KDE4 and the Plasma desktop

Following a morning tea consisting largely of lollies (!) I went to see Aaron Seigo talk about KDE4 and Plasma. Before the talk I?d tried to check out the Plasma web site to get some idea what it was all about, but I wasn?t able to find too much ? this state of affairs is intentional, according to Aaron; they?re hoping to avoid a perception of vapourware.

From there he went on to talk about some of the underlying components of Plasma: Phonon and Solid. Phonon?s a thin multiplatform multimedia abstraction layer and Solid?s a multiplatform hardware abstraction layer. While it?s true that there are existing projects for Linux etc. that fill these roles nicely, their presence is required because the core KDE libraries are going to be usable under Mac and Windows as well for the upcoming release. The abstraction layers will developers not on a UNIX platform play with the new toys ? the intension is to show them how good it is to develop for KDE and lure them to being FOSS developers.

The rest of Aaron?s talk focused around his efforts to rework the desktop metaphor. He made the excellent point that when the desktop idea was developed, you had a disk, with a program on it and a couple of files. The desktop worked well because you could fit your computer?s whole world on it.

Today, this isn?t the case - my home directory alone has 135834 files in it; and that?s just the a tiny corner of the computer. The idea of a desktop needs a rethink. A show of hands at the talk revealed that many of the people at the talk don?t even have icons on their desktops. Just today, I set up my work computer to have a TiddlyWiki page as the desktop; the only icon?s the Trashcan, and that?s because I can?t seem to find a way to turn it off.

The tail end of Aaron?s talk was unfortunately abridged; his talk would perhaps have been more suitable for a two hour slot and so he had to plow through the last part of the talk very quickly, and I stopped taking my notes so I could keep up. Unfortunately, there don?t seem to be slides available online, so instead I?ll just have to recommend you keep your ear to the ground and check KDE4 out when it?s (eventually) released. If even half the things Aaron discussed make it in it should be a very interesting desktop.