KDE 5.0 Will Be Modular, Will Support Mobile Devices - Aaron Seigo

Aaron J.Seigo - Project leader and developer at KDE, in an interview with Andreas Proschofsky of der Standard says, the next big thing for KDE users and developers is the KDE Frameworks 5.0. Aaron was speaking on the sidelines of the Desktop Summit.

Linus Torvalds ditches KDE 4 for GNOME

Linus Torvalds says he has ditched KDE for good and is now sleeping with its arch rival GNOME. Oh well, rhetoric apart, he says the move over to GNOME happened because in KDE 4, he found it quite bothersome that he couldn't get his Right mouse button to access the right menu he wanted. In short, he ran into usability issues while using KDE 4.0.

In an interview given to Rodney Gedda of "Computer World" - Australia, he had this to say, and I quote :

I used to be a KDE user. I thought KDE 4.0 was such a disaster I switched to GNOME. I hate the fact that my right button doesn't do what I want it to do. But the whole "break everything" model is painful for users and they can choose to use something else.

I realise the reason for the 4.0 release, but I think they did it badly. They did so may changes it was a half-baked release. It may turn out to be the right decision in the end and I will re-try KDE, but I suspect I'm not the only person they lost.

I am sure the GNOME camp must be rejoicing in having won over a high profile Linux user to their side. This when a few years back, Linus Torvalds had gone on record severely criticizing GNOME for over simplifying the user interface.

Linus Torvalds was in Australia to attend the annual linux.conf.au organised by Linux Australia. While he was rather critical of KDE 4 in its current form, he did say it was a good thing for Nokia to release Qt as LGPL. Among other things, he also gives his views on Microsoft Windows 7 advising Microsoft to release sooner and decouple the operating system from the applications. A really interesting interview.

A talk by Richard M Stallman - Youtube video

This is a very interesting concise talk (or rather, answers to a set of questions) by Richard.M.Stallman the father of GNU movement. The video was shot by Arturo Di Corinto for Candida TV. This is one of the best video clips of talk by RMS I have come across in recent times.

The future of C++ as seen by Dr. Bjarne Stroustrup

Dr. Bjarne Stroustrup is credited with creating the ever popular C++ programming language. While there are pure object oriented programming languages such as 'smalltalk' for instance, it was C++ which shot the object oriented programming paradigm to popularity.

In this video interview, Dr. Bjarne Stroustrup answers a number of questions such as the following ....

• Do you think you'll ever design a new language from scratch?
• How long after the standard is out do you expect to see a production compiler?
• Is it possible to do garbage collection cleanly and efficiently in C++?
• How soon after you created C++ did you see it start to take over the industry?
• Is there any particular naming convention you subscribe to?
• What's your opinion about the Microsoft implementation of C++?
  

Very interesting questions indeed... which ask for equally interesting answers from Dr Bjarne Stroustrup. Watch the video.

Interview : Linus Torvalds says he has never used Debian yet

Alright, many of you would find this title a bit controversial. But that is exactly what Linus Torvalds the father of Linux said when asked the simple question of which Linux distribution is his favourite one.

Linus Torvalds was interviewed by oneopensource.it where he went on to express his thoughts on a variety of topics including GPLv3, whether Linux infringes Microsoft patents, about Microsoft - Novell agreement, the future of Linux kernel and so on.

The questions posed are quite thoughtful and Linus Torvalds answers are equally interesting.

On questioned as to "which is your favourite distribution, and which one do you consider more secure?", this is what he had to say ... (and I quote)

I don’t really tend to care much, I’ve changed distributions over the years, and to me the most important thing tends to be that they are easy to install and upgrade, and allow me to do the only part I really care about - the kernel.

So the only major distribution I’ve never used has actually been Debian, exactly because that has traditionally been harder to install. Which sounds kind of strange, since Debian is also considered to be the “hard-core technical” distribution, but that’s literally exactly what I personally do not want in a distro. I’ll take the nice ones with simple installers etc, because to me, that’s the whole and only point of using a distribution in the first place.

So I’ve used SuSE, Red Hat, Ubuntu, YDL (I ran my main setup on PowerPC-based machines for a while, and YDL - Yellow Dog Linux - ended up the easiest choice). Right now, most of my machines seem to have Fedora 7 on them, but that’s only a statement of fact, not meant to be that I think it’s necessarily “better” than the other distros.

An interview with Jon Maddog Hall

Jon Maddog Hall is one of the strong proponents of the Open Source movement. He is currently the Executive Director of Linux International, a non-profit association of groups, corporations and others that work towards the promotion of growth of the Linux operating system and the Linux community. He also serves on the board of several companies and non-profit organizations like USENIX.

At some point of time in his life, he has worked as a software engineer, systems administrator, product manager, marketing manager and professional educator. In the past, he has worked for reputed companies like Western Electric Corporation, Bell Laboratories, Digital Equipment Corporation and VA Linux. Not withstanding his name, people who had the honor of interacting with him on a personal level vouch on his pleasant nature.

Recently, Dahna McConnachie quizzed him on his life, the work he is doing, as well as his opinion on issues related to Linux and the open source movement, which makes an interesting read.

To those wondering how he landed himself the infamous name of Maddog ;) , Jon attributes it to those times when he had less control over his temper.

Why should someone use Debian over another distribution?

I think the reason I run Debian rather than anything else is because its as true to the Unix philosophy as it can get: each of the system components does what it should, does that as well as it can, and otherwise keeps out of your way. Nothing on the system happens without your consent. And because everything is designed with little pieces building on top of each other, it's easy to keep an overview. This directly translates into manageability and security. In other words, you control the system, and not the other way around"

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This was the reply given by Martin.F.Krafft, the author of the best selling book "The Debian System" in an interview with Sal Cangeloso when this question was posed to him. The interview also touched on topics on various other aspects of the Debian system like the importance of Debian policy to the final product, the path the author would like to see Debian adopt in the future and many more.

The questions have been well thought out and the replies are quite insightful which makes reading the whole interview a worthwhile exercise.