Mandrake Cooker Beta is out

[Lucas Peet]

> <rant subject="KDE">
> Am I the only person who thought KDE 1 was okay, KDE 2 was kind of
> bloated, and that KDE 3 sucks? KDE 2 made me switch to Gnome and KDE 3
> made me stop using a lot of the remaining KDE programs I still used. But
> then I disable almost all desktop features from Gnome to make it less
> obtrusive too.
> </rant>

<my own rant>
I use both KDE and Gnome on a regular basis.  Most of my work is done in the
shell though.  Out of curiousity, what in the world is so "obtrusive" about
the Gnome / KDE desktop???  The fact that they are window managers / GUI
toolkits that may be a bit reminiscent of the all-hated Microsoft Windows
operating system?  I find both (KDE & Gnome) very intuitive and comfortable
to use, and netiher are hindering or 'obtrusive' in my opinion.  And for
that matter, they've both gotten worlds better (both in features and
functionality, and with eyecandy / looks - professionalism) with each
version.  That and GUI apps don't require you to remember all the arcane
options (that yes, are in the man pages) for the command line utilities.
UNIX guys are generally lazy (in that they write scripts and such to
automate manual processes) but also, well, why aren't the commands called
'move' or 'copy' or 'printworkingdirectory', etc, etc...the list could go on
and on.  Because before X and windowing apps, that's all they had.  IMHO
(and many others, it seems), it's much easier to click a check box, then
'go' and be presented with a graphical percentage bar that shows the
progress of the process than to 1.) man the tool so you can find the
options, and 2.) wait patiently until it thinks it's done, which sometimes
may or may not have completed properly.  Command lines are tools now that
should be used when the need for them, their speed and straight-to-it-ness
or the convenience (such as scripting / automation) of them are required /
desired, but GUI apps are *supposed* to be (although granted, not always)
there to make more complicated routines easier, and not using them on a
'principle' basis isn't very well thought out.  However if it's based on
hardware requirements vs. your hardware capabilities, that would be totaly
understandable.  I wouln't run Gnome on anything less than a P200 (that
pushing it) and KDE needs even more, but sheesh.  Decent hardware is cheap
these days.  Older hardware is great to run as commandline-only boxes, as a
firewall or some other processor un-intensive task, but as far as a desktop
machine...nope.
<side rant>
I'll go back on myself in saying this:  Arkeia (GUI backup solution) sucks,
it's capabilities suck, it's UI and processes suck.  BRU is awesome, never
touched it's GUI, and it's capabilites are immense.  It's easily scriptable,
and much more intuitive to use from the command line / scripts than any GUI
(or command line, for that matter) backup solution I've ever come across.
</side rant>
All this not saying that command line apps / tools are less userfriendly /
easier to use than GUI apps, but each has their place.  For instance, I
prefer burning CD's from a GUI rather from a comand line.
</rant>

Well, to each his own.

(These are all *my* opinions, and as my views may be shared by others, the
text in these rants is my personal opinion only.)   (And it's been a while
since I've had a good rant.  ;-) )

-Lucas