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Red Hat Explains Stance on KDE/Gnome Desktop Changes
An anonymous reader writes "A lot of people are angry over the changes RedHat has done to KDE and Gnome in their latest beta, code-named Null. They have basically "nullified" all the default themes and settings with which each desktop attempts to posture for more users. Instead, there is now a beautiful unified look. To explain RedHat's stance, Owen Taylor writes this piece here. I hope that RedHat successfully forces both Gnome and KDE to become compatible with one another which would result in the creation of a single desktop. This would be the greatest gift to the Linux world."
Begun the flame-war has!
How is Red Hat's configuration any _less_ obnoxious than KDE/Gnome/Ximian's ?
An unified look is good for first time users ... one look, 2 desktops ....
... is this good? I mean, KDE control center != Gnome Control Center, Customization is different, Nautilus and Konqueror are a lot different ...
But since they work in a very different way
------- The last Sig. got fired.
Can we get some screenshots of these desktops so that we may actually see how they look.
--- No, english is not my mother tongue.
I, for one, like the different options we have in terms of desktop environments. I don't want either KDE or GNOME to go away.
I think the different desktop environments are important the way it's important to have variation in the gene pool.
We can only attain perfection through variety.
"If I were to ask you a hypothetical question, what would you like it to be about?"
You can't have your cake and eat it, unfortunately. If your wish is to see Linux achieve large scale desktop penetration, you need to acknowledge that the mainstream user wants one consistent interface, look and feel, etc. If they are a "power user", they'll hunt down the options you think they should have anyway, and customize quite happily. Don't worry about it!
I couldn't agree with RedHat's statement any more. I definately feel that a unified look and feel is something that Linux has always needed. People need to be able to look at a system and recognize it. You can always recognize Windows by the look of it, as it should be for Linux. Users need this to use Linux. If you want people to use Linux for their desktop they must first feel comfortable with it...
------ This has been provided as a public service! ------
A standard desktop ? Then how will all the prima-donna point out how their desktop is so much better because of this or that bell and whistle.
What a horrible idea, leveling the playing field and have a standard theme that concentrates on usability and then a pure battle of abilities to determine who underpins it. If there can be no differentation in terms of buttons and icons then how would people judge if not by "see-through windows" v "tear-off tabs" and other such pointless arguments and wars.
Terrible concept, concetrate a team on a decent standard theme, and then have competition for the best engine behind it....
Umm wait, isn't this in effect the same as the Video card market where standards have led to the engines (the cards) being bought and swapped purely on the grounds of ability, sure each has "special" instructions, but for 99% of applications no one cares.
Oh and isn't it the same as the PC market, one instruction set, AMD v Intel.
Oh I see, thats what they want, what a great idea now I understand.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/cont rib/texstar/screenshots/
This is a positive thing, for the reasons RedHat is stating; namely that many users don't want to make a decision between "this one" or "that one". How many times have people whined on /. that Linux will never make it to the desktop because there are too many tweaks things the users need to learn.
This is RedHat's way of making Linux more appealing to the end user. Good for them.
If you don't like it, do what I do and run Slackware (or other distro of choice), but bravo for the RedHat folks. This is a positive step.
If RH don't like this then why don't they just drop the one(s) they don't want people to use?
Then we'd get the "Redhat is Microsoft" arguments, and people saying that they're reducing choice, stiffling competition, etc, etc.
Why is MS or AOL powerful? Because they are simple, and have lots of users. We need to get more people using Linux.
Get your own free personal location tracker
I think Red Har has recognized that look and feel unification is a prerequisite to corporate entry. I understand the usual ./ user's opinion that desktop uniqueness is cool, but when you're a corporate help desk manager with a limited budget you don't need 2500 desktops looking different. It makes training more difficult too. The similarity of desktops is how MS can easily have people upgrade from Win98 to NT to 2000 to XP... the desktops are the same and retraining cost is minimal. Good for Red Hat!
If you have to support a product, standard look-and-feel is a good thing for you. If you allow advanced users to change whatever they want, good for us.
Where is the problem?
___ I don't respond to Anonymous Cowards, and I Never Mod them UP.
Typical slashdot idiot. Did you even read the article?
RedHat is not removing any options. They are more or less just creating similar themes for both KDE and GNOME.
So, basically their reaction to users having a choice is to try and negate that choice by making the options as similar as possible. How very MicroSoft!
I think you're missing the point here. The idea is to unify a desktop solution so that people who are familiar with MS (read: most of the world) are not terrified of trying to configure a Linux box. I don't see this as MS-like. I see this as a step in advancing Linux as a desktop solution.
The whole point of having KDE/GNOME/WindoMaker/Et al is to allow people to pick the one that suits them.
Very true. If the experts who are used to Linux want it, they should still be available 'untouched' for them to install and configure. But let's face a fact here: RedHat is becoming the easiet of the distros to install and configure; making the setup and configuration less daunting for newcomers is a step in the right direction.
If RH don't like this then why don't they just drop the one(s) they don't want people to use?
Don't you think that this is more MS-like than trying to unify their desktop components? To just drop packages they don't like would be a true method of negating choice. THAT would be a step in the wrong direction.
--Kylus
Idiot-proof something, and Life will build a better Idiot.
"I hope that RedHat successfully forces both Gnome and KDE to become compatible with one another which would result in the creation of a single desktop. This would be the greatest gift to the Linux world."
Yeah, sure. We hate M$ for being too controling and inhibiting choice with their single dominant product, but a single unified Linux product would be a good thing. Some people apparently fail to realize that the incompatibilities that many rant about and that Red Hat would try to smooth out are a direct consequence of variety. Sure, standards are nice, but nobody pays these people to do any of this, or be compatible with any other product - they do what they like, and if you don't like it then you go to a different bunch of people. It's called choice.
The same thing applies to Red Hat themselves. If you don't like the fact that they're limiting variety of desktop environments then you go with a different distro, or set up your own desktop environment, or do whatever the hell you want to. There are lots of choices, after all, which makes this whole thing moot.
Even as you read this, your pants are strangling your loins! Aaa!
We're doing something wrong if a user is choosing between logging into GNOME or KDE because: There is an application available in one and not in the other.
I've seen and heard people say things like, "well I switched to KDE because I liked the applications better". The way things are now, people don't know that it doesn't matter what desktop they run, this Gnome/KDE silliness has given them the idea that they need to run the whole desktop just to get the apps for that desktop.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
There is NOTHING stopping the user from installing either one of these packages from source. Sure, you loose some of the laziness factor, but..
Sure, if Red Hat said "Installing anything but our software voids your support", you might have a case. But in this case?? No...
BWP
Note: they have not taken away any user choices. You can still completely change your KDE/GNOME appearance, perhaps even back to the KDE/GNOME defaults. The only things that might bug users are the changes they've made to the code, but we don't yet know what they are, or how significant they are, so we'll have to wait and see.
I for one would welcome it. I'd change my themes straight away, because I've spent far too much boredom-time making my KDE3 desktop look exactly how I want it. But I also had to spend quite a while getting GNOME and GTK+ apps to look right so they almost blend in with my KDE3 apps and desktop.
The final goal here is of course compatability in themes. I.e. you download and install a KDE theme, and you can then make your GTK apps look identical, either with the same theme, or a mirror package. It's something even RMS has proposed, and something that will make life a lot more pleasant for those aesthetic pedants like myself, without taking away any of the choice we have in desktops and looks. Hopefully RedHat will find a constructive way of using these code modifications to help the KDE & GNOME projects achieve this "integration".
well, if I read the article correctly, all they said was that they made them look/act as closely as possible out of the box... it doesnt sound like they took anything away from either, just set the preconfigured options so that they'd look the same to someone like me, who doesnt currently use linux but might one day want to install it. Its the same with Windows, they set the preconfigs the same, and if you dont like them, you change them. But conformity is nice, out of the box. (in other words, if I watch Bob install red hat, and then I go home and install red hat, its nice to know what its supposed to look like when it boots, rather than getting something thats completely different, albeit perhaps not wrong)
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
I have to say, it does look very nice and I (being in the "lets have one desktop and do it right for the sake of consistency and adoption" camp) will definately be installing it when it is released.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
-sigh-
:)
Look, RedHat is right on this one. Finally, after years of frustration, someone might just drag linux kicking and screaming into the desktop market.
I swear, linux does not want to be mainstream. Sure, everyone talks about how they want their favorite OS to be taken seriously on the desktop, but no one wants to take the steps necessary to do it. I like choice, don't get me wrong. But most users do not give a shit about choice. They want AOL and MS Word. They want the start button. Fine, give them the start button, give them an MS Word clone. Let the world view linux with this perspective: a solid OS that 'just works' with a standard interface and standard applications that work as well as those on Windows. And for those who want to do more, we have other "versions" of the OS that allow other desktops, applications and such.
To sit here and rip them for 'taking away choice' is just ignorant and, well, stupid. Please, people. I like WindowMaker, but I also know what we need to make linux work outside of the server room and the geek's bedroom. Don't forget, programs like 'switchdesk' exist for a reason. Those who want to use it, and those who can use it, are not prohibited from it.
Bravo RedHat. Lead linux into battle for the server and desktop. Let everyone else follow. I need to get back to my kernel compile, now.
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
I can't disagree more with a unified desktop. It might make it easier to for Redhat to manage a distribution or something, but the whole reason Gnome was created was people didn't like KDE. KDE users use KDE cause they don't like Gnome.
I loaded up Null last week, ran Gnome, and was not very impressed with the changes. I think I'll stick with Slackware or Mandrake. They don't change the interface.
From Redhat's standpoint, this move makes sense, because they want to provide their users with a simple, ready-to-use system, and the less decisions a user has to make in order to get that, the better. On the other hand, if you prefer to use Gnome or KDE settings instead of the Redhat ones, there's nothing stopping anyone from changing those settings, or even grabbing Gnome or KDE and installing from scratch (I do that often myself, particularly because I enjoy playing with the unstable branches of things). Given that the other obvious option for Redhat would've been to pick one desktop or the other and run with it, I'd argue that this is not a particularly bad outcome. At least the user still does have a choice, even if both desktops look similar by default.
I started out making this a long and winded post, but instead, deleted it and will just say this:
:)
In my opinion, competing desktops will breed innovation and evolution. We need one unified desktop like I need a hole in the head. A few years ago, if all car makers joined forces to make one type of car, we'd all be driving a Yugo. If there was no Macintosh, we'd all be stuch with Windows 2.0 in the office.
I loathe people who want to treat everything as if it were a zero sum game.
What linux or any other open source program really needs are open sourced drivers so that a standard install procedure will recognize ALL (known) hardware found and with open sourced drivers available for download of non-standard hardware. (And that excludes cheap crap like nvidia pulls which taints the linux kernel.)
Unfortunatly, such an objective is out of the hands of the open source developers/zealots and within the capabilities of multinationals who are too shortsighted to open source their drivers and/or hardware specs. Besides, the desktops currently available still lie overtop a CLI and if you ever want Linux to have success as a Desktop OS, you need to get rid of the CLI first. Make a clear difference between desktop and other distros. Eliminate the damned CLI from the desktop ones, bind the kernel to a GUI instead. Desktop users do not want the GUI as basis, they want the GUI.
.Hate me!
Those who don't care, don't care. Pick a default desktop and make it as good as possible. Newbies use what you give them until they get a reason to disagree.
Those who care, do so for a reason and are not going to appreciate this unification stuff..
Nobody expects the spanish inquisition!
The real reason everyone likes to have multiple desktop environments is for choice. The choice to develop applications with the toolkit of your choice. This is great because, as everyone loves to say around here, "this is what makes Linux great, choice and freedom."
But as with all choices to diverge, rather than unify, someone suffers. Up unitl now that has been the end user -- the person all this software was written for in the first place, or is it? KDE and Gnome are great, but they offer two different window kits, two different looks and feels, and two different user experiences. This is bad for the end user. If I am KDE die hard and want to use a Gnome application, I can, the only problem is that it's going to look and feel like a Gnome app on my KDE desktop. And if I was a Gnome user the above situation would be reversed, you get the idea.
The point here is that Red Hat has done a great service to the KDE and Gnome teams. They have taken two incompatible, entirely different desktops, and unified them for the benefit of the end user.
Let's not forget that Linux is about freedom not only for the developer, but for the end user. Well written applications are designed with the user in mind. If the KDE and Gnome teams want to contribute to the Linux/*nix community in a truly free and open maner, they will see this move for what it is: a change to allow developers to continue to innovate in the way they see fit, using the right tools for the job at hand, all while improving user experience. That's what it's all about. Right?
a few others
$bash>
;
c:\>
nothing else necessary
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Linux is already on more desktops than the Mac, without a consistent UI. It's not the interface, it's what you can do with the system. The interface is only that, an "interface" to the system.</flame>
Yeesh!. Ok, now for the real stuff... nobody really gives a shit about the user interface if it's working properly. When it doesn't, then there's a problem. User interfaces should be transparent to the end user.
That being said, I think Redhat should have respected the creative differences that the two parties have added to their UIs.
The arguments are presented in an articulare, well reasoned way. They are reasonably persuasive from a business perspective, both for Redhat and for promoters of Linux Desktop adoption, however I'd expect to see a rebutal from each of the KDE and Gnome projects vary soon; each of which will probably say the same thing, that they agree that their two projects should colaborate more to bring the look and feel into alignment, however it is not Redhat's place to undertake this.
If Redhat is to take this on, then other distributions of Linux will suffer due to their newfound 'inconsistency', and while this may be a reasonable approach for Redhat, it is something to be avoided from the perspective of the Redhat and Gnome projects since their software is provided with virtually all Linux distributions so in order to gain the greatest market penetration they should be acting in support of all distributions. I'm certain these rebutals will be ariving soon and I look forward to reading them.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Redhat's unified desktop is a step forward. Since both desktop environments are customizable, users can still make them look and act any way they want. The choice is still there.
Now, the desktop environments will compete more on technical prowness than their default look, which is where the competition should be IMHO.
I hope that this decision helps unifiy the two desktop environmnents down the road.
Exactly. RedHat isn't taking away your ability to choose. If you want something to be different, change it. In the meantime, All the people who need standards to survive int he computer world can enjoy a little more of Linux than they could before.
Here's a bad computer-car analogy. If the Microsoft car has a steering wheel, and the Linux car has a numeric keypad (which undoubtably can do more), most people couldn't drive the Linux car.
RedHat is trying to push the Desktop Linux by making different GUIs work the same. This is known as "standards."
The real issue here is while there was a display manager that became the standard, these should have been something on interface design long ago.
We live in a world of standards, and yet the one thing that needs the most standardization is the one thing people push to have the least.
Free the GUI!
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
11 comments, and most of them are people grumbling about how Red Hat is squeezing choice out of the hands of the user. But really, is this true? What RH has done (from what I hear, I don't chase bleeding-edge distros, usually) is just change the way things look. They've provided a different default appearance. How is this worse from the default appearances provided by the GNOME and KDE teams? (RH's arguments for why it's better are in the article, you should read it :3 )
It's not like Red Hat is releasing modified versions of GNOME and KDE that don't let you customize the appearance; then, only then, would the complaints about choice be founded. The people who really care about the difference between GNOME and KDE probably do so on reasons deeper than 'the default theme looks cool'. (Personally, I don't really like either of the default appearances that much ^^; ) So, when nagora asks "If RH doesn't like this, why don't they drop the one they don't want people to use?" the answer is: they don't care what you use, but they want the defaults to look reasonably similar, because they know that people who really don't *want* their default theme either know how to change it or probably have settings that they'll import anyway.
Remember who Red Hat's intended market share is: the corporate environment. A lot of people I've talked to recently agree that RH's biggest 'ins' are (or should be) for office workstations. Lots of places implement a baseline standard that they want to look the same, but that people can customize if they want to (as long as they don't spend hours tweaking it). This is the mentality that RH seems to target. Yes, this isn't for everyone, but that's the point ... there are plenty of good distributions out there, and many more choices out there if you really really don't like it. But no-one said you have to use Red Hat. (Although I could understand concerns about RH-isms creeping into LSB, but nobody's brought that up.)
Remember, RH == vendor for corporate enviroments. Corporate environments like standard desktops, so this move makes sense in Red Hat's perspective.
The whole point of having different linux distos is to allow people to pick the one that suits them.
Don't like what RH is doing? Pick a different distro. Don't like what any of them are doing
I can recognise Windows by the fact that it is bland and ugly. I can recognise a GNU/Linux or FreeBSD desktop no matter what window manager is being used; I'd used just about all of 'em. Let Red Hat do what it wants with its distro; if you don't like what they do, then switch to Gentoo or FreeBSD. Red Hat is not Burger King, and "Have it your way" isn't one of Red Hat's slogans. So if you want Linux made your way, make it yourself.
The idea is: What looks the same behaves the same.
Which is not the case with current Gnome and KDE. And probably never will be.
I have different desktop themes and backgrounds at work and at home for a reason. My mind and my fingers automatically switch passwords and procedures, because without conscious effort I recognize the different environment and switch to different trained behaviour. Also, the few Gnome programs I am using look decidedly different than the KDE stuff I am using, and this helps a lot. Looking different, I do not expect the Gnome stuff to operate like the KDE grouping around it, and automatically treat it differently.
Kristian
There are two points Owen didn't strike home with a sledgehammer, so I'll say them:
First, those users who already know they PREFER the "old look" of KDE or GNOME can configure their new Red Hat Linux 8.0/Null++ to regain that old look. The Red Hat "Bluecurve" work is almost entirely artwork and menu organization, both of which can be re-themed or re-edited by any user who wants to. This change is to remove a bewildering either-or choice that paralyzes many newcomers.
Second, Owen didn't mention that a huge area that BOTH desktops need to strive to improve is accessibility. It's vitally important for Linux to make inroads into the highly regulated Government sector. GNOME2 is laying groundwork for major gains in accessibility, thanks to partnering research by folks at Sun and other places. KDE needs to work hard on being accessible too. Features like Sticky Keys are just a start. Supporting limited-vision users and other areas is a must. Both desktops should do what they can, so that the best approaches can be adopted as standards.
[
That Red Hat pours alot of money in to GNOME, while they give hardly any support to KDE (in fact, they seem to refer KDE as "Crapland" (according to the Red Hat bug-report where they talked about renaming apps and removing the "About" box)). And now they seem to be turning KDE in to GNOME-clone. It's understandable that KDE-developers and users are less than enthusiastic about it.
FWIW: I'm a KDE-user but I support competition between the desktops. In fact, I'm going to give GNOME2 a shot in the near-future.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Umm... yeah right.
So, where's my little 'x' thingy for clicking when I wanna close that box and put it on the shelf (where it will collect dust for a year).
Do I go through a login prompt to get to the cardboard insert?
Sorry, I thought it was funny.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
They're trying to make an OS called RedHat 8 which happens to be based on the Linux kernel and other free tools. I think it's a great decision on their part. It's very similar to what Apple did with OS X.
No one has a reason to complain; despite anyone's accusations, RedHat is still an open-source operating system. I personally wouldn't have a problem if they stopped giving away the OS for free via FTP. There's certainly no requirement that they do so. They are a company which has a product which they are trying to make money from. If you feel that RedHat is simply making money from other people's work, by packaging together free applications: go get those applications on your own, and make your own distro (or choose a completely free, volunteer distro like Debian). RedHat does an enormous amount of work assembling and testing those applications, and customizing them into a unified OS. They deserve to be paid for that work.
Frankly this is a win - win situation. Red Hat now has a more well-rounded desktop with a more unified feel that they can sell to corporate customers. Furthermore, has anything really changed? Red Hat's KDE desktop was a piece of crap, and their Gnome wasn't much better. I've never met a Red Hat user who didn't tear out one or the other and replace it with either the latest build of their favorite desktop or something entirely different. Hell, the first thing I do when I install a new Red Hat box is install Ximian. You have the same choices you had before, today.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
RH should include a default KDE and default Gnome desktop for those that want it (those of us that want it can handle the custimization). Call this an advanced set up feature for those that require it. I'm quite used to many of the KDE feature set personally, and use gnome apps in my desktop. If I cannot easily or reasonably setup a default KDE env, then I will go elsewhere for my distribution. I will also make that recomendation to others.
Consider this RH, I've been using your product since before 4.2, I've been paying for it since 6.2 (I felt you deserved my bucks) If I can't easily install my favorite WM during the install process, you will loose this customer.
cluge
PS: Yes, you have managed to cripple some of the neater features of both desktops or at least hide them, and you have also turned out an ugly compromise.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
A unified look and feel is fine, as is a common mechanism to change it regardless of the underlying desktop system.
Where I think Red Hat have made mistakes (by incompetence, rather than malignly) is by modifying code rather than commissioning the GNOME and KDE teams to do it on their behalf. What they have generated are Red Hat GNOME and KDE desktops. In doing this they have antagonised developers and made both their own and the vanilla desktops more difficult to support.
They have also made maintenance more difficult, KDE 3.1 is due out shortly. This means that all the changes the RH put in place will have to be repeated. If they had engaged the developers in the first place this would have been much less likely to happen.
While there are mujahadin on both the KDE and GNOME desktops, the developers seem to have a relationship of friendly rivalry. By taking the lead on this RH could have facilitated better interworking between the two systems.
I like the diversity that Linux provides. I LIKE the choice. And I hope commercialization doesn't ruin that.
You could certainly take this as a first step towards that direction, but i'd suggest you have a little linux faith that the community would not allow things to progress in that direction for too long.
Just as it's easy to see that which m$ has done poorly, it takes a bit of reflection to realise that which they've done right.
I'm certain it's no coincidence that the mainstay of the workflow for win95-98-nt4wks-nt4srv-win2kpro and win2ksvr are nearly indentical, nor is it strange that winxp adds functionality while still maintaining many old ways to get to stuff.
Any winblow$ user can easy pass knowledge of how to use programs along to any other user without having even the slightest knowledge of how the os really works.
In M$ junk, apps mostly behave the same, Cutting and pasting works cleanly across all applications (including text and binary data), the toolbars on most apps mirror each other, it's very easy to navigate most base apps because most base apps work alike.
Yes there needs to be unification in the linux desktop and application base, and as long as there they maintain an easy way to break that unification or modify it as any user sees fit, linux sill still holds a superior edge to windows dull and slow progressing feature list.
I don't think they're out to become MS i think they're out to become something bigger and better, and honestly, I'm all for it, I seriously doubt they could do as good of a job of being jerks as M$ does anyway.
bleh too early for comtemplation, must have caffiene!!!!!!
Let me also add, that historically I am a GNOME user, but I regularly use KDE3 for:
:)
1) To learn it.
2) Asteroids
3) Because its there.
There are great many things I like about both desktops and I will probably use both for the rest of my life. This move by Red Hat could make my life much easier.
I know I'm not alone either.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
Only one distro is reducing the # of choices, not the whole community. Beside DOS still has a ton of desktop's in production.
Head over to FreeDOS.org and see for yourself.
I love tweaking MS because we all know every product is still just a DOS shell, even NT. If you don't believe me, click Start then Run. Then type the word 'command' in the Open box and see what comes up.
>C:\WINDOWS\
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Be clear when your critical about something like this and state wheterh or not you have used the setup yet? Its not like they rewrote kde and gnome to do the exact same thing. The default config is now just very similar. But fire up your favorite config tool and change whatever you like. Or if your upgrading you'll be happy that it basically preserves your old settings.
Arguing that they limit choice by customizing their configurations sounds very Microsoftish. "You cant remove IE or customize windows as these are all standard components." To met at least theirs a very similar vein executing here.
And honestly the power of Linux is in choice. Redhat is mostly targeted towards new users or corporate standard IT departments. (At least in my opinion thats what they target.) If you dont like what Redhats doing then use Debian, Suse, or roll your own Linux. But if your going to be critical of something at least try the setup so you have a knowledged criticism and not an ignorant one.
BTW: I'm not saying your ignorant as you may have tried the setup and not liked it. But I'd say the vast majority of Slashdots Hyper-Critical comments are quite Ignorant of the facts.
I thought the real issue was that RedHat had basically removed the KDE software options from the menus. So you didn't get the choice to run KMail, it was always Evolution, and so on.
The issue wasn't about changing the look of the desktops. The issue was making KDE just another interface for loading Gnome applications.
RedHat has always been pro-Gnome. Why don't they just ship Gnome only and leave KDE out of the default installation - that would create a single unified desktop.
Gotta run, I hear the karma police pullin up...
Maybe it's my connection, but it seems that the screenshots were slashdotted.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
The truth be told I use KDE, but I also use the tools that null defaults to (Evolution, Mozilla, Openoffice etc). I, for one, like what they have done. I do not believe that KDE or Gnome produce tools that are ready for prime time and that my productivity should not be stifled by the PURITY of a desktop.
If you do not want people screwing with your it should not be open source.
The anonymous submitter wrote "RedHat successfully forces both GNOME and KDE to become compatible with one another which would result in the creation of a single desktop."
Where did he manage to get this idea caught in his head? Merging the desktops? RH is just trying to make the two interoperate as best they can in their own release from a UI standpoint.
If RH don't like this then why don't they just drop the one(s) they don't want people to use?
You still *can* pick KDE/GNOME/whatever. RH chose a *theme* that makes them look alike. A *theme*! God, where did everyone lose sight of that? Ximian chooses a different theme than the GNOME default as well...are *they* evil, sadistic bastards too?
I still can't figure out why this is news. It wasn't back when the story was first posted, and nobody cared except for about four people on the KDE forums (mostly the ever-vocal Mosfet).
My guess is that publicizing this is a UnitedLinux initiative to make RH look bad, since I can't figure out a single other person who has anything else to gain by blowing this as out of proportion as it's gotten. Who *cares* about RH's default theme? Change your theme! Use WindowMaker if you want! This has no impact whatsoever on you!
May we never see th
Debian modified the way WindowMaker looks, they gave it a debian background and the menus are changed.
I hate how debian does this. I wish they would have never modified it. And they developers over at Windowmaker got mad just like KDE got mad that Redhat changed the look of KDE.
I think there should be a theme option in redhat that will allow Users to go back to the orginal KDE look and feel.
Since Gnome2 is the default desktop on redhat, things should look like it. Sorry KDE, but gtk2 is so nice.
Redhat uses anaconda (gtk2 based installer), mozilla gtk2, gaim gtk2, gimp gtk2, xchat gtk2, and many others. So it would make sense for them to use gnome2 as the default.
Also qt apps run slower if they are not running within KDE, kdeinit and dcop daemons need to be running for apps to launch quickly.
but i like how they made kde look.
kwin in my opinion works so much better than metacity.
In metacity(gnome2 default wm) you cant move or resize an app if its maximized. It gets really annoying if you "shade" an app and you cant move the shaded window around. REALLY annoying. (this isnt a bug its a feature)
but as long as the themes at kde-look.org work with kde in redhat, people shouldnt care if redhat modifies the look.
keanmarine.com
Um, actually that would exactly be the open source process. If you don't like it you change it to something you do and redistribute the code. That is exactly what its all about.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
I think that having comon sources for graphics and icons is a great idea. This seems to be the thrust of what Red Hat is doing. I don't know how often I've tried to find an Icon that is hidden inside of .directories for either kde or gnome.
;)
I'm even thinking of switching back to redhat
(currently a gentoo/mandrake dual boot user)
Someone is taking an open source project, modifying it to suit their needs, and redistributing it? God forbid!
--
irb(main):001:0>
Ok now I am confused. If RH is looking for a common look and fell why don't they choose EITHER KDE or GNOME and not give the user the default choice to change it? Now I remember, they wanted to do that with GNOME and it failed. Now they are trying to make them look them look the same because "neither is going away" and they know that to remove one wholesale will lose the developers who use RH. I guess you can't have your cake and eat it too. Developers want one thing (and they known how to make it do that), desktop users appearantly dont know what they want. That is what I feel RH is saying. Finally, changing the About boxes is just plain rude.
Of course this "nullification" is essentially the same thing and will make sure that:
It will be interesting to watch how long RedHat is able to play their silly games with KDE.
As unremarkable as it appears on the surface, this may very well be the most significant milestone in Linux's history -- the first step towards a unified desktop appearance.
Whether you like or not, the rest of the world doesn't want "freedom of choice" when it comes to their desktop appearance. They want freedom from choice. They want familliarity. They want sensibile designs. They want a look and feel that will still apply from one machine to the next. They do NOT want pointless bells and whistles like having sideways titlebars and 18 different ways to unminimize a window. They just want to sit down, do their work and move on.
We are not the average user.
All a user should ever need to be concerned with is just that -- getting the job done. In no way whatsoever should they even know about (or even CARE about) the fact that their apps may be provided by two completely different toolkits. Thats our concern, not theirs.
A lack of continuity in the appearance of the Linux desktop has been one if not THE largest stumbling block in Linux' acceptance on the desktop. It all starts there. Say you're a company trying to offer Linux support for their products --- You cant show snapshots of a Linux desktop in the manual, because they all friggin look different! You cant even explain it in text, because "Go here and do this" can often mean two holly and distinctly different things, depending on if youre using KDE, or GNOME, or God knows what.
Windows has a distinct face to it. So does the Mac. So does AIX. So did the Amiga. So did the Atari ST. So does even friggin Solaris! But Linux? No. The Linux desktop, up until now, is a schitzophrenic mess of different personalities dictates by the whims of individual users.
You guys have no idea how important this evolutionary step was. And I, for one, cannot applaud RedHat enough for having the balls and the smarts to take it.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
Kudos if tehy managed to make them work alike.
.Xinitrc any longer and the great, true and tried Unix GUI standards are broken beyond repair.
I really need to mix applications, most KDE but some Gnome. I am really fvwm person and I long got past the anger fot not being really supported on the latest distribution. I would stand XFCE, but kde just has its components integrated too much to the windows manager, which does not even have background popup menus ( if you do not run that silly kicker real estate thief). Gnome is simply unusable.
Anytime I tried themes with white font, all listboxes were unreadable, because there was (as of year ago) no way to change listbox bacground from white to something more decent. Too many application gave you white background (e.g. nautillus install) that make all white text unreadable.
Also, they also repeatedly forget giving all commands keybord shortcuts, thereby taking away productive environment for user that do not have time to play with mouse.
Overall, command line scripting standards are broken. Most KDE and all Gnome application ignore command line options such as -bg -fg -fn -geometry. Most applications do not save windows into
Modal boxes are getting increasingly prevealent, blocking parent application even from select/copy (to clipboard) operation.
Fingers are no longer sufficient to count application, that canont be run twice on the same account, even if you take your shoes off.
Folks, Linux desktop monkies Windows and is copies all Windows mistakes, and has become to be even worse (on desktop) than Windows. If there were not the command line back-end and old legacy applications, I would long switched for something more proffesional - perhaps Solaris?
Now, get this: What are Developers concerned most with is quarels over default theme!
Petrus.
Freedom shouldn't be an eyesore...
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Recently I tried to upgrade my laptop to RH7.2 (from 5.?) I don't use Gnome or KDE so tried to do a custom install omitting all those components (essentially all I wanted was the kernel and related utilities upgraded as I have limited disk space.)
It was impossible, no matter what I did, the installation program ALWAYS included gnome and a lot of dependencies that brought the install size to 250M larger than the hard drive.
So RH has "enhanced" it's way off my laptop as soon as I find a suitable replacement distribution.
Have they bought out Suse, Mandrake or Debian? Have they convinced Linus to take the kernel closed source?
No they haven't. RedHats target market is the corporate user, some one who needs as much stability in their computing life as possible. Combining features from both Desktops is a good thing for them.
And for gods sake people its open source, that means you can do whatever you like with the source so long as you adhere to the GPL.
Im sure RedHat weren't too happy when Mandrake forked off but there was nothing they could do about it was there.
Many people here are talking about choices and how RedHat is removing choices on the desktop. Well, think about it this way: RedHat also has the freedom of choice and that includes choosing to unify the look and administration of the desktop systems that come with their distro. Users are still free to choose another distro or install the default desktop environments as provided by the different projects.
Freedom of choice applies to all in the system.
I feel so sig.
Don't flame me for saying this, but if Linux is ever going to become a mainstream desktop OS this is very needed. An average office user does not care about Gnome/KDE differences (even though I as a programmer prefer KDE). We geeks must realize that enterprice isn't interested in themeabilities, cool features, etc. but _stability_ and _productivity_.
What RH is doing is not removing all the features, just streamlining. As anyone interested in the extras can reactivate them quite easily, this kind of standardization must be a _good_ thing for the community.
And this is good . This is actually what a distribution is supposed to do . Put software together, configure, etc., save the user the hundreds of hours it would take her or him get the damn thing working and looking good. Make it easy to the user to get work done with the damn thing.
Linux is getting better and better. Thank you KDE, thank you GNOME, thank you GNU, kernel folks, RedHat, Mandrake, Debian and so on ...
... that Redhat was the major force behind Gnome, which came into existence *after* KDE (because qt wasn't completly free and open). They were the single most important distro to support Gnome instead of KDE, which has been chosen by almost all other distro makers as a default. Remember when Mandrake entered the market and basically was a Redhat with KDE? Mandrake's success told Redhat a big lesson.
So it's kind of hmmm strange, that nowadays Redhat tries to nullify the difference between KDE and Gnome.
But let me state it again: I think, we don't need two desktops. So every move to make those beast more similar is welcomed.
Bye egghat.
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
You still have a choice of using another Distribution, there's no one saying "You must use redhat." RedHat is making this for Corporate use, where a unified desktop is probably a good thing. Not for home users who want a specific look. There's nothing that says you can't change the theme of kde or gnome once you get Redhat installed either (i didn't read the article i'm just pointing out the obvious with why redhat is doing it and why its a good thing for THEM, not necessarily for YOU). Seriously, i like the look, it needs some work but the GNOME version is very smooth, i honestly think GNOME looks better than KDE now, but its still lacking the configurability of KDE. I'm seriously thinking of trying the next version of Redhat to come out and i haven't used RH since 5.0.
Logik
Kyle
http://www.unlogikal.net/
I appreciate Red Hat's concern that the community understand and approve what they are doing in this effort. However I think the community has been far too cynical in its reaction.
Being a for-profit company I have long been surprised that Red Hat hasn't done this type of thing more often. There's no requirement that everyone be in agreement with one group's efforts--this is Open Source! Our montra is that if you don't like something, you are always free to do it your own way.
These are the type of freedoms that take away your reasons to complain. Were we in any proprietary system, we would be at the mercy of the implementor. But as it stands here, our only limitation is time and money. These are precisely the same resources Red Hat is trying to steward just to stay in business. (Let alone, turn a profit!) So it appears we are all on the same footing.
I wish individuals would stop complaining about someone else deciding to exercise their freedom. Life is hard, you can't always get what you want. Be happy that your rights aren't taken away. Sure we might not all like Red Hat's decisions in integrating GNOME and KDE. I'd be certain that not all on Red Hat's own desktop team are 100% happy about some of the individual decisions either.
Just be thankful that Red Hat has even bothered to inform us of what they are doing. Obviously they are interesting in maintaining community support, but everyone should take note that this is our privilege, not our right. Certainly, Red Hat has a lot to gain by working with the community as opposed to against it or in some dark shroud of secrecy. But there is no requirement that they do this.
In all, this is a great start on something both sides have long pondered. Frankly, both GNOME and KDE have been slow to make this type of move, although discussed much for a long while. Thank you Red Hat for once again taking the lead on a tough task, and thanks Owen for so kindly explaining how Red Hat is has decided to implement its business strategy.
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
That "Linux is about choice" argument is getting a little stale boys. Choice is having options available to you. The ability to use both KDE and GNOME apps on the same system is condusive to having choice. However if you're stuck with two incompatible systems how productive are you REALLY going to be when you use those systems to do more than tinker on them? Red Hat moving in this direction is forward thinking and in my opinion intelligent. Consistancy is important not just for novice computer users but experienced ones as well. Most experienced users of any type of computer commit certain actions to reflexive muscle memory, when two different programs act similarly that is one less set of motions to memorize or confuse when you're in a hurry.
There's also the important fact that GNOME and KDE are open source. I can fork both projects right now and do what I want with them. Anyone can which is the nature of the GPL. Whining because someone took your code and extended it makes the concept of open source seem a bit retarded doesn't it. People want source code for everything and it all ought to be open and free but as soon as someone changes something all hell and whining breaks loose. Red hat could have tried to contribute their changes back into both respective code trees but why should they wait? Should everyone stick with inferior kernel VM systems until they are officially included in the release tree? Come on.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I get the distinct impression that the Red Hat team is trying hard to not push their biases onto their users. It's fairly clear the Red Hat's developers are more adept with Gtk+/Gnome than Qt/KDE, and there's nothing wrong with that - if they were better at Qt, we'd still be having this discussion.
When you realize you have a bias towards one group, you have two options - defend your bias and try to convince others, or work extra-hard to give the other team a fair chance. I think Red Hat is trying to give KDE a fair chance because the whole idea of Linux is to give users the right to choose.
Maybe I was just sucked in to Red Hat's PR speech, but I really have to agree with their philosophy of providing a nearly identical UI on both WM's. It prevents novices from choosing one over the other just because of configuration differences such as single- vs. double-clicking icons. It annoys me to no end when a user tells me he/she didn't like product A because of a default setting that happened to be set differently in product B. In doing this, Red Hat may have made KDE "act like" Gnome, but I believe that it is inadvertant, just because the Red Hat team has gotten used to settings more typical to Gnome.
Having said all that, though, think about this: If you know the difference, you can change it. If some guy who knows nothing about Linux doesn't know the difference, will he care?
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
The real power of Open Source is NOT:
- A variety of applications
- Multiple configurations
- Configurable kernels
- Source code available
- Community of users
The real power of Open Source is that, despite whatever the default configuration of a system might be, you can customize it any way you want!I really don't care if the standard Linux desktop starts to look and act like Windows in default configurations. In fact, I encourage it. It's the only way Linux will go corporate, companies will start making software for it, and support for things like hardware and drivers will finally become what they need to be.
As long as it retains the ability to be as configurable and adjustable as it is right now, I'm a happy man. So what if your kernel comes configured generically for every piece of hardware in the world? If you have the know-how, configure it yourself. Recompile the software, the applications, the windowing system...write your own drivers, apps, utilities. Colorize your bash prompt. Interface with the toaster.
Remember: With Linux there is Choice. Microsoft never even bothered to give you one. Keep that philosophy in mind and we'll be all good.
Blog,Twitter
If you think Null limits your choices, then you're wrong. You still have the choice to choose Mandrake, Slackware, or any of the many other Linux alternatives. If you "choose" Redhat, then you get a unified look, if you choose one of the other distros, you get their look.
Null seems to be a good choice for corporations wishing to establish some sort of common denominator regarding the desktops that the PC support group will encounter. It also seems to be a good choice for new Linux users that just want to surf, email, word process, and move on.
Have you seen what they've done? They just changed the default look of the desktop, which in my opinion still looks very much like KDE! Nothing has really changed, its still KDE and its still GNOME, the only difference is that Red Hat made their KDE default desktop look the same as their Gnome desktop, which in my opinion looks more like KDE than anything else.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
Have you also forgotten the fact that in Germany computer users tend to be more rabid? And that people in Germany tend to do things for the principle, which may or may not be practical (BTW I should know I am German). Add that to the fact that many in Germany consider Microsoft as monopoly and you have a principle, which attracts users. Also do realize that 5% is about the same number of people who vote for the Greens, Communists and FDP (Liberals). And none of these parties are mainstream.
I do not think it is a silly game. What is silly is to start an application from KDE in GNOME or Vice-Versa and have an entirely different look.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
I read in an local newspaper today that the new Mercedes will drop the steering wheel (and all pedals) for an joystick-like unified control in an "drive by wire" push. I don't know if people will stop buying Mercedes because they don't use the standard interface. I thing It's will be a "must to have" for all yuppy style !
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
If Redhat needed to make the two desktops look and act alike because of support why not just start work on one official Redhat desktop environment? I mean simply making the two look similar is fine and dandy but there are still different probs between the two completely different desktops.
Er... you mean fvwm?
Any fool can talk, but it takes a wise man to listen.
I agree whole heartedly with one astrisk. I do believe that Linux needs a unified, interoperable desktop solution but I think that the single look and feel should be left up to the individual distro. Redhat has the right idea. Being the leader in Linux distros, I think that it's brave (and required) of them to make a move like this to try and steer desktop Linux in a direction that is more concerned with usability and user experience than Gnome vs. KDE idealogical holy wars. Bravo to Redhat for putting the user first.
Chris
...until you *do* suck seed...
If anybody, RedHat included, is going to take a stab at unifying the look and feel of the mythical "Linux Desktop", they're going to need to put in a hell of a lot more effort than this.
While the screen shots I have seen so far of the Null desktop themes are a great improvement over previous attempts at a consistent UI for Linux, it would appear that this is Not Ready For Prime Time.
For Ghu's sake, people, pick up a friggin' copy of Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines! All the research has already been done! How much longer is it going to take for you to realize this?
I mean, really, throw me a bone here, people...
The number one thing holding Linux back from more widespread usage is the clunky UI implementations that are available. The people who are working on this stuff are smart enough that they should know when to bring in experts. I know nobody wants to turn over the care and feeding of their baby to someone else, but don't you think it's time that some *real* graphic designers/industrial designers got involved?
I'm sure at least some of you coders out there must know a decent designer or two, or even a bonafide HCI expert. If we could somehow lure a few good ones into working under a Free Software license to produce some artwork for this effort, we'd be going in the right direction.
Well, ranting aside, at least Null seems to have produced a decent font for the menus. IMO, this was one of the biggest problems.
In my opinion, this is clearly targeted to the corporate desktop market RH wants to get into, and in this case the license of their artwork/changes package becomes very important:
If the corporate employees become accustomed with RH desktop's look and feel, and if other linux distros will not be allowed to use RH's package, RH will effectively have a grip on this market, allowing them to start "embracing and extending" with proprietary protocols/software.
I don't think this will happen, but the community has to probably be cautious anyway...
I think Redhat should have done this a long time ago for now I don't see how MS could blow the desktop market unless our friend Pal is as bad as some people think it will be.
Linux needed to be ready for prime time before the roll out of win2k to have gained real market share.
Look at AMD. When Intel hit its lumps, AMD was ready to capitalize. When MS has hit their LUMPS and lumps and lumps, Linux has not been exactly poised to capitalize.
This seems to be the step in the right direction, I just think that a simple check box on install could take care of anyone's questions about this.
By default, the redhat theme, unles on install you say otherwise!
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
In other words, because people are used to brain-dead fucked-up systems we should do the same to Linux so that they're comfortable.
Screw that. I want choice; if I didn't then I would still be using Windows.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Where I think Red Hat have made mistakes [...] is by modifying code rather than commissioning the GNOME and KDE teams to do it on their behalf.
My God, you're right! How dare Red Hat take Free/open-source code and use it the way the licenses mean for it to be used?
If KDE developers are going to whine about Red Hat modifying code that the KDE developers damn well gave them the right to modify, then they're definitely in the wrong business.
Forking code is prefectly natural in the open-source world. There are a few forks of the Linux kernel (probably more in various in-house projects around the world), you have GNU emacs and XEmacs, etc., etc. Generally, this is a good thing, as new ideas get tested out without needing the "blessing" of the official code tree maintainer. (As I recall, the original USB support started off as a forked project without Linus' blessing, until something usable was available.)
All Red Hat has done is forked the KDE and GNOME desktops to create a unified look for both of them. Yes, Red Hat will have to redo all of their changes when KDE 3.1 and GNOME 2.0.2 come out. That's their perogative, and I'm pretty sure they realized what they were doing when they made the decision.
It boils down to three options:
1) Learn to use Red Hat's desktop environment
2) Replace Red Hat's with another; it probably wouldn't take long for some enterprising people to create a set of RPMs from the "official" KDE/GNOME releases
3) Start using a different distribution; maybe rolling your own is the best answer if you want things exactly your way?
Jay (=
So correct me if I'm wrong here - a small amount of people got all bitchy about this and they are more than likely in some way attached to either the Gnome or KDE projects ?
Redhat are attempting to unify Linux and make it something your marketing department could use - anything wrong with that ?
If you don't like it, don't use Redhat.
Personally, I like what Redhat have done - it means I don't have to spend a ton of time fiddling around with all sorts of useless widgets and can get work done right away.
Not all of us want animated buttons, x-term backgrounds, slide-out menus etc.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
No, this is not what we need. Just like we don't need a "unified" CPU-maker and a "unified" PC-vendor we don't need a "unified" Linux distribution.
If we would need that, we would all run Macs now.
DOS/Windows is so entrenched because:
RedHat having their great "unified" desktop won't make Photoshop run on it, it won't void the contracts OEM have with Microsoft and it won't make people forget about Windows.
However, both KDE and GNOME are usable enough and similar enough so that a Widnows user will have no problem using it (especially if you choose the Windows-config on your first login in KDE.) so that is already solved.
What we still need is:
I'm putting big hope in Codeweavers to produce a usable Wine that is easy to install and works with most office-software. - On all distributions, not only on RedHat.
and not distributors playing monopoly-unification games and reducing inter-distribution interoperability.
To blame Red Hat for the current US Linux Desktop share is totally illogical. There have to be more contributing factors, such as US BASED MICROSOFT on why the desktop share is where its at...
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
A unified "look and feel" is one thing (probably a good thing), but I hope they will address the deeper interoperability problems between KDE and Gnome apps, and config problems in both. In particular, I'd like cut and paste between apps to work 100% reliably. I'd like Quanta not to use an illegible font (A.D. Mono) just because it's alphabetically first and something has monged the config files. In fact, why do distros ship with illegible fonts in the first place? I'd like a single "Control Centre" rather than a KDE Control Centre, a GNOME Control Centre and a $DISTRO Control Center (which from the article is something they're trying to do). I could live without apps looking exactly the same way as long as they play together nicely.
"I hope that RedHat successfully forces both Gnome and KDE to become compatible with one another which would result in the creation of a single desktop. This would be the greatest gift to the Linux world." I fail to see how this is such a gift, the desktops are different but not *that* different, just enough to give some nice variety. Since when does the linux world want to limit choice. Perhaps all the distros should merge to one unified, down the middle, bland, not-specifically-good-at-anything version. Oh wait that already didn't work. Come on Hemos, choice and variety are what it's all about. I really hope that comment was just a troll.
No, I don't think that we should all use the same distro from the same distributor. What I do think is that if Linux is going to succeed in the consumer market, then there must be a noticable face for the consumer to identify with. This is what Windows has done. Most users couldn't tell you the difference in the versions of Windows, other than the newer on is prettier.
In contrast to what you say above, I do think that a unified face will allow more software to be ported to Linux. As companies see that the market is maturing, they will be more likely to take the jump to a linux version because there is less risk to there bottom line. You have a chicken and egg fiasco, which will come first, products or customers? I definately feel that this more identifiable "version" of RedHat Linux will go far is helping the cause. Consumers will now be able to focus on making linux work for them, instead of making Linux work.
------ This has been provided as a public service! ------
If you look at what Red Hat has done, it's very clever, and really is aimed at adressing what you just said.
What are the top things that "desktop" users the world-round will want to do?
1. Web Browsing
2. Document editing
3. Email
There are some other things such as calendars, contact management and spreadsheets that are hugely popular, but I think the above three items cover what 99% of the computer-using population does 90% of the time (if we're not counting games).
Those three things (and the things that I've mentioned as "alsos") are all done using the same applications under Red Hat regardless of which desktop system you use.
This has annoyed KDE folks because Red Hat chose the Gnome-friendly apps for this purpose, but to be fair, there wasn't really any choice. Evolution is far-and-away the best groupware suite for Linux/BSD. Mozilla too is hard to beat on anything but speed, and in terms of end-users speed loses to wider compatability with complex Web sites.
Personally, I thank Red Hat for making this hard decision. It's time that the free software desktop world grew up and started to work together instead of trying to play "my feature is bigger than your feature".
I think this is a good idea from Redhat. If you don't like it change it. But by making a "standard" desktop Redhat can deliver much better support to new users. I'm working at a helpdesk. And you you can't tell peopel to start application X, you have to guide them step by step. Start, programms, application X. By making a standard desktop Redhat will improve their support for new users and these new users will keep using linux.
What power has law where only money rules.
I'd have to say I think this is a really great idea on RH's part. I'm a fairly new linux user and I don't feel any particular attachment to either KDE or Gnome. Anything that get's closer to a unified desktop makes sense to me. No offense to KDE/Gnome diehards, but I could care less about the tiny little things people say makes one 1000 times better than the other. I just need a desktop that's simple to use and works. Making Gnome and KDE act in a similar fashion removes the need for me to pick which one might suit me ever so slightly better even though it's missing features of the other. And don't even get into installing both. Having KDE and Gnome installed at the same time is as usefull as a linux/win dual boot, not at all.
Entering Off-Topic Pet Peeve Mode:
It's "eat your cake and have it too." Having it and then eating it is no trick at all.
Q:How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division? A:None. Obviously market forces will take care of it.
I'm so sick of that nonsense.
When you start ICQ in Windows, you have an entirely different look - whoowhoo!
WMP in Windows - different look! OMG!
Winamp in Windows - different again! THE HORROR!
Quicktime in Windows - again different! THE CONFUSION! (and also in MacOS, BTW)
Just start any game - all are differnt! ONLY A COMPUTER FREAK COULD USE THAT!
If anything of your "everything has to be the same" were true, there would be nobody using ICQ or Winamp and only a tiny fraction of elite computer users would be able to play games.
I installed Null 7.3.94 beta three weeks ago. For the first time ever, I thought : The major reasons were
- flawless hardware detection and config (including the wheel of the mouse)
- out-of-the-box anti-aliasing (it IS important for newcomers)
- and above all the Gnome/KDE integration with a smooth clean unified theme
Don't forget it's only a default setup. If you're enough of a geek to not like it (I am), you should be able to change it in less than 5 mn.On a side note, that version is not stable enough to be really usable yet (two X-windows crashes in the last three days). You should wait the real 7.4 to give it to aunt Tillie.
It stuns me to see how many naive and narrow-minded people post to slashdot. Ferkrisakes. Guess people don't truly understand what RedHat is ... a business. They're trying to increase their user base (the *paying* user base) - to do that, they listen to their *paying* customers and do some research into what would make other people switch to RedHat. Simultaneously, they'll try to cut their own costs so as to increase profit margins - something that shareholders typically enjoy.
... it simply means that GNOME and KDE will look like REDHAT out of the box, not like GNOME or KDE. Don't get the panties in a wad about it - its not that big a deal.
... Apple already has the desktop market (for those not afraid to switch from Windows) and is gunning for the server market - which RedHat has a pretty decent handle on, so far. With these changes, RedHat is gunning to win over some of the folks out there that just want to get some work done, and not have the interface stand in your way.
Does this mean that Linux enthusiasts can no longer customize their install of RedHat? No
I imagine that RedHat sees a good deal of competition from Apple at the moment
Its a good thing, just think about it and please, for the love of Slashdot, stop bellyaching!
I am (was?) a more die-hard Linux user than most on Slashdot. I still love Linux on the server. But the split between GNOME and KDE, and therein between GNOME 1.x and 2.x, prompted me to drop Linux as a desktop platform in favor of Mac OS X. Without focusing on the platform I switched to, let me explain.
When actually trying to get work done, and not simply tinker around, having essentially three different widget sets and standards is a nightmare. I wasn't even using GNOME or KDE as a desktop; I used fluxbox. But some of my GNOME apps looked one way, the 2.x ones looked another, and the KDE apps yet another. Then comes trying to remember the keyboard shortcut conventions: do I shut this down with ctl-Q, ctl-x, alt-q, alt-x? On top of all this, there's the bloat of carrying around libraries for all three widget sets, and all their dependencies (and I still had a pretty stripped down install; I was running Gentoo).
Day-to-day, this made for a truly unpleasant, unproductive, and frustrating desktop experience, without even getting into issues of stability. Many will toot the horn of diversity and choice, but in this the GNOME/KDE split is simply a massive hassle for new and experienced users alike. I'm the secretary for my college's Linux User Group, and explaining the differences between all the desktop environments confuses new users into a catatonic state, leaving them so confused they don't know where to go for what.
I won't say that Linux can never succeed on the desktop. It just needs a shitload of work, and and the demolition of this KDE/GNOME barrier.
Choice is why I moved to using linux. Choice is why I never install gnome desktop. Choice is why I can use KDE, or Window Maker, or Fluxbox whenever I feel the need.
You can merge Gnome and KDE into one desktop over my dead liquid cooled boxes pump!
-- "Perceptions create reality. By changing your perceptions you change your reality."
Why are RH chosing KDE? Because it's a better desktop! Why are RH omogenizing KDE and GNOME? Because they have done the wrong decision adopting GNOME in first palce. KDE is better, so chose a really KDE distibutiong(Suse or Mandrake).
Wouldn't that be /
[you@yourRHbox]# rm -rf
Unless you have som very strange permissions going on (maybe all filesystems in FAT?), a regular user wouldn't be able to do that..
I couldn't agree with RedHat's statement any more. I definately feel that a unified look and feel is something that Linux has always needed.
Yes, I think so, too.
For far too long I've watched two extremely talented and desktop teams produce excellent software and haven't seen as much cooperation and collaboration as I would like. Being open source projects, both teams have the advantage of being able to more easily "steal" good ideas from the other team. I think that's great.
I'm really glad not only that Red Hat, whose market size in Linux matters, is taking the initiative to draw the two desktops closer together, but also that the two desktops are open source and that Red Hat even has the ability to do this kind of unification.
That is, while they don't perhaps realize or care much about it, I, for one, am happy that both Gnome and KDE are unifiable.
That's a great thing.
I wouldn't even care to speculate how much needless user pain there has been between proprietary desktops (win32 and Mac) that absolutely positively would never be merged simply because they're closed source and used as marketing weapons.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
> I hope that RedHat successfully forces both Gnome and KDE to become compatible with one another which would result in the creation of a single desktop. This would be the greatest gift to the Linux world.
Would it? I agree that technically speaking it would be great to have a single API and a single (though configurable) UI combining the best of both worlds. But notice that this is only tempting because GUI developments (on a conceptual level) have been tame an converging for the last couple of years. Wrt. the Gnome, KDE, Windows 98 & XP looks and feels there have been some small changes here and there but hardly any innovative stuff. Many core developers in gnome, kde and M$ team would (or should) admit they have fairly modest ambitions in UI design - merely copying the neat stuff they see others do.
Now would not "the Linux world" REALLY benefit from more dary designs? I would happily trade some compatibility to gain the divergence necessary to see some more innovative and radically new designs.
Slick example: OS X.
Geek example: XCruise-file browser.
More generally: get some GUI professionals to do GUI design (sorry, no offence intended)
--
The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in: we're computer professionals, we cause accidents -- Nathaniel Borenstein
Oh, not another one explaining the success of Microsoft. Face it: Microsoft is successful because IBM gave them the OS-monopoly in 1981. Everybody would have been successful with that, even Microsoft which never really did anything other than following the market. Microsoft has delayed the wide adoption of a GUI (every other major platform had a GUI long before 1990, but Windows 3.1 was the first usable GUI for DOS and came in 1993), they delayed the wide adoption of the Internet (In the early 90's Bill Gates himlelf said that "Internet will never be popular" and "The Internet? We are not interested in it") and PDAs (Go! invented the first PDA, Microsoft killed them with a lot of FUD and PenWindows which came out 2 years afterwards - which was dropped after Go! went bankrupt. Great, eh? PenWindows only use was to kill a company, advancing technology was not really important for MS)
So please stop telling me Microsoft's great secret of success. In real life, Microsoft is one of the most chaotic and incompetent companies.
Microsoft's only interest is maintaining the status-quo. The only reason we have Windows now is because everybody else already had a GUI for years and Microsoft had to follow.
In all new markets like Webservers for example, Linux is doing great - better than Windows. In all old markets where people have tons of programs and documents to lose, Linux doing not so good.
We need backwards-compatibility or WINE. Everything else is already there.
In contrast to what you say above, I do think that a unified face will allow more software to be ported to Linux. As companies see that the market is maturing, they will be more likely to take the jump to a linux version because there is less risk to there bottom line. You have a chicken and egg fiasco, which will come first, products or customers?
Customers.
I definately feel that this more identifiable "version" of RedHat Linux will go far is helping the cause. Consumers will now be able to focus on making linux work for them, instead of making Linux work.
Nonsense.
Currently Joe installs Linux and either stays with it because he likes it better or drops it because doesn't run.
How will that change? RedHat's GUI will be as new as stock-KDE for Joe (only uglier), so why should Joe be more likely to keep using it?
RedHat won't enable Linux on the masses' desktops. Codeweavers will.
I find the new decision to visually blend Gnome and KDE into a single environment as a continuation of the old RedHat mindset, which is exactly what makes me reconsider my loyalty to the distro, in spite of my appreciation for its powerful feature set and significant contribution to the community. What bothers me is that for the sake of being generic and "one size fits all", RedHat has sacrificed each user's ability to have an installation that fits what he wishes to do - no more and no less.
For instance, the option to select particular packages at install-time is extremely inconvenient (and tends to crash). The user, of course, can install broad categories, like "Kernel development" and "desktop publishing". But, many pieces of software that I routinely use are outside these categories, and unless I select "everything", they do not get installed. As opposed to that, I do receive several hundred MBs (from 400 in 6.2 to 800 or more in 7.3) of software that I don't need. For instance, I don't need pine, mail, rmail and mh at all. I need just KMail. I don't need dozens of newsreaders. Most workstations these days don't need Sendmail (by the way, I find Postfix a better choice for an MTA), BIND or telnetd. and I definitely don't need 2 desktop environments. Python, Perl and Tcl are all nice languages, but I see no reason why I've got to have all 3 on my particular workstation. For most libraries out there, I don't need compatibility interfaces for earlier versions, and neither do I need their development versions.
The root of the problem is: I don't have infinite system resources. I might have a lot of memory - but I don't want to waste it with 2 distinct GUI toolkits. I might have a reasonably large disk, but I don't want large parts of it to be covered with stuff I never asked for. I think leaving just enough resources for apps to work reasonably is a silly Microsoft way of doing stuff; I don't know why RedHat has to join the race. Allowing the users not to make choices (by bundling it all) translates into forcing them never to do so.
Several months ago I've got RedHat 7.3 installed on a 4 GB partition. I didn't ask for Everything - but the install was still around 60% of the available drive space. After this, I chose not to upgrade a 6.2 box to a newer version (in spite of the absence of new RPMs), because I know it'll drain too much resources. In the time since, I've considered several possibilities for replacing RedHat with other distributions (I also considered BSD). I won't abandon RedHat just yet; but frankly, I'm afraid it's simply not going the right way.
exactly. who really cares? I don't understand why people can't grok the concept of a theme.
I emerged redhat-artwork a week or so ago, and I love the look. it's really quite slick. kde is broken with xinerama so I'm using gnome, and since Bluecurve comes with gdm, nautilus, xmms, gtk2, and gtk1 themes, I have a great unified desktop look (except for mozilla...).
LUG@GT had an installfest this saturday, and a redhat guy came with free stuff (and redhat 8.0 final). it really was kinda nice, I don't know if I'd match it with mandrake for desktop usage yet, but it was impressive. the install was atrocious (brown!!!???!!), but its fonts were beautiful and professional, and the install was just as easy as it's always been on redhat & mandrake.
I like how mandrake uses debian's menu system to keep all kde/gnome/*box/etc menus in sync. I never actually sat down and messed with a redhat8 install, so I can't comment on that. hopefully they have some kind of unified menuing system.
apparently we're not allowed to distribute the 3 cds, sorry:)
Umm, no. NT is DOS based with a GUI on top. Most services still load in DOS. The only thing about NT is that command interpter forces the GUI to autmagically load.
Check out ReactOS if you don't believe me.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Red Hat becomes more Mandrake-like with menus, defaults, standard tools, etc. and I like it that way.
I started on Red Hat 5.2 and took a while learning the different wm programs. I got a hold of a Mandrake 6.1 CD and loved running any program I wanted from the desktop of my choice. I was running Gnome and KDE apps on the "wrong" one all the time. I didn't even know some of these apps didn't belong on the current desktop. I went back and forth between Gnome and KDE over the years because all my apps were available on the menu so it didn't matter that much.
I like that Mandrake had common tools for configuring the system but was annoyed when they changed them every release. They also changed icons regularly but they where still annoying to me. The current releases have been much better and are getting much more consistent. The big complaint that everything had drake in the name seems a little silly.
Red Hat has a good example for the desktop in Mandrake. Let's hope they avoid the pitfalls Mandrake went through. The end result could be a very nice desktop.
Um, actually, their new "corporate strategy" includes desktop usage. that's what redhat 8 is about, making linux palatable for home users.
If linux is going to make it on the desk top it needs to present a single consistant user interface. Those of us that know how to tweek the crap out it can remove the rh RPMs and go intstall what ever on it our selfs. We loose nothing we gain everything. RH is doing the right thing those of you who are bitiching about this forced spoon fed aproach are not the ones paying the bills at RH. The linux community needs a consitant product that every one knows, the lack of this is what almost killed unix in the fisrt place. These comapnies need lots of sales to stay in bussiness and those must come form the end users out there the non geeks, and as a geek myself i find linux frustrating at times. There is little or no descent documentation(yes i know man, howtos tldp... THEY ALL ARE AWFULL). in order for linux to have descant sales you mother has to be able to sit down and get it connected to a dialup conection with out help. Your mother all so needs to be able to down load cute junkware from the internet and have it work. Now imagine trying to have your mother untar, then ./configure make make install somthing only to tell her that it could not link agaisnt symbols in lpng.34.23.so are something like that. How many rpms actually work maby half intalls with out some kinda depencencay problems. Or how about this try to get you mom to un pack a simple game say tar -xzvf lbreakout2-2.3.2.tar.gz only to find its a bunch of files with wierd names and nothing called setup.exe with a little luck she may figure out how to make it compile but probally not. Linux will suffer a slow and agonizeing death at the hands of Bill Gates unless thinks like this dont happen.
Linux modi 2.6.26-2-parisc
I like the look of that theme, no fake-3d looking buttons, just nice, plain and simple. Somday, we will be able to get rid of everything being grey but until that day I'll be happy using this theme. (sure, it's not a lickable OSX interface, but this one is real quiet and just sticks to business)
No actually it will be RedHat. They run their business based on good business decisions rather than touchy feely open source community feelings.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
For those who have been playing with the beta: what's involved in transforming KDE-rh back into "pure" KDE with all the defaults? The article mentions some code changes. The menus have been changed. Would I have to manually edit the menus, dialogs, links etc or is there a "gimme plain KDE" option?
Chris
I for one think this is a great idea. No one is forcing you to use redhat, and no one is keeping you from changing the look and feel of your desktop, but at least the initial install of a redhat distro will have a consistant look. Its good to see redhat making a move like this as they are one of the biggest linux distributors today. Mandrake has been doing similar things although instead of making kde and gnome look the same, they have just branded them both with mandrake logos.
Reading some of the posts here you'd think that making a graphic desktop look a certain way cripples power users. Unless the Linux power user community has gone completely wuss, power users should still be able to do whatever they damn well please with whatever software they install on their systems.
If you don't like what Red Hat's doing, swap out their desktop for the one you want. If you don't like the theme, put in another one. Or simply don't use Red Hat. It seems simple to me.
All of this makes me think back to when Caldera decided to make KDE its default desktop environment to the point of removing pretty much all the WMs they used to ship. Lots of folks cried "You're dumbing down Linux! How dare you force people to use KDE!". How making KDE the default desktop affected peoples' ability to pull up an xterm, I haven't a clue.
And to the KDE developers who pissed and moaned over Red Hat changing their precious code, try reading the license under which KDE is distributed. Last time I checked, people were allowed to alter GPL'd code in whatever way they wanted and re-distribute their version provided they made their patches available. I don't recall the GPL saying "you can change the code all you want as long as you don't change anything from the way we distributed it". You chose the license, sunshine. If you don't like what Red Hat did, cry me a river but don't expect me to sympathise with you. I'm not a huge fan of Red Hat (truth be told, I don't like their products at all), but what they're doing is something you and the GNOME folks have been allowed WAY too much time to take care of but did not. Both teams dropped the ball (or at least dragged your asses), so don't whine when someone else steps in and does the right thing. If you want it done your way, stop complaining and do it.
'Nuff said.
The trouble with RedHat (in my opinion) doing this is that they're going to end up having a mismatched desktop that will not in any way be representative of either one. I'm perfectly happy using only KDE applications. I think the only GTK apps I use are GIMP and grip. So why, when I upgrade to RH8.0 will I have to have Mozilla as my default browser? What the hell good is that to me? I like Konqueror.
To comment on what you said about "making a unified desktop for Linux", I would have to say I disagree in two ways. I'm pretty sure RedHat doesn't have brain control over Miguel de Icaza and Matthias Ettrich. If I were either of them I wouldn't let a distro dictate the OSS desktop, considering the other distros and unices these desktops run on.
I'm also pretty sure that if the Linux desktop did unite the quality would likely drop off in some cases. It's good to think about that. Besides, I'm not really cognizant of GNOME very much. I really don't pay attention to the project or it's apps because I spend most of my time using Qt/KDE applications. RedHat won't be my distro of choice come RH8.0. I'd rather switch to Mandrake.
"It's here, but no one wants it." - The Sugar Speaker
No, it would not be the so-called greatest gift to the Linux world. It'd just suck. What ever happened to choice, my friend? I use Gnome because I think it rocks. Some friends of mine use KDE because they think it rocks. Why don't we all just chill out, use our own thing, and be productive as we would like to be?
I mean, what good would it really do for everything to be unified, besides maybe ease of use for newbs? Even then, there's not a flame war between Mac and Windows people and others wanting to just make them both work exactly the same. Why do we have to do that in Linux?
I see this as a complete non-issue. Both environments tout their flexibility in configuration, right? Well, here you have a vendor (RedHat) making full use of that. How often can a GUI perfectly emulate a competing GUI on any platform? Look at all the half-baked attempts to turn Windows GUI into a simulation of someone else's favorite user interface.
If they managed to make Gnome and KDE work and look identical, I'd say that speaks volumes about the power of both GUIs to allow custom configuration.
Surely, any Linux "power user" that is primarily concerned with not being "tied down" to a single vendor's idea of "optimal user-interface" is capable of re-configuring KDE or Gnome to suit their tastes?
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
While I don't have any problem with a single distro doing this, I don't think there is any point in ALL the distros making their products look identical. I can see the point in establishing a baseline of installed packages and maybe even a consistent pattern of install directories, (although environment variables should fix even that), but why SHOULD look and feel be the same across linux platforms? The attraction of linux is the variety, the diversity, not the homogeneity.
You can always recognize Windows by the look of it, as it should be for Linux.
Many in the linux community try so hard to beat Windows that they are trying to make linux essentially *become* windows. We need to watch out for this - otherwise, all we have is another crappy OS.
At most, I might go along with a "Dummy config" that looks as much like windows as possible to get the crossover users - but when you get down to it, that's called KDE.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Personally I'm to the point now where I'm so sick of Microsoft hegemony that I don't care if RedHat engages in similar predatory practices as long as MS goes down. I'll support RedHat even if they were a monopoly, because at least the technology inside is good and it's not MS snake oil.
> Because they have done the wrong decision
> adopting GNOME in first palce. KDE is
> better, so chose a really KDE
> distibutiong
What you say !!
Take off every 'zig'
You know what you doing
Move 'zig'
For great justice
-- Rick
i use beos skin(+buttons) on my windows machine.. to have that friendly look! no i don't have ever used a real beos machine.
ok ok, most of my friends can't use it. and they just look at my linux box's desktop and associate that to be linux(and then be little lost if i've switched to gnome/kde from kde/gnome after their last visit).
but, windows ("power")users do tweak their desktop too, most common folk just don't know that they can do that.
what's more important than the look(which can be altered again anyways by user) is that the kde/gnome programs would actually run without too much hassle.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I'm sure that a few years back, that would've been 'Insightfull'. Maybe this signifies some sort of progress...
Yep, my windows box is always identifiable by the blue screen it frequently displays.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Last I knew, nobody really cared about this except for a few rabid KDE people (the people who raised a ruckus about it in the first place). I think their main beef was that the icons on the desktop for web browsing and email were for moz and evolution in KDE instead of kde apps.
Never overestimate the end user. -jeramy b. smith
If Linux is to be accepted by the mainstream user, it must be easy to use. Two completely different looking and acting desktops simply does not accomplish this. Look, I realize that many of you here think this is a bad thing. It isn't. You are looking at this through the tainted eyes of a geek, not John Q. Public's eyes. Right now, Linux is a difficult (almost impossible?) OS for J.Q.P. to use. It's too technical. Windows isn't, and J.Q.P barely can use it! Redhat is trying to make the OS more user friendly. This is a good thing.
I guess what it comes down to is this: Do you want Linux to become mainstream or not? If so, then you support it's homogenization. If not, then you don't.
Of course, there's nothing from keeping you from coding your own version of Linux too you know, and please make it as geeky and user-unfriendly as YOU want it to be.
How many of you actually keep the default settings on your windows boxes? Linux, and open source software in general, is very flexible. If you don't like the defaults, just change them.
-ted
Like other projects I have seen (Lycoris, Lindows, Xandros), this strikes me as just another choice to make. If this or one of the other choices I have seen makes the Linux home desktop experience viable for the MS target market, great. The wonderful thing is that the hard-core users can STILL just bash away on their desktops at will (or even rule harder from the console). Hardware is getting cheaper, MS is slowly backing down on the whole evil empire thing, and voids will have to be filled. A unified KDE/Gnome set would be a boon to the Mom & Pop desktop environments, and the hackers can still build their own environment. It's open source, let RH paint it orange and make all the function keys bring up pictures of Sam Adams... it's their prerogative.
Windows XP SP2 told me to install third-party software that prevents viruses and protects stability... I chose Ubuntu
Its the year 2002. Can we finally stop dicking around with how many different window managers and GUI's we can make and actually start using our powerful computers to do important things now? Please?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
There are really two separate issues here, RedHat is addressing one, and everybody is screaming about the other. The issue that RedHat is tackling is ease of use and standards. In order for Linux to succeed in the corporate world, it has to have a set of standards for everything, including the user interface. Especially for corporate desktops. Corporate sys admins really don't have the time or the inclination to custom configure the Linux UI and then roll it out to all the users. What they will want is a UI that follows a reasonable standard. They can then tune/tweak the few things necessary for their environment.
The issue everyone is howling about is choice in computing. It's still there. If you prefer not to use a distro built for the masses, go get Slackware or one of the other distros that is aimed at the niche, do it yourself, user community. If you don't like RedHat's implementation of KDE or Gnome, but you like the distro otherwise, then install RedHat without KDE and Gnome. Then download them and build them yourself.
But don't confuse standards with choice. If we don't have standards then Linux will fail ultimately as anything but an edge server and hobbyist desktop. RedHat is trying to create a standard without eliminating choice.
In my universe I'm perfectly normal, it's not my fault you don't live in my universe.
So now instead of two standard desktops we will have a dozen of unified desktops, each Linux distribution is going to redesign KDE & Gnome? The goal of KDE (or Gnome, I don't use it myself) is about to provide a single familiar desktop across platforms and distributions. If every vendor makes it completely different this doesn't make sense.
If you know enough to think that the unified look is a problem, chances are you know enough to change the looks back to the old ones. This is designed for those who don't know anything about linux and are confused by the multitudes of different widget sets.
Nobody noticed?
Washington bullets will simply be known as the "Bulle
So, basically their reaction to users having a choice is to try and negate that choice by making the options as similar as possible. How very MicroSoft!
So, as long as we learn the right lessons from Microsoft, what's the big deal? Just so long as we don't learn the wrong ones...
The whole point of having KDE/GNOME/WindoMaker/Et al is to allow people to pick the one that suits them.
Right, but most end-users don't want customization. Don't get me wrong, customization is still very important, but it needs, I think, to be done by the OEM, business, or Linux distributor so that their end-users' needs are met.
If RH don't like this then why don't they just drop the one(s) they don't want people to use?
I always install both desktops because I use applications from both environments, and that way I have more apps available to me.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
can you say, not many reasons to stop building settlements! too bad we blindly support all sorts of "peace" projects.
You're right...I should have put the ellipsis. However, there was no ill will on my part -- the quotes are the same from a point of view of what I'm trying to argue. The point is, here is the way I read it:
"I hope Red Hat successfully forces both GNOME and KDE to become compatible with one another. This would result in the creation of a single desktop."
There are a couple of problems.
First is that the user is implying by the use of the word "successfully" that Red Hat is actually trying to "force" KDE/GNOME to do something. I don't see any grounds whatsoever for saying that, and that has a tendancy to piss off people that see RH as becoming too overwhelming in the Linux world.
Second is the claim that compatibility between GNOME and KDE -- often longed for by developers from both parties -- would result in the "creation of a single desktop". This is bogus, and the only reason for putting this in is to inflame die-hard GNOME or KDE supporters. KDE and GNOME working together doesn't destroy their existence as separate desktops any more than C and Common Lisp being able to interchange data makes them a single language.
Finally, this whole string of stories has been incredibly aimed at blowing up what Red Hat has done -- choosing a similar *default theme* -- into an attack on Choice, GNOME and/or KDE, WindowMaker, or whatever.
May we never see th
Because developers can create proprietary applications without buying a QT license. GTK is LGPL.
This really is important. My university is developing applications using GTK even though the students preferred QT. However finding $3000 per developer is not easy in a bureaucratically run institution.
They figured out a way to help their customers feel more comfortable with and be more productive with their product. They even reduced the amount of support work they have to do in the process. This is the best thing for Redhat and free software as a whole.
If some of you think it's a bad thing, then modify the settings and offer it under your own brand name. That's why free software is great. I like what Redhat is doing, but if it does turn out to be bad, then users can use your modified distro instead.
Eventually, as with Windows and MacOS today, overhauling the system will become next to impossible (Apple pulled it off but it was a last gasp effort, like the Mac itself, before the company flatlined). If new ideas in desktop design come along they will be ignored not because they are not good but because they are different.
That is not a future I'm interested in for Linux and if the cost of avoiding that was that Linux never made it to the big-time on the desktop then that would be a sacrifice I'd be happy to make.
But, it doesn't even have to mean that. All this crap about KDE/GNOME is missing the truth:
THE DESKTOP DOES NOT MATTER
As many people here have said, the ordinary user just wants to get work done. Think about what that means (better yet, go and look at real users working in their offices). The normal user does not use the desktop. They use the Start menu but even that is because they have to. If they really had what they need it would be a screen with maybe six big buttons on it marked "Word Processor","Spread Sheet", "Email", "Web","Print Queue", and one custom button for whatever other app they use in their work (Quick Books, Photoshop, Quark, whatever).
These buttons would be for restarting the given app if it crashes; in normal use a window for each app would be started up on boot.
Give them a handy way to switch between them and that's all 90% of Windows users would ever want or need.
I know this because I've done it. WindowMaker can set this up very easily and it takes about 3 minutes to turn a Windows User into a Linux User like this, for the simple reason that the desktop is not what people use all day, every day. If you have the apps (and OpenOffice has gone a long way on this) they don't give a toss what the desktop is doing.
KDE and GNOME are not things normal users need! Power users like systems like KDE/Gnome because they are useful for handling large numbers of apps and file locations. Normal office users don't have lots of apps and keep all their files in "My Documents".
The only thing convergence does is ossify the system and make life harder for power users who want to be able pick and choose their environments to suit their, minority, needs.
So: package KDE, Gnome, WindowMaker, ICEbox, and as many other desktops with your distro that you can fit onto the CD, make them all options during install, and make the default choice one the simplest with a handfull of icons already set up to start the "usual" apps and leave Linux to celebrate diversity while Windows fades away as new ideas and innovations pass it by because they are "too radical" for users.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
That doesn't make any sense at all. All red hat did is make the two desktops look more similar - they didn't make X configure itself. How can consumers "focus on making linux work for them, instead of making Linux work." just because KDE and GNOME look similar?
They that quote Benjamin Franklin on liberty and safety deserve neither.
And I can see why the KDE, Gnome teams would be pissed.. though it's a great idea for business, it's a terrible one for the teams that worked so hard to create their products.
These products are two different apps, from two different mindsets. In the least RedHat should offer people who install their new desktop to choice to have a "Unified" or "Standard" Option... that would be fair.
3000 dead over past 2 years, still no free Palestinians, still
I'm glad to hear that KDE and GNOME are unifiable. But will it be the least upper bound or the greatest lower bound of the two?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I still get tempted to use KDE because so many people said KDE was better and I consider myself computer savvy so I thought I should use KDE.
But I couldn't find the RedHat RPM tools on KDE. I didnt see RedHat network. I used KDE but had to switchdesk to GNome to do any administration.
Next, can we get rid of the 100 word processors and text editors?? Its confusing as hell to have so many damn tools that do the same thing. Is this an OS or a program war???
Where can I find this gtk2 theme so I can try it out. I'm sure redhat are open enough for it to be downloaded, however I can't figure out which rpm it is in without downloading them all... (I also wouldn't mind some of 'them nifty icons').
Thanks
I wouldn't count on that if I were you.
Consider this:
1. internet explorer in crossover office runs well enough to use all day. internet explorer in the public GPL tree crashes after about 15 seconds of use.
2. quicken doesn't install with the public GPL tree of wine. quicken under crossover office runs well enough to use for a long time.
I know these things because I've tested them myself. I'm comparing crossover office 1.2 to wine 20020804.
if you're looking to codeweavers to provide the community with a reliable wine while still trying to make a profit, you're not going to be happy.
hyperpoem.net
Yes, he is that dumb. It's as simple as that.
I didn't see anywhere where they are going to release a distro that you can't modify to your hearts content. Just one where a newcomer to Linux gets something that won't cause vapor lock on first sight.
It's the single largest liability Linux has in the quest for a larger place in the computing world. The existing user base. Half of them (or more) don't want it there and the rest want it there but expect everyone else to "get up to speed" like they are.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
I don't see this effort of Red Hat is not going to create a 'unified desktop'. It is going to create a 3rd desktop enviroment for Linux - besides KDE and Gnome, we will also have "Red Hat".
>RedHat is not removing any options. They are
>more or less just creating similar themes for
>both KDE and GNOME.
That is certainly not the case. Mandrake has been shipping desktop environments with their own themes for quite a while; Crystal is Conectiva's own icon set for KDE. If that was all, there would be no major fuss.
The thing is that Red Hat is doing code changes to the environments, to further reduce their recognizability. I don't know what motivation other than this would drive their decision to remove the "About KDE" box from KDE apps.
That is a serious thing, because it might even be illegal, since it effectively removes the copyright notice from the program.
The filesystem is the package manager
any human being who honestly prefers the interface designs of most linux systems is probably seriously addled Consistency consistency consistency... I personaly am a Mandrake Man myself... and they produce a fairly streamlined package, but even with that nicely made desktop there are at least 4 GUI interfaces to get or control or modify information about my system..... I made my linux desktop look exactly like my Mac OS 9 once.... i installed mandrake on another machine, and am still trying to figure out how the hell i got it too look the way i like on the first machine. THIS IS A PROBLEM PEOPLE. I understand and support the need and ability to create and design your computer to be exactly as you want it to be.... except when consistency is utterly demolished... There are so many competing widget systems, and theme managers, and desktop environments, and windowing elements, that its hard to even say which one is dominant at the moment... I swear i changed to elements, then undid those two elements, and my system still looked completely different. As such i support red hats attempt to get some kind of default, some kind of starting page for the UI. This is the reason MAC OS X is winning so many converts... they offer an environment that can run unix/linux/windows (with VPC or YDL or Mandrake) but all under ONE consistent UI...
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
These changes really don't affect anyone other than newbies.
Think about this: Anyone with any experience using RedHat linux is probably going to pick and choose what they want on their desktop anyway in terms of themes. (I use Enlightnemtnet because it looks so damn cool.) When I used to use RedHat, I found over time that I was installing less and less of it each time. I eventually got to the point where I could compile just about anything I needed in terms of apps, custom kernel, X, window managers, etc... If you want choice in any distro, it's already there. Just don't go with the defaults, use the custom installation.
Chew on this for a bit: How many REAL experienced Linux users actually go with the defaults? Probably none. So.. if you are a user who understands and wants choice, you are likely a user who has experience. Only the newbies don't fully understand the concept of choice... look at where they are coming from (Windows). For them, this is likely to matter very little because they aren't ready for it yet, so the defaults are very likely good. It gives them a chance to try the OS out and have a basic user experience that is similar between KDE and GNOME. If this extended to other distros, it would be great. As they gain experience, they CAN begin to make choices. And, in the event that the only experience they want is a glorified typewriter, then RedHat (and potentially other distros) will be able to offer this to them as well.
There is no reason that this has to be a problem for anyone. RedHat could make it even better by just asking you at installation "Do you want the unified Desktop themes, or do you want to pick your own"? A simple change that I think would benefit newbies and satisfy power users.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
"I hope that RedHat successfully forces both Gnome and KDE to become compatible with one another which would result in the creation of a single desktop. This would be the greatest gift to the Linux world."
Sounds alot like Microsoft. One of the reasons I LIKE Linux is my free range of choices.
What the hell has happened to this site?
It seems to me that most of the people complaining that Redhat is stealing choices from people are people who know very well how to exercise those choices regardless. They're also probably coincident with people who can't understand why Linux isn't the Desktop Of Choice for any company, let alone users.
.rpm or .deb or something?)
Unfortunately I'm one of those users. I've installed Linux a few times, and have been trying new distrobutions faithfully every few months for the last 5 years, and I have yet to have one meet my needs from the installation.
What are these needs? Well, they're quite simple. I'd like for my XWindows to work right away, this is actually a new requirement, I have been quite happy to type xstart for a large portion of the time, unfortunately I have only had it work once or twice, usually it's a problem with the hostname. I'd like the functionality provided for me in the applications I need (interestingly this seems to be where Linux actually DOES make the grade). And somewhat importantly... I'd like for my sound to work. I'm aware that I probably "just didn't buy" the right sound card, but it came with my Motherboard (Via chipset). Alsa lists it in its supported chipset (I think it's an AC87) but is apparently completely impossible to get working (insert modules? compile modules? What the heck, why isn't there a
AND....
Why do my applications look like they're from 3 different beasts? There are more similarities between Apple and M$ than in a typical qt/X/gtk setup... great, so I have many choices but I can't use any of them because I've got work I have to do.
So rather than giving me some cryptic documentation written by some software engineer that KNOWs the system, and expects you to KNOW the system to, Redhat has unified the choices, made it so that I can follow one thread of (hopefully) well written documentation, and provided the functionality that I want (In this case)
Bravo Redhat! Thank you for making my life easier. Maybe in another few releases I can actually start recommending Redhat to my friends.
And yes, I know at least a little bit about computers, I've written device drivers, Operating Systems, Network stacks, database procedures and more. Generally these are easier to figure out than simply trying to get ANY LINUX distribution working, as they come with, or have rather straightforward requirements and/or API's, leaving the rest up to me.
And I say again, that's nonsense.
BeOS had a nice desktop. Where is it? It's gone because it doesn't has any apps.
Windows succeeded because it was backwards-compatible. The PC was plagued by IRQ and DMA conflicts and still took away marketshare from Macs and Amiga.
Linux needs to become backwards-compatible to Windows and needs to run Win32 applications.
That's what is holding it back.
In all areas where the apps are available, Linux is doing fine
Examples? Webservers - Windows gets marginalized there. Professional 3D-animation: Just after the tools were ported, many movie studios moved right to Linux. Embedded systems: Except for PDA's which are ruled by Palm and WinCE (and now guess why? RIGHT! Because of the APPS!!!) Linux has become the standard.
Software will be ported to Linux when the users are there. C++ and Delphi apps will be ported to KDE and C-apps will be ported to GNOME. Period. All apps work on all desktops, no problem in sight. End of story.
People want applications.
Nobody will give a shit wether an application runs on Qt, GTK or Wine. It doesn't matter as long as the functionality is there.
That's why I said "might". But the Holy GPL, on Item 1, first paragraph says that thou shalt "keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty;"
"About KDE" is where the license is displayed, so, yes, it may an issue.
The filesystem is the package manager
Apparently two minutes isn't long enough sometimes ... I need to go eat something >.>
But yeah, I can see how that would be of concern ... and a potential nightmare for support. Then again, vendors have been doing this with the kernel forever, and we can find out exactly what the differences are by looking at the source. RH could take responsibility by having users direct bugs to them, and then send the official-version KDE bugs to the K team. Nevermind that politically, this would probably be a nightmare for RH. ^^;
So we have here another gcc-2.96. Interesting. Well ... if the changes are really that good, they'll make it into the trees upstream. (Well, maybe not the fontconfig stuff, is that RH-specific?) Anyway, I still think RH is basically within their rights here, but then it should be their responsibility to maintain their version of it, and to try to make it clear that RH should be contacted first for support. Doing this while getting all the credits right could be interesting ... but that's Red Hat's problem.
It is certainly arguable that the best way to describe gaim in one sentence is as an "AIM clone".
Well, one of the reasons I like gaim so much is because it works with several IM services and it has features AIM doesn't. (Including the little things, like automatic logging.) If we were to nitpick, maybe "Trillian forerunner" would be more accurate -_^
But ... I do see your point, and I hadn't looked at it that way. A little addendum saying " ... that also works with Yahoo ... " would be nice, but maybe we just can't see that in the screencap...
Why should a "unified" desktop better than some default desktop?
Both are new to the user. HOW DOES THE NEWBIE BENEFIT?
Just look at KDE 3.l and Keramik and tell me RedHat should not install that as a default.
If you think that newbies should not choose, just install KDE and include GNOME on the CDs for those who really want it - or do a recommendation.
Actually I don't really mind distributors optimizing things, but in this case it's not an optimization, it's a "kill all innovation" approach. RedHat didn't try to make their default desktop better, they tried to align their default desktop to another desktop.
RedHat newbies will never see Keramik, they will never see new cool features.
All they will see is a bastardized desktop that just won't feel right and will be behind both KDE and GNOME.
And for you "standardize"-fans: Now we have 2 major desktops (KDE, GNOME), how is going from 2 desktops to 3 desktops (KDE, GNOME, Redhat) a step towards standardization? Imagine every distributor would do that?
Install KDE by default but include Gnome in the distribution for those who want it.
What's wrong with that?
The reason RedHat pushes Gnome is just politics and stubbornness.
But it's OK, it's their distribution, so why not install Gnome by default and include KDE in the distribution?
Would still be better than such a half-assed desktop mixture.
PS: You can't "take the best of both and integrate them into a single desktop" because KDE is written in C++/Qt and Gnome in C/GTK. Those don't mix. If they would mix, such a merger would have happened a long time ago.
... what you're whining about. The people who CARE that there are separate desktops and window managers available for Linux will continue to use them.
Look at StarDock and the other shell replacements for Windows. Those users advanced enough to want more find out about the other options available, and use them.
+++ATH0
All they did was create a uniform theme for KDE and Gnome.
So the default install looks, more or less, identical, for both desktops.
How does this remove your ability to change the theme?
(Hint: No)
How does this remove your ability to go in and turn features back on?
(Hint: No)
All it means is that, immediately after install, everything has a uniform look.
B
O
O
H
O
O
!
Now get over it already.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Personally I'm to the point now where I'm so sick of Microsoft hegemony that I don't care if RedHat engages in similar predatory practices as long as MS goes down. I'll support RedHat even if they were a monopoly, because at least the technology inside is good and it's not MS snake oil.
Roll your statement back 20 years:
Personally I'm to the point now where I'm so sick of IBM hegemony that I don't care if Microsoft engages in similar predatory practices as long as IBM goes down. I'll support Microsoft even if they were a monopoly, because at least the technology inside is good and it's not IBM snake oil.
Corporations push together Democrats and Republicans through fundraising. The status quo dictates not to vote for a third party because you're just "throwing your vote away." Thus, those who are easily swayed by said status quo, and feel that both parties suck do not vote for a third party, while those who don't give a shit vote for the best candidate for them and ignore party lines and hope people see the hipocracy and stop throwing their vote away on the dem's and 'pubs.
Corporations (red hat, which isn't a corrupt corporation, but is a corp nonetheless) force the two major desktops together hidden under the shroud of "useability." The line between the two is smeared. New users are blind to the true nature of choice in the *nix community, and those that follow Gnome/RedHat/KDE blindly either applaud, or yell and scream. The rest of us use blackbox/fluxbox/aewm/pan9wm/etc, get on with our work, and run both GTK&QT apps when needed in our respective, customized, unique environments without a hitch....
Ok it started out as a good analogy and ended in pieces, but perhaps you catch my drift nonetheless. Everythings a conspiracy.
BTW, how many Red Hat devlopers also develop for gnome, and how many also develop for KDE?....I don't know for sure...but it's an interesting question...
....everythings a friggin conspiracy...
*goes back to processing watershed records on FreeBSD w/ openoffice running in fluxbox*
While I do like people having an option to more easily get a unified look throughout the programs, beautiful is the last thing I'd call the theme. In fact I used screenshots of it as an example to an artist I know, to make sure she knew that just because kerimik looks nice, artistic sensibility and Linux developers have been slow to mesh.
And now the disclaimer. Yes, in any kind of art there's going to be different interpretations. Most seem to like this look, I happen to be one who strongly dosn't.
Everything will be taken away from you.
If you are going to make both desktops look and act the same, then what's the point of having two desktops? Why couldn't RedHat just say Gnome is the default, if you want to run something else, that's unsupported.
stop being so freaking idealistic. The real world can't handle diversity. It's a matter of the lesser of two evils, in every part of life - for president, for which corporation you work for, and for software. If you have to have a monopoly -- and we do now that computers are a commodity -- wouldn't you rather have one that had some substance underneath all the flash??
WINE and Windows Compatibility are a way to win the battle and loose the war, it is a short-sighted "Fix it now" solution that will cause more harm that good. All it will do is ensure that developers never develop for linux.
WINE is a nice way to play catch-up forever. Think about it from a a developer point of view. If I know that my app will be developed for the massive market that is windows -- and get the linux market for free (since they are playing catch-up and compatibility) what possible motivation would I have for creating a native linux product. I would have ZERO motivation.
This is what killed OS/2 -- they had a windows compatibility mode that was so good -- no one developed for OS/2, what possible motivation would there be to? Program to windows -- sell on windows and OS/2.
Beyond all that -- the unified desktop (QT+GTK) will enhance the user experience. Widgets should look and act the same, you shouldn't have to train your eye to a new widget set for each application you use. You shouldn't select an application because it fits "with your desktop" -- you should select it because it is the best application -- the article makes the point very clearly and I whole-heartedly agree.
You wish there were a Microsoft of the Linux world. Linux is going to wander off into world domination without a market leader to take it there. That'll be awsome.
Right. But it isn't required. *YOU* choose to have differently looking applications on your desktop by installing applications that use different toolkits. You can always stick to one toolkit. Then you lose choice. But it's still your choice whether you do it or not, and that's the good thing about Open Source. It's NOT a problem.
It's all about choice! If you want to have your apps look the same across Gtk and KDE, use RedHat's patches. Choice again.
There's no problem of interoperability anymore. We finally have standards (and compliance) for the clipboard, window management and drag'n'drop. We will have stable component APIs for a long time. I'm sure that wrapper components will be developed so you can use Bonobo from KDE and KParts from Gnome applications. This gives you even more choice. Stop complaining about it!
By the way, a window manager that makes KDE and Gnome look the same is technically not feasible. RedHat just developed common themes, and patches that make the look even more similar.
I wish somebody would moderate your post up. This is solid information that nobody else here on /. seems to know. Perhaps the KDE project would consider offering a set of RPMs for Red Hat, particularly for upcoming versions of KDE that users would like to upgrade to anyway. The KDE project should not have to live with stability problems introduced by Red Hat.
Well, as someone who IS using the RedHat beta I find the lack of difference in the look and feel of the two desktops confusing. That may seem like an oxymoron, but it's not. I'm used to having KDE and GNOME look and feel differently, and now it just about looks the same whether I choose KDE or GNOME from the login screen. That lack of difference is now confusing, making me feel like they took something away...
So please stop telling me Microsoft's great secret of success.
Microsoft's success is inarguable. Their "secret" may be arguable, but that shouldn't be the issue here. At issue is a unified desktop - the noticable face for the consumer to identify with - that the previous respondent vetted.
You write:
The only reason we have Windows now is because everybody else already had a GUI for years and Microsoft had to follow.
Whether this is true or not is largely irrelevant; the Microsoft GUI is the only GUI that 90% of of current (consumer-Joe-and-Jane-public) computer users have ever known.
When the first respondent wrote:
Most users [can't] tell you the difference in the versions of Windows, he was entirely accurate. I've worked tech support for years, and the vast majority of our customers have no idea which version of Windows they are using. They frequently tell me they are using Windows '97, being unable to distinguish between the OS and a suite of applications.
The point of this? If Linux is ever to succeed on the Desktop, with über-geeks AND consumer-Joe-and-Jane-public, a unified desktop is essential.
As Linux exists now, customer support for Joe-and-Jane-public would be a nightmare.
Me: "Do you use KDE or Gnome, Ma'am?"
Them: "Hmm?"
You also write:
RedHat won't enable Linux on the masses' desktops. Codeweavers will.
Bullshit. Most users - the non-MS haters, non-zealots - will see no reason to switch to another OS in the first place, and being able to run the same apps won't sway them. They will respond, logically: "If I'm going to be using the same programs, why not be using the same OS?"
I see Wine as a hindrance to Linux, not as a help. I also find it puzzling. To me, it is a bit like going to a Chinese restaurant and ordering a cheeseburger.
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
It's a big issue, because the Red Hat "look" is likely to become standard if it's any good at all.
As a business move, a unified look makes a lot of sense. It should have happened years ago. Maybe if VA Linux had done it, they'd still be a viable company.
But all too often these APIs aren't compatible. Theming APIs are one good example as they are related to the problem that people either bitch about or get used to (depending on how long they use Linux for ;) Both GTK and Qt have different ways of writing pluggable theming engines. What RedHat have done is create several themes that look the same. OK. Good start. What we really need to do though is have a standard for plugin theming engines, so I can use the GTK ThinIce theme in KDE and vice-versa. Then if I run a program in KDE, it adopts the theme I chose for KDE, and if I run it in GNOME, it adopts the theme I chose for gnome.
That's only one simple example. Sound servers are another pet hate. When I run Konqueror inside of GNOME2, it won't play sounds. Why? Because Konqueror uses aRts, and GNOME uses eSound. In about 6 months gnome is switching to GStreamer, and KDE is looking interested too, which will hopefully provide a unified API for Linux multimedia. The work Havoc Pennington is doing at freedesktop.org is great too.
We're getting there, but it's a lot of effort. Which brings me on to my final point. There's a reason there are so few unified APIs - it's very, very hard to create code that is easily used by anybody. You often have to manually create bindings to umpteen different languages, and even different "feels" to make all the different programmers happy. Then you have to campaign for adoption. It's a lot of work.
What's needed is a decent object model. Something as easy as KParts, as powerful as CORBA and as ubiqitous as COM. Something that lets me write an object in any language (including C), and then "export" it to the OS, so that it can be used in any other app. This would not only increase code sharing (so reducing memory usage), but would also lay the groundwork for many more technologies to be standardised. I wish I had time to do this, but it's far from easy.
Wrong, Wine makes developing for Linux easier and faster. IBM has shown that you can make good and stable Wine-based apps (hpbuilder).
WINE is a nice way to play catch-up forever.
Also wrong. All Win-soft is Win98-compatible which is a fixed target for 4 years now. - And will be around for quite some time, too.
This is what killed OS/2 -- they had a windows compatibility mode that was so good -- no one developed for OS/2, what possible motivation would there be to? Program to windows -- sell on windows and OS/2.
Yeah, I saw that coming. But it's complete nonsense. OS/2 was killed because it was from IBM.
From an OEM point of view:
OS/2 = IBM = computer-maker = competitor = not a good idea.
Windows = Microsoft = software-company = no competitor = OK
Add in that OS/2 was too expensive, had really shitty marketing and wasn't really pushed by IBM itself (they sold DOS/Windows PCs at all times!) - but even the best price, the best marketing and IBM only selling OS/2 PC wouldn't have made OS/2 successful. OEMs would have been stupid to adopt it.
Wine is a great way to attract users. If Wine becomes so good that Wine-apps run on Linux just like on Windows - well what's the problem?
But we both know that developing for Win32 is a pain. Wine is a way to attract users. Once Linux gets a significant marketshare on the desktop (over 10%) developers will happily make native Linux-versions. Just like developers stopped made Win32-apps when Win95 was released. Also a native app will have better KDE-integration (and that's where RedHat's initiative fails - where it counts it doesn't work, it just puts a skin over it) than a Wine-version. Of course Linux-users have to be relevant, which is currently not the case on the desktop.
We have to get the users *FIRST*. Whining about no native apps available won't change a thing. If Wine is a way to get users (and it is, IMO) it is the way to go.
And another thing: Linux has a strong development community which puts out many great Linux-only apps. Wine won't change that. - If Linux manages to become the OS with the most apps (Qt, GTK, Win32 AND Motif) it will become the most popular OS.
Beyond all that -- the unified desktop (QT+GTK) will enhance the user experience. Widgets should look and act the same, you shouldn't have to train your eye to a new widget set for each application you use. You shouldn't select an application because it fits "with your desktop" -- you should select it because it is the best application -- the article makes the point very clearly and I whole-heartedly agree.
Well, where it counts, RedHat's approach fails. (Does Gnome's Palm-software get synch my notes with knotes? I don't think so. Does Gnome's PIM software know about my KDE-adressbook? Does Gnome's Windowmanager restore KDE-windows on relogin? on the correct desktop? I don't think so. Will Gnome apps use KDE's really fine printmanager? I don't think so.) RedHat made it *look* like it's integrated, but in reality it isn't.
*IF* you think we need a really unified desktop you will have to choose.
There are good political reasons to choose GNOME. (I don't know why when people say 'politics' it is assumed to be a synonym for 'bad'.) Namely, proprietary software vendors can produce GNOME versions of their apps without any trouble; but you have to pay Troll Tech if you want to produce proprietary software for KDE.
Free software zealots won't care one way or the other - indeed they might even prefer the GPL'd Qt rather than Lesser-GPL'd GNOME libraries - but businesses are perhaps more likely to choose GNOME if they decide which desktop to develop for.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Well, it looks like I'll be switching away from Redhat pretty soon. I've been running Redhat 7.x and KDE on my desktop for about a year now and think it's great. KDE is a very well intergrated solution. Konqueror, Kmail, etc all interoperate with each other in a sensible, predictible fashion. I have Mozilla installed and I like it, but Konqueror is much more integrated. I like hiting ALT-F2 and typing gg:. Or typing a directory, or a website, or a program, or a samba/windows server, or any or the other protocols that KDE will seamlessly pass on the correct app. I don't want to be sent to a million non-KDE application, fill up all my RAM and have the names of the programs I'm actually running hidden from me.
I want Mozilla's menu item to say Mozilla, not "Web Browser". Jeezus, if I run Linux I may just care about my operating systems internals. Right now I have about six web browsers installed on my system. I need to know which one I'm getting.
What Redhat should work on is adding menu items to the GNOME and KDE menus for the applications you actually have installed. Right now most of them get left out. I don't even have a menu item for gimp!
Life is too short to proofread.
What I am saying is... A newbie NEEDS to see the EXACT same thing on each distro. Otherwise they will get confused, especially if they need support. As someone pointed out earlier; each of these interfaces provides very different environments that are extremely confusing to the average user. On Windows, all newbies see the same thing. Yes, there are minimal changes betweeen revisions of Windows, but in general From Windows 95-2K, there were not many adjustments that joe user had to make. Even with XP, the average user knows what the Start button is supposed to do. But put that same user in front of KDE with it's "K" menu or GNOME with the Footprint, and they won't have a clue. Keep in mind, most "joe users" are extremely technology challenged.
r haps log out (in a shared computer situation)
A theme that is tuned to the basic needs of the average user does nothing but make Linux even better. And it still need not affect people who use Linux at a much more advanced level. Just don't install that theme if you don't want it! That's all RedHat did, is make a theme and ADD some functionality that wasn't previously there. Only improvments from where I am standing.
> Why should a "unified" desktop better than
> some default desktop? Both are new to the
> user. HOW DOES THE NEWBIE BENEFIT?
The newbie benefits because (if this were in all distros) the newbie would never have to deal with the oddities of one user environment over another when dealing with support or working with someone who is more knowledgable. They wouldn't be able to tell the difference between KDE or GNOME. Remember, "joe user" is never going to use all the features that you and I may use.
Here's an example. I set up GNOME for my wife. GNOME has a pager and allows multiple desktops, but she does not multitask, so the pager does her no good. As it is, she rarely even runs more than one program at a time. I left it out of her customized desktop. This is the average user, like it or not. Having all the great features and themes that KDE or GNOME have, is not going to help them out in any way. It will very likely confuse and frustrate them. This is alleviated with a set of default themes that create a comonality among the differing environments.
> Just look at KDE 3.l and Keramik and tell me
> RedHat should not install that as a default.
It doesn't matter wht it looks like... While it may look great, it's not going to be any better than something like a basic W.I.M.P. The average user doesn't care about the extra features. Sure the eye candy can and does appeal to average users, but if the default theme is as pretty and useful as it needs to be, why should it matter that they are given a default? This is all most users do anyway (in no particular order):
-Browse the web
-Check E-mail
-Maybe use multimedia
-Type a paper
-Create a Spreadsheet
-Manage an address book
-Dial up/Connect to an ISP
-Minimize
-Maximize
-Close
-Shutdown
-Pe
-Maybe us an instant messaging program
-Set a background wallpaper
-Very unlikely, but possibly choose a screen saver.
-In rare instances, balance their budget.
That's about it... There may be a few other things they can do, but your average user doesn't even know or care about those things. Changing their window widgets or themes in the window manager is a very unlikely activity for a newbie. Or applying "skins" or "chromes" to their mp3 and web browsers is also extremely unlikely. I challenge you to present me with anything else that an average user will definitely do on a system that they are unfamiliar with.
And once again, you miss my point... this is NOT for you. This is for the person who has never run Linux before. This is for the person who can't set their microwave or VCR clock because it's too difficult. These are not stupid people, they are people who simply don't care. They just want to turn the machine on and get to work.
I think the more sensible approach is a set of themes that are common across all window managers/user environments. This could be a pack of themes that are attuned to the needs of a low grade user. And if RedHat is listening... this would be something that you DO install during a default installation, but can be de-selected during all installations if the admin chooses. If you want to elevate yourself among the masses, then you can call it the "Dummy Pack" for all I care, but either way, it has to be unifrom across all distros and it has to be a default that can be over-ridden by those who "know better".
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
There are other important issues RedHat need to improve in their KDE support :
- Updates to packages
As it is now, everyone installs unofficial KDE packages, due to the complete ignorance of RedHat of new versions. And no I know how they operate, only releasing backported fixes of their version, for example KDE 3.0.0. Problem is they rarely if ever release updated KDE packages !! (I have been running RH7.3 for a while now, and do know what I am talking about.) SuSE on the other hand release new KDE packages all the time, and backport the most important fixes to their released version / OR issue a completely new one when appropriate (KDE 3.0.2 for example).
- Packaging of more KDE applications.
Again SuSE impressed me a lot when I installed their distro. An amazing selection of good KDE applications. RedHat consistently provided me with GTK / Gnome apps, but rarely that many KDE apps.
How are the chances a patched (they did change the sources of a good number of parts of both KDE and Gnome Afaik) packageset of both desktops is going to improve the above mentioned points ?
Would be nice if Bero commented on this (or anyone else with RH), as I still doubt RHs commitment to anything else than Gnome / GTK..
life+universe+everything=42
- Christopher Null
chrisnull.com - read my book, Half Mast - filmcritic.com - New Architect
filmcritic.com - Movie reviews on Internet time
RedHat having their great "unified" desktop won't make Photoshop run on it,
Think about that for a minute. Part of the reason that software vendors are loath to enter the linux desktop market is because there is so little standardization and they don't want to have to support 50 different ways of launching a program. Standardization makes it easier to guarantee that the software you'd like to distribute will work. The LSB is moving towards making that possible at the developer level, but having the biggest commercial distro standardize on a desktop will help to make the user interface less of a moving target.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
First you say it is a problem that users can't distinguish Windows-versions then you say it's essential to make KDE and GTK indistinguisable? That doesn't make any sense.
Me: "Do you use KDE or Gnome, Ma'am?"
Aha, and "Do you use KDE, Gnome, RedHat's desktop, SuSE's desktop or Mandrake's desktop, Ma'am" would be better?
*IF* we really need a unified desktop we have to choose from KDE and Gnome. Period.
If RedHat would install KDE by default, we would have that unified desktop RIGHT NOW, because they are the only ones still holding out with GNOME. (The default is what counts)
Creating a bastardized mixture of both will not solve this problem (if it really is a problem which I honestly doubt.)
Bullshit. Most users - the non-MS haters, non-zealots - will see no reason to switch to another OS in the first place,
Oh, Microsoft is doing their best to provide reasons: New licensing scheme, DRM, Palladium, spyware, requesting rights to control everything...
Of course KDE offers so much, Windows can't do (more desktops, session manager, good MMB integration, etc.) but those are only discouvered after using it for some time.
and being able to run the same apps won't sway them. They will respond, logically: "If I'm going to be using the same programs, why not be using the same OS?"
By that theory, we would all still use DOS.
Correct is: "Great that I can use better and more stable Linux-apps on a better desktop, but I still have to use this one important Win32-app or I can't switch."
Or (more realistically for the average Joe): "Great that I can still listen to pirated music, but I still have to use these (also pirated) Win32 games"
It's ridiculos to think that anybody will use Wine to use all their Win32apps on Linux. Wine is and will be used for those programs that don't have an equivalent in Linux and only for those, not for all.
IIRC, Trolltech's license is about 1500$ - 3500$ per developer. That shouldn't be a roadblock for a commercial vendor. Microsoft's tools are also not free and people are obviously using them.
Free software zealots won't care one way or the other - indeed they might even prefer the GPL'd Qt rather than Lesser-GPL'd GNOME libraries - but businesses are perhaps more likely to choose GNOME if they decide which desktop to develop for.
Wrong, businesses will choose Qt if they use C++ and GTK if they still use C.
And if they want to do multiplatform, they will choose Qt or Kylix (both KDE-based).
It's fairly clear the Red Hat's developers are more adept with Gtk+/Gnome than Qt/KDE, and there's nothing wrong with that - if they were better at Qt, we'd still be having this discussion.
Actually, I wonder... Redhat is the only distribution I can name that has GNOME as a default desktop. Had Redhat chosen KDE as their default, then maybe they would not have even bothered with trying to theme with GNOME. So, no, I think if they were better with Qt then we wouldn't be having this discussion.
The irony here is that Redhat, being the most popular Linux distribution, could probably end the desktop war by simply switching to KDE as a default.
Anyway, just thinking out loud. I have nothing against GNOME.
Windows, and Linux should look, act, and feel the exact same. Choice is so overrated anyways. I mean come on. Creating two sets of configuration tools, two operating systems, and two user interfaces isn't feasible or desirable. I believe that all of operating systems should look and behave consistently. I mean, sharing a similar setup between the two operating systems would also significantly reduces everyone's documentation work.
They are really doing something wrong if a user likes the way a preference is set in one operating system better than it is set in the other. If they were exectly the same, than problem solved! If they have an opinion on what is the better choice is for a particular setting, it would be irresponsible for us not to configure both operating systems that way. If we don't have an opinion, than the problem goes away! It still doesn't make sense to configure one operating system one way, the other the other way.
Who came up with this "choice" BS anyways? In fact, I think all cars should look and feel the same, all houses should look at feel the same, all clothes should look at feel the same, etc... What is it with these wacko supporters of "choice" anyways? Why in the world would anyone want to be able to choose something different, it's obvious that one company should make the choice for us and make all products of that type the same as to what they choose. Sheesh.
http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares
Windows XP offers multiple desktops.
Windows XP has session management
It also has remote access. It has many things that you say it doesn't have. Please don't spread FUD to try to win this silly little war you think you're fighting.
The fact is, A unified desktop is necessary for the masses. You hang out with Linux users and think that therefore all computer users think like you. The fact is, the majority of computer users find Linux users asanine jerks who need to get out more. We're NOT the majority here.
Magnwa
Oh.. also..
Why would someone want to run an emulation of a shaky OS? (Yes, Wine is an emulation in practice.. no matter what it's called).
If it crashes under Linux/Wine but not under Windows.. how would this win Linux people?
Linux's first goal is to get some advocates who aren't worse FUD spreaders than Microsoft. We scare users away, okay? We don't attract people, we SCARE THEM FAR AWAY.
Magnwa
Currently all distributions install KDE by default except one which installs GNOME.
In 2 months, all distributions will install KDE by default except one which will install a bastardized mixture of KDE and GNOME.
And you say that's great. What was your point again?
The newbie benefits because (if this were in all distros)
It is not in all distros. KDE is the default on all distros except one. If we really need standardization who should change?
Also, I don't think anybody can expect all distros to put a redhat-logo in the bottom-left corner.
And once again, you miss my point... this is NOT for you. This is for the person who has never run Linux before. This is for the person who can't set their microwave or VCR clock because it's too difficult. These are not stupid people, they are people who simply don't care. They just want to turn the machine on and get to work.
Your point is completely irrelevant.
Hell, KDE even offers a settings-manager which is launched at first log-in. Just choose "Windows" and *ALL* your settings will be set like Windows. It will look like Windows, it will feel like Windows. So the newbie thinks "I know Windows, so this is probably the best" clicks on it, clicks "next" twice and that's it.
This is out-of-the-box KDE functionality.
If RedHat thinks it's so damn important to keep Gnome, they could just write a similar application for Gnome and everything would be fine.
Sorry, but creating a mixture won't solve *this* problem (which has nothing to do with uniformity) at all.
And if RedHat is listening... this would be something that you DO install during a default installation, but can be de-selected during all installations if the admin chooses. If you want to elevate yourself among the masses, then you can call it the "Dummy Pack" for all I care, but either way, it has to be unifrom across all distros and it has to be a default that can be over-ridden by those who "know better".
So you say that we need uniformity and think that RedHat is doing the right thing by being the ONLY ONE doing everything different.
Sorry, I don't understand your point.
I'm not scared until they come out with a unified theme for Enlightenment. After all, what other wm would one use?
Could it be possible to create a theme for each
desktop with the settings for a joint-strike theme?
Guess the whole redhat effort contains more than this, but it might be part of it. Maybe upstream developers will include it?
Yes, but only 4. And only since XP.
Windows XP has session management
No it has not. If you have 10 IE-windows on your desktop and you reboot, you start with an empty desktop.
In KDE, all KDE-programs are restored just like they were before you left.
Why don't you just install normally and customize from there? You already said 1) you can handle it and 2) you intend on customizing. All Red Hat is adding is a new default theme and shared Xft2 code.
To sum it up, quit being a whiner.
I dunno, the propaganda for GTK-- seems to say that it is a better fit for C++ than Qt, since Qt is old and crusty and 1993-era C++ rather than nice and clean and STL, standard-library-based. So I don't think the KDE / GNOME choice is as simple as C++ / C.
The Qt licensing costs aren't a big amount but I think the point is there's only a single supplier. This is generally considered a Bad Thing, even if in the short term the fees they are currently charging (to get people 'hooked') are affordable.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
NOTE: Get your mind out of the gutter.
I've tried using a joystick in numberous driving games. It doesn't work well, you usually crash a lot. I think I'll pass on a joystick controlled car. I hope the owners of them have good insurance, and that they never try to park near me at the store.
WireHead
The previous message was created with 100% recycled words.
These screenshots of null don't lack developers' names.
The problem is one of themes, not modified about boxes.
I don't know who started the rumor about altering about boxes -- happened sometime in the last submission about this.
The problem is that there's been a lot of bullshit going around about this, and it's been trumped up a lot, and I hate to say it, but I honestly think that some of the people at companies that compete with RH might be stooping to somewhat dirty tactics.
May we never see th
Heh, what does this article have to do with GNOME?
They modified GNOME almost as much as they modified KDE. They only thing I personally want changed is the ability to go back to a default KDE. Apparently there is a gconf key which you can use to revert some of the changes they made to GNOME. There should be an equivlent way of doing it in KDE.
You can restore programs in Gnome just the way they were when you logged off.
Dawn of the Dead
Windows users often use various screensavers, desktop backgrounds, mouse pointers, etc. to customize their setup. We linux users just have more choices, but the Redhat unified look and feel will be needed in mainstream desktop distros for the average Joe Sixpack. These folks don't fool with computers just to be fooling around with them, they want to do something else, like "Send an Email" or "Scan,edit and print an old photograph". Also, they want to "look something up on the Internet". For them, a unified look and feel might be good, to get RHL out there in competition with Windows.
btw, I'm using Grey Cat Linux 3.0 to make this post, temporarily unavailable for download, so I feel like I'm one of a very few that are GCL 3.0 users.
Right now, one has to have a little patience with GCL 3.0, it has it's good days, and it's bad days...
Rapidweather's Linux Screenshots.
So, why did you say you need a unified desktop?
Achille Talon
Hop!
I, for one, like the different options we have in terms of desktop environments. I don't want either KDE or GNOME to go away.
People are continually misunderstanding this point. You can change the default look and feel and behaviour if you want t, but Red Hat have made the two desktops consistent. Which is a good thing, as users choose their desktop apps based on usefullness, rather than toolkit.
The world would be a better place if the both projects united. A streamlined UI is a key part of refining and polishing an intuitive interface.
A truly ideal enviroment exists. It is the programmers objective to FIND it, not create it. If KDE and GNOME were one (dubbed "KNOME" or something) the fittest enviroment would be found quicker.
Most will never agree, but it's an interesting read.
Currently Joe installs Linux and either stays with it because he likes it better or drops it because doesn't run.
How will that change?
I thought that would be obvious. One of the reasons he might not like it is because his apps never look quite the same - QT, GTK2, GTK1, XMMS and Mozilla on every Linux desktop but Red Hat Nulls don't look consistent. This is annoying and unnecessary.
So unifying on one user environment and taking away choice with regards to environments is a good thing? I think THAT is a serious mistake. My personal preferences lie with GNOME. Yes, I have used KDE 3 for quite some time at work, but I eventually found it not to my liking, so I dumped it and switched to GNOME 2. So don't accuse me of not having tried it.
KDE IS a great user environment for beginners, and I have seen the first time configuration screen... but I still say that we don't need to standardize on one user environment. That IS limiting in a far greater way than creating a default theme that is common across environments. The flexibility to appear exactly the same is there in both GNOME and KDE, so why not use it? We need to standardize on a default theme that allows easy transitioning from one environment to another.
As far as RedHat being different is concerned, what does it matter for crying out loud!?? Strictly speaking from an Amuhrican point of view, THEY have the majority of the US Linux market like it or not. What distro of Linux do you think newbies are going to buy in the US? They certainly aren't going to get Debian, SuSe or use Linux From Scratch. They are going to buy RedHat every time. When SuSE actually makes a dent in the US, maybe things will be different. But I still think that it would be best if every Linux distro had a common theme across multiple user environments. An unbranded theme that was specifically geared to low-end users. Why is this such a difficult concept for such intelligent people to understand? Maybe you've forgotten what it was like to be a newbie? This attitude does nothing to further the cause of Linux on the desktop.
Your point is that you would like to see people limited to the more popular environment: KDE. Sure, it's nice, but it's hardly the end all and be all of environments. KDE isn't flexible enough, and GNOME needs to mature just a little more. I think we need to have multiple environments, window managers, etc... that's what makes Linux great. But, we need to have a way to draw it all together so that people who are just starting can have a common experience. At the same time, we don't need to limit a distro's choice of environment either. And that is exactly what you are proposing. Who cares if it's the environment that most distros use? It's still a limitation in choice for the user. A theme is less of a limitation and has NO impact on advanced users.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Looking around in my Red Hat 7.2 box I find four different file-open dialogs. See here:
f
http://www.pjls16812.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/rh.gi
I guess if I looked harder I could find more... Now, I am a very small OEM and repair shop. I pre-install Red Hat 7.2 on my customers' PCs sometimes. It sure is hard trying to explain why the apps look and behave so differently! I'm happy that Red Hat is actually trying to do something positive about it...
True, but nothing prevents them from including GNOME. But IF you think that standardization is important they should switch to KDE as the default. IMO, they should use KDE as a default, but not because of standardization...
As far as RedHat being different is concerned, what does it matter for crying out loud!??
Funny, it was *YOU* who said that everybody should have the same thing on every distro, not me.
IMO, standardization is overrated, but that's me.
What distro of Linux do you think newbies are going to buy in the US? They certainly aren't going to get Debian, SuSe or use Linux From Scratch. They are going to buy RedHat every time. When SuSE actually makes a dent in the US, maybe things will be different.
Wow, you change your mind pretty fast. First you insist on cross-distribution conformity, now you say that RedHat is the only thing that matters.
There is also Mandrake, BTW, which is not doing bad in the US either.
Of course RedHat scare away so many users that there are fewer desktop Linux-users in the US than in Germany, despite being 3 times larger...
Just check out newsgroups, you will see about 5 - 15% of Linux users in German newsgroups, but only 0-3% in US-newsgroups. (non-technical, OS-neutral of course.) I can send you a perl-script that analyzes with what people posted their messages if you want.
But you seem to be fine with that, it seems.
KDE isn't flexible enough,
Do you have an example of KDE "unflexibility" or are you just trolling?
At the same time, we don't need to limit a distro's choice of environment either. And that is exactly what you are proposing.
Wrong. I was talking about defaults. Of course Gnome should be included for those who want it.
Who cares if it's the environment that most distros use?
You seem to.
A theme is less of a limitation and has NO impact on advanced users.
As I already pointed out, that's false. A theme just makes it "look" integrated, but the real cool features all don't work (and you don't know why some apps work while others don't because of your idiotic theme, which makes it even worse.)
As I said, this standardization is overrated, however it's not completely pointless either. For example you might want to use the addressbook or the printing dialouge or want to dock to the menubar. These are things that really matter and those will not work better because of themes.
No, what you describe is win95, win98 or winMe; but not NT, win2k or winXP. NT/2K/XP has a different kernel, does not load DOS at all in any way shape or form. The GUI is part of the kernel and there is no way to get a full-screen text only command-line interface a la DOS under NT.
> Windows succeeded because it was
> backwards-compatible. The PC was plagued by
> IRQ and DMA conflicts and still took away
> marketshare from Macs and Amiga.
> Linux needs to become
> backwards-compatible to Windows and
> needs to run Win32 applications.
OS/2 tried that, and you know its fate. You can't win market by your own merits. You have to play by the demerit of the your competitor. I don't really consider Windows to be a competitor of Linux (or vice versa), but let's consider it is. Then you don't just need Linux to be good, you need Windows to be bad, bad enough that people want to switch.
MS has made a seriously wrong move by not making their software as free as their customers want. But as shown by statistics, this is not enough to drive people over to other solutions. And, Linux is not a good enough contender at that time, anyway. Now the goal should be to make Linux attractive as an alternative, when License 6 really get people annoyed. When this happens, people should have already decided to leave MS, so no problem if MS-Word can't run. But of course another app must be there to fill its gap, and it should be able to read MS-Word created files.
Not so. IBM actually was a latecomer to the home computer market, following successes such as the Commodore 64, Vic 20 and slew of others."
What Microsoft had was MARKETING. Yes, marketing is where it is all at. It really doesn't matter if you have a great product or not. It's all in how you market it.
M$ has proved that with marketing, not only can you sell shit sandwitches, people will actually think they like them!
If Redhat, or any other Linux company wants to succeed, they have to hire the best marketing director that money can buy. Period!
I don't know exactly how this whole conflict erupted between us as we seem to be on the same side but have a difference of opinion about environments. But I will respond to what you said above:
Fine, you like KDE. Why do you think it should be the exclusive default environment? I don't see the reasoning. I am not saying that KDE shouldn't be there, but I am saying that the environment doesn't matter a hill of beans since the user is going to choose based on the apps. I choose GNOME because it has the apps I like. KDE does not. I used KDE 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0. None of them were satisfactory to ME. So I choose GNOME. I think if you looked at it reasonably, you would see that there are always going to be people who prefer to use one environment or the other. Why not give both environments some common ground by way of a theme or a set of themes?
Answer this: why is standardization overrated? It's the only thing that allows something to gain mass acceptance. Look at cars. They are all pretty much the same in terms of the basic "user interface". You can soup up a car and make it look cool or give it some eninge modifications to get extra performance, but any joe off the street will be able to drive even the most modified car. This is becasue ALL cars have a "default theme", so to speak. If someone said, I have a better idea of how to steer the car without using a steering wheel: a steering knob. Do you think that car would ever gain acceptance? Never. That is what KDE and GNOME are like without a common theme. To the end user, KDE and GNOME may as well be totally different operating systems. Keep in mind that to the average user an OS has nothing to do with a kernel, security, performanc, etc... it has to do with where all the nice looking clickety click stuff is. So standardization is the key to gaining mass acceptance.
We could make one distro that is geared towards mass acceptance, but that doesn't really give users a true choice. Giving them multiple distros with the appearance of sameness (because they don't know any better) is a much more equitable approach. After all, that is what free software is about: free choice. There should be no competition with a winner at the end, there should be constant cooperation between all projects to make the whole thing seamless. Everyone benefits then.
> Wow, you change your mind pretty fast. First
> you insist on cross-distribution conformity,
> now you say that RedHat is the only thing that
> matters.
No. I've been completely logical and consistent throughout... I believe tht all distros should have the freedom to package whatever they want in their systems regardless of popularity. But, I also believe that the default dekstop that a user is presented with should be identical across all distros. KDE and GNOME or even Enlightenment, and OpenStep can be made to look and work exactly like each other with default themes. The only differences are going to be the apps. If you have QT and GNOME on the system, you can run both environment's apps. They will funciton identically in either environment. I've seen it, I've done it. There are a few K apps that I will use on ocassion in GNOME. So including this defaulot theme does not do any "damage" to either GNOME or KDE. I have no preference for RedHat, but I do conceed that they are the dominant distro in the US. I haven't touched Mandrake since version 7, so I cannot speak for or against it. I was not impressed with version 7 however. Either way... yes there should be uniformity if you are going to considerr the whole of a distro an OS. No, I did not say that RedHat is the only thing that matters. I said that it's the only thing that sells to the masses in the US. Mass acceptance is the goal...
I don't need a perl script to tell me how much smaller the Linux user base is in the US. I see it at work, I've seen it in the streets (the blank stares at my Got Root shirt and my LINUX license plate). But that has nothing to do with RedHat and everything to do with Linux user's attitudes. Unless a lot of them adjust their attitudes to be more friendly and open to dumb questions and "stupid" ideas, Linux will always remain a minor player. ONe poster on here pointed out that the only reason he doesn't use LInux and went the way of MS is because he dislikes the experience he had with the users. *I* try to be open to what users want and expect out of their computers. No idea or request is too "stupid". At the base of most requests is either misunderstanding from the user or a misunderstanding on the part of the "Linux guru". There don't appear to be many gurus that are willing to put their egos aside and listen. RedHat has no bearing on that... If anything they've done more to get Linux exposure in the US than any other company. I'd love to see Linux grow here in the US, but it won't happen until the gurus and developers realize that it's the user that matters, not the code.
KDE was inflexible for me when it comes to themes. There are many themes for KDE, but they are all same-ish. There is no wild divergence from the generaic Windows/Macintosh/CDE paradigm, and there ought to be. This flexibility is useful for more advanced users sinc it can make the interface much more efficient. I couldn't find any themes that place the window widgets in unusual locations or have more than just the basic "Close" "Minimize" "Maximize" "Stick" and "Menu" buttons. Enlightenment has done a much better job at this than any other window manager. Sure, the KDE themes apply to the apps and the window management, but there wasn't enough variety for ME. KMail is a pretty boring app, it allows you to send and read mail and keep an address book... where are the groupware fatures? I think that Evolution has done a lot more for mail client/groupware than KMail. The applets... boring. Where is the Flame applet in the default set of applets? The Tea minder is OK, but the clocks are boring again... The AfterStep clock is much better: nice themes and a cleaner look. Of course this is ALL subjective. But the point is that the KDE interface really just reminded me of a pale imitation of Windows/Mac/CDE. Whereas GNOME seems much more original and a lot more flexible. Again... just my opnions though.
>> Who cares if it's the environment that most
>> distros use?
>
> You seem to.
No, I didn't say that. The choice of which environment is installed by default should be the vendor's choice when a newbie is installing it. But, why make one envirnment seem so different from the other when it can all look the same? All it requires is a simple question: Are you new to Linux? If they answer yes, then BAM! install the low-grade user's default theme pack. Then it doesn't matter if GNOME or KDE are the distro's default choice, it's going to look the same to joe user and all the functionality will be present.
>> A theme is less of a limitation and has NO
>> impact on advanced users.
>
> As I already pointed out, that's false. A theme
> just makes it "look" integrated, but the real
> cool features all don't work (and you don't
> know why some apps work while others don't
> because of your idiotic theme, which makes it
> even worse.)
I have no idea what you are talking about here. I've NEVER seen this happen. If I install KDE and GNOME and go with GNOME as my default environment, I can run everything for both environments with no probelms. There might be a quirk or two, and to be real honest here, it doesn't have to be that way. GNOME/KDE cooperation would solve that problem real fast. That's what I was saying earlier about how competition needs to go away since it is only a destructive force. Cooperation would make the entire system seamless and provide benefits to everyone.
Anyway... I will agree to disagree. Neither you nor I is going to convince the other that either of us is right. I think a unified theme that is optional, unbranded and ery basic would be very helpful in getting Linux on more desktops. You feel that KDE is the best environment for all users and should be the default. We just disagree.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Listen, troll.
Just because a fork of KDE is legal, it does not mean it is smart to do a fork. Corel did this for their linux version and many changes were just lost , because noone ever ported them to KDE-2.
Also many of the changes to KDE software are done by Gnome developers working for Redhat. These people call KDE "crapland" in public bug reports.
At the moment the Redhat KDE changes the name of the KDE services, so that any program compiled for Redhat's KDE might not work with SuSE's KDE, Mandrake's KDE, Debian's KDE or any generic KDE.
Noone needs this kind of crap.
Moritz
Oh, not another one explaining the success of Microsoft.
Nice article. But we miss a crucial point. The general acceptance of the LINUX OS depends more on the available applications and the ease of use than any other factor. The challenge presented by KDE and GNOME has clearly driven the WindozeXP evolution - you can see the similarities where microsoft has "borrowed" from LINUX. It is only the COMPETITION between these two desktops that has made them both as good as they are. I have been a LINUX user and developer for nine years now and know many of the original players. Red Hat and other LINUX distributions have made a very nice living from the efforts of the Open Source community and elimination of the competition between the Desktops in order to reduce your cost of production of a given distribution is a false economy.
It will result in less competition, slower advancement of the Desktop for LINUX and ultimately kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Remember that most of the Desktop developers do so from pride and not for money, or to reduce their cost to produce any given release. The generalization will dampen their spirits and in the long run kill their motivation to improve at a rapid pace which will in turn provide RedHat and others with an inferior product.
I understand your reasoning, which is indeed on track in the short term, but its a short term fix for a long term slip into obsolesence.
My 2c worth,
Well, I didn't. I said that *IF* standardization is so damn important, you would have to standardize on an exclusive default environment.
A theme will only make it look integrated but will fail where it will count.
Answer this: why is standardization overrated? It's the only thing that allows something to gain mass acceptance. Look at cars. They are all pretty much the same in terms of the basic "user interface". You can soup up a car and make it look cool or give it some eninge modifications to get extra performance, but any joe off the street will be able to drive even the most modified car. This is becasue ALL cars have a "default theme", so to speak.
A good example: All cockpits look very different (= **NO** "default" theme at all. not even near it) but the controls work similarily (like everybody has windows, menus, a mouse, etc.).
So you provided an example that the average Joe does not freak out because some colors or looks are different. My point all the way.
Your "steering knob" example is not appropriate. All common DEs work through the same principles.
Regarding KDE: Yes, many themes support putting the buttons wherever you want, but some don't. On everything else you say it's "boring", whatever that means.
I don't really care much about being "cool", I care about getting work done. KDE's printing manager lets me send a pdf as e-mail out of *every* KDE app. This is why I switched over to KWord for bills. Konqueror's "fish:" KIOslave lets me connect to *ANY* ssh-scp computer without any need to configure anything. (What a relief, before that you had to set up NFS, SMB or something like that - unnecessary for non-permanent connections. This is the first graphical ssh/scp client I am aware of).
All it requires is a simple question: Are you new to Linux? If they answer yes, then BAM! install the low-grade user's default theme pack.
Well, as I already pointed out, a settings-manager already exists in KDE and the "Windows-like"-settings will probably be fine for newbies coming from Windows.
So what you request *EXISTS RIGHT NOW* and is used in SuSE, Mandrake, Caldera and all other distros that install KDE by default. But you seem to be in denial about that fact.
You said that something like this is needed for mass-acceptance and you are right: Everywhere RedHat scares away new users, Linux is virtually non-existant on the desktop while everywhere a KDE-centric distribution is in the default installs, it is spreading. What a coicidence, eh?
Stop denying the facts.
Do you know the saying "A technology has not been invented until Microsoft incorporates it"? - We are discussing really long now and you beg for a solution that does not exist for you because RedHat does not incorporate it but everybody else is using for quite some time now.
GNOME/KDE cooperation would solve that problem real fast. That's what I was saying earlier about how competition needs to go away since it is only a destructive force.
Let's get some facts straight: GNOME was a reaction on KDE, if there were no KDE, there would neither be a GNOME. GNOME's only reason to exist is to kill KDE.
Also if you look at GNOME, they seem to be eager to jump on every Microsoft-technology (MONO, a registry-like settings system(!)) but are not willing to use KDE-technology at all. It's not easy to work with people whose only goal is to kill you. But to be fair, it was getting better lately.
Also, because of the nature of the two projects (C vs. C++) sharing code is hard or even impossible.
You feel that KDE is the best environment for all users and should be the default.
Wrong, I think (and I can support that with usage statistics) that KDE is the best environment for most (not all) users and should be the default.
The PC was the only open hardware platform at that time.
You also need games. Any house that has somebody under the age of 18 (Most anyway) will by Windows because it runs all the mainstream games their friends play. Yes wine could solve this, but it would be good if the developers released linux versions of games. It would be ideal to not have wine at all, we have office applications, browsers and all those things, made in linux that don't need an emulator. The only big thing missing is mainstream games. We have equivelants of everything else.
Another thing to think about is that some people like KDE to look the same on their Linux box as on their Solaris box or other platform. Same goes for GNOME. If RedHat wants to create a third unique desktop using aspects of both GNOME and KDE and meshing them together then that's great, but don't F-up the look and feel of the original desktops...
Finally something worthy of the combination of the words 'united' and 'linux'? As long as there's no per-seat-licensing ;)
Actually, I think this is a GOOD thing, as long as other distributions can also pick up the defaults. Currently working with some programs is jarring - and thus painful to users. However, I think just having a generic function description in the menus is a mistake. It's important to modify the menus so that they show not just the function ("Web Browser"), but also the name of the program ("Mozilla"). Yes, it's longer, but it is MORE confusing to users when the programs change or when they update to a different program. When I see "Mozilla Web Browser" and "Galeon Web Browser", I can understand both (a) they do the same basic thing, but (b) will do it somewhat differently. You could swap the order if necessary "Web Browser (Mozilla)" if you'd prefer, as long as it was done consistently throughout the system. This is already a requirement in the GNOME User Interface Guidelines; you can see the whole document at: http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/1.0/ And this specific guidance at: http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/1.0/de sktop-integration.html#menu-item-names
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
So, I stand by my statement.
Very true. If the experts who are used to Linux want it, they should still be available 'untouched' for them to install and configure. But let's face a fact here: RedHat is becoming the easiet of the distros to install and configure; making the setup and configuration less daunting for newcomers is a step in the right direction.
Yes, RedHat is easy to Install, easy to configure? As long as you don't mind uncommented config files and upgrades that completely hose your customizations... http://www.debian.org