Miguel de Icaza moves to Mac

This is a fresh news: Miguel de Icaza, founder of Gnome and Mono projects, declares in this post he moved from GNU/Linux to Mac OS X.

Once upon a time, there was KDE

KDE: your UNIX easy

My first Desktop Environment on GNU/Linux was KDE 2, at university laboratory. At that time I didn't have a computer powerfull enough to double-boot Windows 95 and a distro, but I read a lot, fascinated by FOSS philosphy.
I was KDE fanboy: I am still convinced that big projects as a desktop environments must be programmed with an object-oriented language. KDE uses C++, while Gnome works in C. This difference was visible in first years of 2000: KDE was fast, fascinating and colorful, while Gnome and its applications were gray and old-looking.
When KDE3 was released I run it on my new Pentium IV 1200 with 512MB, looking admired that environments, far advanced from Windows XP. Many friends of mine were surprised by KDE3, its themes and its applications (Kopete, Konquerror, Kircand KOffice), making it very near to Mac OS X.
On 2002, the Liquid theme (made by Mosfet), was a wonder.

KDE 4 Revolution

Since Matthias Ettrich foundation, KDE was a well engeneered project. Ettrich did many analysis to optimize user experience, expecially about memory use.
KDE 4 was a "revolutionary" project: its developers wanted to change the usual "desktop paradigm", introducing a engine which runs many "plugin" (called "plasmoids"). You can still have a "desktop" with your folders: it's a "plasmoid" which will show you your $HOME/Desktop folder big as your monitor.
KDE4's underlaying platform is a programming masterpiece: there are base libraries well organized (Phonon, Solid, KIO, Plasma, KParts and others) and well integrated all togheter, but... take a look to these two screenshots

KDE 4	Enlightenment 17

Well... there's something not very clear to me: Enlightenment 17 is a "yet not finished" project, but you can test it. It's written in C and it's very fast and light. So light to move some producers of embedded devices to run E17 on their products.
KDE4 is big, heavy and does E17 same things.
Looking to Gnome, I see a lighter DE, fast and nice looking. Its technology is not refined as in KDE, but Gnome does its job very well. It's usable and I can be productive with it. One year ago I tryed both KDE4 and Gnome: after some "Wow! Amazing!" I used Gnome because I can "do things", while KDE4 seemed to me a "useless videogame".

The Future

Gnome is the most widespread DE thanks to its usability. Its Human Interface Guidelines were the secret of its success. KDE, instead, worked too much on its underlying technology, making it «the Java of Desktop Environments»: well designed, well documented, well thinked, not very usable.
KDE has to rethink its structure, moving the user-experience as center of its universe, continuing to host great applications and (maybe) trying to take a diet.

This is my Way (land)

This is "MY" way: AC/DC, no Sinatra!

 In these days, the FOSS world seems shaked by a earthquake called "Ubuntu". Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the most widespread GNU/Linux distribution, in a post on his blog, talks about the possibility to replace X.org and the whole X-Server architecture with the modern and clean Wayland display. Mr. Shuttleworth admits X.org is a living project, more active now than ever and he admits and it's die hard. But, also, he said

«[..] we don’t believe X is setup to deliver the user experience we want, with super-smooth graphics and effects.
[..] We’re choosing to prioritize the quality of experience over those original values, like network transparency.»

Yeah mr. Shuttleworth! This is the first time I heard statements like this since the Waldo Bastian's analysis about KDE^[1]. Statements about the importance of user experience over technical decisions

Now, let's see differences between X.org and Wayland

X architecture (curtesy of Wayland's site)

As you can see in this graph, rendering a frame is a very long path of APIs. And this is because (from Wayland's site):

«In general, the X server is now just a middle man that introduces an extra step between applications and the compositor and an extra step between the compositor and the hardware.»

Now, let's look Wayland's architecture:

Wayland's architecture (curtesy of Wayland's site)

In this graph, you see that Wayland embeds the compositor. This reduces passages to render a frame and then, accelerate displaying speed. But, most important, Wayland embeds the detection of window whom recive an I/O message (such as a click). This task, in X, is done by the compositor: in Wayland is part of the display manager.

Wayland, also, it's smaller than X.org and less resources-hungry. These features makes it perfect also for small computers, such as netbooks and tablets. Furthermore, X can works as a Wayland client and this can help the passage to the new display manager.
It's true Wayland doesn't work on old hardware. But this means we'll never use it on a Pentinum I 233. About this, mr. Shuttleworth said

«The requirement of EGL is new but consistent with industry standards from Khronos»

And he's right. Now the bad news: NVidia (AaronP's words) say

«We have no plans to support Wayland.»

Does this means the end of Wayland project? Who knows? Actually NVidia just said ACTUALLY they have no plans, so in future this decision could change. Anyway, a passage to Wayland is a big step for FOSS world, at least as the begining of KDE project.

[1] I read this analysis on a italian magazine (Linux &C.), when KDE 3.0 was released. I can't find Waldo Bastian's post anymore, because all forums are now dead-links. Can you help me to find it?

Unity and so be it

Is this a flame? Maybe. But I support Canonical's decision to use Unity instead Gnome Shell. Why? Because this "fork" is fundamental, not just for usability reasons, but mainly because it's a strong stance from the most widespread GNU/Linux distribution. Adopting Unity, Canonical did some decisions, oriented both to usability and development. Choosing Unity, Canonical show us its direction: the underlying technology is useless if user experience is poor. KDE 4 is on this way: great technology (C++, QT, Plasma, Phonon, ecc.) but the resulting desktop is not "sexy" as Gnome on Ubuntu.
Technology can't be the objective. Christopher Tozzi said

«GNOME Shell introduces a number of innovative interface concepts that, if successful, could truly redefine the way users interact with their operating system.
Unity, meanwhile, is an interface developed by Canonical that borrows many of its ideas from GNOME Shell. Canonical began work on Unity last spring, and introduced it as the default interface for Ubuntu Netbook Edition in the Ubuntu 10.10 release, which debuted a few weeks ago.»

I put emphasis on some statements, expecially about "to borrow ideas": this is the base of Free Software, which is not (as many thinks) a "Hippy-Programmers Way of Life". Free Software is much more near to "Ideal Market" and "Concurrency" than other realities (such as Apple and Microsoft). Same ideas are implemented by different teams in different ways (e.g. EMACS vs VIM; Eclipse vs Netbeans; Gnome vs KDE; Firefox vs Konqueror and so on). This environment allows to many competitors to survive. But Canonical must monetize its work. And to do this it needs to follows user's desires. If Gnome shell isn't actractive enough, then welcome Unity.