Ideas for Free

For those few brave souls working on KDE 4, this is my list of bugs I noticed in the first couple hours.  Some may be viewed as belonging to other subsystems.  This is installing KDE 4.1, 32 bit, on a new T-6836 laptop.

• On live CD, font on “read me” came up as unreadable and clipped.
• The whole “add widgets” system is difficult; I keep wanting to add widgets to my task bar.
• Double clicking on a downloaded debian package brings up Ark but without the package loaded. Ark doesn’t appear to handle this file type.
• Hey! Where’s my alt-space quick launch (Katapult) or a replacement.
• Where’s my easy “look for more widgets to install” thingee?
• During install on partitioning disks, the progress bar hangs at 0% for about five or ten minutes.
• My traditional bar across the bottom disappeared and I don’t know where it went. Sometimes KDE seems to fail to bring up any interprocess communication.
• Once I moved the app launcher to the right hand, it made my menus funky, and I don’t know how to make it go back. I eventually blew away my .kde* directories
• Why do I have a .kde3 directory when running kde4?
• Tons and tons of warnings and errors in the dbus backtrack.
• Crashing Konquerer on GMail. Why KDE has its own browser is beyond my keen.
• Grub should initialize with better names. Not just “Generic Linux…” and “Windows Longhorn…”. Also, there are two Windows entries, one of which should be labelled recovery.
• Default width on “Add Widgets” box is way too narrow.
• In “Add Widgets”, “Pager”, “System Tray” and “Task Manager” have too generic icons.
• Can’t be sure or prove it, but “All Widgets” seems to not have all widgets the first time.
• Power management, by default, ran until out of battery and turned off.
• Appears not to save settings until successful shutdown of window manager.
• When I click on the “Leave” icon, choose restart, I get another level of menus to try to restart again.
• Network manager crashed at least once or twice. No clear way to make it start again.
• No ’small icons’ for a quick launch bar.

After a certain level of  bugginess, it makes no sense to report bugs unless one is also submitting patches.

80% of effects come from 20% of causes
— Pareto Principle by Vilfredo Frederico Damaso Pareto, 1906

90% of Everything is Crud
– Sturgeon’s Law by Theodore Sturgeon, 1956

100% of Everything is Crud
– Linear extrapolation of above, 2006.

There seems to have been a natural tendency for us to look at past as some magical time when quality mattered. Really, only the pure quality of finished work survived. We forget the uncountable steps towards quality.

In the world of desktop environments, the journey towards quality continues. KDE 4.1 makes a step, following trends, and aiming to be The One Last and True Windowing System.

Quality Steps and Missteps

I installed Kubuntu with KDE 4 on my laptop, and am using it to write this post. That it is written at all shows a minunum level of quality. That the post starts with these quotes shows a maximum level.

I find immediate problems when installing. The very first action, the “Read Me” during the LiveCD boot, comes up in a clipped and illegible font. During partitioning the disks, the progress bar hangs at 0% for ten minutes. The task bar lacks resizing and basic functionality. The quick launcher, Katapult, disappeared. A new program launcher experiment falls flat with some buttons activating by click and other by hovering the mouse.  Konquer still crashes.   I discover new bugs a few times per hour.  These are the the nits and bugs of a new system.

The subtle problems are the problems repeated from previous years: the LILO boot system that unhelpfully refers to Vista as “longhorn” and Kubuntu as “generic Ubuntu core”; the cobbleware of screen layout that has fonts too big for buttons, text too wide for dialogs, and odd alignments; the usual flakiness with power and wireless management. These problems persist for ages from expectation, difficulty, or blindness.

So quality is a step downward while the easy bugs are fixed. Some nice features, like FileLight are a definite step up that I expect every other distribution to copy soon. KDE did buck the trend in releasing a quality downgrade.

Trends in Window Managers

KDE 4 follows the collective wisdom of other software competitors including GNOME, Sugar, Microsoft’s Windows line, and Apple’s OS X line. It tries to be different just like everyone else.  It adds new functionality in pieces and parts.  The hodgepodge of bundling, or smush, that make up windowing systems includes GUI and interface candy, applications, and APIs.

Smush is not pejorative. Open source swaps in and out competing components and the windowing system selects components under its seal of approval and delinates APIs outside its control. Quality for each component is involved at several layers. When the power management on my laptop fails to hibernate before powering off, I could file a bug with KDE, Ubuntu (link to shuttleworth), Debian, the Linux ACPI mailing list, hardware discovery, or just fix it myself. When searching for a workaround, it could exist anywhere.

KDE is following the trend towards aggressively  cross platform deployment. By using Qt 4 as it’s underlying graphics engine, KDE hopes to deploy on desktops (Linux, MS Windows, and OS/X), cellular phones, and some embedded devices. It is currently hampered by Qt 4 having no LGPL or BSD license, requiring a special licensing cycle to deploy any commercial application. The previous Qt 4 copyright holder, TrollTech needed this revenue to continue operations. The new holder, Nokia, may free the code in order to encourage wider adoption and easier developer migration to its cellular phones.

KDE also follows the practice of wrapping more and more functionality into API layer plug-ins. Rather than commit to a scripting language, Kross wraps or interfaces to Python, Ruby and JavaScript. Rather than commit to a multimedia engine, Phonon creates one more layer of indirection for a common interface to GStreamer, QuickTime, DirectShow, and others. The new release switches many of the wrappers so now it is Phonon (multimedia), Solid (device integration), Plasma (a new desktop), Kross (scripting), DXS (application data updates), Decibel (human communications), and D-BUS replacing DCOP (application messaging). It is unclear if “one more layer of indirection” will be the correct solution in the long run.

In the long run, of course, KDE hopes to birth “The One Last and True Windowing System.”

The One Last and True Windowing System

Results 1 – 10 of about 1,040
– Google search for “One API to Rule Them All”

Windowing systems race towards the goals of full functionality, sweet abstractions, and wide deployment with the winner creating a work that will last decades. Each release brings new experiments and implements growing standards. Implementations trump ideas. Differing implementations get abstracted and merged. Engineers have always raced towards sweet solutions.

Software does get finished. We still use the C programming language after more than a third of a century. The syntax, style, and assumptions are passed to new languages such as C++, Python and Ruby. Other contenders failed. Hardware architectures now handle pointer indirections, sequential arrays, and null terminated strings. C goes through occasional updates and forks, but it endures. Also enduring are the most of the Internet stack including TCP/IP, DNS/Bind, and packet switching; HTTP protocols, SQL, and many more. These become the common parts upon which we solve new problems. Many hope to finish writing the desktop software.

FreeDesktop.org gently pushes towards standardization by facilitating discussion. It speeds the process of making compatible, then integrating, then merging competitng development that has become similar. It’s influence on KDE is unmistakable.

So, will KDE give birth to the “One Last and True Windowing System” that lasts for decades?

Conclusions

KDE took a significant risk. It’s adoption of Qt 4, dropping of DCOP, and making so many changes significantly hurt its quality. On the other hand, it might provide a new level of functionality to catapult into the top three windowing systems. Time will tell. For people just wanting a desktop to work, stay away for six months. Continue Reading »

I went out and bought a new laptop, having succesfully proven that driving over a laptop is not a good idea.

First, I watched SlickDeals for a reasonable, cheap system.  I’ve found that laptops have a short obsolescence period, and buying near the bottom end is best.  Second, I went to Best Buy and picked it up.  Best Buy has a less than stellar reputation, so I double-checked the factory seals.

And the system had a bad wireless.  DOA.   Some hours on Gateway’s chat trying to install drivers for a broken subsystem.   They gave me an RMA number; Best Buy has a less than stellar reputation.

The next morning, I went back to Best Buy.  Ten minutes for them to poke and prod and I had a new system on the way out.   Sometimes the reputation is undeserved.

Boot up Windows; download Firefox; download Kubuntu; burn CD;  install and go.

Life is better again.

In hopes of making a more productive utopia, I share this tip:

DO NOT RUN OVER YOUR LAPTOP WITH A MOTOR VEHICLE.

This has caused a noted decrease in my productivity.   A corollary for advanced production specialists follows:

DO NOT RUN OVER LAPTOP IN THE  MORNING WHEN THE BACK-UP DRIVE WILL BE DELIVERED THAT AFTERNOON.

I hope this bulletin prevents the same mistakes that I’ve been having this week.