KDE: What a monster!

[Wojciech Puchar]

> worse, if I compare them to older versions. And if I try to
> print pages, they look terrible (exceed page borders).
> Furthermore, it crashes more often than Opera 5 or 7. When

do you have opera 7 package somewhere? i would like to downgrade.
yes it got very bad.

> Ah yes, and Firefox doesn't have a key combination to quit
> the program (such as every other program has, usually something
> like Ctrl-Q).

with my fvwm2 config i simply press CTRL+right mouse click to close 
window:)

> Firefox has always been criticised for being slower than
> every other browser. I'm still sticking to Opera because
> I like the look and feel, the good keyboard support and
> the mouse gestures. Yes, I know some of them can be installed
> to FF as an addition, but... it's not the same! :-)

the best browser i've seen is links (graphics mode). excellent font 
rendering, excellent speed, but unfortunately quite limited HTML 
processing.

>
> Oh and printing, apsfilter, allthough equipped with the same
> settings as before, doesn't utilize the duplexer of my HP
> Laserjet 4000 duplex office class printer. It reqires me to
> pull paper cartridges (because it uses them, even if paper
> is in tray 1) and then put paper manually (!) into tray 1.

well i have laserjet 4 and use ghostscript+lpr. can't help you.

> I know that most of these "improvements" come along when the
> developers decide to move to a new version of the toolkit,
> for example Gtk to Gtk 2, such as it has been in X-Chat.
> Try to follow this example (or try it by yourself): Normally,
> you have X-Chat with a startup dialog of the available IRC
> servers. In Gtk 1, you could double-click on an entry and

simply use text mode irc clients like epic or BitchX.

> Now for mail. Sylpheed has always been a good mail client,

fast is relative. for me it always been slow.

USE TEXT MODE MAIL CLIENTS.

> to incorporate new mail (from /var/mail, I fetch separately
> via fetchmail) disables its whole GUI for several seconds,

which is funny as every normal mail clients reads mailbox files directly.

alpine reads maildir dirs directly, and i use maildir format (through 
procmail).

> The image viewer xzgv, a fine thing, now has problems displaying
> the file and directory icons on the left. Let's say the window

yes it get broken. no cure for this, i use xv now only.
it's bad, xzgv was useful.


> bar is 	[|||---------]. While I keep holding down cursor up
> or cuirsor left, this bar should move [||||||||----] until the
> end of the file. But now, allthough I can hear the sound "move",
> the bar AND the screen content doesn't update, so I could reach
> the file's end without knowing it. And OSD doesn't work anymore,
> but I don't care for this.

look at port options. i installed mplayer recently, works fine.
i use it regularly

> Whenever I quit some programs (confirmed for: xmms, xzgv), the

mpg123 is your friend. best ever mp3 player.

> For a long time, StarOffice 5.2 was my tool of choice when I
> thought I needed something except LaTeX. It didn't matter
> that it brought its own desktop. For some time afterwards,
> versions 1.x of OpenOffice could be installed via pkg_add,
> including the german version. Since 2.x and now with 3.x,
> it seems that compiling it is required. I don't have an
> office package installed at the moment, I think I should
> look if AbiWord can be installed as a german version...
> (I prefer my system to be english-only, with this particular
> piece of software as the only exception.)

use LyX.

> Then, the Midnight Commander has been "improved". The command
> line now includes the full path, and for longer paths, column

ports/misc/mc-light

>> not mentioning Slowlaris :)
>
> Hey hey, Solaris is not that bad, it's my secondary OS (usually

well with solaris you have lots of time to make your tea or coffee :)

>> unfortunately you are right. but you can use IMHO firefox with GTK1
>
> This would be an exception, and maybe it would reduce in
> functionality.

no it works fine.

>>> from the system's speed gain. That's why I love to use them instead
>>> of their "oversized brothers".
>>
>> so use them as long as you can - as i do.
>
> I would still run my 5.x system, I would change back ANY DAY.

i don't mean old FreeBSD version, but old programs.

dig out older ports tree and extract needed ports :)

>> There is NO USE for it's "GUI", and it's programs are toys, not much
>> usable.
>
> KDE's philosophy seems to resemble the same concepts that have
> spoiled users who are long time "Windows" users: Put as much
> functions as possible into one program. Don't mind if it takes

which is exactly opposite to unix philosophy, having small program doing 
little things but doing it well, and a method to automatically use many 
different programs to get your job done.

i really prefer unix philosophy.

> I think that's UNIX great advantage over all these "one program
> does everything" concepts. Sure, there are many little tools

that the reason i think that things like KDE in unix are pure nonsense.
for those who like windoze way of computing, windoze is the best.

it's really worth spending these few $ on windoze that case.

>> use separate programs for spreadsheets, word processors and similar
>> "office" work.
>
> I grew up with this spirit. =^_^=
good

>> i tested it.
>
> It was just an assumption so it wouldn't look like I did not like
> KDE in the first place. :-)

for "modern" programs there are no computer on which they work fast.

>>
>> gnome is slow too. just a little bit less slow ;)
>
> Are we comparing desktop systems noch in magnitudes of "how much
> they suck"? :-) Okay well, that's how elections work here in

It doesn't matter how much they suck. Even if it would be superfast, 
bugfree program sets like KDE, i won't be using them.

Actually there are in a world one PROPERLY coded system with GUI, and 
much more.

It's called AmigaOS. As you see - people WANTED crap, that's why Amiga 
doesn't really exist anymore for over 10 years.

> Germany: you're voting for the party or the candidate that
> seems to be the smaller evil, allthough everyone knows that

there are no smaller evils, all are the same. at least in Poland.
I don't think germany is different.

Actually all these voting is just to make most people thing that they have
any effect of what will go on and how. they have no effects.
Those who really rules your/mine country are (with few exceptions) not 
those who are elected ;)

>> BTW are there somewhere available older version of opera package? :)
>
> It seems to be good to store /usr/ports/packages of older versions
> that habe been confirmed to work well, but if they can ever be
> installed on a newer system...?

if you have opera 7 somewhere please mail be binary package.
thanks.