Slashdot Mirror
Are You A Friend of Gnome?
From the donation page: "Love GNOME? Want to give back to the community of mostly volunteer developers who have worked so hard to make GNOME
the powerful, flexible, friendly, fun desktop that it is?" There are a number of contribution levels a person can join at, so if you love Gnome, consider helping the foundation out.
The KDE project is famous for its funded and organised trolling of
weblogs and message board associated with Linux and Free software/open
source. Outrageous newbie impressing claims are made for the software
and huge quanities of FUD are spread to destroy competitors. If this
sounds familiar, then you are correct, most of these tactics were
lifted straight from Microsoft's arsenal of dirty tricks. The Windows
look and feel is not the only thing the KDE project has copied! In
this short article I will address some of the lies and FUD spread by
the KDE trolling teams. It is my hope that this, in some small way,
will redress the balance and re-introduce two things almost eradicated
by the KDE project: Honesty and facts.
Myth #1 - KDE is more integrated than GNOME
The oft-heard cry of the noisiest KDE advocates. No explanation is
given, the reader is expected to simply grok the wholesomeness of KDE
and the lack of this mystical quality in GNOME. It is nonsense of
course. Neither desktop is particularly "integrated" compared to
Windows XP, and certainly not compared any version of the Apple Mac.
Whatever "integrated" actually means.
Myth #2 - KDE is easier to use
Again, such nebulous arguments are never explained, and the reader is
expected to simply understand the truth of the zealots statement. Both
KDE and GNOME have user-interface irritations (all systems do), but
"ease of use" is not a simple thing to measure. KDE has never been
subjected to detailed user testing, unlike GNOME [gnome.org]
[gnome.org], and the claims of user-friendliness are from crazed
supporters and not average users. Furthermore, the KDE faithful rarely
look beyond simple-minded copying of Windows, and forget that
administering a desktop system is just as important as having widgets
in the correct place on the toolbar. For example: What about
application installation and removal? GNOME has the excellent
RedCarpet by Ximian [ximian.com] [ximian.com], which makes the
installation, removal and updating of applications trivial. KDE users
are expected to fend for themselves with brutal command line driven
systems. GNOME also has the excellent Ximian setup tools to handle
various tricky cross-platform and potentially risky system
configuration operations. KDE offers none of this, only a few small
half-assed Linux-only tools, which make no attempt at check-pointing
to return to known working configurations.
Myth #3 - KDE is more popular
In what sense? Arguably more people use KDE, but it is a close run
thing. Most KDE zealots use the results of online polls as proof of
their superior userbase - which is, quite frankly, complete and utter
nonsense. Online polls are the joke of the century; it doesn't even
require a motivated script kiddie to render then worthless. A single
post alerting the faithful on a zealot-ridden site can skew the result
so much it makes American presidential elections look fair and well
organised. Popularity is also difficult to measure when *both* GNOME
and KDE are frequently installed on the same system. The systems can
co-exist and even run at the same time, except for certain
applications such as panels. Many KDE users actually run GNOME
applications for their superior features and stability, not realising
that by doing so they are barely running KDE at all.
One of the few solid measures of popularity is commercial use of a
desktop, and here, GNOME is far ahead with both Hewlett Packard and
Sun committing to using GNOME as the desktop for their Unix systems.
This also ties in with the previously mentioned ease of use. Sun's
major contribution to the GNOME project is in the areas of
user/developer documentation, testing, accessiblity and user-testing.
Three of the less glamourous parts of desktop development. The arrival
of the GNOME 2.x series will see these contributions reach fruitition
and allow GNOME to make a quantum leap ahead of KDE in most of the
basic computer/user issues.
Myth #4 - Konqueror is the best Linux browser
Oh for a penny every time this lie is told in any KDE story! Konqueror
not a bad piece of software. It's authors deserve praise for the work
done on it. However, the sheer amount of orgasmic gushing by the KDE
faithful is completely out of proportion to its actual quality. It is
quite unreliable and even simple standards compliant pages can crash
it quite comprehensively. It is also lax in its support of basic web
standards compared to either Mozilla or Opera. It is also extremely
slow - much slower than the latest incarnations of the GNOME Nautilus
filemanager/browser (a target of much KDE FUD during its development).
Myth #5 - KDE applications are better/more advanced than GNOME ones
due to the ease of developing in C++ using the Qt toolkit
See also: Qt/TrollTech. This is the most common wail heard by KDE
developers, and yet it is easily disproved by looking at the actual
applications for GNOME/GTK and KDE/Qt. KDE applications often have
larger version numbers than GNOME ones... an old trick played by
commerical software developers. Most KDE apps seem to jump for 1.x
releases long before they are ready - KOffice being the best example.
None of the components in Koffice are worthy of a 1.0 release, let
alone 1.1 or 1.2.
GNOME applications get much more testing in their 0.x stages and
despite shorter development phases they mature and reach stable
featureful release states much more quickly. Some examples of this
are: the superb Evolution (groupware/email), Gnumeric (spreadsheet),
Pan (newsreader), The GIMP (image manipulation), Abiword (word
processing), RedCarpet, X-Chat (IRC client), XMMS (media player),
Galeon (web browser), and for developers: Glade and Anjuta. All of
these packages ooze quality, and far outclass their KDE counterparts.
It is no understatement to say that GNOME is at least 18 months ahead
of KDE in applications, and pulling still further ahead.
It's not only in the area of user applications that GNOME is vastly
more advanced. With the forthcoming 2.x release, a number of
impressive behind the scenes technologies will finally mature:
component technology (bonobo), media (Gstreamer), internationalisation
(pango). As a developement platform, GNOME 2.x is, conservatively, 2-3
years ahead of KDE. And what is more, because it is not tied to a
lowest common denominator cross-platform bloat-fest like the Qt
toolkit, the lead (as with applications) can only increase further.
It is also worth noting that GNOME also develops code for use outside
the project (see the XML libraries as one example) - the KDE project
rarely (if ever) engages in this kind of work. KDE developers ensure
that all software must link with Qt, and hence tie it closely with the
Qt toolkit preventing re-use and enhancing the value of TrollTech
intellectual property.
Yet despite all this, we are still regularly fed the lie that Qt and
C++ makes application and desktop development easier. Judge for
yourself.
Myth #6 - KDE is faster and takes less memory than GNOME
KDE is written in C++. While this is not necessarily a problem, it can
be when Visual Basic reject programmers (which the KDE project is
overrun with) do not know enough to avoid important pitfalls that
plague C++ software projects. Stupid use of autoincrementing operators
and iteration with C++ objects; and masses of unnecessary allocations
and deallocations of memory are two of the most common. KDE suffers
badly from both problems.
Perhaps the most cretinous of all problems is blaming the extremely
slow startup times of KDE apps on GCC. The GNOME 1.x releases were
hardly svelt (2.x fixes many of these issues), but GNOME is a fashion
cat-walk superwaif when compared to KDE's 500lb fat-momma
cheese-burger scoffing trailer trash. One need only look at the recent
fuss over ugly KDE hacks (such as prelinking) used to bandage up the
design and coding flaws in the decrepit KDE architecture to see the
truth.
Myth #7 - GNOME development is slower. KDE releases faster.
Fundamental misunderstanding. The KDE project releases as one big lump
of code due to its use of C++ and the many problems this causes with
libraries. The project bumps the version number of the entire KDE
system for the smallest modifications. GNOME, on the other hand is
componentized and each component releases on a (almost) separate
schedule, bumping it's own version number but not the main GNOME
version (1.4, for example). Occasional releases of the entire GNOME
system happen, and that's when the GNOME version number is bumped
(currently it is at 1.4). To see this in action, use RedCarpet and you
will regular updates to GNOME components. GNOME development is not
slower, it is in fact faster and more advanced. Lamers and newbies,
however, fail to understand the advantages of this method and just see
KDE 1.1.1 followed a few weeks later by KDE 1.1.2. Wow! KDE roolz.
Gnome has never caught up to KDE and never will. And I don't intend to duplicate my efforts, so all my programs are written for KDE.
If your going to donate, give your money to a worthy project like KDE.
I like gnome because it doesn't segfgault every 20seconds, and plus I get gunky vertical lines over any dragged pixmap in KDE 1 2 and 3.
I don't have money, but I plan to contribute when I am older. I've tried each WM, but I keep on coming back to GNOME.
A correction to your statement..
..
..
..
While you may rea din history books that Germany was involve din starting both wwI and wwII
You are sadly mistaken,,,,
It was rich industrialist in Countries such as our won that started both wrodl wars
Lets see
Henry Ford both wwi and Russion revolution
shall I go on
I do think that right wring Chrisitianity comapres to Nazism..
So lets not start draging things through the mud that you probably do not understand
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Checks are payable to the GNOME Foundation. The GNOME foundation is not Ximian.
Anyone who had the slightest interest in finding out what the GNOME foundation is could easily find out. Anyone just interested in trolling would simply jump to ludicrous conclusions and post them on Slashdot...
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Really I wish Linux would die already. The only thing you are killing is Sun and Solaris. Which was Microsoft only REAL competition on the server line. Now that Linux is around companies like the one I work at (dow jones) are converting to Linux and not paying a dime to Red Hat for it. In fact we just downloaded a free iso and bought a used VA Linux rack server off of ebay and we are now hosting http://www.opinionjournal.com/ . While we switch all our servers to Linux and not pay a dime for it, most of the majors distros are going to go broke because we at dow jones are not the only ones not paying a dime. Then we have to go back to Solaris but by then Solaris will probably be dead so we probably have to move over to Windows 2000 Advanced server since all our hardware will be by then converted to Intel from sparcs.