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KDE Gets The Hat
minkwe writes "Tension is currently rising between the KDE and GNOME followers, following the release of the new beta to Red Hat's upcoming distribution. Neither group appears to be satisfied with the fact that Red Hat has null-ified the difference between the two desktop environments."
No distro should take preference over which is the default windowmanager... nor promote one more than the other, it is for the end user to decide which enviroment to use. This is what the open source movement is about.... choices!
Hey, this is my sig, if you don't like it, STOP READING MY POSTS!
Isn't that the point of open-source software?
Now I just can't believe this. People slave away on their open source software "as a hobby" and "for the community." They claim they don't want any recognition in return. Then as soon as someone branches their app, they get all self-righteous.
Reality check: you are not guaranteed anything beyond what is spelled out in your license. None of this appears to violate the [L]GPL, so you brought in upon yourselves. If you didn't want someone to rebrand your app, then you should have gone with a more restrictive license. Red Hat owes you nothing because you told them they could have your work for free. You can't have it both ways, folks.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Linux needs ONE stable, flexible, powerful and good looking GUI. It would make life so much easier for both developers and end users. Look at all the fuss over Aqua, Apple knows that consistent UI is a Good Thing(TM) and we can see the results in MacOS X. Get over this. The choice is not good in this matter. We need consistency if Linux is ever going to make it on the desktop.
J.
That's fine, if that's what you want to do. Don't use Redhat, then.
Everyone who said "Open source is about choice" is right. Redhat chooses to make these changes to the source, something they have every right to do. You can choose to reverse these changes, if you want to use Redhat. You can choose to use Suse if you want a more "default install" distribution. You can choose to use Debian if you want even more control, or you can Roll your own Linux.
What you must realize, though, is that if you want Linux to be widely accepted, supported, and user friendly, a common user interface is a must. Red Hat is taking a step in that direction, and this probably also cuts support costs (as someone in the article mentioned). Red Hat isn't taking away your right to customize, they're just providing a different default customization. You can still make the choice, rather than some committee. Remember, some committee made the original Gnome/KDE default choices.
The whole point of using free software is that the users and not the developers or corporations decide what you use and how to use it. If the gnome developers are angry that users prefer kde because of feature x,y, and z, then they should include it. If they do not want the features then don't code it. Plain and simple. I decide and not redhat, the kde development team, or the gnome development on what I use.
I think including both and having the individual user decide is the best way. Such as I laugh when I see all the clueless windows users wonder why debate and flame each other and which editor to use. In the windows world you only use notepad and purchase VC if you want to do any programming. Microsoft lays out everything for them. If you do not like the way redhat does something you can change it. I downloaded afterstep which redhat no longer supports as an example.
http://saveie6.com/
What RedHat did in the beta (null) was to unify Gnome 1, Gnome 2, KDE and xmms themes. Wasn't this precisely what ESR was saying? Actually it works quite well. The whole interface is slick and unified. Just swap RedHat's default icons for your favorites and you're golden.
Eddy.WriteLinux.Com
I haven't written Konqueror or anything like that, but I have submitted a few decent sized patches to a couple of KDE apps that have been accepted.
And I think this is just great. It is exactly what Linux needs to break into mainstream. The people who won't like it will be the Suse and Mandrake's of the world who won't like RedHat raising the usability bar so significantly. This should have been done along time ago IMHO.
I can't wait for this to be released stable.
. . . how the Linux kernel developers have felt for years. In other words, this hasn't been the first time RedHat has done this, and they are sure to do it again. It's all a part of Open Source, so get used to it. If RedHat does anything stupid (like they have done in the past with their packaged kernels), it will come back to haunt them. If they do anything good, then great, it will go back to the community.
Nathan's blog
The whiny rant on your site, including such gems as "RH [are] a bunch of bastards", does nothing to aid your cause. Were Red Hat truely serious about destroying KDE as you claim, they simply wouldn't supply it with their distro.
You seem genuinely shocked that a company who has funded Gnome development for years isn't pouring resources into KDE. Be realistic about it - what kind of business sense is it to resource supporting two projects that replicate the tasks of each other. They put Mozilla as the default web browser, when they committed resources to Mozilla development? Oh the horror! I know that as a Linux user, I would rather they committed all their resources to improving one project, and get Linux out there on corporate desktops sooner.
Don't get me wrong, I've run KDE for two years and like it. But posting a flamebait rant, as you have, that a company has a different agenda to what you'd rather they do, demonstrates a lack of maturity. You should be content that they are still taking time to supply KDE with their distro. If they wanted to kill it off and strip the user of choice, they simply wouldn't include it.
And you're complaining?
.... and maybe it should be a web browser, Instead, they just want the best web browser avaliable and expect it to be in their goddamned internet menu.
I'm usign the Red Hat beta Null right now. I *like* the fact that all my apps - GTK1, GTK2, QT, XUL, and XMMS skins - look consistent. Other people I know have been asking for this for years.
Did people complain when people made their KDE and GNOME menus consistent? Not if I remeber correctly. Because nobody ever says `today, I feel like launching a GTK app
Likewise, nobody says `today I wish half my app would look like X, and the other half Y'. The lack onconsistent theming between these two desktops is retarded (If you find that offensive, becausee it implies mentally retarded people are stupid, they are).
Red Hat have done some excellent work on Null and done a lot of useability improvements to their desktops. Consistent looking menus and widgets and comparable panel apps is just the start of what should hopefully become a linux desktop where people pick apps based on quality rather than toolkit, and the desktop reflects this.
Well, gee, mosfet, sorry to tell you, but if you didn't want them to do this, you should've put it in your software license. Nobody forced you to contribute code to KDE under the GPL. Redhat's actions are not only totally legal, but totally right. The ability of third parties to customize Free Software to their specific needs is one of the most important freedoms afforded by the GPL.
Red Hat included KDE when the licensing situation was cleared up, and were one of the first distros to have KDE 3.03 packages for their stable release. As someone who posts frequently to RH bugzilla, I know that KDE issues are being fixed by other people than Bero.
Actually, the major apps on Red Hat's quiclauncher are Mozilla and OpenOffice, which are neither KDE nor Gnome apps. Although I love Konq, Mozilla *will* render more pages, so I think itsa good default. Likewise, Openoffie is useable for the 99.9% of people who need to open, edit, and save Microsoft office documents, and Koffice and Abiword / Gnumeric are not.
Are you sure about that? I would have thought that users should obviously get access to the best applications as the default. Doing otherwise is a self-selving wank on behalf of the desktop. Sorry, Mozilla will work for more pages than Konq and therefore makes a good alternative to Konq, which is still there.
Color schemes DON'T work properly everywhere. That's one of the things that's broken about Linux. last time I checked KDE color schemes didn't affect GTK2 apps and vice versa. That said, KDE color schemes still work fine in Null.
Here we go!
This is demonstrates exactly what I mentioned in my previous post. Instead of taking what good can be harvested out of the Red Hat changes, KDE developers have their panties in a bunch for people tresspassin' in their 'hood.
Give me a break! I've worked in the television industry for almost 10 years, I've seen a lot of big b-i-g B-IG egos in that time. But I've never seen such big egos with such a childish slant.
It's not about promoting Linux, it's about promoting and controlling your little cyber-kingdom and territory.
The people in Redmond must be rolling on the floor over this one, they know they have nothing to fear from these bozos.
I'm mostly a Windows guy by background and have been supporting it for years. I would love to be able to roll Linux out to my users, but I need a clean, easy to use interface. I don't give a damn what it is -- I just want it to work consistently and with ease -- like Windows. Yeah -- like Windows. Every single one of my users, no matter their skill level can very easily do things like change their background, resolution, create Word documents, print files, email said files, etc -- on Windows. Before Linux can truly move ahead, some serious integration issues need to be addressed. All I want is a desktop that does its job -- who cares what it is? A user in an office should never have to care. They should simply be able to use it.
I see Red Hat's move as a step in this direction and although some folks do not like Red Hat, I think we are going to begin to see them make major inroads at the desktop, which is good for all of us.
I admit I am absolutely fascinated by the whole Linux phenomenon and this debate gets right to one of the core issues. Open source may indeed be "about choice" but until someone chooses to make a usable, consumer-ized distribution the world will choose to use another operating system on the desktop.
Linux will never be more than a geek toy and a server OS until and unless someone takes seriously the idea that its general usablity has a long way to go. I predict that when/if this happens, that consumerized distro will be universally hated and soundly thrashed in these forums for "taking away choice," and using "too much eye candy," etc.
There are, naturally, other hurdles for Linux making inroads on the desktop. But its consumer-friendliness is certainly one of the biggies. Perhaps Redhat is making more moves in that direction than I realized. I guess the signs are there...it's already been branded as the "Linux for sissies" in these forums.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
Redhat has also changed the Gnome icons, which I've personally always thought were quite nice, to the new uniform set. As many others have said, you can always go back to the original ones with the new RH. They are trying to make GNOME more like KDE or KDE more like GNOME, they are trying to unify some of the differences so that it is easier to support (that is what people pay them to do, after all). You have several options, including using some other distro besides RH, installing Xiamian GNOME if you want, changing the Redhat defaults for either GNOME or KDE (whichever you prefer) to something that you prefer (which may or may not be aligned with the "official" KDE/GNOME ideas).
I fully agree... this is why I use opensource in the first place. In fact, I only know of one or two power users that *don't* customize the daylights out of their work environment anyway. I like my distros to do what they were intended to do -- give me an easy way to install the latest goodies in a semi-stable state. I want the distro to leave out the politics and as much preconfiguration as possible --- I want to make the choices, not some committee.
OK, but that is not what most *customers* want. I agree that choice and customization is a good thing, but for Linux to reach the masses, I think that the customization will need to be done by the vendor pre-shipment. This is what Red-Hat has done. if you don't like it, you can use a different distro or re-customize it.
The market is a good thing. It will select for the best solutions in the long run. Maybe this is why MS is so scared about Linux
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Anyone want to comment on the fact that the first link claims that "About KDE" has been removed? I think unifying the appearances is a good thing, but I don't see what RedHat hopes to gain by not giving credit where it's due. Even if the licenses don't explicitly say these dialogs need to remain untouched (and for all I know they do) RH is making a bad PR move right there.
Everything else about the changes looks gravy to me.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
I'm running null on my laptop right now and when you start a KDE app (I use the KCalc app rather than the Gnome calc, for example) you find the about section still lists the authors and the fact it comes from KDE.
As far as I can tell, none of the KDE apps have been removed. The only thing different is that they have picked what they consider best of breed apps and given them generic labels like mail, or browser.
You don't get all Gnome apps, you get a mix. The nice thing is that they look somewhat integrated and it works. I thought the idea was to give the end user a good experience. RedHat is trying to do that by picking the best of the apps out there for the defaults.
You know, I had more respect for the KDE guys before these ludicrous rants based on falsehoods. It is not even childish, it is just plain pathetic.
Many people have been calling (and some working on) interoperability between desktops for some time. Both the GNOME and KDE developers have been paying lip service to this for years, and the result has been a little bit of drag-n-drop interoperability and a few minor theme tweaks. Finally, Red Hat is actually doing something significant about it. Why? Because Red Hat actually has a financial stake in listening to their users.
Unlike KDE developers, who hear primarily from people regarding KDE issues, and GNOME developers, who hear primarily from people regarding GNOME issues, Red Hat hears from everyone, including people who use both GNOME and KDE and have to put up with the highly inconsistent desktop and app interfaces. In addition to my normal tasks, I also support desktop Linux users at work, and regardless of how we geeks think, average users, even otherwise technical people who just aren't computer geeks, are annoyed and confused by the wildly different interfaces between GNOME, KDE, and various other applications (such as OO). It may sound strange to many here, but I've been asked several times why you can't embed a DIA drawing in an OpenOffice document. It's a real-world problem and Red Hat is actually trying to do something about it, at least at the desktop level. Unfortunately, they can't as easily do much about the apps themselves.
The open source development model has been very good at producing software that is of high functional quality, but it has been much less successful in several areas of consistency, such as user interfaces, printing, and font handling. This is one area where high level integrators like distro vendors can help make a difference. Whether or not you like the icons, it's good that Red Hat is taking this step, knowing full well that it will be controversial among the more hardcore Linux community.
This is my 2nd or 3rd comment on this article and I'll just cap it off for now. Most of the people who posted comments don't run the new Beta of RedHat. Sure, RedHat choose certain applications as defaults and made both gnome and kde look the same. However, if you want to use KMail, Konqueror, KWord, etc. they are all still there. If you want to use them in KDE, customize the menu in KDE so they point to your preferred apps. At first I thought the moron menus in RedHat were terrible: Browse Internet, Check E-mail, etc. But the more I thought about it, the better it was for *most* newer users. If I want to be a power user, all I gotta do is edit the menu to my liking. Most power users already do this. For all of you that have said that their is no more "About...", well, every KDE app I ran had the About box that mentioned the authors, project name, and license (GPL). Sure, they lost that stupid intro "about" screen that you got when starting the app, but who cares. I like what they've done.
Also to Mosfet... let me get it off my chest... you are a great programmer and I respect you but you are a sensationalist idiot. I applied you Liquid theme to RedHat's new beta and it worked fine. Your webpage says that it doesn't work in the new beta. Now why is that? You may be a great programmer, but you are no better than 99.99999999% of slashdotters who come on here and make stuff up. Why don't you download the new beta and try it for yourself before bashing it?
Well, Redhat just can't with win some people. It's a case of "Damned if you do, damned if you don't." About the only way these so-called Open Source advocates would come to accept Redhat is if they got rid of the gui installer, make KDE the default desktop, and lost 99% of their market share.
It's not enough that the company's business model is intertwined with Open Source, GPL software. It's not enough that they fund GCC, kernel,, gnome development, as well as many other GPL projects.
I never thought I'd see so much bitching about a company that sells/supports GPL software. I guess many slashdotters are just a lot of ingrateful elitists.
Nice rant, btw.
Why do I keep typing pythong?
Users have no clue what in the world KPP is. So I suggest redhat change the menu name to Dialup Settings or something to that effect. Please get rid of the KXXX crap it just confuses users...
Got Code?
RedHat has does the same thing to GNOME too, so quit complaining. OpenOffice and Mozilla have replaced GNOME Office and Galeon. GNOME 2's menu panel (which is one of it's best features) has been replaced by one similar to KDE's panel.
They're trying to be fair in offending everyone equally. People have been begging for GNOME and KDE to merge. Like it or not, this is precisely what you'll get if they do merge.