface is the nipple.' (att. to Bruce Ediger).

> Having said that, you'll prolly reply with a salient point about
> Outlook and email.... :)

`But Windows can spread viruses', you mean? ;)

> konqueror as a file manager can be almost pleasurable. This is partly
> because of the way that the KDE has abstracted IO into the KIOSlaves,
> and so I can use the same interface to manage files over FTP, SSH, or on
> the local file system, to name but a few of the available plugins. Not

Likewise Nautilus and gnome-vfs --- or, at least, this will be true in
time; right now -vfs and Nautilus are playing catch-up with each
other. They're resynchronizing in GNOME 2 and should end up duplicating
less of each other's functionality :)

> only that, but the same level of functionality is provided
> pervasively throughout the KDE (try opening "ftp://server_name/" in
> one of the normal KDE dialogue boxes)
> 
> Personally, I think that rocks.

gnome-vfs can do it too.

But it belongs in the kernel; the filesystem should unify such
namespaces into itself. Sticking it in userspace is just perverse.

> Pick one. Stick with it. A QT version of Evolution sounds like a nice
> idea *drh*[1]

Oh, great. Make it even *more* bloated. ;)

No chance, I'd say; Evolution is really tightly tied to Gnome. Only
Nautilus is more tied. Both are pushing features into gnome-libs,
bonobo, gnome-vfs and so on and finding bugs in it at a considerable
rate; there are even two libraries (eel and gal) that consist of little
more than `stuff gnumeric, evolution, and nautilus originated that
should be in gnome-libs, and will move in in 2.something.'

> [1] Not trying to start something here, but if you avoid loading GTK
>     and the Gnome libs, then you make a significant memory saving, and
>     therefore avoid hitting swap for that little bit longer.

Qt and the KDE libs have a vastly higher memory hit than Gtk and the
Gnome libs; about 70% higher last time I tested. This is partially
because of the way LD_PRELOAD requirements interact with the thunks
required to implement virtual methods (each such thunk requires
relocation, so you get slow started and lots of dirtied, nonsharable .so
text pages); the `prelinking' hack gets around that, but it's *ugly* and
not supported outside of unreleased CVS binutils to date.

It's also because C++ is intrisically harder to optimize than C, because
of the proliferation of exception handling flow paths and what they do
to many otherwise nice optizations :(

-- 
`The situation is completely under control. All of them were killed.'
     --- Alim Razim, for the Northern Alliance, demonstrating fine
         command of traditional Afghan prisoner control techniques.

-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at linux.co.uk
http://list.ftech.net/mailman/listinfo/gllug