jhughes wrote to us with the
report that Debian will be including KDE2 within Woody, and according to the article, backtracking it into Potato. Of course, you've been able to get the packages by editing your sources.list
[?] , but apparently this will mean including it in the "official" list.
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Only if by "contemporary" you mean "more like Windows". I can't really think of much in the way of older user interfaces that GNOME resembles.
KDE takes a less timid approach to making use of others interface design philosiphies than GNOME does.
KDE is certainly more eager to imitate Windows. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's a dead end strategy when it comes to winning hearts and minds. "Chase the dream, not the competition." It also presumes you like the Windows-style interface. If I did, I wouldn't be using Linux. Windows does come "free" with new computers. (Okay, but you have to pay for it either way.) ;)
KDE has more mature app integration than GNOME
I can't really argue that point. But GNOME is newer, and it is plainly advancing faster than KDE, which is to be expected for a system attempting to blaze new territory rather than to simply achieve parity with a competitor. Still, I'll be glad when I can cut and paste more often.
The KDE UI is centered around implementing what works best for the user, where GNOME appears to do what is best for the developer.
Huh? I think you can make a case that GNOME is friendlier to C programmers than KDE's C++ API -- which is part of why I like it, being a C programmer -- but I can't really say that either system is better for developers than end users. Except for the actual task of GUI design, character-based commandline systems are a lot more developer-friendly than GUIs in general.
What's really disturbing to me about these pointless advocacy debates is the hidden presumption that everybody must be forced into one standard interface despite their personal preferences. That's a BS viewpoint fostered by commercial software. What we need are solid interoperability standards so you can use KWrite, I can use AbiWord, and the next guy can use Word, and we can all use each other's data without respect to each other's software. Killing the competition is only good if you're selling software; if you're giving it away, the competition ought to be more friendly and cooperative.
--
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
KDE2 won't be in the official Debian archive for Potato. Potato is closed now, updates are normally due to security fixes and some others to fix some outstanding bugs that really shouldn't be in later point releases. Debian KDE maintainer, Ivan E. Moore II, will probably continue to maintain his unofficial Debian packages for Potato.
More info in:
<a href="http://kde.tdyc.com/Debian/">RevKrusty's Site</a>.