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KDE Gets The Hat

Posted by michael on from the kat-in-the-hat dept.

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."

4 of 540 comments (clear)

  1. Re:ridiculous by Dr_LHA · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The problem that KDE people have is not that Redhat is theming KDE to look like Gnome, but rather that they have also removed the "About KDE" menu item from KDE which displays copyright information and info on KDE from the KDE programs.

    There's a very real possibility that this is against the LGPL that kdelibs uses due to this clause:


    You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Library's complete source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and distribute a copy of this License along with the Library.

  2. Re:usability and Linux for sissies by symbolic · · Score: 3, Interesting


    You make some very good points. But I don't think it has to involve removing choice, so much as it should make some of them less obvious. This is kind of how Apple handled it with OSX. Very pretty and functional interface, but if you really want to get your hands dirty, you can easily go for it.

  3. Re:Someone finally makes Linux apps look consisten by slamb · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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).

    Actually, I feel that way.

    My ideal situation would be for all applications to look and behave in the same way. It might be themeable, but there's only one theme - all applications use it.

    But Qt-based, gtk-based, and XUL-based applications do not behave in the same way. So I would rather they be visually distinct. The consistency of appearance is a foolish one IMHO because it falsely implies a consistency of behavior.

    (Obligatory quote: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds." It's not really appropriate - I respect the RedHat developers even if I disagree with this decision. I just like the quote. ;)

    Fortunately, much of it can be turned off fairly easily, at least in the KDE area. I installed (null) tonight and have done this already. What I don't see any way to get rid of is their bad iconset.

  4. Re:Someone finally makes Linux apps look consisten by mickwd · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Actually, I think that the choice between the two desktops is good, and that (healthy) competition between them helps both of them improve.

    Red Hat's idea sounds good in practise, but what I would like to see is the following:

    a) A set of themes which make KDE and Gnome look and behave similarly (as similarly as possible, anyway);

    AND

    b) Some sort of unified control panel application which applies settings, themes, etc, to BOTH KDE and Gnome environments.

    It should be possible to have a control panel application which detects which environment it's running under and uses the appropriate GUI toolkit - separation of program logic from GUI code and all that - even to detect at run-time whether both KDE and Gnome are installed.

    Of course, both environments will not be identical. But the differences between them could be minimised in this way.