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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."
So does it support transparency, anti-aliased logos and gradient shading now... that's a pretty fancy hat.
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!
Could someone post a link to another relevant article or the articles content?
damn slashdot effect.
KDE sucks anyway. Oh, and Vim is better than Emacs, Java is a dead buzzword, PHP is far too slow to use in a production environment, Python is for hippies, Perl 6 is massively outclassed by Ruby, *BSD is dying, OS X is just eyecandy, Mozilla is a buggy piece of shit and spaces are better than tabs.
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)
Here'w a bunch of screenshots from the article to show what they are talking about:
Screenshots:
#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 #11 #12 #13 #14 #15 #16 #17 #18 #19 #20
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
You can find Google's cache of the article HERE.
"UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things."
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.
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.
The way I do things: pick the right tool for the right job and after some use, customize (interface, menus, scripts, modules, filesystem layout, etc) to best fit my needs. Linux works great for most of my needs, though I also use SGI, Sun, Mac, and Wintel systems for specific tasks.
Command-line console utilities and the various shells are still far from perfection... so why are all of the lemmings moving to GUIs? They're just slow and inefficent anyway! NeWS was bad, X11 is worse. Windows and Mac OS are even less flexible.
If you have to make an X app, please do us all a favor and use "clean" straight xlib, stay away from the bloat of Motif, GTK, and Qt.
*Sigh*
I really wish Debian was a bit more with it... I think I may try Sarge soon.
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/
Ok, the GNOME link collapsed long before I got a chance to look at any of the discussion points, but I have looked at the screenshots. Besides the fact that RH has done a good job of making both G and K look boring and uninteresting (although the Keramic window border still manages to look good, despite their best efforts), I don't see what the problem is.
:Peter
Actually, I would like to see more visual and functional integration of the two. If I could just find a non-Aqua theme that is similar for both KDE and GNOME, I would be truly delighted. While the discontinuity of having two separate themes doesn't bother me much, the neat freak in me wishes for something more...complementary.
The Gnome article Stolen from butthead's post.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
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
What for? They are building to their audience. There's no games. If you aren't their audience, don't use their distro.
Remember - their software is free. Everything they make is free. If you don't like it, either a) don't use it, or b) take their existing code and make it like you want it, or c) hire someone else to do the same.
To make comparisons between Microsoft and RedHat is just completely stupid.
Engineering and the Ultimate
The competition between KDE and Gnome is wonderful! To all those who plead "let's all just get along ... let's combine these efforts into one desktop uber alles." ...bullocks. Competition invigorates. Both of these desktops are evolving at a phenomenal pace. Why? Well, duh, to survive.
As long as we don't forget about sportsmanship...
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
Vim is not better than Emacs!!!
No, seriously, I just come here for the articles.
Jesus H. Jumping Christ! Can we stop this nonsense of which window manager is better? This does nothing productive, and it cements the perception that people who use Linux on the desktop do so because they have nothing better to do between Star Trek/Star Wars conventions.
KDE and Gnome have their merits, and I use one or the other frequently. The bad news is that I still maintain a Windows2000 partition simply because neither one is "there" yet.
I'm sure that the energy wasted in this non-issue would be better served creating an environment where my parents could get XF86 working. The damned thing intimidates me, I can't imagine what it's like to someone trying out Linux for the first time.
It's time the Open Source development teams quit putting up barbed-wire around their little camps and just get on with making their stuff better. These out-bursts remind me of the little cliques you saw in BBS chat rooms in the '90's.
Neither group appears to be satisfied with th fact that Red Hat has null-ified the difference between the two desktop environments.
I wonder how they feel about having their server null-ified by shashdot?
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
How the fuck did you get over 25 karma ?
As everyone keeps pointing out, it's all about choice. "Microhat" - oh haha really clever.
You're obviously one of those people using linux because you hate Windows rather than because you love open source.
Now, being among like minded people you can't stand it and have to pick a side within a side, so you hate KDE and love gnome.
I bet when you go on gnome-loving forums you decide to hate mozilla and love opera (or vice versa).
graspee
They removed the 'about' boxes from all the KDE apps
Advanced users are users too!
Who really cares? The desktop wars are always fun, it pushes all products to "Excel" or change thier "Outlook." Heck I'm not making a "Powerpoint", I'm just stating the facts. Competition is good for linux, it pushes us to open new "windows" and grow. This is evident in the way open source coverage has grown "XP"ediately in media coverage lately. You mark my "Word", it does not matter; KDE or Gnome, which ever product continues to "Project" themselves forward with quality features, smooth intergration and stable ease of use; that will dominate the desktop.
I know plenty of developers who use GTK 1.x out of licensing issues, when they openly admire Qt but can't touch it.
I thought those issues were fixed about 2 years ago. Heck, even RMS is cool with the QPL, last I checked.
--fatboy
who cares? this is just.. dumb. what are we worried about here? anyone else notice that lilo looks different on different distros? who cares?
add this to the pointless and time-wasting flame wars bin, next to vi vs. emacs and the rest of the dumb things we bitch about.
-
Actually, it's X11 that I despise the most. It's great if you're doing Unix sysadmin tasks or a network engineer, but if you're just a normal user looking to use a regular desktop, X11 just plain stinks. KDE and Gnome are both cumbersome, resource-intensive, and huge bandaids covering the shortcomings of the X11 system. The best both of them can do is cover about 50% of the features that other GUI systems such as MS Windows and Mac OS X give you without an add-on.
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.
Yes it is true that KDE is nothing other than a shell. Most applications you use are those of Gnome. I have very mixed feelings over this. Sure, I really like some of the stuff KDE has to offer, but in the end, I like the fact that I can change to KDE or Gnome and the look and feel is still the same. I know people have jumped the gun (like mosfet) by saying that nothing works and how this is the worst thing to ever happen, but eerything is still there. RedHat choose to standardize on Gnome. If you don't like it, DON'T USE IT! No one is sticking a gun to your head making you use it. As for the about box changes, I don't understand what the issue is. If i want to run a standard KDE configuration, then I'll revert back to the KDE defaults. As it is, the system works and looks great.
That's what i get for not previewing the subject. I have ran Limbo but now I am running NULL.
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.
Typo: Read "yospu" as "you". Sorry.
Bruce Perens.
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.
Which is he difficulty of doing dependency resolution post-install. Sure RPM can tell you what you need, but none of the post-install frontends in RedHat would actually resolve these dependencies for you (the one think I really really liked about SuSE).This is good and I wish them the best.
Besides, RedHat wants a supportable desktop so they can go after the corporate workstation market. I am sure this has a lot to do with it.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
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?
He linked to the Emacs page, which is in fact the OS that RMS has produced. It just needs a kernel to bootstrap it. =P
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
And don't forget former physicists turned Linux system administrators at open source companies, who pull down over $80k a year.
Now litte kid, go back to your nice game of counterstrike and come back when you're old enough to participate in a grown up world.
Redhat has also changed the Gnome icons, which I've personally always thought were quite nice, to the new uniform set. As many others have said, you can always go back to the original ones with the new RH. They are trying to make GNOME more like KDE or KDE more like GNOME, they are trying to unify some of the differences so that it is easier to support (that is what people pay them to do, after all). You have several options, including using some other distro besides RH, installing Xiamian GNOME if you want, changing the Redhat defaults for either GNOME or KDE (whichever you prefer) to something that you prefer (which may or may not be aligned with the "official" KDE/GNOME ideas).
Noticed that, didja? Better don your asbestos underwear -- I had to, last time I made such a remark.
Yet everyone here wails no end when M$ and the RIAA do the same control-freakery. Ironic, eh?
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
But I use Fluxbox as my WM with mostly gtk apps. Gqview, Galeon, Gimp, Grip, Etc. I don't get what the whole Gnome VS. Kde thing is. It's all about the apps. Hell, I would give up all the WM's and go back to TWM before I would give up the apps.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
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.
Well I am a developer of an open source project (actually the project lead). Lets see-- I have called Microsoft a Monopolist, incompetent security engineers, etc.
I am starting my own business, so I am a capitalist. But we are going to use open source software wherever possible. And it won't be possible everywhere, but it will be the backbone of our network and on nearly all the desktops.
After all Linux, like Redhat, IBM, and HP is communist, right?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Will it's interface be also unified or ratehr nullified?
NOT.
First of all, this is actually some developers over on the KDE side of the house complaining. I just wish the KDE/GNOME guys would get over the NIH concerns.
Already they are doing a couple of stupid things that will ensure the dominance of Windows for another 5 years.
QT# does not implement the standards form interface making it incompatable with a large number of Windows and Mono applications.
A common Linux API's in C# would be a nice start. Some simple SOAP bingings that are platform independent would make the Linux experience much nicer.
Think about how to play together rather then "my program is better then yours"
But people who don't even know about this might not realize something they couldn't care less about! Not that the UI has anything at all to do with the big picture, except for it work and be easy to use, but for not being a purist, you should be ashamed of your self.
I have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, and I don't even know how what I said could possibly make any sense. But apparently it makes sense to some people. Or maybe I'm mistaken over the whole thing.
Danish != nationality
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.
That's all I got. Feel free to add more.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
I do not like the new look. I would rather
GNOME-ized KDE than vice versa. But I do not
care as I Ximianize my Red Hat anyway.
Kubus
KDE is a package deal. People work hard on it with that in mind. When someone comes along and picks and chooses pieces from the whole, the original idea is trashed. As all of you know, a big part of the Open Source community is the belief in it. For anyone to do anything for free they must believe what they are doing is worthwhile. I can't help but feel bad for the KDE folks who are watching their baby be split into pieces, and incorporated into someone else's dream. You know, this is Red Hat we're talking about here. This *could* seriously alter the future of KDE. When the very idea behind a project changes, a lot of people become disenchanted. Unfortunately, the thin veneer of idealism is all that holds many projects together.
Then again, a license is a license. Red Hat was totally in the right to do what they did. The question is, how does large-scale project snatching effect the developers? This has happened a million times before in the paying world, and the free one too I'm sure.
Crystal Meth: Would you ingest somthing made from a poisonous gas and an explosive metal? You do it every day -- Salt!
Or should we call it GDE?
l lustrator
Here's my list of favorite apps:
Gonqueror
Gapital
Kimp
Knumeric
Knucash
Gi
Gword
Kaleon
Givio
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?
So some big wheels in KDE think KDE must be a package deal. Other people writing KDE disagree.
So let those "package deal" foks write their package deal system, and let it compete with RH's stock system. Make a RH binary release. Whichever is better will come out on top, plain and simple.
May we never see th
Your web site is awfully boring at the moment...I get an "access denied" message for "/" with both lynx and dillo.
May we never see th
When someone comes along and picks and chooses pieces from the whole
Please, please knwo that KDE is intact. The desktop, the panel, Konqueror, Knode, Koffice, etc. Moset is simply lying when he says Konqueror isn't avaliable in the menus. It is.
What Red Hat have doen is picked what they saw to be the best apps to handle some particular tasks by default.
Mozilla (although I love Konq) simply renders more pages out there than Konqueror. I think a new Linux user would simply be happier with a web browser than can view the most popular web site in his country (here, www.ninemsn.com.au) than one that can't. Because of this, Red hat (I believe) thinks it is the better tool, and logically makes it the default.
Likewise, OpenOffice can read, edit, and save to Microsoft Office documents, and unfortunate necessity in todays world, better than KOffice or Abiword/Gnumeric can. Because of this, Red hat (I believe) thinks it is the better tool, and logically makes it the default.
Neither Mozilla nor OpenOffice are GNOME or KDE packages (sadly, they use their own wacky toolkits and reinvent the wheel yet again). So this isn't a matter of Red Hat sabotaging KDE in favor of Gnome.
I'm a KDE user sitting in front of my machien usign the same apps I always do. All of KDE is here and I'm typing this into Konquror which I launched from the KDE menu.
The QT Konqueror window I'm looking at looks the same as the GTK1 xchat, XMMS, and the GTK2 Packages app behind it. This rocks.
Red Hat are picking the best apps for the job for their defaults. Just like real people do.
I think I'm going to adopt those words in leu of retarded.
I've always found using "retarded" instead of "gay" because I know/interact with almost no retarded people, a rather stupid thing to do. I like your verbage though and think I'll adopt it.
I live in a giant bucket.
You mean a commercial company that's paying the rent by distinctively re-packaging a free OS has distinctively re-packaged the OS again?
If you don't like what Red Hat's doing, then use the power of the almighty buck to reward another distro.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
in reading your article, one word kept running through my head: twink. you either lied, misled, or posted out of ignorance. lame.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
I know plenty of developers who use GTK 1.x out of licensing issues, when they openly admire Qt but can't touch it.
I thought those issues were fixed about 2 years ago. Heck, even RMS is cool with the QPL, last I checked.
Well it depends what you're talking about. For an open-source developer, there's no problem with Qt. For someone who wants to write a closed-source application, Qt costs a lot of money. Then again, it's fair since Troll Tech has to make money somehow and making Qt GPL was already very nice of them...
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
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.
"Linux needs ONE stable, flexible, powerful and good looking GUI."
True, we only need one but having a choice isn't a bad thing.
"It would make life so much easier for both developers and end users."
The users can load which ever desktop they like and the hardest thing about different desktops is that some of them have trays and other's do not. Not really a big deal.
All in all choice is good and I wouldn't suggest that we drop Gnome or KDE. I would suggest that we have a minimum standard set of libraries. That's what developers really need.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
The fonts in the new NULL beta are the best I've ever seen on a Linux desktop. I don't know what magic they're using, but my old RH 7.3 install with the Microsoft Web Fonts, XFT2 and GNOME2 anti-aliasing doesn't hold a candle against the NULL beta.
Now looking at the NULL beta XFT config file, I can see that there's a ton of setups listed, alias size tresholds, sub pixel aliasing etc. Also, there's a new Red Hat developed GNOME2 program for changing the between various aliasing modes.
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.
On my system GNOME2 apps follow my KDE color scheme. Of course I do not use Redhat but SuSE.
Moritz
If I've read correctly the kde.dot text above, they re not complaining about the common look but about:
1/ red hat made the "about kde" entry in konqueror disappeared.
2/ red hat behaviour toward kde has always been disrecpectfull (they feel)
3/ 1/ + 2/ made them feel the changes were made to have kde disappear in terms of look and feel, and credits, in the redhat distro.
I think it's red hat's fault if they can't have a good relationship with a project they get a lot from, and if they get bad pr afterward.
(remember the linux expo pr fiasco (for red hat) between red hat and kde).
Here's a RedHat+GNOME user.
to Kiddie Desktop Enviroment? Or rumor central? The about box is there. None of this discussion was on the limbo mailing list (which is used for Null). All I see here is assumtion, and rumor. If the KDE camp wants to force a default look then they should change their license. If they have issues, they should ask questions on the proper mailing list for the RedHat beta they are testing. Not posting rumors that they got from IRC.
Get a free ipod.
.. this is wrong exactly why?
Red Hat gets a lot of shit for being GNOME-centric. It includes KDE, but granted have never really made that big of an effort of integrating KDE.
Now, how many distributions out there is KDE-centric? Just about everyone! SuSE, Mandrake, Caldera, Conectiva, etc..
Can someone then please tell me what is so wrong about there being a big GNOME-centric distribution? I'd love to know, because frankly I'm a misguided fool that thinks it's great that different distributions cater to different needs.
I'm a GNOME-user, and I love Red Hat for their work on GNOME, and their level of integration with it. Red Hat is the best distribution out there for me. If you are a KDE-user, then why not try out Mandrake, SuSE, Conectiva, etc..? They might be a better choice for you.
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.
What is with the trend towards soft-edged, rounded, muted icons, windows and menus?
Everything reminds me of "Barney the Dinosaur" and other 2-year-old soft-n-cuddly, non-offensive, no-sharp-edges T.V. shows.
Ugh!
I hope RedHat just "unified" everything, and it can all be changed with a theme.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Sounds to me like you're the zealot, friend.
People such as yourself are no longer in the cross-hairs of the folks making commercial-ready desktops. You talk about architecture as if an end user gives a rat's patootie about it. All they want is functionality and the ability to move from one app to the next without feeling like they have to re-learn everything first.
It looks to me like someone's actually thinking out of the techie/programmer box by starting to build/configure apps for end users. This is long overdue and should be applauded.
Luckilly, the people who still pointlessly try to keep the GNOME/KDE "war" alive are decreasing in number. It's over, buddy. Nobody won, so now there's cooperation. Deal with it.
(Why am I replying to an AC? Someone should slap me...)
Um, the guy you responded to was *joking*. Take a look at what the guy you responded to was responding to.
How then is the programmer to get his due?
End-user documentation, when present, must prominently give credit to both [COMPANY-NAME], the [SOFTWARE-NAME] software and its list of contributors, and likewise must include an associated reference to [WEBSITE NAME AND URL].
When an "About Box" or other primary user interface element which is routinely used by end-users to get version or status information about a graphical application constructed using this software, this user interface element must prominently give credit to [COMPANY-NAME], the [SOFTWARE-NAME] software and its list of contributors, and must also include a reference to [WEBSITE NAME AND URL].
C//
You are technically correct, the problem is that users want both technical interoperability and consisetncy, and Red Hat must be hearing this in spades, otherwise why would they be doing something that they know is virtually guaranteed to piss off a large number of both KDE and GNOME evangelists?
Both issues are problems that the Linux community is going to need to solve if average corporate Windows users are to be happy accepting Linux as an alternative.
Both issues are very pervasive. The consistency issue affects desktop UIs, app UIs, font handling, printing, system configuration, and I'm sure several others.
Interoperability still has a long way to go too. When I answer previous Windows users' document embedding questions by telling them that Linux has no consistent document embedding mechanism that works across all applications, they are typically pretty surprised.
For many of these users (primarily the ones just want to get their work done and don't have a technical interest in computers), their systems may crash less, but the interoperability and consistency problems make their overall experience less pleasant than it was with Windows. As long as this is the case, Linux has an uphill battle.
It's supposed to be able to return you to the exact state in terms of running applications. Are you sure that you've done this (from the Nautilus help manual):
And also upon MainMenu->Logout->SaveCurrentSetup is checked? I suspect that you need to take the actions above.
Have you tried using CUPS? It's worked perfectly for me when I switched from using the LPrng printing system. I also made sure that I had gimp-print and foomatic packages installed and it works very nicely. Try using the /usr/bin/redhat-switch-printer command to switch over to cups. (The RH redhat-switch-X commands work with a re-implementation of Debian's "alternatives" system).
But I _explicitly_ chose to _not_ use the default (which is GNOME)
No, it isn't. The default is neither KDE nor Gnome. Red Hat aren't putting Galeon on your desktop, nor are they expecting to to actually use Abiword for anything serious. They've actually chosen two GNOME/KDE neutral apps for Office Suite and Web Browser.
You selected to use the KDE desktop. When you selected to install KDE, Red Hat installed Kong, KOffice, Kmail, etc. and pu them there in your menus. But most new users to linux would rather have the browser than renders more web pages and the office suite that's finished rather than the one that doesn't and the one that isn't. Likewise, Evolution is much more simialr to what a Windows users expects from a PIM than KMail is (because KMail isn't a PIM, its an email program and nothign more) The rest of us can change the defaults.
Because Gnome apps don't know/care about KParts?
/etc/X11/applnk bug, but the menus are how I launched the Konq session I'm using to type this), contrary to Mosfet's lies.
Again, the main apps involved, for webv browser and office suite, aren't Gnome apps. But more importantly, all those applications are still there in the menus (unless you're affected by the
The copyright information, full license agreement, and list of authors is still intact on every KDE application. I'm looking at it right now.
Konquerer 3.03, using KDE 3.0.3-2
Web browser, file manager
(c) 1999 - 2002, the Konqueror Developers
http://www.konqueror.org
Authors:
David Faure
faure@kde.org
developers (parts, I/Olib} and maintainer
[list of athors follows]
License agreement
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Version 2, June 1991
[rest of license follows]
That's because all this information in contained in the About Konqueror screen. About KDE is an advertisement for KDE. You can remove about KDE from every KDE app and still thank every author, display every license, and show every author. And that;s exactly what Red Hat have done.
1) All of Red Hat's KDE apps still include every copyright, every license, and every author's name. That's because they live in About [Application}. About KDE is basically an advertisement for KDE.
2) Some people feel Red Hat's behaviour has always been disrespectful, just as I'm sure there are KDE developers who have had issues with Debian changing things in their package to improve (in the distro makers eyes) the output. But these people, in both cases, are a minority. Look at what the developers in the post actually said - they're all overwhelmingly not fussed about Red Hat's actions. Likewise the only KDE developer here approves.
That's because they live in About [Application}. About KDE is basically an advertisement for KDE.
yes, and it would be a sign of respect to leave it there. Don't you think?
Look at what the developers in the post actually said
Yes, that's the reason of my post. They werent as infuriated as the news from slashdot tried to make them look.
Yet a real ressentment against rh exist in enough kde developper to have that kind of wrong news arrise. Try to check the incident with the rh pr man and the reactions that came from it.
All and all, kde developper are providing some free work. Respect and recognition is the least that should come from those who get anything from it.
I always praise kde or gnome people whenever I can. I always give credits where credits is due. I never transform another person work when unnecessary.
Why shouldnt rh?