The Linux desktop manager KDE will get a major update to version 4.0 at the end of this year, ushering in a new visual era for the desktop environment. In spite of its "not for n00bs" image, the update signifies Linux has joined the race against Apple amd Microsoft to make PC desktops more aesthetically pleasing.
A new visual layer on KDE called 'Plasma' is being touted as providing "breathtaking beauty"
According to devlopers on the KDE Plasma webite
" people want gorgeous interfaces built upon sophisticated graphic design,. This may sound obvious, but expectations have risen dramatically even just within the last five years"
Further, the KDE desktop manager has won a powerful ally - Linus Torvalds - who has publicly attacked the alternative, Gnome, for being oversimplified.
"This 'users are idiots, and are confused by functionality' mentality of Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it. I don't use Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long since reached the point where it simply doesn't do what I need it to do," wrote Torvalds in a fiery online posting. Torvalds flaming of Gnome
A part of the overhaul, KDE will get the ability to render OS X's popular Dashboard widgets, partially made possible because OS X's web-rendering engine, used to display widgets on screen, is based on KDE's KHTML rendering engine. But KDE's ability to render Dashboard widgets is not thanks to Apple willingly sharing its code improvements to KHTML. Apparently KDE developers have had to reverse-engineer aspects of the way that Dashboard widgets are rendered, because Apple only complies with its 'bare minimum' obligations to return code changes/ change history to the open source community.
Read about Plasma here: http://plasma.kde.org/cms/1029
:yumyum: :worship:
