Slashdot Mirror
Richard Stallman On KDE/GNOME Cooperation
Karma Sucks writes: "For the first time that I remember, RMS is encouraging collaboration between the GNOME and KDE projects. He offers a concrete idea: Unifying the themes between KDE and GNOME. Matthias Ettrich once went far enough to propose a default unified 'Linux' theme that both Qt and GTK+ could support."
I've never heard of it before. I would have posted themes.org as the link. But that's me. kde-look is a very nice website, but is there a GNOME equivalent?
Everything is mainstream now.
I use KDE but prefer Mozilla. I am *sick* of the incompatible clipboards that KDE/GTK use. As a matter of fact, I just complained to my co-worker about this and said, "This is why a monopoly is a good thing: someone to declare 'clipboard functions work this way or no way'". Damn I hate this.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
He explained his reasons for opposing KDE. As you even said in your summation, it had nothing to do with who was in charge and everything to do with the license. The license has since changed, so there is no more need to oppose KDE.
People who assume his attack on the license was an attack on the people who chose to use that license are the ones who come off as ideologues.
Nope, no sig
Flamewars like the Gnome/KDE one have always been a side-effect on free projects that have the same final purpose (and on free projects in general ;), but it's true that the rivality between developpers of such important components has to disappear. The idea is good, and given its originator it may have a considerable impact on future GUI development aims.
;)
:]
But I'm not quite sure if a compatible theme engine is the way to go... Many people still consider themed desktops as a waste of time and space, and sometimes you can find really awful things on themes.org
Another direction may be the component object model itself. There has been, IIRC, at least one attempt to start an uniform interface between ORBIT and the KDE object model, and others may be under way.
IMHO, this would be a much better challenge for Gnome/KDE integrators, and provide a broader signal to the GUI community.
Microsoft has made COM first, then made XP skinnable. Of course, the Linux themes.org effect was not present then (IIRC), and maybe it was sheer luck. It worked for them anyway.
But I'll sure fancy some skinnable icons while drag/dropping objects between Gnome and KDE apps
Karma cannot be described by words alone.
RMS didn't like KDE because it was not "free" -- and in fact, in his opinion, it's position was threatening Free Software in general (it undermined the GPL, it took people away from developing Free alternatives, etc). So he argued against KDE, in favor of GNOME, a truely Free alternative.
KDE is now Free, in part because of serious amounts of lobbying by the Free Software Community, including RMS. KDE is no longer the bad guy, RMS no longer has a beef with KDE.
Now that the "Free KDE" battle is over, RMS is now saying "Um guys... we won -- ALL of us (KDE and GNOME) won, last year. It's time, past time, to stop sabre-rattling at each other". Since Qt became GPL-compatable, I haven't seen RMS stoking the GNOME v. KDE fires. Now he's trying to quench the GNOME v. KDE fires, because leaving them smouldering is bad for Free Software in general.
I don't know about anyone else, but I always thought it was funny how the Open Source community yelled about "standards," yet we have so many damn standards that there aren't any.
Now that license issues are cleared up, RMS has a chance and he's gonna take it. Eliminate two, create one. This isn't a bad thing, since you STILL have the source.
We have options for customization, and a lot of freedom, but what we lack is any real consolidation (IE eliminating redundant standards), thus creating a plethora of pitfalls for software developers.
This is one thing I think the Linux Standards Base should cover. More than just one boring, rather useless "base," it should cover MANY bases, and specify standard APIs, installations, and specifications for systems/software. Hell make Linux Standard Base certification like that damn Made for Windows XX logo.
Theory:
LSB defines a desktop base, a server base, and an embedded base.
On the desktop base you have modules (not necessarily compatible), say Gaming Module which includes all necessary packages and auto-detection and config info, a Network client module that automatically loads remote config utilities and any necessary client software, and a workstation module that adds it's required things.
Same for server and embedded.
Also have the LSB supply standard definitions for the GUI APIs. Standard Themes, fonts, what have you.
If you can build a solid foundation for your system and get it under control (community control, it's still ours), then you'll attract users. I think that's a bit of what RMS is trying to do here.
Back in November 2001, when RMS was candidate to the GNOME Board of Directors, there was a discussion on /. about the reasons why he applied.
Just a couple days before, he had said during a conference in Paris that his primary reason to apply to the board was to support cooperation between GNOME and KDE (see my post), eventhough it wasn't clearly stated in his answers to the GNOME board candidacy questionnaire.
I'm really happy to see that it was not only electoral bulls**t.
Maybe he is the last person you could have think of for such a task (especially knowing his position toward the KDE team in the old days of the QPL), but here he comes with this simple (as in not heavily political) practical (as in usefull) first step... so let's try !
Actually, there's a pretty simple argument against this. Standardizing the desktop stagnates innovation. With a standard "Linux" desktop, all distributions for a good amount of time will have to follow that standard or face alienating their users. Look at how little the MacOS interface changed before OSX and how only with Windows XP has Windows had a major interface revision - and even now it is still heavily rooted in the framework of prior revisions.
Personally, I agree with you and think a standard would be a good idea. Taking a step away from rapid developement and making a single stable interface would do wonders for acceptance. Besides, you can always have easily accessible information on configuring your interface how you like it. Still though, the arguement against this is pretty obvious.
I'd probably say that the best idea would be for some group to go and dedictate a year or so to making the be-all-end-all of interfaces. Not some wierd hybrid of previous interfaces like most distros ship now, but something that is simple, elegent, etc. Other people have said it, and I'll repeat - like the OSX interface. I'm not saying it's the most efficient, but it consistently does what you intuitively expect it to do. That's what a defacto Linux "theme" would need to do. The only other option, I suppose, is just to copy Windows or OSX or another highly developed/researched interface. There simply exists nothing right now that would make sense to call the default desktop.
Debian is close to releasing and they are talking about a unified Linux desktop theme. Hell most have frozen over or this is a sign of the apocalypse!
Gorkman
- It will address what's generally felt to be KDE's biggest drawback.
- Do the same for Mozilla and every other C++ project, free and non-free, running on GNU systems.
- Point up the importance of the GNU contribution to what's generally referred to as Linux. (Not that I'm thrilled to see him getting more ammunition to pester us on that score, but it's not until I was cursing out the FSF for making C++ apps run so slow that I realized he's actually got a good point.)
Besides, it's something he's in a position to actually do, and which doesn't require anyone to sacrifice existing work.(Poor guy -- he's like Alan Greenspan, where every public utterance is turned into a grand policy question.)
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Think about it. Compare to 'windows' in its simplicity if you like. We want to create a unified GNU/Linux desktop operating system and not play around with fancy names. (Designed for X Windows, anyone? :-)
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Why?
Nobody is suggesting anyone be locked into these. Nobody is suggesting these be graven into stone never to become v.2 as progress marches on.
What this would do would be provide a common basis for new folks, a baseline for support folks, a universal look for screen-shots and documentation. If along the way some solid UI design were applied, usability testing done and minimal esthetics incorporated then so much the better.
Tweak away, replace, bend, fold, spindle, mutilate. But at least folks who are bewildered and lost could go to a common default and see something reasonable and trivially relate it to the documention or support folks. A simple menu option of "Default" would do wonders and all the better that it be consistant across toolkits.
Of course the next question is "What?" Here's where I think a good process of involving folks who are knowledgable in this area along with things like testing and feedback and skills in UI-standards-making would be incredibly valuable. Nothing against the coders but frankly, and many would agree, many desktops today are bad Windows reimplementations, wannabe-MacOS X looks or terrible pistaches of any number of good-ideas-running-into-eachother. A committee of KDE and Gnome AND others working on a timeline with a budget and a set of goals and opportunity for community feedback would be ideal, something with conflict-resolution built in from the beginning.
And if it stinks up the place it gets ignored. Or fixed in v.2. But at least we'll have taken the chance of a basic common UI gtting a shot and possibly accruing the benefits that would accrue from such. As for those looking to use something different, more innovative, more complex, more suited to them - go right ahead.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
The main reason for the split, is the widget set dependence of GNOME and KDE. Until this issue is resolved, deeper interoperability issues won't likely be resolved.
You *should* be able to use Qt write a complete GNOME application that obeys GNOMEs theming rules, uses Bonobo, GConf and other GNOME technologies.
You *should* be able to use Gtk+ write a complete KDE application that obeys KDE's theming rules, uses KParts, DCOP and other KDE technologies.
Yes, it may be *easier* to write KDE applications with Qt, and GNOME applications with Gtk+, each desktop/platform shouldn't be *tied* to these widget sets.
That's not the way it works now. At the moment, I believe that GNOME's technologies (at least the one's in GNOME 2) are more decoupled from the widget set than KDE's. For instance, it's possible to write a Qt application that uses GConf2, Orbit2, GStreamer, and Bonobo2 without linking in any Gtk+. If you *really* work at it, you should also be able to integrate with GNOME's accessibility framework by hooking Qt components to the appropriate ATK+ options. That's a fair chunk of GNOME already. But there are many other GNOME features that Qt applications can't take advantage of.