Solid Blog of Ise I think my toes are jealous of my fingers because they get to point at things

I’ve been running the upcoming version of Ubuntu for about a week now. It’s codenamed Karmic Koala and will have version-number 9.10 when it’s released in stable towards the end of October.

Let’s just say it’s been an interesting week. And also, lets say that I’m a bit nuts for running this as my main OS since it’s significantly more prone to… err… personality defects than the last time I ran an Alpha, which was almost 1½ years ago when I ran the alpha of the then-upcoming 8.04 aka Hardy Heron.

But it’s impressive how fast it moves along. Almost daily there are improvements, and almost daily the experience of using Karmic becomes less like dancing polka in a minefield and more like using an actual operating system.

Also, I’ve finally started using Firefox 3.5. Version 3.5.2 to be precise. I gave up on the Artwiz-fonts that I’d been using as interface-fonts for more than a year. Partly because FF3.5 refuses to accept bitmapped fonts in it’s interface, but also because lately I’ve felt that the artwiz fonts while pretty to look at are increasingly difficult to read.

One of the many powers that come with soaking yourself in the world of Free/Open Source Software (aka FOSS, and “Linux” to the layman) is flexibility and modularity. With Windows or MacOS you’re limited to what Microsoft or Apple decides to give you. FOSS is not limited by this, and one of the more obvious facts of this is the desktop itself.

Windows and MacOS provides you with one environment. In Linux (yeah, I’m going to refer to this as Linux since that’s what I run) you have the choice of several different environments. These are commonly referred to as Desktop Environments (or DE, for short) and comprise the user interface. Gnome and KDE are among the more popular, but there are several other more obscure that might suit you just fine as well.

The DE consists of a large number of applications designed according to a common philosophy and using a common framework in the software. Gnome is based on GTK and follows the GUI guidelines of the Gnome-project. KDE uses QT instead and follows a different set of guidelines. Other DE’s use the same general principle, for example the XFCE-desktop is also based on GTK but follows a different philosophy when it comes to the user interface.

One this is however common among all DE’s. They’re what you use to interact with your computer.

For many, many years I’ve always preferred Gnome over KDE. Apart from a brief flirtation with KDE back in the late 90′s I have never liked the cartoony look and feel of KDE. I’ve always preferred the restrained and cleaner look and feel of the Gnome desktop. This didn’t change back in early ’07 when I made the switch fulltime to running Linux even on my desktop, and thus I chose Ubuntu for two reasons: It’s based on the rock-solid Debian distribution of Linux, and it uses Gnome as the default desktop environment.

But, just earlier today I got curious about where KDE stands.

I played a bit with it back when KDE 4.0 was released, and I was impressed. Gone was the plastic cartoony look, and instead it seemed as if KDE had matured. There were tons of new features, and the environment seemed lightyears more coherent and thought-through than the previous generations of the K Desktop Environment. It was polished, but like all point-zero releases it wasn’t really there yet. It was sluggish, it lacked a lot of applications still stuck in the 3.x series of KDE and overall wasn’t quite my cup of tea. But it showed a lot of promise.

And earlier today I punched in one command and installed the current stable KDE release. It stands at version 4.2 and it has matured even more. Now most of the applications have caught up, developers have polished the look and feel even more, and now the speed is up to par as well.

I’ve been playing around with it for the last hour or so, and I have to say I’m deeply impressed. I don’t think I’ll be making the jump to KDE within the foreseeable future – but golly geez, it’s tempting. KDE 4.2 gives both Windows and MacOS a run for it’s money in so many ways, which says even more since it’s free software. Also, since the QT toolkit now has been ported to Windows, you could run KDE under Windows as well, and leave that awful mess Microsoft calls a user interface behind.

And, it also gives Gnome a run for it’s money. Like I said, I never really cared much for previous generations of K, but 4+ is a much different beast. Unlike it’s previous iterations it’s polished, pretty and deeply usable.

Gnome developers, take heed. If you don’t get your game together I’m pretty sure KDE will be eating your lunch soon. You’d better shape up and put a lot of effort into Gnome 3, or KDE will quickly establish itself as the superior desktop – even on the desktop of a die-hard Gnome-man such as myself.

I’m a big proponent of Free/Open Source Software, commonly shortened to FOSS. I gave up on Windows and most of the proprietary world of software in January 2007, and have been running Ubuntu in various incarnations on my desktop since then.

I’m not a newbie to Linux however, since I’ve been dabbling in it since I first came in contact with it around 1995. The server that serves up what you read here has run on Linux since 2003, and in waves I’ve been a lot more of an open-source nazi than usual. For example, most of 1998-2000 I ran nothing but Linux on my desktop.

Currently I have three computers in my home. My workstation, my server and a broken laptop which I managed to fix to somewhat working state. The workstation and the laptop both run Ubuntu 9.04 and the server runs Debian 4.0.

However, I’m no stranger to handing out criticism in areas where FOSS deserves it. Unlike the world of proprietary software which encourages a see-no-evil attitude and is very dependent on self-censorship in order to maintain the illusion of perfection, FOSS needs the criticism in order to survive. Of course, we’re talking about constructive criticism and preferably the attitude that you can fix it yourself. Simply saying “linux sucks!” is not constructive.

As stated, I prefer the Ubuntu-flavor of Linux, at least on the desktop-machines. To use a tired old cliché, it just works.

A while back (quite a while actually, October 2006) Mark Shuttleworth posted an article on his blog claiming that “pretty is a feature” and that Ubuntu needed to put priority on not only functioning well, but also looking good while doing it. Mark, as most people know, is the founder of Canonical, which in turn is the financial backer behind Ubuntu.

More than two years have passed and in many aspects his wish has been granted. The new notification system in 9.04 (aka Jaunty Jackal) is actually quite lovely and in my opinion both prettier and more functional than the old style of balloon-notification. The themes look better, and more options for good-looking themes are included out of the box for those who don’t like the default brown-ish theme.

But there’s still an area of prettiness which is in dire need of being taken care of, and that’s the default icons. Recently I got tired of using the icon-theme from Ubuntu Studio (which are black/blue in style) and went back to using the original Human theme. Unfortunately, just like most other icon themes out there, the maintenance is spotty.

The goal for the default icon theme is to provide all icons in scalable SVG-format. That means that not only can you scale the icons on your desktop without them looking like crap, but the applications under the Gnome desktop can use them in any size. Unfortunately, a lot of icons are missing in SVG format, and the fallback is to use the non-scalable PNG versions. Those are good-looking, but don’t scale well.

Here’s an example of a pretty SVG icon being scaled.First normal size, and then scaled up to a much bigger size.

You see, it looks just as pretty. Just a lot bigger.

Unfortunately, like I said. Not all icons are freely scalable. For example the search-tool icon only exists in a 22×22 pixels PNG, which looks like crap when Gnome Do tries to use it as a default icon when expecting input.

Not exactly pretty, right? Especially ugly in such an otherwise good-looking app as Do.