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KDE Strikes Back
Nerds writes: "The fourth beta release of KDE has been announced. Also, you might want to check out this editorial at LinuxPlanet. It is a bit biased, but the author makes good points." Its an enjoyable piece that everyone ought to read: it takes some pot shots, and points out some very real truths (and does both with a reasonable sense of humor).
...at least for Suse
Microsoft? Is that some kind of a toilet paper?
Yeah, completely proprietary. You can't even look at Qt's code without paying fees to the Trolls, the Free-KDE-Qt-Foundation doesn't exist either.
Or did you mean the closed source libkdetopsecretstuff.so.2.0?
Hey pal, pass over some of the crack you've been smoking...
-- KDE programmer and computer science student in Klagenfurt, Austria.
I think that the debate over the linux desktop is the same as the debate over religeon. Which one is the correct/best one? Protestant, Roman Catholic, Jewish Orthodox, KDE, Gnome, or for that matter, Mac OS, M$ Windows of Linux? It all comes down to a matter of personal preference, and there is no real way for a clear "Best" one to be found, they are all good in different ways.
I personally use KDE, I like it, It works for me, etc... That's not to say that Gnome is bad (M$ Windows is bad) Pick the window manager you like and get over it!
___________________
___________________
He who laughs last... Thinks slowest
I thought the article was quite good, but it's a shame he included sly attacks on Gnome along with mainly factual comments. I was unimpressed with the quotes from anonymous 'Gnome experts who also know KDE', and the rumours about tensions within the Gnome camp, but the points about the languages and API are worth considering.
If only Qt was LGPLed...
In short, Gnome more resembles well-known commercial projects than does KDE. The involvement of commercial software houses is supposed to improve this?
Which one to you looks more like a commercial product we all know about? (here or here)
They look almost the same to me.
"Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely."
I haven't looked at the KDE/Qt code, but why do they use a custom type called Qstring, instead of STL's "string" ?
--
The world is divided in two categories:
those with a loaded gun and those who dig. You dig.
--
The world is divided in two categories:
those with a loaded gun and those who dig. You dig.
Here is what I think the differences between KDE and Gnome are.
KDE
Is about stucture and order you have one way to do something and only one way
Gnome
It is about choices you use GTK,Gnome,Bonobo, perl,scheme,tcl,python...
Both have its advantages
As someone who has worked with Microsoft's products almost exclusively over the last ten years but has recently come to appreciate the benefits of open source the sort of ideological arguments that occur in the open source community truly amaze me. I mean, there seems to be little difference between "free software" and "open source" and yet each concept has rabid followers which decry the opposition at every step.
Thanks to my handy Corel Linux distro I'm well on my way to becoming a Linux "guru". After installing it I tried each desktop and came to the conclusion that KDE is a lot smoother and efficient than Gnome was, and have since been using that. But I constantly hear people bewailing the fact that it's somehow "tainted" by the fact that a couple of words in the license don't match their Beloved Leader's psuedo-communistic writings. And then they go and try and create an entirely new product! So much for the idea of having the source encouraging "code reuse"!
As a consultant I can tell you that these issues seem rediculous and petty to outsiders. And they certainly add nothing to either the image or the quality of Linux, but instead cause resources to be squandered in duplicate efforts. As long as it works, why should the license matter so much? It's only software, it's not a matter of life and death.
To be perfectly honest, some of the rabid fanaticism that I see here just strikes me as childish. There's a real need to grow up in some people and get on with improving the code rather than slating the "opposition".
To be honest, I don't think this editorial is very good, and should be taken note of, It is totally biased towards KDE, even though myself AM Biased towards the KDE as well, I just don't think this should be taken seriously, it just looks like some Good old FUD. All he really said was about the QT debate, and some other yap about infighting, I think he should argue about the relative merits of both and not about how developers argue with each, which lets face it happens on every product developers make, as they all want there project to be the best.
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As cunning as a fox, which has just been appointed professor of cunning at Oxford University. http://www.kinlan.co
It's noteworthy that the press release differs from earlier press releases in the way it emphasises the technical and functional capabilities of KDE. Earlier press releases had a casual, informal feel to them. This one sounds hauntingly "corporate" and hammers home the main reasons why they feel that people should be excited by KDE.
Speaking of seeming "corporate". Have you noticed how the KDE 2.0 release date keeps moving back?
Buy out Trolltech. Release Qt under the GPL. Use KDE in Solaris.
:-). We are now using KDE...
I recently installed RedHat 6.1 on a machine at work, first with Gnome, then with KDE. It is hard to be objective about which was better: Gnome's reliability makes it hard to be objective, very hard
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
I could care less about these "wars", and I hope most linux users feel the same way.
Would be nice if they could work together instead of against each other, but perhaps competition, no matter how heated, can benefit everyone.
btw, I enjoyed this note from the author indicating his usual slant presented in the article here... "By then, KOffice, which is already really good, will have been released. And unlike StarOffice, it loads for use the same day its icon is clicked."
________
from the article: Gnome's stated purpose, its whole reason for existence,is to kill KDE. Nice, huh?
What I want to see is MTV have a celeberty deathmatch, Gnome vs. KDE. Lets get this thing settled once and for all!
:P
I'm getting pretty sick of the GNOME vs KDE flamewars. But before you mod me up as +47 Insightful because I'm spouting the party line of "we should all just get along" read what I have to say: Both GNOME and KDE have got it wrong.
From a economic perspective: You can't win in the marketplace by being "just as good as" the existing Goliath. What features specific to GNOME or KDE are offered that surpass what you can do in Windows?
From a usability perspective: Why is there all this harping about a "consistent UI"? Check my sig for a soundbite on this, but then come back for an explanation. Sure, it makes sense for a word processor and a spreadsheet to have "File" menus with "Save, Save As, New, Close, etc" all in the same place. But does it make sense for all apps? Think about it this way: My car has a certain UI. My telephone also has a UI. They have absolutely nothing in common but I can use them both very effectively. What if LifeKDE sprang into being and created a phone with a steering wheel? Would I be better off?
How does this apply to computers? Because a computer isn't just one tool. It is a generalized tool simulator. Every "application" is a tool. If two applications serve radically different purposes, I would expect them to have radically different UIs. For instance, people often mention that Blender has a difficult to learn UI--irrelevant! The purpose of a UI is not to be easy to learn. The purpose of a UI is to afford access to a tool. (if the UI is difficult to remember that is a different issue--internal consistency is a valid goal) To go back to the Blender example, people often go on to say that once they learned the UI quirks it turned out to be very powerful. Exactly!
What does this have to do with KDE/GNOME? I think each of these projects has a certain amount of validity. For instance a lot of apps need to have file selection dialog boxes. That should probably be a system service. But "standardization" beyond that level is, IMHO, a very big mistake.
So what do I recommend? I recommend two projects:
1) The Common GUI Services Project for things like file selection dialog boxes.
2) The Advanced UI Research Project to do research on what kinds of UI elements work best with what kind of tool and then making that research available to the tool makers.
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Did I say FUD? He complains about Miguel trying to blast KDE, then he goes on blasting gnome for 5 pages, Nice! I find this whole article so childish! I think he's trying to start wars on just about every subject:
- license wars (QPL/GPL mess)
- language wars (C vs/ C++)
- toolkit wars (QT vs GTK)
- "commercial wars" (which compagny is good (QT), which is not (Helix)
At last, when has anybody (relatively important) working on gnome said "Gnome's goal is to kill KDE". This is the worse piece of FUD I've seen in the OSS community.
(Note: For those who want to know, I use mostly gnome, but use KDE and KDE apps regularly and enjoy them)
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
If 14 companies want to stand on stage and give money to have free software written, I won't complain.
Thi article is totally biased. I mean to say Miguel did it all for the money and the whole point of GNOME was to kill KDE. C'mon! Get real. Kill off KDE. It was setup as an alternative and sure any software would like to have a user based particilarly from a competing product but GNOME was made as an alternative to KDE because at the time with the QT licenses. This guy seems to be a KDE enthusist in the way he downplays GNOME. What does he consider a nasty comment from Miguel. That he says GNOME is better than KDE? What is he supposed say "Well GNOME isn't as good as KDE but I would like you to use it". Of course not...I mean if he wants users...KDE is very good product and is getting better but lets not downplay GNOME. A bit of irony of the GNOME ethusiast though. the who Free Unices (BSD, Linux) is supposed to be about choice but *some* GNOME developers/users seem to want it to be the only one. This is where they make GNOME look bad. Gnome 1.2 is a very good product from helix gnome and I use it and have the KDE 1.9.2 Libraries for some of the superior KDE programmed applications. Lets keep the competition friendly between the two desktops.
Anyone paying attention to XFCE Lately
-The good humor man can be pushed only so far
Under X, it's different. KDE and Gnome -- let alone other wms and apps -- are very compatable, and running programs from one on the other is usually a no brainer. Sure, there are incompatable pieces, but none that prevent you from switching between different desktops/wms.
The only thing people are griping about are the last few inches of compatability; libs used, file formats, and the main language used to create the reusable parts (C vs. C++) -- *not* that you can't use any of your favorite tools if you switch between them.
With the exception of licencing, it's a bad idea to even acknowledge this as a any kind of squabble...and I'm not even convinced the licence issues that get dragged up are reasonable after Trol Tech's changes.
I'm sure there will be plenty of people who think I'm just not getting it. That the issues raised are important in a practical, moral, and cosmic sense.
Well, I don't see smoke, I see a description of smoke. There's definately no fire. You can't even warm a marshmellow with this.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
You will be assimilated.
C++ everywhere.
You will be assimilated.
KDE will eat you.
Garbage collection is for losers.
Low level languages for dreamers.
C++ everywhere.
Objective C is dead.
So hile your Basic.
Next step is not GNUStep,
it is Basic for KOffice.
You will be assimilated.
Scheme is dead,
hile imperative languages.
Hile C++.
KDE rulez!
You will be assimilated, you losy, dusty Gtk and Guile hacker! Muahahahahaha!
...does it seem to anyone else that Taco is stoking the fires in the KDE/Gnome battle?
;-)
I say this because, well, typically KDE beta announcements are posted by HeUnique. They are typically short and sweet: "KDE Beta x is out. Go have fun."
Taco, otoh, seems to be posting material that's pretty inflamatory towards Gnome...trying to make KDE look bad. I know people can say stupid things sometimes, but I don't think its _just_ the KDE camp doing it
Am I crazy? Ok, well, I know I am, but am I just reading into this too much?
--------------------------
Why neither Mandrake nor Red Hat are mentionned in the PR!? Are there any RPMS available for Mandrake? Where can I find them???
It's more than a bit biased. It's utterly, completely and unfairly biased. It has numerous digs at GNOME, all conveniently attributed to anonymous sources. It's low on facts, and its only purpose can be flamebait. And at that, I'm sure it will succeed. I have never before criticised /. for posting a story,
but there has to be a first tiem for everything. This story crossed the line.
Flame wars don't achieve anything, other than lots of page view. Maybe the conspirancy theorists are right about /. trying to get more ad revenue...
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
To this day I still can't understand why we Linux users have to have "THE ONE SINGLE BEST DESKTOP". In UNIX there are lots of ways to get the same thing done. One tool can be used in different ways for different things. What's so wrong with more than one desktop? I use KDE, GNOME, afterstep, fvwm, xfce, etc. It depends on how I feel that particular day. The freedom of choice is what I love about Unix and why I switched my desktop to Linux 3 years ago. I guess with Linux getting more and more popular companies like Sun, HP, Compaq, etc. will want a standard interface. Let them have their standard GNOME desktop. Jut let them remember to make all of the code they add available and the community can then make sure the programs that are used are compliant with OUR standards. This is a community of Linux (and *BSD) users, not a community of CEO's. We should not care if GNOME is the default wm for a specific distro or company, we should care if that Distro makes running another wm impossible.
"If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people in the world?"
"There's a real need to...get on with improving the code..."
If it weren't for people like RMS and his "psuedo-communistic" ideas there would be no code to improve. It's licenses like the GPL that ensure that code freed remains free.
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
What the hell are you talking about? I seem to remember just a second ago, looking at QT's code, and not having to pay a dime. Anyone can download it. for free. free is free.
-- "Perceptions create reality. By changing your perceptions you change your reality."
Dude,
If everyone had adopted the "pragmatic" attitude as you suggested, linux would never have been written.
I mean, it would be impossible to write an OS without corporate backing, right? Linus should have adopted the practical approach and gone to work for Microsoft.
But of course, you know that. You don't give a rats ass about Linux, open source or "the community". You want to go in, rake whatever cash you can out of the mix and get out. And if it can help you MS stock go up a bit, so much the better. Your reference to "Pseudo-communistic leader" gave the game away.
Neither Linus nor Stallman needs advice from the likes of you. In fact, you are exactly the sort that the GPL was written to thwart.
Hari.
-It is preventing one, single, unified desktop standard for Linux/Unix from emerging. This, as Miguel has pointed out, is crucial to Linux moving into the desktop world. Some layer needs to take over policy, behavior, look+feel, and code sharing/APIs. I know the geek community likes to have choice (and even if one environment becomes the "standard" you will still be Free to choose your own), but at some point Linux needs to show the world "this is what Linux looks like, this is how Linux apps behave, etc."
-It proves open-source nay-sayers correct. Those people who say that open-source projects only lead toward fragmentation and dissent: they are absolutely right. Why should we put our faith in open standards when tomorrow that open standard my split into two competing ones? Why should I port my commercial application to GNOME, when next week GNOME may split into "Helix" and "Foundation" strains that have different, new incompatible features?
So, I know it may be a pipe dream, but I wish that the talent pool out there would decide on one desktop environment to put their effort behind. It would be better for Linux, and better for those of us who believe that open platforms and standards are the way to go in the software business.
ok bye.
Axel
Axel
mhm23x3, alt.fan.karl-malden.nose
Jeez, Nerds. If being biased was something that we considered a bad thing, we wouldn't be visiting Slashdot at all.
Now, that being said, I didn't find this article to be all that informative at all. It was in fact a bit childish, with all that grousing about how KDE is deemed "politically incorrect" by GNOME advocates because of its use of proprietary tools. Yes, Open Source is something that a lot of us hold dear. We like the idea as something more than just a poke in the eye of the powers that be. It's the only development model that consistently finds and encourages people who really care about what they are doing. It's such an appealing idea to a lot of us that we tend to resist anything that doesn't stick to the ideal from beginning to end, solely for purposes of idealism.
I'm not saying KDE is a better or worse desktop than GNOME at all, and I don't really want to get into that here. I just think it goes beyond that -- not just "what are you putting out" but "what were the principles behind doing it" that decides for me what I will use. Don't whine about people staying true to their ideals, for crying out loud. IANMarthaStewart but that's a Good Thing!
-in a fast german car im amazed that i survived... an airbag saved my life!-
So what about *BSD then? That code seems to have remained free without any help from Richard Stallman...
Poverty does not a saint make.
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
If I develop KDE-specific code, then it doesn't interoperate or look right in GNOME. If I write GNOME-specific code, then it doesn't interoperate or look right in KDE. Because of the war, it makes it hard for me as a developer to want to code for either. Understood?
Now, if I don't take advantage of the fancy features of either, how can users take advantage of them, either? Now, really, I hope that interoperability vapor we heard a while back goes somewhere. Meanwhile, major corporate backing of GNOME is a sudden shift that may woo application developers.
If coding/porting in KDE/Qt is so easy, why don't they just incorporate Bonobo and be done with it? Developers and users both win.
The other option would be for someone to develop an abstraction layer that could allow applications to be compiled to either KDE or GNOME.
- Tom
- Tom
"O, to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be."
What he means:
It's been a while since the last gnome/KDE flamewar, so I need to start one. Gnomers are always gratuitously nasty about KDE and that's why Gnome sucks. It's also bad because it's controlled by big nasty companies like Helix and RedHat. Fortunatly TrollTech are nice guys and don't count as a big bad company.
...no need to continue.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Dennis E. Powell has written numerous .comments about Linux desktops, KDE most notably. He's always worth a read, and he makes no effort to hide his bias toward KDE.
You should read with a critical eye though. It's *always* suspicious to base major points you have on a source who just happens to be anonymous and untracable. For all we know, this may be a cheap trick Dennis pulls to hide his incompetance when it comes to technical aspects like APIs.
I also question his saying that Gnome was founded with the one goal of killing off KDE. He uses cheap semantics such as "Gnome is written to the venerable and venerated GTK+, while KDE is written to the technically excellent but politically reviled QT."
He goes on to say "I've tried for years to find out who the king of KDE is, and have concluded that there isn't one." Of course, KDE has a founder and über-developer. Mathias Ettrich is for KDE what Miguel de Icaza is for Gnome, and I've heard him bashing Gnome in interviews lately so I don't see the fairness of that not being mentioned is Denis' article.
I hate to see all this FUD within the Linux camp, when we despise the traditional FUD. I guess with big things like Evolution, Nautilus and the Gnome Foundation going on in the Gnome camp and the long-anticipated release of KDE 2.0 along with KOffice in the KDE camp, this is bound to happen as a result of natural human pride. I hope we can all see through the FUDding and the bashing and just look forward to getting some great software RSN!
--
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
And how is this is on-topic?? :)
Powell has one point that has often bugged me about open source software. Far too much of it is written in portable assembly language (a.k.a. "C"). I appreciate the advantages of this as much as the next guy -- it's good to have a lingua franca, C is widely portable, and a lot of tools for programming it are already there. Nevertheless, C is really primitive, and it's difficult to write reusable bits of code for it. Up until 1997, I had a job where we wrote code in object-oriented languages (C++ and Objective C). Since 1997, I've worked at a place where everything must be ANSI C. That has paid dividends in portability, but we've expended tremendous effort doing things like
;-} ).
* writing array structures, and functions to operate on them (pseudo-objects)
* writing standardized error handling
* synchronizing related structures
* fixing memory bugs
* avoiding that oh-so-tempting copy/paste by generalizing function arguments
all of which would have been alleviated by using some flavor of object-oriented language (or even C++!
If you look at the code for open-source projects, you can see them inventing the wheel, over and over. I suppose you could argue that things are going slowly in the Java direction, which is fine. But that just means that Gnome is in retrograde motion.
- Brian K Boonstra (who can't wait to start using Mac OS X)
While there is something to be said for KDE, there is a major problem. If you're not non-commercial, licensing QT is very, very pricey. Well beyond my reach for a simple widget library.
There are some things the open source movement could do with learning from the Cathedral...
I wish to hell both bloody groups would stop their bickering and get on with producing a viable, desktop alternative to MS...
As a person who uses both desktops (And MS - due to the fact that I cannot use KDE or Gnome for all my tasks) - I'd really like to have one proper environment.
More to the point, as a Systems designer (In my daytime incarnation), I really, really wish I didn't have to recommend NT 4 on the desktop (With Linux/UNIX in the back room)
So, if any of the Gnome or KDE developers are listening:
GET YOUR F***ING ACTS TOGETHER
Bloody stupid idiots take all the credit and kudos that goes with the JOB of being an open source programmer, but can't actually buckle down to produce what the users want.
If the Kudos was money, they'd be fired.
Gav
"There's no such thing as data that can't be manipulated"
Ooohh! I'm sooo angry!
You've made me so angry , you ****!
As someone who has worked with Microsoft's products almost exclusively over the last ten years but has recently come to appreciate the benefits of open source...
Thanks to my handy Corel Linux distro I'm well on my way to becoming a Linux "guru".
their Beloved Leader's psuedo-communistic writings.
some of the rabid fanaticism that I see here just strikes me as childish.
Oooh, the bare-faced cheek, the audacity. Oooh!
[Rant mode deactivated]
---------------------
%46%55%43%4B !
If everyone had adopted the "pragmatic" attitude as you suggested, linux would never have been written.
Why? Linus wrote it for himself, not for any other reason. Pragmatism had nothing to do with it really did it? IIRC, he wanted a free Unix system that ran on his 386. The success of Linux has been incidental to his original aim.
You don't give a rats ass about Linux, open source or "the community". You want to go in, rake whatever cash you can out of the mix and get out. And if it can help you MS stock go up a bit, so much the better
My, ad hominem attacks really prove your point don't they? FYI, I have nothing to do with Microsoft at all (although you probably won't believe me since that would make it easier) and I do like and use Linux, I just think the breed of zealotry you display does nothing for it.
Your reference to "Pseudo-communistic leader" gave the game away.
Whatever his personal politics are (not communist I believe), the aims of the GPL do bare similarities to the ideals of communism. It's not an attack unless you are some kind of rabid anti-communist.
Neither Linus nor Stallman needs advice from the likes of you.
What I was saying doesn't really touch Linus at all, and Stallman is not really responsible for the childishness displayed by some of his sycophants.
In fact, you are exactly the sort that the GPL was written to thwart.
What, people that like Linux? Please explain. I look foward to it.
GLib/Gtk+/GNOME's use of C is actually pretty amazing in my opinion (and yes, I've used C++, Java, Python, ... as well, so I'm not ignorant in these issues). It's quite a pretty language when used well.
- Tom
- Tom
"O, to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be."
Yeah..it was all of the above. Some of it was a little silly though. He brings up the whole c vs. c++ debate....aaaaagain, that would be considered a troll if I did it here.
If gnome-hackers [a mailing list] was archived, you could have a whole debate about a very classical problem of C programming : when a function returns a char*, who owns the char*? Does the caller have to free it? This is just about the most basic problem you can find with C programming. And they're thinking about it just now, after 3 years of development.
Uh.. sorry.. that's not a c issue, it's a doc's issue. They simply don't document it anywhere. In fact when I asked about it on a mailing list the reply I got back from Havoc was to keep a copy of the source handy to look it up there. Uh.. sorry, that's not acceptable. Anyways..yeah..bag on them for poor or total lack of documentation, not for using C. That's such a flambaity thing to do.
KDE fans, this isn't a flame. It's a free world, you have choices, and whatever you choose is fine with me.
But *I* choose not to use KDE, specifically because the underlying toolkit is not Free. Period. Be as "technically superior" as you want, but I am not going to rely on any software built on a proprietary foundation. Been there, done that, got seriously burnt.
Until such time as the QT toolkit is properly released under a true Free Software licence, then any software that depends on QT will not be installed on my system.
Yes, it's THAT important.
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Is how be bashes Mr. de Icaza for wanting to make money off of GNOME, which, given his apparent familiarity with the Free Software / Open Source world makes it sound for all the world like he's deliberately trying to blur the difference between free (beer) and free (speech). It looks like a pretty direct attempt at character assassination, and even if it is based on a misunderstanding [ which it almost certainly isn't ], the author definitely needs to work harder on understanding the issues before he writes such an editorial.
No doubt he's generating lots of hits for his site, because he could be reasonably sure his editorial would get posted on Slashdot.
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
Now, if I may politely ask: where the fuck did that come from? Eazel, as they clearly state on their web page, is also in the GNOME Foundation along with Red Hat and HelixCode. Obviously, HelixCode, Red Hat, and Eazel are not "in a running battle" but actuall all working together to develop GNOME together. If Miguel was so intent on fighting with these two other companies, why is he letting Nautilus be the default file manager for GNOME 1.4? If there was such bitter hatred between Eazel and GNOME why would Eazel put the following on http://www.eazel.com/about.html? "Eazel is developing software that will be an integral part of the GNOME environment and we are collaborating closely with the GNOME community and our friends at Helix Code to develop GNOME into the finest desktop environment available on any platform." (italics mine.)
In other words, this Dennis Powell guy is full of shit. He's just trying to be inflammatory, for whatever reason. My best advice: ignore him. Having established that he can't resist flaming the GNOME project (although, granted, he pointed out some "issues" with GNOME), just chalk this guy up on the moron chart. Put him in your killfile. Whatever. He's not worth anyone's time.
GNOME vs. KDE: Battle of the Desktops runs on a computer called NES. NES emulators are available for GNU/Linux, BSD, DOS, and Windows.
Have fun!<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
Gnome is written in C. So is the linux kernel.
Companies package and sell the gnome desktop. Same with the linux kernel.
Gnome has an irratic release schedule... sound familiar?
Miguel is bad because he is 'in charge' of Gnome. So Linux and Alan are bad because of their leadership with the linux kernel?
IBM embraces Gnome. This is bad, but what about IBM embracing linux?
This guy just needs to get over the fact that Gnome and KDE are both cool.
You don't get sarcasm, do you?
;)
Or was that anti-sarcasm?
-- KDE programmer and computer science student in Klagenfurt, Austria.
I think he's trying to start wars on just about every subject
More like he's firing back another volley in the wars.
They've been at it from day 1, and they never stop this crap.
To be fair, most of what he says is technically true: KDE was out first, Gnome was not started because of technical flaws in KDE but political issues, KDE has a nice office suite, KDE is probably the better built of the two especially if you can handle C++, etc. But it's all delivered intermixed with little digs and a heavy slant, adding fuel to the fire. I certainly don't think the KDE licensing issues are trivial, but I never liked the GPL, either.
Personally, I don't use either, I use a fast, efficent windows manager that doesn't grab any of my screen space and starts in a blink. I resent it when someone makes an application that requires one or the other, without needing any of the features. I feel it is often done as part of this battle. "Look Gnome is good because I wrote this app which you can't run under KDE." or vice versa.
That's dirty pool in my books.
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
Qt vs. GTK
KDE 2.0 and Koffice vs. StarGnomeOffice
Development styles between the 2 groups
I started out using Gnome when I first installed RH Linux 6.0, but grew weary of the constant crashes and switched to KDE. I find KDE and Gnome similar enough from an end-user standpoint that I'm just going to end up using the one that's most stable. But if KDE 2.0 and KOffice are as good as they're being hyped to be...now that might just be enough to make me choose a religion!
They call me the working man. I guess that's what I am.
It's about what you can do with it.
Currently, you can use Qt to write open source applications for X11 only and write bugfixes.
You can not port it (according to readme that comes with sources) to another platform, be it win32, beos, mac, or future systems like berlin. You have to rely that Trolltech will allow you to port your (GPLed) application to these systems.
Yes, I understand that Trolls want to make money. I don't object. But I want to run my applications on any platform in my sight. Qt may be technically superior (or may not, we will not discuss it here), but it does not allow run my programs on platforms other that *nix/X11 that I routinely use (e.g. at work).
|_|_
_||
It's not "hile" it's "heil". But if you really want to be a KDE nazi, then be one on your NES.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
Although most responses have been positive, some articles and comments about our recent GNOME Foundation announcement have been disappointingly inaccurate.
In particular, two mistakes are common. The first is referring to the Foundation as "consortium"; the Foundation is not a consortium, but an organization of individual contributors to the GNOME Project. The companies joining the Foundation join an advisory board which has no decision-making function; decisions are made by a board of GNOME contributors elected by the membership. At this time, around two-thirds of the members of the Foundation are independent volunteers not employed by one of the advisory board companies. The Foundation is simply a legal entity that can act on behalf of the preexisting GNOME Project. The GNOME Foundation is comparable to the SPI/Debian and the Apache Software Foundation. For more details, see the press release: http://www.gnome.org/pr-foundation.html
The second mistake is that this represents some kind of flareup or resurgence of a "war" with KDE. At our press conference, we took pains to discourage this interpretation of the announcement when members of the press asked about it. We are interested in healthy and friendly cooperation with the KDE project and other free software projects. Interoperability efforts such as http://www.freedesktop.org continue and will not be affected by the GNOME Foundation.
Both GNOME and KDE have valuable contributions to make. We're creating a foundation to help us run GNOME well, and we're excited about the recent commercial acceptance of GNOME, but these things are advances for GNOME, not attacks on anyone else. Our primary focus is to expand the userbase of free software; competing with other free software is not the point.
For a growing number of Gnome projects, Helixcode now demands that contributors assign their copyright to them. This scares me. The only good reason for this demand is that Helixcode wants to be able to fork proprietary non-free versions. Helping to turn a few men into multimillionaires should not be what contributing to Gnome is about.
Since then the KDE has expanded and given birth to all these irritatingly named k-applications. But overall there is an aura of amateurism about their work, and the recent Sun endorsement of Gnome makes me think that KDE people are worried about being left out in the cold, hence this venomous article.
Are you at all familiar with GNOME programming? Many of the deficiencies you mention not a problem with Gnome, because they're available through GLib.
Offical binaries of KDE 1.93 aren't ready for all distros yet, but you can still upgrade if you run Mandrake, by using *1-93*.rpm RPMs found here:
v el/cooker/Mandrake/RPMS/
ftp://sunsite.uio.no/pub/unix/Linux/Mandrake-de
--
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
You can not port it (according to readme that comes with sources) to another platform, be it win32, beos, mac, or future systems like berlin.
No... In fact, AtheOS has a port.
I don't know about the attitude of other neutral developers, such as myself - but back and forth flames between the KDE and Gnome fronts such as this make me not want to be involved in either community.
I have been looking to get involved in a Linux programming community, yet the two most prominent - KDE and Gnome - are always fighting back and forth, and it just disgusts me. I have serious abilities to contribute to a major project, yet political wars such as this make me disinterested in being involved. I think if they would just settle down with each other, a lot more could get accomplished. Makes me sad.
Daimun
...for MY conclusion.
"By sticking to basic conventions for all apps, it makes GNOME or KDE more user friendly to all computer users and makes Linux look better and better."
More user-friendly? Yes, if your only criteria is ease of learning. Look better? Yes, but that's irrelevant. I don't buy the hammer that has a shapely handle, I buy one that works well.
As for scripting: Find a programmer. Ask that programmer these questions: Is it feasible for ALL applications to use one single scripting API? If it is feasible, would you want to use it? Sure, "Save As" is probably quite similar across apps. But how would you implement "rotate scene" needed for Blender in an API designed for AbiWord?
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Yes, we should enjoy the great software. However, from a point-of-view of reality, we should go for Gnome. Even though KDE is nice and all, the Qt is free for non-commercial use, we should stick to Gnome. Why? Because though free software is good, there are still corporations out there trying to make money. It should be possible to develop for a platform and sell the product, and not pay out to someone for the development tools. If you can't, there would be one less advantage in the Linux vs Win32 battle for developers.
So - KDE is nice and usable, but it's bad for Linux in attracting commercial developers. If you honestly think that all software for Win32 could be produced openly, go for KDE. Otherwise, swallow some pride and work on a good C++ interface for GTK and Gnome!
Stop the brainwash
The author writes "well-known commercial PROJECTS", not "well-known commercial PRODUCTS". So he means the way of making software and not what GNOME/KDE look like. And in that sense GNOME is really becoming a playground for big companies, and KDE is staying more as a project by coders themselves.
--
You have to rely that Trolltech will allow you to port your (GPLed) application to these systems.
Not true. You have to rely on Trolltech to port Qt to these systems (and I don't think the license even says that, regardless of the README).
No one is hindering you in porting your application.
-- KDE programmer and computer science student in Klagenfurt, Austria.
And you don't think the people who run slashdot are biased against microsoft?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Not every application is an editor. Including editor commands in every application is ridiculous, and can be misleading.
And for the Blender example, what does File- Save save? The entire scene? The current object? A texture?
You simply can't have a consistent interface for any and all programs. Even something like "Exit" can have different meanings. Sometimes it means "close this window", sometimes it means "shutdown the app and close a whole slew of windows". It may have a consistent meaning for the programmer, but it can have many for the user.
As for scripting, I personally believe that engine and interface should always be completely seperated for tools (for toys it doesn't matter so much). I'm going to try very hard not to launch into my usual tirade against XML.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
With so much flaming going on about the editorial, I have trouble finding any comments here about the new beta. How does it look to you brave beta testers, especially Konqueror? Their release schedule indicated that release candidate 1 would be out about now. Since we have instead something labelled a beta, I have trouble interpreting the events. Either an extra beta cycle has been inserted into the schedule, or this beta is indeed the release candidate but was not tagged as such. My impression is that it is the former, which means the final release will probably be delayed another month or so (not bad for a project this size). Would someone care to clarify?
and standardized interapplication communication. Thus gnome and kde are good efforts. I do agree with you that you should not have to choose sides over some lowtech little dooda app. However, if you save code by choosing sides, I totally understand and encourage the coder to use either Gnome or KDE.
Stop the brainwash
Is that not the case? That's why Gnome was started! Because KDE was not open source because of QT.
Read on Gnome's web page: "The GNOME project was born as an effort to create an entirely free desktop environment for free systems."
He uses cheap semantics such as "Gnome is written to the venerable and venerated GTK+, while KDE is written to the technically excellent but politically reviled QT."
What's wrong with that? My understanding is that C is excellent for operating system but that GUI are best done with OO languages... No?
As good as the C API can be, it will still take longer to develop a GUI with a C interface than a C++ one (and I know what I am talking about!).
Ok, I am biased toward KDE but so are you about Gnome!
Black holes occur when God divides by zero.
it's jelly for crying for crying out loud. and stop trying to convince me to change from apricot.
oh wait, wrong inane discussion.
That's the catch. You can not port Qt yourself. I see no reason to use Qt (or another toolkit for that matter that forces you to use it's types and it's task is to abstract as much as possible) and then completely rewrite application to run on another platform. When one writes application using Qt, it's usage is quite pervasive.
No, the license does not say anything about this, but readme says that the license is valid only for x11 edition.
That important code is available under the GPL is not proof that it would not be available without the GPL.
How many programmers who would have written public domain code decided to use the GPL just because "that's what all free software is written in"? RMS didn't invent free software, he distorted the name Free Software for his own purposes ("it's not really free unless you place restrictions on how you can use it" - good logic, Mr. Stallman).
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
This is so wonderful. For years, GNOME users have been saying how GNOME brings more choice to the Linux desktop, how there is enough room for both to coexist, how the two aren't competing, etc. Of course, this was back when GNOME still sucked. Now, with the official blessing of IBM et al, GNOME users are talking about how KDE is scared to lose, how GNOME is going to totally take over the Linux desktop, etc. Lovely, absolutely lovely.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
KDE and Gnome reminds me too much of a windoz knock-off. They have their little "Start" menu and bottom task bar. G & K are for people that can't let windoz go....be a man, grow a pair, and go download WindowMaker. You can run all you Gnome and KDE apps and have the superior interface; not to mention the lighter memory usage.
"You have the right to free speech...as long as, you aren't dumb enough to actually try it." - The Clash
You know, I've said many, many times in the past here on slashdot and elsewhere. When you command 90% of the market, YOU are the standard, regardless of what the other 10% agree should be standard. It does not matter that everyone except MS agrees that some format should be common, they are the minority, and the "true standard" is what the majority uses, thus windows.
I have had my arguments with Windows for years, and probably will always have some problems with it, but I have used MacOS, linux, solaris and windows in various combinations for years, and for day to day work, I must honestly say that I am most productive under windows 2000 (which is the first MS release I will call a true operating system, since it actually operates my computer without crashing it ;-) Regardless of what you may think of windows, or regardless of which superiority it may indeed have, it is not the "standard" for desktop computing, it is a fringe operating system for the desktop, and as such, to make it work on the desktop, and therefor to truly SET the standard, it needs to be the dominant player, not just the technically superior product. To do this, it needs to adhere to the standards that people care about, the standards of ease of use and productivitythat they need, and for that, linux is not there. Gnome gets it close, IMHO, KDE gets it even closer, but its still not there yet, the only
company to get UNIX of any flavor "ready for prime-time" as we used to say, is APPLE, with OSX. When the power user can pull up a CLI and get down to serious work, and the average user can do anything they need to on their system and NEVER pull up a CLI, then linux/unix will be ready for the desktop and may become a large enough player to start setting standards.
Once again, I must let out the old battle cry. "If you want linux to dominate the world, you have to make a linux the world can use"
I think....therefore I am
I reject your reality
Why aren't people allowed to like whatever the hell they want to anymore? I don't really give a crap which is better. KDE does this blah blah blah. GNOME does this blah blah blah. Screw that. I use GNOME because I like it. I don't really give a crap what KDE has to offer or how they go about doing it. I like GNOME's programming model and interface better. I like GNOME's software better. It suits me perfectly. I wish KDE all the best, but I'm sick of people telling me I should be using it over GNOME. Screw that.
BTW: I love New Wave of British Heavy Metal, and if you have a problem with that all you Pearl Jam and Madonna lovin' weenies, you can suck my ass! See, it transcends just OS/Desktop boundaries.
But it's a moot point, anyway. Everybody is welcome to make money while making free software.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
There is a difference between creating completely free desktop and development environment and trying to actively kill off another project. Gnome was not started to kill KDE. A completely free system (beer and speech) was and is necessary given their (Miguel and the other original Gnome hackers) and my worldview.
----
Celebrate the finer things in life
From Atheos website "Qt GUI toolkit. (Only the 'tools' part needed to port Doxygen)". I wonder if Trolltech is aware of this. I need to dig deeper into the license to see if this is allowed.
- double-clicking a taskbar icon will iconify that application. great for getting stuff out of your way.
:-|
FVWM can be configured to do this.
- right-clicking a taskbar icon gives you a menu which includes 'iconify other windows', which is really handy since I usually have like 14 Konsoles, 11 Netscapes, GAIM, XMMS, Quanta+ and StarOffice open simultaneously.
FVWM can be configured to do this.
- Alt-F2 brings up a little input field which I can use to start an app quicker than using the menus. It keeps a history too, so I can cycle through previous commands.
Xterm can do this.
- Rotating desktop wallpapers. I have a directory of about 450 hi-color psychedelic 1024x768 wallpapers, and I have KDE set to switch to a random one every 30 seconds. Keeps things interesting.
A 20-line shell script can do this.
- Right click on desktop gives you a menu which includes 'Logout'. I find that much easier to deal with than windows, which requires you to hit Ctrl-Alt-Del or click on the Start button.
Any window manager + XDM-managed server does this
So, I guess it's subtle things like that, that make me like KDE so much.
"I guess it's subtle things like the inclusion of a trigger, a handle, and a shoulder rest that make me prefer an RPG launcher to a can of bug spray for killing roaches."
GNU Info is documentation optimized for machine readability
Search for kde2. Redistribute.
Leave the arguments and grab the funtions.
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
I notice that Caldera OpenLinux and their Technology (Kernel 2.4) preview as well as Suse have precompiled binaries already available, but this is not so for Redhat-6.x and Debian-2.2. One thing I've noticed about GNOME is that the team makes every effort to support most any platform (including other architectures). I recognize that there was once a tiff between Redhat and the KDE teams, but since there are so many Redhat (and to a smaller extent Debian) users here in the States, that if the KDE team wants significant penetration in the US market they're going to have to provide good support for it's most popular distributions.
I am not biased. I will support KDE if my users request so. But I won't manually compile the tree just to show it off. I think the KDE folks ought to re-think their attitude toward Redhat users and support RH6/7 as a top-teir platform -- one with the potential to attract huge numbers of users down the road. That is the goal, right???
BTW there is a good review of CLOS 1.2SE in today's Washington Post.
The author states:
The software's K Desktop Environment also is open-source. KDE creates a graphical interface on top of Linux. Competitor Red Hat uses a different graphical interface, the GNU Network Object Model Environment, or Gnome for short. I liked KDE better than Gnome.
By using KDE, Corel delivers something that most Linux vendors have ignored: It has given the OS a look and feel that will be familiar to most PC users. For Linux to become a viable alternative to Windows, that user-interface harmony is crucial.
Thanks to this KDE front end, Corel Linux has better-organized multi-layer menus than Red Hat's Gnome. For example, Red Hat included the same item more than once in different locations under repeated headings. Corel arranged items logically and with less repetition - although a couple of items do appear more than once.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
The README is irrelevant. Besides, it means that the license only applies to the X11 version. That does not prohibit you from porting it to Windows yourself.
-- KDE programmer and computer science student in Klagenfurt, Austria.
For what it's worth, I've seen this particular kind of post before on other threads and now believe that it is a troll.
I replied to the first one I saw with a outrage, blah blah, but shortly afterward I found the "20inchfan" troll message board and realized that it was highly probable that I'd been played. (There was some fascinating stuff on that sid, BTW, I hope that it's preserved and can be analysed psychologically at some point)
Anyway, the modus operandi of this kind of troll involves posting as a profit-motivated "consultant" who appears subtly clueless and hostile towards an open source philosophy. Be warned!
-OT
The idea that Free Software means you can't make money is the stupid strawman every pro-closed software fanatic trys to claim is the goal of Free Software.
Scream it from the hills, "you can have freedom and money!" Just have to be a little more careful constructing your business model.
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
Maybe I have it all wrong. When Helix really started coming around I remember reading on Redhat Labs that with Helix working on GNOME usability and how it looked they were going to focus their energy on improving the base toolkits like the GTK. Eazel is making the filemanager thingy(for lack of a better word) to add to the GNOME desktop. This doesn't sound like a battle to me. It sounds like each is working on their own part. Well I don't have anything to add other than that.
Molog
So Linus, what are we doing tonight?
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
In Applescript, there is a "required" suite of commands that every app should support (like "Quit", etc.), then there is a "Standard" suite of common commands (like "open", "close") but in addition every app has its own commands that only it uses. You can use the AppleScript Editor to look at the dictionary of supported calls in any app. After all, when you write a script, you are generally scripting a specific app -- there is no need to have a platform-wide API that every application needs to support.
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
Why does everyone always neglect Slackware packages? As of yesterday, there STILL aren't any Slackware packages for 1.92, much less 1.93.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Flame-On
;)
psuedo-communistic
Is that supposed to be a bad thing? By inferring something is bad/inferior/evil because it is psuedo-communistic without explaining why , you betray yourself to be a mindless bigot incapable of free thought. 'Communists' aren't 'bad', as much as the US Media/Corporatists Propaganda machine would like everyone to believe, 'Communists' would have a lot of very valuable influence on the "US Democracy" at this point. Grow up. TURN OFF YOUR TELEVISION AND READ A BOOK. Start with something written by Marx.
Flame-Off
Also: The QT license scares people because the underlying code has not been GPLed. GPLed code will ALWAYS (gratis/libre) be free. KDE and developers who build 'KDE Apps' will always have to rely on the 'goodwill' of QT who at sometime MAY change their license to... god knows what.
But: I use both KDE & Gnome.
The reason KDE gets flamed is because of the use of QT. Now that QT has an (almost) free license this would have gone away except for one small problem.... the QPL is incompatable with the GPL, you CAN'T legally link QPL code with GPL code. The KDE team can fix this in one of two ways:
1: relicense KDE under the QPL.
2: Add a clause to their license statement to allow linking their GPL'ed code with the QT lib.
It sounds too simple, but the fact is that you MUST have that clause in your license or the full GPL applies, and prohibits linking with QT because the GPL 'infects' the QPL'ed code. You may argue that this is a problem with the GPL, but that is the license that KDE chose, so it is THEIR fault. As long as they keep their heads shoved up their asses and ignore the problem it won't go away. A few month's ago someone offered KDE a 'reward' to fix their license so Debian would include KDE. They ignored it. Debian may be picking nits here, but they are REAL nits to the letter of the law (or copyleft). If the KDE guys would wake up and insert a few lines into their license statement they could wipe Gnome away, or at least compete on a feature basis instead of a political one.
Nuff' said!
I've tried quite a few, and found IceWM to be the closest. It seemed easy enough to get it to do the right things and to be told not to get in the way of things like the gnome panel, etc. It's been stable for me, and hasn't caused any problems.
Sawmill also showed a lot of promise, but the versions I looked at (a way back) weren't quite ready for daily use.
I have Gnome on one machine, and KDE on another. I find myself tending towards Gnome, but KDE is quite acceptable. The important point is: I can WORK with either.
--
--
The Internet is the Suppository of All Knowledge. You get it in the end.
How's the speed of this release? On my 300MHz machine, KDE 1.92 is pretty poky. Especially Konqueror which takes a second or two to start up. It's shouldn't be because it is a debug build because I compiled the sources myself, and stripped everything. In fact, all the KDE apps seem to have a built in delay. Everything from Kontrol Center (several seconds) to simple applets (a second or so) take a long time to start up.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
>> He uses cheap semantics such as "Gnome is
;)
>> written to the venerable and venerated GTK+,
>> while KDE is written to the technically
>> excellent but politically reviled QT."
> What's wrong with that? My understanding is
> that C is excellent for operating system but
> that GUI are best done with OO languages... No?
Personally I would agree, but that's not the point. I could have said "Gnome is written to the technically excellent GTK+, while KDE is written to the venerable and venerated QT." It's steering rea-duh-rs into an unfounded belief -- it's his personal opinion presented as a stated fact.
> Ok, I am biased toward KDE but so are you about
> Gnome!
I have to print that out and have it framed!
Seriously, I'm a 100% KDE user, just striving to stay clear-sighted in these days of F, U and D...
--
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
OO concepts can be used also when programming in C if appropriate programming practice are followed. In fact this is how gtk+ works.
True, coding GUIs in an object-oriented language such as c++ can feel more "natural" to those accustomed to it, but in the end it all boils down to use whatever language and toolkit you feel most comfortable and productive with, it's as simple as that.
Well this is the KDE team and they do things differently. If you do not want to compile the packages yourself, wait patiently for the rpms or debs. And please clue me up on the alleged attitude of the KDE folks towards RH users. The last time I looked RH was well supported by KDE.
--
Bitching neva helped, compiling soothes the mind.
Ret. add. is really fake....
> "If gnome-hackers [a mailing list] was archived, you could have a whole debate
> about a very classical problem of C programming : when a function returns a
> char*, who owns the char*? Does the caller have to free it? This is just about
> the most basic problem you can find with C programming. And they're thinking
> about it just now, after 3 years of development. KDE doesn't have such a
> problem, it has QString.
>
> "This is only an example of a more general trend: their C base puts them in
> front of a lot of problems which KDE doesn't even face. Of course, KDE has
> C++-specific problems, but nothing as fundamental as this."
Well this problem is not solved in c++ as well. This problem stems from a really big architectural problem of general c programming and operating systems. There is no provision for garbage collection and strong typing. I am pretty sure that c++ has - maybe - more refined and precise disposal guidelines for caller/callee then plain-c. Unfortunately, guidelines aren't worth a cent in this case. In a component-oriented, object-oriented environment no-one can keep track of the uses and references to the objects. I mean, no one except the memory manager that could deploy automatic memory reclamation. Of course, reliable memory management (heap-memory, I mean) can be obtained through strong typing: no pointer arithmetic is allowed and each pointer is bound to an object (usually called reference). A language-system can be considered safe with respect to memory, if it support strong typing *and* it doesn't allow for manual disposal of dynamic memory.
All this, in order to say that it is very childish to argue between c and c++, since both aren't safe languages (a.k.a. they suck, excuse my French), thus both sharing the same pitfalls. This is for example one of the problems that require hardware memory protection to be solved (separate address spaces). Actually, it could have been solved earlier with a better language and system design, without the (at this point) avoidable overhead of heavy-weight processes.
It's surprising the way he sweeps the whole license issue under the carpet. Can even the free non-profit license be withdrawn like he says?
This is way worse than I had realized.
The other amazing thing is in the same breath he notes that the KDE GUI is free for NON profit uses then says these commercial companies backed the wrong horse. Why the heck should any commercial entity back a proprietary standard as the desktop for Linux? Does he really expect they are lining up to pay royalties, or to force their customers to pay royalties? They can do that now with Motif et.al. You can get the whole of Windows for less than just the library license fees for the darned Motif GUI on a Unix workstation, in the mean time unix custs are asking why their workstations cost more than wintel systems. The consortium wants to change this and get a standard adopted, not recreate this attrocious situation.
When are these KDE folks going to get it? The license is CRITICAL. It's THE major obstacle for KDE, it's not enough to dismiss these concerns or say "trust us". KDE-Qt is doomed to be marginalized in the long term unless it ditches the QPL.
Powell throws a knock out punch in the first round by: (Does anyone else see the irony of a project headed by a guy who's in it for the money, backed by companies who are in it for the money, getting the official Glorious October Revolution seal of approval, while a volunteer effort driven by sheer love of the project does not? Yes, there are people from distributions who work on KDE, but they have not set up little companies for themselves to capitalize on it.)
This says it all. Miguel de Icaza seems to now have a vested interest in Gnome. Now IBM, SUN, HP and others are lining up behind gnome and most likely HELIX. What is wrong with this picture? And why in the hell do we need Large corporations as members of a "foundation" deciding the path Gnome is to take? I remember when Gnome was first started. People were protesting KDE's QT license and decided to start their own project which is their right. Now De Icaza has his own company (and trying Helix isnt any more stable or usable then the stable release of Gnome is. If only it didnt crash) and quite frankly I view this as a major conflict of interest. At least KDE is not plauged with this threat, and thus is a more 'FREE' environment in my opinion.
I'm sick of both Gnome and KDE and will continue to use WindowMaker. For example I have been working with the lastest KDE 2.x pre releases and the development versions of Kmail. Well the new version of Kmail wont run under anything but KDE as it needs DCOP. So I try Gnome's Evolution and it wont run under anything but Gnome as it needs Bonobo and a few other things. So piss on both Gnome and KDE. They both are anti-Linux as far as Im concerned with their childish bickering and flammage to each other. If I *HAD* to choose though it would be KDE 2.x mainly because its way more mature. That still doesnt make me happy about the direction both camps are going. We the end users end up the losers. You would think these people would consult with each other and make both environments compatable with each other instead of this immature stupidity and finger pointing. Users should protest this behavour by refusing to run both Gnome and KDE. Oh but now they are headed in the direction of forcing you to run their enviornment in order to use their apps. If that isnt anti-Linux I dont know what is.
You have been assimilated.
Then my objections against Qt fade away.
-- Used-to-be-lurker-around-kde-lists-in-pre-1.0-days and non-CS student in Bratislava, Slovakia
See Strog's comment above.
--RANT ON--
No one cares what desktop they use. As another article on LinuxPlanet which defended Gnome for increased operability with other environments was hinting at, let me do my work.
To work today requires ability to interface with many different environments. Whether you are producing multimedia or text files, you must be able to deliver them to the customer and be assured that the files can be used.
M$ Word-less can't do this. DOC is a perfect example of a proprietary interface. But how many of us think before giving our DOC file to a comrade without a duplicate of the file in a format such as RTF? The point is that your working environment must be able to access any, that is any format that it is given. Linux comes the closest of any OS in this.
The KDE project is proceeding at an admirable pace on this issue with KFilters for the KOffice. Do you see M$ focusing on increasing the ability of their Office to interface with other environments? No. They've seen their Death coming and it is the DOJ.
--RANT OFF--
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
I have one pc running windows and one running linux. I use the linux machine as a router and fileserver. Also I like to fool around with it a bit. I installed helix gnome, to check it out. It installs easy, but somewhere it fucked up because the gnome setup lists settings for both sawmill and sawfish. Both report that sawmill/sawfish is not running when I try to change anything. This became true when I finally decided to install enlightenment. I also have Icewm but I didn't like it very much. Enlightenment looks very cool and sort of gets the job done. The only thing is that it fucked up my menu structure (never asked for that) and duplicates a lot of functionality (didn't ask for that either).
I tried KDE as well (hell it comes installed with mandrake). However upgrading seems to painfull to me (you have to download 20 or so packages) so I won't give 2.0 a try.
Jilles
This can be summed up very simply.
Format a floppy in Windows. Try to launch an
application while formatting said floppy.
Do the same with KDE.
Get your PostgreSQL here: http://www.commandprompt.com/
I'm sick to the back teeth of watching all these fevered egos in the KDE and GNOME camps whacking off in public like two troops of rabid spider monkeys. Snipe followed by counter-snipe followed by smug insinuation followed by all-out shit-slinging rarely seen outside the monkey house at the Zoo. Where they get the time to code is beyond me.
Point is, I've tried both and they both suck. Why? Because they are shamelessly ripping off a UI paradigm popularised by Microsoft, a paradigm they ripped off in turn from Apple, who designed for a 128K monochrome machine with a 400K floppy drive. If I wanted my machine to work like Windows, why would I have bothered installing Linux in the first place? Both GNOME and KDE actually boast about the extent to which they follow Windows-- "no retraining-- it works just like Windows!" they crow.
This is cowardly bullshit. Any real user you talk to will tell you how much Windows and the MacOS suck. KDE and GNOME are appealing to the same middle-tier IS management types who mandate the use of Windows throughout their organisation; empty-headed MBA jackals with one hand turning the pages of some gushing ZD publication loaded with "handy" product feature matrices and the other hand tugging at their atrophied genitals. These, all you GNOME and KDE advocates, these are the assholes that put Microsoft on the map, and you are lining up, learning to talk their talk and walk their walk so you can kiss their asses. "No retraining-- it works just like Windows!" You fucking whores!
Why does the Open Source community have such an inferiority complex when it comes to original UI design? Is it because we don't really "get" GUIs? Is it because deep down we'd just be happy with a command line if it wasn't for those pesky users wanting their icons and their flat toolbars? So instead of sitting down and thinking through this whole UI thing, we just clone Windows? Are you so desperate for mindshare and flattering media coverage that you'd take over screwing your users where Bill Gates left off? A reaming from the Free Software community is going to feel much the same as a reaming from Microsoft come morning. "Microsoft spend millions on usability! We don't have the resources!" scream the apologists. You idiots. That's a PR exercise if ever I saw one. Microsoft spend that money to impress the middle managers who are their real customers; the rest can go hang. Do you really think Microsoft ever ditched a single line of interface code because it raised a usability issue? The whole thing is a snow-job; it gives Microsoft plausible denial: "What? You say our products are unusable? Well, we spent squillions on usability last year-- you must be a retard or something."
The 15-year old Mac GUI metaphor is creaking badly; it doesn't scale. I have a 6GB hard disk at home (tiny by today's standards); how am I meant to navigate it, to manage? With a GTK+ tree control? Think again, Mr. GNOME Man. Furthermore, we're stuck with Mac UI dogma that made sense on a 128K box but not on a machine with 32MB or more of RAM. A one-shot Clipboard in this day and age? Puh-lease! You want me to click File, Save every five minutes? Give me a break; I could record every damn keystroke in my word processor including ^H and never run short on hard disk space. File Open dialog boxes? They were a hack because the first MacOS was single tasking and you couldn't get at the shell!
Think, you freaks, think! All this sniping about code reuse and re-inventing the wheel. Both camps started re-inventing the wheel before the first line of GNOME or KDE code was written, and you didn't even notice.
Read this and this and then come back to me.
IBM and all the other big boys probably want GNOME for Commercial use. Thus they would probably have to pay to QT or Trolltech.
Why pay for milk when you can get the cow for free? GNOME is just that the cow, and you get the whole thing free. NO annoying popup ads no shareware reminders free. No license fee, etc. And they have the source to GNOME, Gtk+ and all the apps as well so they can tweak them as they need. They can't do that with KDE and QT. KDE yes QT NO. KDE is the milk that companies like IBM and et al pay for. Not KDE in and of itself, but QT. Think about it. ;-)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I don't want a lot, I just want it all
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
It seems that the KDE folds are all up in arms since big companies picked Gnome over KDE. Why would companies do this? Because the QPL is for NONCOMMERCIAL USE!! So why should IBM be a slave to Trolltech? It woudln't make sense.
The GPL is OK because then everyone is playing by the rules, kinda like the idea behind CDE. If everyone is on the same playing field, then let the best man win.
As a user, I want free, powerful, easy to use tools. I want a good Gnome interface with reusable code, etc. I want it free and open.
Will I try out KDE2? yes, I will. But most likely I will go back to my helix-gnome desktop... not because it is better, but because it is GPL.
Sorry KDE. When I was first starting to run linux (and after the debacle of fvwm), I thought KDE was a godsend. But now that I program for it, I want a completely free desktop.
To develop commercial apps for KDE, you have to pay money to Troll Tech for QT. I see tons of people portraying this as irrelevant. It isn't.
My suggestion: Make a GPLed clone of QT (assuming that this would actually be legal somewhere). Much easier than jumping ship.
Open source does not necessarily mean non-commercial, and v.v.
The whole language issue is similarly silly. You can pretty much program in what you like, which is how Linux has worked all along. And ORBit bindings are either already in place or being worked on for all the big languages (including C++.)
He does have a very good point about documentation though. Thus far I'm not aware of any resource that will tell you everything you need to know about Bonobo programming, for instance. Gtk/Gdk have reasonable resources available, but gtk-- is barely documented. Hanging out on the developer's list will provide insights into various things, but not everyone can afford the time to read the developer's lists every day.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
It's really sad that a beta preview release announcement on Slashdot has not one comment that I could find about anyone's impression on the usability of the code. Every single comment is about the Gnome/KDE holy war. A dark portend for the Open Source community, we are more interested in bickering about trivialities than how anything benefits the end user.
Sad.
"Gnome is currently the snowball that starts the avalanche. With bonobo in place and people writing reusable components left and right, gnome code will start improving by leaps and bounds. Predicting that corporate involvement will not significantly advance gnome is foolish."
Hmmm....
How do you know that? Extrapolating from any past experiences? Sounds like pure speculation to me.
Have you ever read "The Mythical Man Month" by Fred Brookes? Brooke's Law states that adding more programmers to a late project will make it later.
Stephen Molitor steve_molitor@yahoo.com
I think that should do it. He makes it sound like C is sooo bad. If C++ was so great why is just about every version of UNIX written in C? Obvoiusly if you have C programmer s to write the OS it should not be difficult to find C programmers to work on GNOME either. C++ is not that great, it has its problems too. This author is just bias and this article is really just here to get the KDE vs GNOME war going. Gee maybe KDE developers should help write the C++ interface to gtk+ and then port KDE to that.
On another note has anyone tried gtkmm?? ;-)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I don't want a lot, I just want it all
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
The people over at Open Implementation would probably disagree with your statement that a "black box" is necessary to be object oriented (or even that it is desirable at all).
Delegation based languages like Self don't have inheritance but achieve reuse all the same.
Typeless languages don't need polymorphism.
I don't think multi-dispatch would be called "messaging", as there is no "recipient" like there is in single-dispatched languages like C++.
Maybe it's just me, but your four points seem very C++ biased. If you want a different bias of what is "required" to be object oriented take a look at what Eiffelites might say:
- should have the notion of class as the central concept
- must have assertions to check preconditions, postconditions, and invariants and produce documentation from them as well as check them at runtime
- classes should be the only modules (i.e. no "namespaces" a la C++)
- every type should be based on a class (so long C++ and Java)
- it should be possible to specify which clients can access which features (i.e. finer granularity than "public", "private", and "protected")
- the genericity mechanism should support constrained genericity (i.e. only classes with the method "sort")
This list is no more or less biased than your own.Please, before I continue, let me assure you, that I'm not trying to
:-)
.doc documents
:-)
:-)
flame/convince/icmp attack you.
Ok, now that we got that straight, let me introduce myself:
I've been using linux for 4 years (since slackware 3.1, kernel 2.0.0),
pretty much exclusively for the past 2. So although I'm not really an old
timer, I'm not a newbie either. I'm also a final year undergraduate
computer science student at University College London. I have run various
versions of slackware, tried debian & mandrake, and I've settled down now
with my own tweaked version of redhat. Through my university course, I
have been exposed to various unices, running from IRIX to sunos (from
openlook to CDE).
I used to be running KDE, being very enthousiastic about it, since the
first stable version (1.0.0) came out. I was (still am really) very
impressed about it (didn't really care about the licensing issues), as I
was with all the updates as they happened. It was pretty much the best
unix desktop I had ever seen (although too windows-like//let's not kid
ourselves (this is not a bad thing per se)). When I switched over to
redhat (version 6.0), I tried gnome for the first time (version
1.0.something) and found it appauling (didn't really try too hard to learn
it). It was much too slow, enlightenment and gnome didn't really cooperate
to such an extent, seemed bloated, and was far less stable than KDE.
However 2 things I did take notice: DragNDrop worked both with xmms (or
was it x11amp then?) and with Netscape. I wondered: Netscape was out for
SO long (much older than KDE). Why the hell didn't motif dnd work with
kde? (let alone xmms). But I switched to KDE anyway, and kept recommending
it to anyone who wanted to use linux. However, after upgrading to redhat
6.1, I tried gnome again, played with it some more and updated all the
packages through redhat rawhide. I also installed sawmill (now sawfish) as
a window manager, which cooperated to a much better degree. I was stunned!
Although a bit slower than KDE (and less stable, but certainly more stable
than the shell of an OS of a certain large Redmond-Based company), it
totally blew KDE away at my opinion. DnD worked! Mouse-wheel worked. It
looked far better than KDE and was certainly more customisable. Or so I
found it. And I've been using Gnome since (I've also installled some kde2
betas). (I've on to your article. (btw I seriously recommend (out of
open-mindness at least to try the latest version of helix-gnome))
Everyone deserves an opinion, so please do hear mine:
"Every six months or so, hostilities once again erupt between the KDE and
Gnome communities. These battles are usually sparkedwhen the king of the Gnomes, Miguel de Icaza, grants an
interview and just can't seem to resist saying something gratuitously
nasty about KDE."
True, but you must admit that KDE is pretty arrogant too! At every
occasion it keeps boasting that it is the "Leading desktop for Unix" or
Linux, at every occasion. If you want to be exact, CDE or TWM is the
leading desktop for Unix and it is debatable if KDE is for Linux. Redhat
and Debian have a huge linux market share. Plus, the Gnome Foundation
really (whether we want it or not) makes gnome the "leading Unix
desktop" simply because Solaris is the most popular Unix OS. Please note
also how TrollTech a company bashed gnome in the recent QT-Designer app.
"(The argument is that because the QT toolkit used by
KDE is proprietary, KDE is tainted. But QT has a
foundation, too, and it has pledged to keep QT free for noncommercial
use. And as a practical matter, withdrawal of free use of QT would
make as much sense as Adobe withdrawing Acrobat Reader.) Gnome's stated
purpose, its whole reason for existence, is to kill KDE. Nice, huh? "
The argument is that it's illegal to tie GPL (under which KDE is released)
with the QPL. This might not make much sense to the users, but it is
important to the free software movement in general. The GPL has not ever
been legally enforced. What if some large unknown corporation, took out
say the best parts of the linux kernel and incoporated them into their os,
without giving any source back. How will the GPL be legally enforced, if
projects as popular as KDE also violate it? Plus Gnome sole perpose isn't
destroying KDE. Not at all. Even collaboration efforts have been made This
is simply the third attempt of the GNU project to create a GNU desktop
enviroment.
"(Does anyone else see the irony of a project headed by a guy who's in it
for the money, backed by companies who are in it for the money, getting
the official Glorious October Revolution seal of approval, while a
volunteer effort driven by sheer love of the project does not? Yes, there
are people from distributions who work on KDE, but they have not set up
little companies for themselves to capitalize on it.)"
I really doubt that Icazza and the rest of the gnome team is only in it
for the money. Two years ago, when gnome started and KDE was light years
ahead, you cannot argue that people were in it for the money! You should
also note that many people have set up companies to capitalise on another
free software project: the GNU/Linux OS. They're called Linux
Distributions, and they have offered a great deal to the Linux movement
and operating system, just as Helix-Code have done to gnome (if you were
using gnome, you would have seen the great progress that gnome has had
since the introduction of helix-code).
"Gnome is written, mostly, in C. KDE is written in C++."[...]"Goodbye,
easy portability to other platforms. KDE, on the other hand, has reuse of
code as a goal, which is why KDE2, though far more powerful, often has
less memory footprint than does earlier versions."
If you want to code an application for KDE you can only do it in C++. Even
if additional code has to be loaded (but certainly gnome-apps are not as
slow/inefficient as statically linked apps), it is still a great advantage
for gnome that you can code gnome apps even in pascal, or Lisp or python
(or C++ of cource). (though I think there is a PyQT module which allows
apps to be written using Python). Gnome is also Very much portable. Look
at all the binary distro's that helix is offering (not only Linux). Plus,
you cannot argue that Gnome has not reuse of code as a goal! Look at
gnome-print as an example. And also, if KDE/QT has reuse of code as paramount, why do KDE1 apps need to be PORTED to KDE2?
"But even sticking to C, I'm told by programmers fluent in both, Gnome
faces a world of technical issues to overcome before it is on par with a
project, just starting out, in C++."
That is VERY debatable. GTK which is very much OO is written in C.
""If gnome-hackers [a mailing list] was archived, you could a whole debate
about a very classical problem of C programming : when a function returns
a char*, who owns the char*? Does the caller have to free it? This is just
about the most basic problem you can find with C programming. And they're
thinking about it just now, after 3 years of development. KDE doesn't have
such a problem, it has QString."
I don't see any USERS having a problem with either gnome's or KDE's
interpretation of character strings
"Gnome is written to the venerable and venerated GTK +, while KDE is
written to the technically excellent but politically reviled
QT. (Technically excellent? Youbetcha. I still have here a copy of QT
Mozilla, in which Netscape Navigator was ported to QT in one man
month.) Compare the documentation of the two. Look at the new QT Designer
integrated development environment. Look at the documentation and tools in
GTK+. Which would you rather write to? Likewise, the specific
documentation for the developer heavily favors KDE."
If I am not mistaken, QT is older than GTK+. Technically excellent is
again debatable. Even if you do not like gtk+, it has grown much faster
than QT has, introducing more widgets and supporting features like
mouse-wheel faster than QT. QT is also very nice and easy to program
with. GTK+ has also been ported to win32 like QT. You also fail to note
that QT Mozilla, has, well failed. Mozilla uses GTK instead. QT
documentation is indeed very nice. But so is GTK+ / Gnome! Have you
checked out the gtk.org gtk intro? Or the "Gnome/Gtk+ Application
Development" book (http://developer.gnome.org/doc/GGAD) (also in
bookstores). ? They are both very well written. Plus there exist gtk+
/gnome C++ wrappers like gtk-- which making coding much easier for the C++
crowd.
"While we're making comparisons on a developer level, it might be a good
idea to look at kdelibs v. gnome-libs. The KDE libraries are well
understood to the extent that a bug is often fixed almost instantly. Gnome
(and GTK+) are another story, according to a very highly respected Gnome
and GTK+ expert who knows KDE and QT as well."
kdelibs vs gnome-libs is an interesting point. kdelibs have been frozen at
version 1.1.2 for several months (close to a year maby). gnome-libs are
constantly updated and Helix-Update can automatically update
them. End-users do not care if bugs are instantly fixed in CVS or source
pathes. Gnome clearly wins in this one. Plus you cannot quote a "very
highly respected Gnome and GTK+ expert who knows KDE and QT as well.",
without giving his name!
"The KDE project was designed to produce a great desktop for Linux and
related operating systems, while Gnome was given the task of killing KDE
and, on the way, producing a desktop."
That is simply not true. You are unfairly bashing gnome now.
"KDE has an office suite weeks away from release; Gnome has played with
one (and an element of it, the Gnumeric spreadsheet, is by all accounts
quite good)"
You are wrong: Gnome Office has the following elements, out NOW (unlike
KOFFICE, which although VERY good (I use it) is still unstable and in
beta)
Abiword: Good, lightweight worprocessor which can import
(much faster than KWord btw, but has less features).
The Gimp: No intro needed
GnuCash: Quicken like money managing program, very nice
Gnumeric
Gphoto: digital camera manager
DIA: a diagram creation program (supports UML
Also, helix-gnome has written evolution, which by all accounts, is the
greatest linux mail program (maybe in all platforms!)
" but now seems to be counting on the largesse of Sun to cough up a port
of StarOffice (well, speed and memory efficiency weren't a consideration
to begin with, were they?) for a pre-packaged office suite, those who have
worked within the Gnome project be damned, about which more in a
little. There is likely to be a StarOffice for Gnome available for
download within the next year or two."
Competition is never bad. After all, I too wish KDE 2 to succeed, so that Gnome will also advance.Everyone applauded Sun for releasing staroffice. Granted, it is bloated, but it is the best productivity suite out for linux at the moment (sure beats Corel WPO for stability and
speed). Plus OpenOffice (as it is now called) will remove stardesktop, and
will have only single individual apps. Plus you do not KNOW that
Gnome/Staroffice will be available in the "next year or two". For all you
know, it could be available this December.
"Which is another issue with Gnome. No one knows anything about release
schedules. Gnome developers grumble privately about it, and publicly when
events such as the release of Gnome 1.2 surprised developers and led to
some very hard feelings within the project. It's generally thought that
Gnome 1.4 will be released sometime around Halloween, and Gnome 2.0
sometime around -- well, let's be satisfied with sometime. KDE, meanwhile,
publishes a schedule. Yes, it slips, sometimes more than anyone is happy
about, but everyone is kept informed."
True, KDE does keep a more tight schedule. But: KDE-stable is still at
version 1.1.2 for nearly a year now (maybe more than a
year?). Gnome-stable on the other hand, has really advanced on the same
timespan. It has many more features, it is faster etc. Gnome has advanced
MUCH faster than KDE. Also you should note that the Gnome release schedule
is much more like the Linux kernel release schedule. It will be released
"when it is ready". Believe me, you do not use gnome, but if you had used
it, you would have really known what all this time has done to Gnome. The
improvements are countless.
I do agree that gnome should abandon the war, and start pursuing
excellence. But KDE should do that to, staring by stopping calling itself
the leading desktop for Unix. I do not know of any unix cluster that uses
KDE!
Well I undestand that you will not agree with some of my points. Linux is
about choice after all. But I really think that articles such as yours,
can fuel the fire. Do give gnome a shot. Helix-code has created a
wonderful installer for anyone to use. Plus gnome can be customised to
match any personal preference. I really cannot describe the number of
features that the latest helix-gnome has. Do give it a try.
I hope that you will read my letter,
Stefanos
Why does it seem to me that many companies don't have a problem charging for software, they only seem to have a problem paying for it? Seems a bit one-sided to me.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
It is only not free for closed source use, okay?
It is propagating open source better than the LGPL.
Moritz
C is the language of Linux
Actually, C is the language of modern kernels (with a little assembly in there for fun :P).
- the article had some points, however, it was a little overboard in it's 'gnome sucks, kde rocks' attitude. It's fine to feel that way, but when every sentance is a slam, you (or at least I) get a sick feeling reading it.
- some of the points, like making money from gnome, are kina irrelevant. In the interview posted on
/. the other day (link) the way they were going to make money was by keeping the software free and open (beer+speech) but offer a *service* to aid people using it. This is how people can survive economically in an open source world.. this is also a service that I would use.
- KDE vs GNOME is personal preferance. Both have good and bad points, but in the end, you use what you like or are comfortable with. I use gnome becuase I like the way it looks and feels. [random other person] uses kde for the same reasons. Who cares beyond that.
- At the end user level I don't care at all if one is written in C and the other C++. I care if the applications and environment *feel* comfortable to me and the apps do what I need.
- It appears everyone is missing the "use the right tools for the right job" philosophy that comes as the result of most "us vs. them" arguments. Macs have their place, as do windows machines, as do linux machines, as does kde/gnome/fvwm/xfmail/mutt/pine/elm/gimp/photosho
p ....
- having read some articles on UI design I know that both kde and gnome break a huge number of rules... or at least ideas of how a "well designed" GUI should work.
- I really don't think that GNOME is out to kill KDE. It is there as an alternative, though it was started because of the politics of KDE.
- Alternatives are good.
- Choice is good.
- Competition is good. One thing about the gnome/kde debates that people seem to miss is that a huge number of STANDARDS compliant (or at least semi-standards compliant) apps have been written since this whole war started. While the kde coders are trying to outdo the gnome coders they are all creating decent apps and making them better over time. The end result of this is that in the end we have more choice, more apps, and better apps.
Now folks lets come to our senses, realize that we're all on the same team with the same objective... to make linux better.Nitpicking j/k.
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
but not for closed source apps, okay?
Star Office could very well use qt-free for their commercial GPLed Star Office.
And their windows port is not available under the QPL, but that's not a problem for a unix desktop and if it bothers you, fork qt-free and make one.
Moritz
Brooke's Law states that adding more programmers to a late project will make it later.
I believe, however, that the law stagnates when you have a highly parallel development process. Each project has a maximum number of programmers that it can sustain before they start to interfere with each other. In a monolithic program, when you've reached that limit, you're SOL. In a distributed/parallel development, the limit begins to apply not to the end product, but each piece. Let me explain using GNOME.
GNOME is a fairly abstract concept. Adding more programmers to GNOME itself is like adding ten to infinity - it doesn't mean anything, because GNOME (and infinity) are composed of many smaller segments. Adding more programmers to, say, Bonobo or the desktop/UI is a much more meaningful statement.
Now, let's say Bonobo - as a monolithic project - can sustain ten (10) active software developers. Great, wonderful. When you reach eleven (11), things start to go down hill. However, Bonobo isn't a monolithic project. One piece of Bonobo can get done independently of another piece of Bonobo. Perhaps each piece can only support seven (7) engineers before they interfere with each other. That's still a total of fourteen (14) engineers working on Bonobo now. Brooke's Law is still at work, but when comparing the law's expectations to the overarching project, there appears some disparity because of the parallel development.
To answer your scepticism, adding more programmers to GNOME won't necessarily hinder GNOME outright, because each developer can add his or her strengths to a small portion of GNOME that may not have reached its peak developer potential. Joe Average #1 may be writing components that have no bearing on Bonobo or the out-of-the-box UI, so he doesn't count when taking Brooke's Law into consideration. Joe Average #2 may be an extra programmer working on Bonobo, but if he's working on a sub-portion of Bonobo that hasn't reached it's maximum effective developer total, Brooke's Law hasn't yet begun to matter.
There does get a point where you can't divide a project up any further, and an absolute limit does apply (and, hence, Brooke's Law applies when you start adding developers past that limit). But the blanket notion that "more developers = slower development" ignores the development style of the project.
--
From what I understand, GTK-- is on the way out, being replaced by Inti developed at Red Hat. Inti is a documented C++ framework for GTK+. I don't know of any application written for Inti, but it is a space to watch. Also, I believe it was developed because of the immaturity of GTK--, and because corporations really want to develop for GNOME, but want to do it in C++.
but not for closed source projects.
It's funny how all the advocates of Gnome claim that QT can not be used for commercial projects... Use an Open source license for your comercial project like StarOffice and you are fine with the QPL....
Moritz
That's actually pretty much what we do, though with a bit more code here and there. I'm no expert on the subject, but I've never heard of any fundamentally different exception-based error handling in C. I assume this is more or less what goes on, even in C derivatives that "do it for you".
The problem is not so much this piece as making sure everybody uses the system, properly, for handling their errors. Some of our people are hard to talk out of using (ugh!) passed parameters for error indication.
When the error handling is "part of the language" as it is, say, in Python, people tend to agree to use it (and learn how).
for a while and I leave it running in the Office. Nothing ever crashes except for konqueror, the browser and it crashes only on weird pages with wrong HTML and javascript.
Really I would not go back to KDE1.12 for money.
Everybody: Check it out. Try everything. If it crashes or does something you don't want it to: Report the bug. It's automatic after crashes and you can manually start the bug reporting in Menu->Help->Report Bug.
I have had only very good feedback and several features I proposed were implemented.
This thing will have an impact on Unix/Linux desktop use! The browser is quite complete (bugs mainly in java [where does this work??] and javascript.) and renders a lot better and a lot faster than Netscape 4.7. It is also a lot snappier than Mozilla, forget that instable beast. The HTML engine is the best GPLed thing of its kind. Marvellous.
This thing is GREAT. Theming support. Colors are applied to all apps, even Gnome, Motif, GTK, Athena etc. GTK Themes are supported, so you don't loose the uniform look of all apps, if you use e.g. the Gimp.
Thank you developers, thank you everybody, I can't wait for the final release.
Moritz
But here is my $0.02.
With respect to GNOME vs KDE: I think having a truly open source desktop is the way to go. I like GNOME because it's open source, and also modular, in the sense that I can run Sawmill, Enlightenment, or whatever as my window manager. KDE may or may not get around to letting you sub out window managers, excuse my ignorance, but that was two major keys for me. With tight and modular code, you could install WINDOWMAKER on a 486 with 2M memory, and GNOME+HELIX+ENLIGHTENMENT+NAUTILUS on the Godzilla machine, and tailor the level of what you install to what you want.
About Miguel being a King - there's two sides to every story, and for every autocratic leader of a volunteer group, there's always two to four people who want to be leader who whine and stamp and try and ruin it for everyone else. There's too much noise and not enough signal to make an objective assessment, but as far as I can tell, there needs to be someone in charge dictating at least a direction for any given project.
In terms of C++ vs C, it's BANG ON. Would someone please tell me why I have to say (excuse the spaces - they're an end run around the lameness filter) Gnome _ Please _ Give _ me _ a _ window ( (GTKWIDGET) & window), then Alright _ Then _Gnome _ set _ x _ value _ of _window _and _at _the _same _time _give _me _carpal _tunnel _syndrome(window, 20); ??? I understand that portability is the issue, but we could get really elegant, especially if we got around to some of the very interesting new features of C++.
And also, in terms of components, there MUST, repeat MUST be some commonality of this. I'd personally like to see both KDE 3 and GNOME 3 gutted and rewritten to have some common foundation in terms of interface, even if the toolkits are different, so that if I want to embed a KDE developer's Widget X in my GNOME project Y, I can.
And lastly, a damn good multi-desktop IDE would be nice. Code Crusader keeps segfaulting when I try to run it, and I can't get the proper version: I am NOT paying $100 to CodeWarrior for a wrapper to gcc, and I am neither going to run KDevelop and only have support for KDE in it.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
The article is flame bait. The author is attempting to incite a "war" between the two communities. To suggest there is any value in this article is completely without merit.
Truely discusted.
Troy
yeah..just try it and watch trolltech sue you into oblivion. they tried to kill harmony for that reason...it would allow KDE apps to run on windoze platforms which is their main revenue model.
The prime reason the "American" companies are putting money towards GNOME is that GNOME is primarily an American venture, whilst KDE is primarily based in Norway. When it's free software nobody cares where it comes from, when there's money involved, the sponsors want it to be American. All this talk of QT and stability amounts to nothing but hot air, the prime reason is financial.
If you haven't tried the version of sawfish (ie. sawmill) that comes with HelixGnome you really should take a look at it. I used to be a fan of IceWM, but the GNU (oops I mean new) HelixGnome combination of Gnome + Sawfish is really quite impressive.
Gnome really has come a long way in the last little bit.
You can create black boxes in C just fine. Take a look at the FILE pseudo-object. It's completely opaque; a total black box. The only thing known about it is it's public interface.
Here's why: ++Development issues: KDE - One commercial license is prohibitively high cost for me (more than the cost of an RTOS development license). Gnome - I feel every time I turn around, there's always another missing package I didn't have to make Gnome work. And now I see that I will have the Helixcode licensing fee issues coming up for the future. ++Consideration for my users: KDE - will install & compile nice enough, but I don't relish having to expain to my users that if they develop an application that they wish to sell, they have to pay high royalties because of QT commercial licensing. Gnome - Locked into installing binaries since the sheer amount of sources from different packages is very large (and no list exists detailing every package needed). And if my users have my luck, Helixcode will break any existing Gnome installation . It simply isn't worth it. I'll just stick to Lesstif where I can both make commercial applications without fear of license repurcussions, and it will install on my users machines (binaries or sources) with a minimum of trouble. And if the Lesstif library is on a user's machine, the application I make will also run under KDE or Gnome.
Consider this situation:
/* code that modifies i */
/* code that does something with i */
int i
try
catch
endtry
Quick! What will the value of i be in the catch block?
The answer is: it's implementation-dependent, because i is modified after the setjmp() call. If I was held in a register at that time, it will not have the value you expect. The only way around this problem is to declare i as volatile, and then the simulated exception handling in C will not be transparent to the user anymore
Exactly the kind of reason why C is such a terrible language for simulating the more advanced features of other languages.
I confess my dirty secret. I don't read the licenses before I install Linux software. I don't read them afterwards either. I have never read a software license. Ever.
Now, I know it is my duty to read the license. I know that I should be on the side of righteousness. But that brings me to my second dirty secret. I just don't care. That's right. I just don't fucking care. What I care about is "does it work?", "does it do what I want?", "does it look nice?".
I like GNOME because it's fun. I change windows managers about once a month. Because I can.
At work I use KDE. It works all the time, its efficient. Besides KDE2 betas are fun too. And it looks a lot better than it did.
So if "which is better?" is the question. "Yes" is the answer. Beyond that, it's all bullshit.
Open with scene of woman struggling to use computer that obviously has Win95 installed. She's throwing her hands in the air, making loud exasperated noises, etc.
Voiceover: Tired of the difficult to use UI of Windows 95?
Jump transition as Windows 95 disappears and KDE appears. Woman begins smiling and becomes obviously productive (much mousing around and so forth).
Voiceover: Discover the power of KDE: Alt-F2! It brings up a little input field which you can use to start an app quicker than using the menus! Finally, a breakthrough in UI technology that will make you 10 times more productive leaving you more time for your family, blah blah blah...
Yes, I understand your point: the difference between a poor UI and good UI is incremental. My point, though, is that the difference between and good UI and a great UI is fundamental. We need to make a jump beyond Windows as far as Windows was beyond DOS.
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
The article linked to on the front page was obnoxious, and I feel personally attacked, not for my code's merits, but just on "general principle", because I happen to code for GNOME. I, as many other developers want to be left alone by such rabble-rousers. I just want to do my thing.
I've never attacked anyone on the basis of doing the KDE project - on the other hand, we're all making good progress, and I believe that one borrows ideas from the other on a regular basis. The "inefficiency" of having two projects with such overlap is blown out of proportions by many comments here. They merely represent two different approaches to a problem, with two different solution sets. No one side has all the best solutions.
Here are links to the publicity/news pages on both sides of the camp, so you can compare the badmouthing-article counts:
KDE news, GNOME news.
They speak for themselves. Thanks for your attention and stuff.
I think a lot of these new bugs crept in there
because you slipped a whole bunch of new
features, and more annoyingly, a new BETA version
of QT into something that was getting ready for
release. Why did kde have to upgrade to a beta
version of qt this late into the cycle?
Did the new beta REALLY fix that many critical bugs?
You're either misinformed or pretty lacking in imaginations here. I have a couple of Indian friends who'll gladly tell you they not only believe in one God, but actually in a whole pantheon of Them! And if more is indeed better, I guess we non-Hindus are pretty much doomed...
And of course, even within the context of the three main monotheist religions there's a couple questions that set them apart concerning the wishes of the Deity...
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Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
Therefore, distros cannot both ship KDE _and_ QT at the same time.
Hmmm, can Sun distribute GNOME alongside its openwin? In any case, I'll play the devil's advocate and assume that Qt accompanies KDE and is simultaneously a module of KDE. What to do? Just read a few phrases back and distribute the source code for Qt! And reading over section 2, I find that works distinct from the Program do not have to fall under the GPL.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
As some people have commented, unless GNU/Linux/OpenSource/FSF/whatever starts providing something that you can't get from M$ (besides stability) what's the point?
I really need to be able to create a graph in a spreadsheet and embed it in a document, and be able to edit the graph afterwards, like you can do in Windows. Copy and paste objects of various sorts. I don't see either KDE or Gnome providing this as yet. I know that this is what Bonobo is supposed to do. I don't know if this is something that KDE will provide or not.
I'm not a big fan of StarOffice, but one benefit of having a monolithic office program is that object linking and embedding is possible on any platform, because they don't rely on the OS to provide those things. I use WordPerfect office on Windows and Linux, and the lack of true OLE is glaring on Linux.
As it is, I have no problem with using both KDE and Gnome, and hope that either one or both will develop the type of code reuse that allows the sharing of complex data objects between programs as soon as possible.
On the other hand, here is an article that explains why GNOME is a better platform for the future. It seems fact-filled and flame-free to me.
I would like to see an article from the KDE camp that is as sensible and reasonable.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Just admit it: GNOME is competing with KDE. These partnerships have been zero sum, and KDE is conspicuous by its absence in all this publicity.
Of course Gnome competes with KDE, he explicitly said "We are interested in healthy and friendly cooperation with the KDE project and other free software projects." They are competing with GNUstep too, but the POINT of Gnome isn't to compete with either of those.
Of course in so far as they are developing alternative solutions to the same problems for the same communities they do compete.
Just admit it: GNOME is competing with KDE. These partnerships have been zero sum, and KDE is conspicuous by its absence in all this publicity.
The GNOME Foundation is not about expanding the user base of free software, it's about expanding the market penetration of GNOME. Is it so bad just to admit it?
He does admit it, hence "We're creating a foundation to help us run GNOME well, and we're excited about the recent commercial acceptance of GNOME, but these things are advances for GNOME, not attacks on anyone else."
Of course Gnome is promoting Gnome, there's nothing to be embarassed about in that.
If GNOME ships as a "standard desktop" for Solaris, HP Unix, etc., GNOME "wins."
If you mean that suddenly everyone will stop using KDE then this is absurd, and if Gnome subsequently loses momentum and KDE is perceived by Sun etc. to have surpassed it then Gnome can be replaced just as Motif is being. Gnome seem to be doing well right now, but what's your problem with that?
I don't hear the GNOME Foundation talking about promoting free software for desktop GUIs, I hear it promoting GNOME.
Erm... Gnome consists of fre software for desktop GUIs.
I wish you guys would just admit that you are out to promote GNOME.
I can't really imagine them denying it, just as the KDE people are out to promote KDE. That doesn't mean that either group exists JUST to promote itself.
In foo.h you have:
struct black_box;
typedef struct black_box BLACKBOX;
then in foo.c you have:
struct black_box {
int stuff;
};
anybody else tired of the internet.com family of websites posting inaccurate, inflammatory, and otherwise trashy "reporting"? I've been really unimpressed with any article I've seen on BSDToday, LinuxToday, and etc. Incorrect facts, bad advocacy... It makes everybody look bad.
Everybody makes up its own Strings making the interoperability hellish.
Try watching "CBS Evening News" sometime. It's amazing just how biased this program is. Did Dan Rather get his education from a Cracker Jack box? It's usually a little more subtle than just, "President Clinton was blasted by the evil Republicans for his perfectly innocent, supposed extramarital relations," but it's darn close. I remember eight years ago when Clinton ran against Bush; CBS EN ran a segment on Bush's golf game every time the man went to play golf. Oog. Their recent coverage of Napster was, shall we say, embarrasingly biased.
Before you comment, Dan is not just the anchor; he's also the news director.
And, finally, the point, proving that if this is marked as -1, Offtopic, the moderator's an asshole. The point is is that most if not all journalists let bias slip in. Sometimes is extremely obvious, such as in this case. Sometimes it's more subtle. But for all the high-and-mighty talk of the journalistic establishment of not allowing personal bias to affect coverage, it's just talk. A reporter's personal feelings will *always* be a factor. Period.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Bullshit. C++ doesn't encourage good design. You can write a straight C program using a C++ compiler and it won't complain once. How is that encouraging good design? Or any different a design from C? The only thing that matters when picking a language for a project is what you're most confortable with. Telling me python is a better choice is meaningless if I don't know python.
The interesting thing about this is, I'm a KDE user. Your imflamitory comments make me want to be otherwise.
Your article on Linux Planet was beyond the hypocracy of Microsoft. You slander Gnome for being commercially backed while silently relying on TrollTech for your most basic component. Talk about Gnome's leaders flaming KDE in one long flame of your own, which is far worse than anything Miguel ever said.The Gnome Foundation is so terrible because it has corporate backing? That will somehow corrupt the code, the same way Red Hat corrupts Linux, I suppose! I would prefer the Gnome Foundation being backed by corporations than the QT Foundation to plea with corporations not to cut a widget library loose.
Finally, your biggest LIE is that Gnome was bad to kill KDE. It was made to be a free alternative. Linux, I suppose was made to kill Unix? Nothing more? When Unix dies, I'm sure that Linus (who is a "king" --- ooooo) will stop development.
The extent to which you are full of crap is an ambarasment to the entire Linux community.
-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/
And of course, even within the context of the three main monotheist religions there's a couple questions that set them apart concerning the wishes of the Deity...
You missed the point of what I was saying. Maybe I should have been more specific. I picked one religion, Christianity, as an example to illustrate my point. There either is just one God, or there isn't. You could also pick another religion, as an example and say, there are either many Gods or there are not many Gods. The entire point was to say that religion isn't the same is picking what socks you want to wear on a given morning; it's not just a matter of preference.
----
Celebrate the finer things in life
Every six months or so, hostilities once again erupt between the KDE and Gnome communities. These battles are usually sparked when the king of the Gnomes, Miguel de Icaza, grants an interview and just can't seem to resist saying something gratuitously nasty about KDE.
You know something? I think that its comments like this that start the debates and wars off again. I have grown sick and tired of the debate. Gnome and KDE both have their features and uses that are suited to different tasks better than the other. Which is the better? Depends on your own personal point of view.
The purpose of my desktop is to give me a GUI that I can use, that is configured the way I feel most comfortable and it looks the way I want it to. Using Gnome, I can configure my desktop and place icons upon it with relative ease. I can access all my programs through an easy to use and easy to configure menu system. I can create applets on my "gnome bar" that allows me fast and easy access to the applications I use most or even to control those applications. Using Enlightenment I can make my window frames and icons look any way I so desire and have those functions I use/want show as icons on the window frames. With GTK+ I can change the appearance of my applications to suit the scheme I want and the colours I desire.
Now before a lot of you go off at me saying that KDE can do that... I know it can. But its the little things that make the difference as most of you know. I am not saying KDE is worse or inferior to Gnome, I'm not even insinuating anything close to it. What I'm saying is that I use Gnome because it suits my tastes and performs the tasks I ask of it in a way that I like and prefer. KDE just didn't do it for me.
So what about this article? Dennis Powell is just flamebait. He's trolling for a reaction by attempting to insult members of the community. So saying that, we do have to respect that he is entitled to his opinion and his beliefs. It matters little that they are derogatory and worded specifically to inflame the community. Are we really so worried about which is better that comments like this are let to cause the reaction he wants?
The desktop we use should not be decided by which one is "better". It should be decided by the question "Which one does what I want it to do and in the way that suits me the most?". There is no other real way to decide which is the better desktop as its a relative question and can only be answered by one person. Yourself.
Ignore the types of reviews like this one from Dennis Powell. They serve no purpose other than to incite disruption and disharmony. Instead, look at the real reviews. Those that concentrate on the technical differences, the benchmark results, the ability of the product to do what its designed to do. Add to that your own reseach into the specs of the software and then make a decision for yourself. Don't be a sheep and follow the flock just because its the in thing to do. Be an individual and make up your own mind about something and decide for yourself which is the better.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
That not what he meant. He wants to be able to use an application's *existing* functions with a scripting language. Kind of like OLE Automation does for VBA + Office. From what I read in the mailing list, there seems to be someone working on this for Bonobo. King of like a Windows Scripting Host for GNOME.
[quote www.stupidfakenews.notrealsite.ie]
Microsoft announced yesterday that they would release Knome using the QTK toolkit. Industry sources say that the plan is to decrease Linux prodictivity by 75% by stating the mother-of-all flamewars.
[/quote]
Qt 2.0 *for Unix* has a proper free software license: the QPL, thus this problem will go away if the above poster is correct (which I'm unsure about).
Oh please, have you got anything more besides that (quoted) email saying "we don't KNOW whether we would sue or not"? Sounds like hearsay (aka FUD) to me...
-- KDE programmer and computer science student in Klagenfurt, Austria.
The problem here is that the free software producers are not producing a net benefit to the end user by copying every advance as quickly as they can.
They blatantly copy good ideas as soon as they appear, producing nothing new of value, just spending their own effort to keep people from having to pay the people who had the good ideas. This is mostly what free software developers do, they duplicate effort to get around IP restrictions (yes, of course, there are exceptions, but the high-profile stuff is all duplication).
Knowing that this will happen, people don't bother developing their software ideas, because they know they can't get paid. Instead, they end up making a living doing system administration or some such thing, and creative talent gets wasted on unoriginal work.
There's a way out, though. In mass market busking, the users decide who and how much to pay, and are therefore free to pay whoever has the good idea first, and not bother paying people who just duplicate effort or slap a new interface on public domain code. This actually gives people a profit motive to write innovative free software for the general public. Integrators of all the good ideas can also get paid without usurping the income of the originators of the ideas, because it is in the best interests of the people who are paying to and they have control of their payments.
This also deals with the problem of 800-pound gorillas like MS screwing original people even worse than the free software community does.
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
Actually picking a RELIGION is the same as picking socks, it's a matter of preference, either you are a catholic, a baptist, a muslum, a jew, or a hindu. They all believe in the existance of a god or gods, it's simple a matter of which god you are going to pick. The TRUTH you are talking about is that either there is a god (or gods) or their isn't, that has nothing to do with the fact that you are a catholic, a jew, or a hindu.
___________________
___________________
He who laughs last... Thinks slowest
I just use languages like perl / tcl and Java mostly so I don't worry about these things. I do do some C, but more properly you should have said I am not a hard core "C" code. ;-)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I don't want a lot, I just want it all
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
I think perhaps you might need a lesson in basic classical logic. There is a fundamental difference between a choice about sock preference, what to have for dinner, what kind of car you want to drive, et. al, and what you are going to believe is true. The difference is that when you make a decision about what kind of car you are going to drive, for example, you're just deciding what your preference is. There is no wrong answer. When you are deciding what to believe regarding the nature of the universe, the existence of God, if he does exist, what his character is like, etc. there are many wrong answers! You can be completely, utterly, fantastically, desparingly, hopelessly wrong in your views of the nature of the universe. You can't be wrong when you make a decision about what socks to wear.
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Celebrate the finer things in life
I think that you are lumping too many things together. I will admit that the existence of God is a major choice, with a right or wrong answer. Once you make that major choice, everything else is about preference. When you decide what socks to put on, you have already assumed that socks exisit. Just like when you "choose" your religion you have already assumed that god exisits or does not exist. it's almost impossible to be wrong about socks and amazingly possible to be wrong about the nature of the universe, that does not change the fact that after you decide they exist (socks or God) everything else is just personal preference.
___________________
___________________
He who laughs last... Thinks slowest
fair enough. :)
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Celebrate the finer things in life
which has some obnoxious exception handling bugs in the C++ compiler that the KDE folks need fixed. This is understandable.
:-)
Unfortunately, to upgrade the compiler requires upgrading one's binutils -- which is a royal pain in the ass. I note that RH7.0 beta ships with GCC-2.96.x and the recent binutils... along with KDE 2.0Beta3. OK!
I can (In fact, am) develop in GTK-- now. When inti appears whenever it appears, I'll have a look at it.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?