Slashdot Mirror
Bero Quits Red Hat Over Treatment of KDE
Vicegrip writes "In an article on leaked release notes on Redhat 8.0 CNet also revealed that Bernhard Rosenkraenzer, known here on Slashdot as berorh, has quit over objections he has on what Redhat is doing to KDE in the new release. Bero says that the new version of KDE in Redhat 8.0 is going to be crippleware.
I know I always found Bero's comments here on Slashdot helpful and insightful. His worries about what Redhat is doing to KDE for 8.0 have me rather concerned and thinking of switching distributions."
Why? Because RedHat continues to release everything they develop under the GPL? Because they're trying to create a credible alternative to MS-Windows on the desktop, so people like me won't have a future of writing .Net crapplications to look forward to?
RedHat pushes GNOME and GNOME was only created to kill KDE. (Yes, you can mod this down, but it's still the truth and you know it.) RedHat doesn't like KDE and the only reason there were KDE-packages (other than those included in the RedHat releasees) was Bero creating them in his spare time. Yes that's correct, RedHat did not pay their "KDE-maintainer" to create packages for KDE-releases.
If you look at non-technical usegroups, you will see that in areas where KDE-centric distributions dominate (like SuSE does in Europe), about 5 to 15% of users post with Linux, while Linux is pretty much non-existant in American usegroups (although Linux has risen very much in the last months, it's still usually less than 5%).
Coincidence? Maybe. I didn't do statistics on all newsgroups.
(Yes, I do know that usegroup users are not representative for the all computer users, yet is proves that Linux can be used by A LOT of users on the desktop RIGHT NOW and that no magic "formula" is needed. The software is available RIGHT NOW.
Will RedHat's attempts to "nullify" their desktop make it more successful on the desktop? I don't think so (Will GNOME apps use KDE's great printing dialogue that lets you create or even email PDFs? No. Will GNOME PIM apps be aware of the KDE-counterparts? No. Creating a theme does not solve any problem), anyway we will see what happens. They certainly can't do any worse on the desktop than they are currently doing.
Here is RedHat's take on this issue, which makes a lot of sense to me. If you're interested in trying an alternative to Gnome or KDE, check out WindowMaker, it's fast, stable, simple and has some nice themes.
--It's Pimptastic!--
Frankly I'd replace konqueror with mozilla too, since mozilla isnt a steaming pile of crap that cant parse simple javascript, DHTML or some web forms correctly. And yes I am using KDE3.
siri
> GNOME was created by the GNU folks as an
.net craze after Ximian's "distribution" did not convince anyone to give him money for it.
> alternative to KDE at a time when KDE was
> dependent on a piece of non-free software,
> specifically the Qt libraries.
So instead of replacing the qt library by free software (harmony project) and uniting all forces behind KDE (and harmony) some big ego jerks started spreading lies about KDE and Trolltech and started gnome, which still lags behind KDE by month even though it got a lot more money.
In fact Miguel de ICaza was disappointed that his ideas did not impress anyone at KDE, so he left and started GNome, which he left to get some scraps of the
Richard Stallman discovered that he had not realized the need for a free unified desktop. He felt insulted that someone else (Matthias Ettrich) had that idea and did not call it GNU XYZ something. In fact they did not even ask him for permission. Disrespectful like that Finnish guy... So he supported GNOME for political and personal reasons.
Trolltech got so annoyed that they made a big gift to the world by donating qt to free software. After that nothing would stop KDE.
But no, some people still think GNOME is more politically correct and should therefore be used.
Moritz