A Users' Perspective of Red Hat 8.0s KDE

Updated 2003 04 03, GMT 3:00PM. Aye, it seems Pixie doesn't built on 8. Mea culpa - I checked the packages I'd built a while back and indeed they were only for 7.3. Note that according to Mosfet, the reason Pixie breaks is because of a GCC issue (ie, not because of any changes Red Hat have made to KDE - at least that he mentioned).

Updated 2002 09 30, GMT 3:00PM. Noted the existence of kmozilla, corrected Notification Area system as being a draft specification, and not a finished proposal, added coverage of crystal icon beta labelling / bluecurve konsole bug fixes & updates, corrected document to note that although the Red Hat fork of QT 3.05's font handling and QT 3.1's font handling are both based on the original Keith Packard code for QT 3.03, they are not the same code. Added mention of icon theme support. Many thanks to all those who have provided feedback, additions and corrections. Please mail me your submissions if you can.

Updated for release, 2002 09 30, GMT 1:00PM. Added screenshots.

Updated for release, 2002 09 30, GMT 12:00PM. Added info re: service bug.

Hi, I use Red Hat Linux, and KDE. I don't work for Red Hat, I'm not a KDE developer. I've used all three betas of Red Hat 8.0, reported a lot of bugs, and frequently deal with people who are new to Linux as part of my work.

There's recently been a great deal of controversy of changes Red Hat have made to KDE in their most recent distribution. The idea of changing an application to include it in a Linux distribution isn't anything new - IIRC, none of the major Linux distributions currently ship a unmodifed Linux kernel. But some of Red Hat's changes seem to have irked some people, most of whom it would seem haven't actually used the distro. As someone who has actually used the distro, I think Red Hat are doing a very good job. Red Hat have added support for three freedesktop.org draft specifications to KDE, that will hopefully make it into future releases. Their Xft2 additons to QT 3.05 dramatically improve font display, and are based on the original patch by Keith Packard - QT 3.1's offical XFT2 support comes from the same base. Many Linux distributions already take the logical step of making what they consider to be the best application for a particular task more prominent than another applications, even if those other application were written in the same toolkit as the desktop. Other distros already ship identical themes for GTK and QT and have been doing so for years.

Red Hat have:

• Unified the default look of applications. On my current KDE desktop, my QT based Konqueror, GTK 1 based Xchat, GTK 2 based redhat-config-packages, and even XMMS look consistent. If you wish to return to a cornocopia of different themes for different apps, then change your theme. Red Hat have just provided sane defaults. Someday every Linux distro will do the same.
• Patched KDE to support the freedesktop.org system tray draft specification - which I think you can find here. Yay, panel apps working in both KDE and Gnome. Older KDE taskbar apps still seem to work fine. It should be noted that this system isn't currently listed as having `de-facto adoption/agreement' on freedesktops standards page. However, according to Havoc the patch to KDE only implements the basic notification area support which was widely agreed upon when working out the proposal, not the more controversial matter of what provides the `message baloon'. Its a usefull additions and hopefully future KDE releases will ship with this addon. After solidly using the GTK2 config tools, each of which implement notification area panel apps, under Null KDE for months of beta testing, I didn't notice anything amiss.
• Patched KDE to support freedesktop.org vfolder draft specification. Red Hat have added support for another freedesktop.org draft specification. Again, like any piece of software it will likely have some bugs, but I haven't noticed any deficiencies during months of beta testing.
• Patched KDE to support freedesktop.org icon theme draft specification. As seen here. Seems fine to me.
• Selected what they consider the best application for each category (web browsing, email, office etc) and used those as default quick launchers on both the Gnome and KDE taskbar. This makes sense: users pick apps based on quality rather than toolkit. Mozilla renders more pages than Konqueror. OpenOffice is more capable than Abiword or KOffice. Evolution matches more of a Windows users understanding of a good PIM than KMail / Korganizer / Sylpheed, etc. This isn't a bias towards Gnome - most of these apps aren't Gnome apps, and OpenOffice actually integrates better with KDE than Gnome. Some people are saying that Red Hat have removed Konqueror. This is false and has never been true at any point in time. Use the distro and see for yourself. They haven't removed Konq, KMail or any other major KDE apps, they've just changed what's in the QUICKLAUNCH area of the panel. Red Hat have most definitely NOT replaced Konqueror. Basically, they're putting their best foot forward by showing off what Red hat considers the best apps in the distro. I can understand why they're doing this. Although personally I quite like Konqueror, I can understand why Red Hat made Mozilla more prominent by giving it a quicklauncher and simple label. Mozilla renders a bunch of pages that Konqueror (using its default HTML render, khtml, as opposed to the much less maintained kmozilla) doesn't. The most popular site in Australia, NineMSN, which is filled with bad HTML that permeates the web, renders fine in Mozilla. Its pretty much unnavigable in Konq. I know its not Konq's fault the site doesn't render, but its not the users fault either - they shouldn't be stopped from viewing the document. If you want to talk about standards support, try this website I'm developing. Its a new website I'm working on for my company, thats strict XHTML 1.0 - go on, validate it. Again, Mozilla renders it, Konqueror doesn't. Again, I think someday every Linux distro will do the same.
• Removed the About KDE dialog. Some people who seem to not use KDE think this means Red Hat have removed credit to the authors of the applications. This is also false, and has never been true, and again, see for yourself Note that every copyright, author credit, and license are still there - in About -> App. The About KDE screen is a just an ad for KDE. Its not a big deal, I don't really care either way.
• Made KDE use double click for desktop items. Personally, I dislike double click, and agree with most usability folk that requiring new users to click desktop items twice in the space of 500ms is silly. However, its been pointed out that this is what Windows still uses, and Red Hat know their target market. Fair enough.
• Red Hat have patched QT 3.05 to support Xft2 - meaning that out of the box, Red Hat 8s font are comparable to Linux with the old Xfthack or a modern MacOS / Windows. Red Hat's 3.05 port itself isn't in the upstream providers source tree, but its based on Keith Packard's original QT 3.03 patch, which will appear in the QT 3.1 beta.
• Its been alleged that Red Hat deliberately broke Konqueror plugins. This is also provably false. Firstly, Konqueror plugins work. On my current 8 BETA system, my favorite Flash site (www.xdude.com) works, my favorite Quicktime site (www.quicktime.com/trailers) works, and so do most other sites (macromedia.com still has issues though). The issue was that older versions of these closed source plugins were compiled with `ancient' (according to Bero) compilers, and this couldn't be dynamically loaded from the GCC 3 compiled nspluginviewer. Macromedia seem to have fixed the problem with their current Flash 6 open beta (send them an email about why you'd make a good tester and sign up if you like) which is good, because every other distro will eventually compile most of their apps with GCC 3, and Red Hat doing so will may have already prompted some of the closed source vendors (NVIDIA drivers, Macromedia) to work with them - by building with modern compilers. Compiling an app (Konqueror) with the current GCC does not amount to sabotage. Nor does not not maintaining another company's closed source product
• Renamed .desktop files, breaking the execution of KDE apps by other apps which using KService::serviceByDesktopName. This is a the only real and serious deficiency in the KDE that Red Hat have shipped. It is marked as a high priority bug in Null, and has been scheduled to be fixed in `future milestones' – although the bug still made it into Red Hat 8.0's release. The bug is a side effect of Red Hat renaming KDE .desktop files with a `kde-' in front of them. Although I've recently read Red Hat's explanation, I can't quite understand the benefit of doing this. As an end user I haven't gained much from this action – this seems to go against the unified desktop concept which improves the rest of Red hat's KDE offering. The problem seems to be that KDE applications will often wish to start a KDE `service' (an application or kcontrol module) by the name of its .desktop file, which Red Hat changed in 8.0.
  In Red Hat's defence, it should be noted that this bug was opened by a Red Hat employee and only reported sixteen days before the release of 8.0. Think about that – none of the people ranting about Red Hat 8's KDE setup reported the one true, provabaly serious bug throughout the entire Null beta cycle. As the bug report mentions, its possible to work around the bug with some additional coding.
  As long as Red Hat provides a fix in a timely matter (i.e, early in the 8.0 lifecycle) I'll be happy. That said, the renaming is one of two changes to Red Hat's KDE that I've found doesn't improve usability. If someone from Red Hat would be willing to provide the rationale for such a move, please email me and I'll include it here. .
• Red Hat screw their menu system up. There's not much end-user logic behind whether an application appears in the top level hierarchy or in `Extras' – you certainly couldn't reliably pick the location of a given app. Then again, I haven't seen any Linux distro's that don't screw this up either, so I doubt its malicious in nature, especially as it effects Gnoem and KDE equally. I'm still yet to find why distributions can't just use a single place for everything. No `extras' menu, no `insert desktop environment here' menu, no `Debian' menu, no anything else (asides from, maybe, hiding desktop control apps for desktops which aren't in use). Oh well. I'll file a bug report at Red Hat Bugzilla and hope for the best.
• Its been said that Red Hat are making changes for the sake of rebranding KDE. They are branding KDE, just like most distros do (with wallpaper, custom desktop icons, etc) but as you can see most of the changes revolve around usability for Windows users, not branding.
• The Crystal beta icon theme wasn't marked as being a beta in the 8.0 beta releases. This too has been fixed. Bluecurve apparently also had problems drawing Konsole scrolbars. Again, this has been fixed.
• It has been alleged by Mosfet that Red Hat's KDE somehow won't run the apps that run on kde.org KDE. Beyond applications that don't compile with the current GCC (and those which will be susceptable to the acknowledged-as-a-bug service screwup) I fail to see how this would be the case. Red Hat 8.0s KDE runs every KDE app I've built and packaged for it, including Liquid (but aalas not Pixie which fails to build becuase of GCC 3 - not Red Hat 8'd KDE), cheers Mosfet. I've asked people to tell me exactly what's broken about Red Hat's KDE. Beyond provably false statements ("they deliberately broke plugin support!") I haven't had anything that proves that Red Hat are doing anything to KDE to make it worse – in fact, quite the opposite. Reading the interviews with KDE developers who dislike Red Hat 8 I have yet to find them mention any specific app which is broken by the changes (again, excepting the services bug, which wasn't a deliberate change but a side effect of one that has been marked for a fix by Red Hat). Yes, the patches, like all apps, ubdoubtedly have bugs, but they've seemed remarkably solid to me. I doubt many apps would be – the KDE in Red hat 8 is a complete one, with better defaults and some useful additions that will hopefully be in future upstream KDE and QT releases.

In conclusion, I hope I've shown that what a lot of people have been saying about KDE 3 in Red Hat 8 has been outright false. Konqueror hasn't been replaced. Flash works fine in KDE, and it was Macromedia's bug (which Macromedia fixed). Every KDE app still has its list of authors, copyright notice, and license intact. You can still change your theme and make your applications look different based on their toolkit if you wish (tho I personally wouldn't want to). I personally dislike double click, and think its a bad idea for new users, but Red Hat know the audience for their Linux desktop – not new users, but Windows users, who'd probably click every app twice. The QT changes for font support rock, and you'll all be enjoying them in the future no matter what distro you use.

I don't know why Bero thought Red Hat's KDE was crippled. As a KDE user I think its a great deal better than ordinary KDE – consistent applications (like Red Hat's target audience, I pick apps based on quality, which includes Gnome apps like Evolution on my KDE desktop), truly excellent looking truetype fonts out of the box (which you'll all enjoy when QT 3.1 is eventually released), a (semi) unified menu of apps (but that's been around in Red Hat for a while), panel apps from Gnome apps like Red Hat GTK2 based config tools that work in my KDE taskbar. New users, I imagine, can find the best Linux apps prominently in the quicklaunch area and still more in the menus, and would benefit from having mouse behaviour similar to Windows.

I know Bero's a smart and reasonable guy. What I think, and this is just conjecture, is that Bero valued KDE's branding and uniqueness just a little more than the experience of the desktop users Red Hat 8 is aimed at. There's also some talk that Bero wasn't actually paid to work on KDE until Null, but expected to anyway - I don't know if this is true or not. There's also the matter of a Red Hat employee referring to KDE code as `crapland'. This is childish and stupid on behalf of whoever sent that email and not the sort of thing one should have to pur up with at work. I imagine Bero needs some time to chill out right now, but I'll be interested to see what he has to say when he's finished.

I've yet to see anything to prove that Red Hat have deliberately sabotaged the project - though I've seen a lot to indicate that many people are lying about what Red Hat has done. If you can install the distribution you can examine their claims yourself.

I think Red Hat 8 is a compelling distro, with sensible defaults aimed at users new to Linux, and a number of benefits for the rest of us. Everything is still there, and if you don't like the default setup, you can easily change it.

However, I like it. A lot :)

Response to Mosfet

As for the first point, that RedHat has just developed a new theme to make KDE look like Gnome, this is patently false.
From my (a users) point of view, Red Hat have indeed improved both KDE and Gnome in more ways than unifying the theme. But how does the new theme look like Gnome? Its grey. Asides from this, it uses chevrons for arrows and has radial gradients on radio buttons. Gnome has never shipped with a default theme resembling Bluecurve. In fact I'd say the new unified theme resembles Windows XP more.

Many distributions have made custom KDE themes in order to make their product unique. While of course this is a bad idea since it would be preferable to have KDE look the same by default across all Linux distributions, nobody really gets upset about it.
I think more harm comes from desktop applications that look and act inconsistently, forcing users to pick their applications based on what to users amount to arbitrary meaningless concepts, like toolkits, rather than quality. When was the last time you saw a Windows user choose and app because it was MFC or VCL? In the case of theming, I think visual consistency across applications is a more important goal than keeping KDE consistent across distributions (which is only broken because, by default, KDE and Gnome still don't have a standard look and feel or theming system)

Of course this behavior makes it difficult for people to do things like Linux books because everyone is shipping with different themes, but whatever.
As someone who's contributed heavily to two Linux pocketbooks, a Linux columnist that receives email from many new Linux users, an installfest organizer, frequent speaker at my local LUG, and someone who generally tries to help out on IRC, I can state that having to explain the inconsistency between the applications on a standard Linux desktop wastes much more of my time.

But themes aren't really the issue.
Well, we both certainly seem to have our opinions, so I think they're part of it.

The issue is they also made several changes to the KDE libraries and programs, some of which cause breakage, incompatibilities, or reduce functionality.
Could someone please post a specific list of what Red Hat allegedly broke? The only two things I've heard was a Xft addon to QT which (like all software) had some bugs, but markedly improves the rendering of text in Red Hat 8's KDE setup. I imagine the freedesktop.org panel applet spec Red Hat added will also be included in upcoming KDE releases. The `Red Hat deliberately broke plugins' statement I've heard is a simple lie: recompiling KDE on GCC 3 isn't sabotage. Neither is not maintaining Macromedia's closed source Flash applciation. As someone whos spent the last week or so testing the new flash beta (and enjoying my movie previews with Crossover) I can say that problem seems to be fixed.

In some cases changing code wasn't even needed
Yes, but in most cases it has improved KDE.

It is my opinion that when your forking a project
It not my forking-a-project, it belongs to someone else ;). Just kidding.

who was forced to make KDE packages in his spare time because RH refused to put any resources in KDE.
Are you sure of this? It might be true but I don't know anything more than what Bero uploaded, which wasn't too specific.

The other problem is switching the default applications for things like the web browser and email client from their KDE implementations to Gnome apps while using the KDE desktop.
Most aren't Gnome applications! 2 out of three aren't Gnome apps, one is. It seems Red Hat picked what they saw to be the best tool for the job to be the defaults. Which make sense, as that's what users generally choose too. KOffice is a good app, but its simply not feasible for the average joe who needs to reliable open, edit, and save MS Office documents. OpenOffice is. Likewise, Konqueror can't render as many pages as Mozilla can - I've provided two examples (one spec compliant, one realistic) above. Evolution is more akin to what a Windows users would expect from a PIM than KMail. If KDE doesn't let me run choose my own apps, then that's an issue.

Initially I didn't even think they included the KDE versions but I found this is not the case.
Indeed, those statements were false. Do you think that, since you haven't used the beta, other things may also not be as bad they seem?

Of course it is okay to integrate Gnome apps into KDE and vice-versa, but by making non-native applications default within the KDE environment they are crippling KDE.
Why? KDE can still do everything it did before. All the apps are there. All the third party programs I've tried work as they should If KDE / Gnome can't run non-KDE / non-Gnome applications I choose then there's a problem. That IS the case, and there is a problem, and by unifying themes, panel apps, menus, etc, Red Hat are trying to fix it.

It will take longer to load the default web browser or email client in KDE than it would in Gnome, it will consume more memory, and it will not provide a consistent look and feel with file dialogs, etc... all when KDE has it's own native equivalents.
A consistent look and feel with file dialogs is a good idea. Making Red Hat 8.0 target users - people who don't and shouldn't have to care about things like toolkit - pick their apps based on toolkit is a bad idea.

The argument for this that "we only want to support one version of these applications".
I think the argument is `the distro is aimed at users, who should be free to pick the best applications to run under their desktop environment, and our software should help them do that'

Okay, but then why are you shipping KDE if you only want to support GTK/Gnome applications? It would be better not to ship it at all, or ship it as unsupported, which is basically what RH has done all through KDE's existence.
Again, two of the three changes from the regular KDE defaults aren't Gnome apps, and we're changed in Gnome too (Abiword, Gnumeric aren't the default OpenOffice is, Galeon isn't the default, Mozilla is). Red Hat don't include unsupported apps in the distribution CDs. KDE is and remains supported.

What I think would make both parties happy is for RH to integrate apps across the desktops, but allow each desktops to use their native applications as their defaults. In this manner you'd still have the KDE web browser as the default browser under KDE
I disagree. A web browser is a document viewer. Whichever app does the best job of viewing the documents should be the default. Currently, Mozilla can view many documents that Konqueror can't.

but users would also be able to access Mozilla easily through the menu
Just like people, such as myself, that prefer Konqueror can do now. Nobody's removed our choice. They've just given new users a better set of default apps, so that Joe Exwindowsuser has a better chance to read his favourite web page udner Linux. Red Hat have also implemented a couple of already ratified freedesktop.org specifications that you'll soon see in regular releases of both popular desktop environments, and rode the rocky road of GCC 3, paving the way for other distros to do the same - any many will.