Has GNOME Become LAME?

auferstehung writes "Nicholas Petreley (should that be KNicholas KPetreley) of LinuxWorld and VarLinux.org has taken his gloves off in the latest article in his KDE vs Gnome series. An unabashed KDE supporter, Petreley uses some choice fighting words in re-acronymizing GNOME as the Language Agnostic Morphable Environment (LAME) Franken-GUI. Despite the sensationalistic flamage throughout the article, several of his GNOME criticisms (Gconf, file selector, features) echo those already voiced within the GNOME community itself. A happy GNOME user myself, please someone...tell me it isn't so."

Comments

The only once inside the GNOME-community

[GauteL]

.. that complains about GConf, is the ones that do not know what it means.

It is basically a configuration database that provides notification, and can use any backend, where the default is pure XML-formatted text files.

An LDAP-backend is also being worked on, something which should be a boon for network administrators.

The file-dialog is lame, and is being replaced.

This article is basically a troll. Use whatever you like. Some people like KDE, others like GNOME.

Re:The only once inside the GNOME-community

[mbogosian]

It is basically a configuration database that provides notification, and can use any backend, where the default is pure XML-formatted text files.

Can someone please tell me what the fsck is wrong with text configuration files (automatically created by the application or not)? And no, don't talk to me about XML...XML is not human readable and is fragile enough to be non-hand editable in a lot of cases. What ever happened to:

• .emacs
• .pinerc
• .plan
• .procmailrc
• .profile (.login, .bashrc, .zlogin or whatever)
• .ssh/...
• etc.

What was wrong with this paradigm?

Re:The only once inside the GNOME-community

[Yokaze]

First, XML is human-readable. It is not readable by Jon Doe, but you won't see him sticking his nose into these files anyway. Those people who can't edit an XML file will most certainly be even less inclined to edit a .emacs file.

XML can be so fragile, that they are non-hand editable, but so can be a non XML-file.

XML is a syntax, nothing more.

With that listing, you have essentially shown yourself, what's wrong with the paradigm.

Each and every application has it's own file, where it stores its configuration (which is not a problem) and it it's own syntax.

The problem with each application it's own file is, that they aren't sharing common settings.

The interesting part behind XML is, you don't have to invent your own syntax and implement your own parser. As a result other applications can quite easily access your data, too.

Re:The only once inside the GNOME-community

[FirstEdition]

There's nothing basically wrong with this (.x) text file kind of configuration, but XML is more flexible in several ways:

* it has inbuilt validation (of a sort) via DTD files
* it is a format which lends itself to generation by other machines, eg many databases have native XML interfaces

Re:The only once inside the GNOME-community

[smittyoneeach]

So, in summary, XML is about standardization, a Good Thing.
How satisfying is it when you can open something completely new, and discover your existing knowledge about how stuff works maps perfectly to the new application?

Re:The only once inside the GNOME-community

[Anonymous Coward]

Each and every application has it's own file, where it stores its configuration (which is not a problem) and it it's own syntax.

Yeah, having a Babel of file formats can be a bad thing, but XML is not the be-all and end-all of data formats. It's great if you need to store something with a complex heirarchy, but what I find annoying are the people who use XML just to be trendy,* and end up with config files that look like this:

<alice>
<bob>blah</bob>
<carol>blah</carol>
<david>blah</david>
</alice>
<ed>
<florence>blah</florence>
<george>blah</george>
<henry>blah</henry>
</ed>

Which takes up close to twice as much space as the corresponding ini-format data, with no difference in heirarchy:

[alice]
bob=blah
carol=blah
david=blah

[ed]
florence=blah
george=blah
henry=blah

*[Insert anti-SUV rant here.]

Re:The only once inside the GNOME-community

[Yokaze]

As if space for config files would matter...
Anyway:

<alice bob=blah carol=blah david=blah/>
<ed florence=blah george=blah henry=blah/>

XML is certainly not the be-all and end-all of data formats of data formats, and is certainly sub-optimal in several cases and aspects.
I find XML hyped, too. But I see it as a simple syntax.

But now think about what you are optimising for.

Space?
Compress your examples: XML=111b INI=94b (bzip2)
And what about code-size? Every progam it's own parser. Shudder.

Ease of programming?
Ever programmed a validating parser?
As for me, I don't want parse a single line of text anymore. Thinking of all the possible deranged things a user or another program can feed into ones program makes me want to hide and curl.
Remember, your program has to even tell the user what went wrong.

Ease of use?
Well, certainly is the XML-syntax less readable then the INI-format. But as I said before, John Doe is not going to see them.
Try an XML-editor, feed it the DTD or Schema, and it will check your modifications.

Interoperatiblity?
See XML-editor.

>It's great if you need to store something with a complex heirarchy

I'm not very into XML, but I thought that is one of the deficiencies of XML. I don't know how to store anything, but a tree structures.
I wouldn't use it for anything too complex.

Re:The only once inside the GNOME-community

[squiggleslash]

XML is human-readable.

For different values of human readable.

My objection is that frequently it's used to replace keyword/value pairs with... er, values in tags, and is readability-impaired - not because a human being can't decypher what something says, but because you have to decypher that something first.

If you don't understand what I mean, consider the following example:

Old, obsolete, non-standard format:

FullScreen=true

Exciting, new, XML format:

<FullScreen>true</FullScreen>

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to realise that not only is the first form actually reads almost as a sentence ("FullScreen is true"), where as the second is a "Ok, I've got something surrounded by FullScreen tags, the something is 'true'". Imagine this not for one setting, but for hundreds.

Worse than that, it's about as hard to parse the XML version in practice even using an XML library as it would be to write a program in C to parse the first form from first principles. Seriously. Thinking about it for two minutes, and then write the C program. The latter is piddlingly easy. Then compare it to something that makes calls to a generic XML parser. And if the argument is "Well, d'uh, but you wouldn't make calls to a generic XML library, you'd use a library that calls the XML library that does that", then you're kind of making the point for me, as the same can be true too of the first form, it's just the first form is so simple that very rarely does anyone bother learning how to use an entirely new config setting library to parse it.

XML strikes me as one of those technologies that's been overused and stretched beyond what it's good at. It's very good at passing certain types of structured data between applications from different sources. However, despite the claims of its advocates, it's neither generic enough to be a universal file format (for one thing, it's plain text. Bye bye images, sound, and video), nor is it simple enough to replace all lower level file formats. It certainly shouldn't be used to replace keyword/value pair type configuration files for specific applications as there's no need, in that case, for portability or complex data structures, and the overheads of using it under those circumstances, from the pain it causes people who want to edit those files to the hit on performance and bloat is really quite unnecessary.

Use the right tool for the job!

Re:The only once inside the GNOME-community

[Milo77]

I hear this a lot, but people seem to forget that XML is about "extensible" syntax. Sure you could use your "ini file" syntax above, but you'd better be darned sure you never want to store anything other than string name/value pairs. Sure a simple parser for what you gave above is easy, but say you start adding capabilites to your format like multiline string CLOBS or allow for string value quoting, etc. What if you decide (or someone else decided) that one of the key/value pairs should be "icon" and the value needed to be a "png"...sure you could go and add the ability to your parser and if your a hobbiest programmer, you'll find this fulfilling, but I program professionally, and I find making good design decisions fulfilling. When my boss comes to me and says you need to add the ability to read PNGs from the config file I say "done". And with XML all this can be added *without* breaking existing apps.

Re:The only once inside the GNOME-community

[Anonymous Coward]

Every anti-XML rant pretty much boils down to the same thing:

• It's trendy and I'm too cool to go along with the crowd
  
• The bloat offends my 386 sensibilities
  
• My favorite config format fits my contrived example

As to your contrived example, we lived through systems {OS/2, Win3} based on INI files, and we know the fundemental problems: (A) Parsers are buggy, and (B) You can not impose a 2-level heirarchy.

I think anyone who had to fight with Windows 3.1 would remember examples like this:

[alice]
bob=blah;blah;blah;{CR}
henry=blah:0|b lah:99|blah:32{CRLF}

(program crashs for unknown config-file related reason)

Speaking from experience, coding parsers for hierarchies imposed on crappy flatfiles is time consuming, expensive, NO fun, and inevitably buggy in some way.

Now if you are going to create a new config system like gconf, do you go down the Windows 3.1 road or do you do the right thing and use a standards-based format with off-the-shelf parsers? Or do you make a knee-jerk decision based on percieved "trendyness"?

Re:The only once inside the GNOME-community

[rabidcow]

Compress your examples: XML=111b INI=94b (bzip2)

Is this supposed to be for or against XML? An 18% increase in size after compression is nothing to boast about. (and the XML can never be smaller, it has more information in it)

Ever programmed a validating parser?

There's a lot more to validate in XML than simpler formats. With the ini format, for example, there's basically two errors: "I can't find this," or "This line makes no sense."

Every progam its own parser.

ini format is pretty standard, not to mention that formats of this complexity have trivial parsers.

Well, certainly is the XML-syntax less readable then the INI-format.

I'll say. I'm a programmer and XML files hurt my eyes. Screw John Doe, *I* don't want to look at them.

Try an XML-editor, feed it the DTD or Schema, and it will check your modifications.

This is a cop out, you're essentially saying "yeah, I know it's not human readable, but you don't really need that."

If that's what you want, you might as well go for a binary format. You could have a binary format that's just as expressive and save a lot of space.

Re:The only once inside the GNOME-community

[Anonymous Coward]

The heirarchies are not the same: the ini format is not heirarchical at all, it's section-based. To see this, add more nesting. In XML:

<contacts for="alice">
<person name="bob"/>
<person name="carol"/>
<person name="david">
<phone type="home">5550000</phone>
<phone type="cell">5551010</phone>
<phone type="work">5550101</phone>
<address of="home">
<street>1 Cul de Sac Ct.</street>
<city>Anytown, NA</city>
<zip>10101-0100</zip>
</address>
</person>
</contacts>

This is simply impossible to reflect in ini. You'd have to hack the parser to treat section names specially so that you can use some dot notation to represent nesting -- and then it just becomes ugly:

[alice]
[alice.person.bob]
[alice.person.carol]
[alice.person.david]
[alice.person.david.phone]
home=5550000
cell=5551010
work=5550101
[alice. person.david.address]
street=1 Cul De Sac Ct.
city=Anytown, NA
zip=10101-0100

This is just a trivial example that illustrates quite well that ini is a deficient format for all but the most straightforward data sets. The statement, with no difference in heirarchy, is misleading at best and hopelessly ignorant at worse. There is no heirarchy in the ini and the format you chose for your example (perhaps not incidentally) has very little structure. This only serves to further demonstrate the deficiencies of the ini-format for the general case: its simplicity fails to encapsulate structured data, lists (because it's a key-and-table-based format), and other essential features for many, many applications.

All of this without addressing the technical issues of implementation availability and stability mentioned elsewhere, and the problem of code-bloat due to varied implementations and reimplementations of a parser (with hacks to handle structured data, perhaps), also wisely mentioned elsewhere.

Can't these kids grow up?

[BrokenHalo]

I am very tired of reading flame wars between Gnome and KDE. OK, I am a big supporter of Gnome, but that doesn't mean KDE sucks. It plainly does not. I would be the first to agree that there have been some terrible blunders made by some of the Gnome developers along the way, but the current 2.2 is very sweet. Every so often I try out new versions of KDE as they come up, and every time I abandon it because my desktop looks cluttered and Kalling Keverything Kfoo.Kbar Ketc Kgives Kme Kthe Kshits... :-) [/rant]

Re:It's nice to see

[Nerant]

So to use your analogy, if I was to design a car, I can't design one that uses wheels because someone else has done it before?
Microsoft has certain ideas that are sound in theory, but their implementation of it sucks in practice. There is nothing wrong with implementing GUI features in Gnome or KDE that have already proven to be useful in actual use.

Where's the flamage?

[Isldeur]

Nicholas Petreley (should that be KNicholas KPetreley) ...&&... Despite the sensationalistic flamage throughout the article,

So can you give examples of this "sensationalistic flamage"? I sure didn't find any. Why is there an immediate knee-jerk reaction when anyone ever criticizes gnome or kde? I personally think he has some very good points. Why can't people try and learn from constructive criticism?

If I could now lapse into a personal opinion: I've tried gnome and I try it regularly. And to be simply honest, I continue to get this "Is this all?" feeling every time I use it.

He's right about the dialogs. When I tried changing my background with one of the latest gnomes, I get this measly little window with three different picture boxes that don't help at all. I remember thinking how Spartan (?) this was back then.

Gnome just seems to be going in so many directions that it's turning into a mess. And no one wants that.

Re:Where's the flamage?

[msaavedra]

So can you give examples of this "sensationalistic flamage"?

You don't think referring to GNOME as LAME is flamage?

I personally think he has some very good points.

I'd say he has one good point: GNOME's file selection dialog sucks, and KDE's is much better. One thing I like about the Gtk file dialog is that it has tab completion. I don't know if KDE's does or not. The bookmarks rock, though.

Beyond that, Petreley just seems to harp on consistency, though he doesn't give any concrete example of how KDE is consistent and GNOME is not. He seems to imply that KDE is consistent because it uses a bunch of small tools from a common framework. But Gnome is the same way. I fail to see what his point is.

Further, he criticizes Gnome and Bonobo for not fully exploiting CORBA's network transparency, yet he doesn't explain how this makes it worse than KParts. He also ridicules Gnome's efforts at language indepence, though doesn't really explain why their efforts are bad.

He also briefly criticizes a few other components:

• GConf is like the windows registry - This old chestnut has been thouroughly debunked by Havoc Pennington in a number of places. I won't recount them here. Google is your friend.
• Metacity and Nautilus are lacking features - Of course, he doesn't say what these missing features are, though.

Beyond that, he incessantly spins things as negatively for Gnome as possible. I love this passage: "New holes are appearing, as well. Read my lips: no new file-pickers." When did not fixing a problem become equivalent to a new problem emerging?

When I tried changing my background with one of the latest gnomes, I get this measly little window with three different picture boxes that don't help at all. I remember thinking how Spartan

Changing a background image is a simple procedure, why would you need a complex dialog? I've used the Gnome2 background picker as well, and I haven't found anything lacking. On the contrary, I think it is quite elegant.

Gnome just seems to be going in so many directions that it's turning into a mess.

This seems to contradict your previous observation of Gnome's spartan qualities. How can something be both spartan (simple and lacking luxuries) and a mess moving in many different directions? That said, I can see your point here. There are places where Gnome is a bit awkward, though these are mostly relics from Gnome 1.4 that haven't been fixed yet. This is not an indication that things are moving in many different directions, just that they are moving, and still need to move some more.

As an aside, I've noticed an increasing frequency in these anti-Gnome trolls. A while back, an Australian site did an interview with Shawn Gordon, and he came across as very arrogant and contemptuous of Gnome. The same interviewer tried to bait Gnome's Jeff Waugh into a flamewar over this, but he politely declined. Why have certain members of the KDE camp become so bitter? By the way, I don't mean to imply that your post was anything of the sort. Rather, I think it was honest and tactful. Petreley's article was a major league troll, though

<disclaimer>I do not use either Gnome 2.x or KDE 3.x, though I do follow the Gnome project closely and admire what they are trying to accomplish.</disclaimer>

KDE did have a headstart

[nkv]

Which is something to be said. I'm a GNOME user myself. KDE is definitely good and beats GNOME in lots of ways. But it does seem to be like the latter is getting there.

One thing I completely agree with is the removal of sawfish and the inclusion of metacity. A lot of the GNOME users I know loved sawfish. Removing it was a bad decision. Perhaps the developers had their reasons but.... *shrug*.

I find both of them "lame"

[g4dget]

And that's not necessarily a bad thing: Gnome and KDE are competing with Windows and OS X for users, so they should look and behave roughly like what common users expect.

However, some of Petrely's remarks are just silly. For example, he thinks that KDE being "more feature rich" is a good thing. Sorry, but that's not true. Having lots of features and buttons and widgets may work for some users, others may prefer something simpler, and yet others may want a different set of complex features. And while some users get all pushed out of shape about inconsistent appearances, consistency just isn't a big deal to many users either.

But what makes Gnome/Gtk+ and KDE/Qt both really lame in my book is that they don't take advantage of the really powerful and useful capabilities of X11. Motif and Xaw, for all their many and fatal faults, had better support for remote applications, customization, and inter-application communication than either Gnome or KDE. And Gtk+ and Qt both make very inefficient use of the X11 APIs, giving X11 an undeserved reputation for being slow. The Gnome and KDE developers don't even seem to understand what they are not doing, they are just complaining with some regularity that X11 is more cumbersome than Windows (which it is, if you try to program it like Windows).

As I was saying, I think both Gnome and KDE are ultimately good projects for Linux. I'm glad I have something simple and pretty to install on PCs for use by friends and family, something that, for better or for worse, works just like Windows and MacOS. But I also view them both as about equally "lame" from a technical point, and the differences between them seem minor compared to their common limitations.

Re:I find both of them "lame"

[rseuhs]

For example, he thinks that KDE being "more feature rich" is a good thing. Sorry, but that's not true.

OK, show me the app that is successful because it's not feature-rich.

MS Office? Nope, probably more configuration options than full KDE and full GNOME combined.
Winamp? Nope, the plugins are all configurable, plus Winamp itself. On top there are skins.
ICQ? Nope, configuration options are crawling everywhere and more are added with each version.
And finally KDE: KDE is more successful than GNOME. That's a fact. The Gentoo statistics and numerous web polls confirm that. To argue that KDE has to become like GNOME to be more successful is quite retarded.

KDE is great, better than the Windows GUI and MacOSX (yes, I tried both of them). I don't want to see make KDE the same mistake GNOME did and sacrifice usability and features for some mysterious "average user" that doesn't exist anyway.

Re:I find both of them "lame"

[Nick_Gunz]

However, some of Petrely's remarks are just silly. For example, he thinks that KDE being "more feature rich" is a good thing. Sorry, but that's not true.

In my experience, this is wrong. In my experience, people don't complain about too much configurability; people complain about not being able to find the features they want.

Let me develop this idea further:

As everybody with the ability to think knows, there are going to be different kinds of user that use any program. Some people just want to pick it up and have it work. Other people care about a few things and want to be able to change them. Other people want to be able to change every damn thing because a) they like to work with the computer in an unusual way or b) they just like to play. Then there are, obviously, going to be people arrayed at other various different points along this spectrum, but for now I'll just talk about it as a simplified model.

The first type of users aren't going to be particularly freaked out by lots of features. They never even open the preferences menu, for the most part. Many of them don't know it exists. For these people, the important thing is that there are a good set of default preferences that work in an ergonomically reasonable way, and work the way that they expect it to work and feel comfortable with. This may mean that you have to set up your defaults to work kind of like Windows. The Win32 interface has become the standard, and that's how people expect their computer to operate. But it doesn't mean you don't have to let them change it.

Ok, so lets skip ahead to the third kind of user, the kind who wants to change everything: Are these users so unreasonable? I don't think so. Partly this is because I am one. I like to play with my interface, tweaking it constantly. Gradually, as this happens, I drift way from the default windows-like standards. So be it. My point is that I will never be confused by 'too many features'.

But there's another, more important, reason to allow users who want to change everything to change everything. Computers are designed to be flexible: to do tasks you never envisaged. That's the main point of them, really. Often, people will start using a computer in a new way and find that the old default configuration is no longer convenient or ergonomic. In this situation, not letting them change basic things about the way their computer interface works is like not letting them move the furniture around in their office. User interfaces aren't just an interface between the user and your application; they are also an environment in which the user uses your application.

Ok, so to the second kind of user. The user that causes all the trouble in this respect. The user who wants to change the odd thing now and again, but not spend hours playing with tweaks. Again, this is not totally unreasonable. There are setting that users have to change even when they generally aren't into customization all that much. For example, if you don't happen to be an American and you want to use a word processor, chances are you're going to have to change the default language setting. So even the dumbest user who doesn't want to change anything will, at some point, have to venture into the bowls of some big, convoluted, preferences interface.

As they do so, they become more and more frustrated. This is the important part: they don't become frustrated by the fact that they can change every little thing in the program. They become frustrated because they can't figure out how to change the things they want to change. This is when they start 'freaking out because of too many features'.

There are a number of ways 'round this. For example, you can have a clearly marked 'meta' setting set, by default, to the simplest user mode. Alternately, you can put as many settings as possible in the context in which they're used. You want to change the way the window frames work? Click on the 'advanced' option in the window menu. This way the central prefs menu doesn't get too cluttered with options to find anything.

Above all, you should make an effort to put commonly used preferences front and centre. Language settings in word processors are a prime example of this. Programmers know that even users who change no other options are going to have to change this one, but they still tend to put it three layers down in the options panel under a section marked: 'Advanced! No, we really mean it! This is supper advanced! Experts only!'

Joe user wants to change to UK English. Joe user can't find the option for all the buttons asking whether he wants to set an alarm every time a new user logs on to a remote part of the network that doesn't exist, Joe user 'freaks out about features'.

These ideas applied to the debate over GNOME:

This is where I get to my critique of the new GNOME interface. When I started using it, there was a clear difference between GNOME and KDE from a user's perspective. KDE worked better. It kind of hung together better and look slicker. GNOME was the one you used if you liked to change everything and tweak everything. But in 2.2 they've taken out all that good stuff. Even simple things, non-confusing things, have been ripped out in the name of 'simplification'.

To make matters worse, they've made it harder to get to whatever options remain. The gnome control centre is gone, and now you have to track trough endless menus to get to the bits you want (yes, there is a strange nautilus based interface, but they don't make it easy to find at all). There are even features where they left in the 'potentially confusing' control interface, but crippled the feature so that it doesn't actually work any more (eg. I used to be able to make each of my directories look physically different from one another in nautilus by changing the background colours. The control interface is still in place for that feature, but it doesn't work any more).

Apparently, the GNOME development people think they're helping ordinary users by making all the features hard to get to, but nothing could be further from the truth. Power users are going to be pissed off because they can't find the features they used to rely on. Non-power users are going to be pissed off because they can't find or get to the few features they do need to change (remember my basic thesis: they're not annoyed by choice, but by not being able to find the choices they need). Nobody has been helped.

Re:I find both of them "lame"

[tf23]

Having lots of features and buttons and widgets may work for some users, others may prefer something simpler, and yet others may want a different set of complex features. And while some users get all pushed out of shape about inconsistent appearances, consistency just isn't a big deal to many users either.

And what that really says is that you can't please everyone.

I personally think that you can come close - and here's how you'd do it:

1) Leave all the customization options *in*. Organize them as best you can. If someone wants to fiddle with 'em, fine.

2) Create an interface that let's an admin *lock* out options/preferences and/or set the defaults. I think the Kiosk type thing may fit the bill here.

I think if KDE and GNOME, and any other graphical interface parties do this, they'll be successful.

An example: With a setup like this, I can put linux on a machine primarily for the kids to use. I can have either GNOME or KDE available to them to pick which one they want to use. And I can lock things like their webbrowser so that it uses our proxy, which filters out inappropriate sites. I can lock down their look n feel so that I don't get the "help me I lost this icon" etc while I'm watching MNF. Yet I can login and use the box with as much customizations as I want.

Re:I find both of them "lame"

[caseih]

OK, show me the app that is successful because it's not feature-rich.

MS Office? Nope, probably more configuration options than full KDE and full GNOME combined.

Umm, actually the feature bloat in MS Office is making it harder to use and harder to teach newbies how to use it. In fact, the mass of menu options has been deemed to be so comfusing that MS defaults to not showing all the menu options (which could be argued to be a usability blunder in itself). Also there is a difference between features and configuration options. Workable defaults is always the best thing. No one I know knows how to set much in MS Office. Fortunately the defaults are okay most of the time.

And finally KDE: KDE is more successful than GNOME. That's a fact. The Gentoo statistics and numerous web polls confirm that. To argue that KDE has to become like GNOME to be more successful is quite retarded.

Umm again, gentoo users are hardly average linux users. They typically tend to represent the minority "l33t" linux users. These users are control freaks and have the skills and the time to mess with every little thing. All you can really say is, "Among gentoo users that we have statistics for, I think that KDE is more popular." Anything else is unsupported.

As a Linux professional, I just don't have the time or the caring to tweak every stupid little thing in KDE. I use Gnome and it's clean, nice, and it works. I can tweak everything I need or want to (I've been using transparent gnome-panel's for years -- by using special pixmaps in the background!). Most Linux professionals I prefer Gnome to KDE. And a good many prefer fluxbox in conjunction with gnome-panels. Hmm. Fluxbox has even less useless "features" and bloat than KDE.

No blanket statements here. Just my own observations about what I have *seen*.

I want my Swallowed App Back!

[Anonymous Coward]

The "best" feature of gnome-panel was the Swallowed App, but it seems it's not to be in Gnome2... Now That's LAME!!

Re:Why do some many prefer Gnome then ?

[rseuhs]

Why?

Because it's backed by RedHat and Sun.

And it's no coincidence that RedHat users usually say that Linux isn't ready for the desktop yet while SuSE, Mandrake or Gentoo users say it is...

At least that's my observation, and it's also confirmed by statistics (in Germany (= SuSE territory) Linux marketshare is about 3-4 times higher than in the USA (=RedHat territory))

Gnome vs. KDE is a matter of taste.

[miffo.swe]

What i want is a slick empty GUI when i start setting my workstation up. Gnome is what suits me the best right now. I fleed bloat and tight integration in the windows world and im not going to just pickup different branded bloat from KDE. Someone else likes many buttons and for him KDE is better. Dont get me wrong, i love KDE to but it isnt what i want.

All in all i think the competition between KDE and GNOME is very healthy. What wee need to refrain from is mudslinging and bashing.

Re:Why do some many prefer Gnome then ?

[tempest303]

And it's no coincidence that RedHat users usually say that Linux isn't ready for the desktop yet while SuSE, Mandrake or Gentoo users say it is...

Perhaps this indicates that Red Hat users are more objective then, since Linux isn't yet ready for the desktop.

KDE is a complete mess of feature and preference overload, with little apparent thought given to design. GNOME has the design part down a lot better, and has a far more sane attitude towards preferences, but is lacking in some features, a few of them major. (No, I don't mean stupid sh*t like edge-flipping - I'm talking about stuff like a lock-down system for administrators, a must-have in office environments!)

Neither desktop is quite ready for Joe Consumer use - but I predict that one or both will get damn close this year, either by GNOME filling in a few feature gaps, or KDE getting serious about consumer-level usability.* We're not there yet, but we are damn close.

* side note to Mosfet-worshippers: "organization" will not save you - kontrol center is drowning in useless preferences. Some of them simply have to go

The problems of GNOME

[rseuhs]

GNOME has a couple of problems:

• It was created in a political effort (to replace (=kill) KDE.) and politics is still very involved in GNOME. I really acknowledge what GNU has done in the 80's and early 90's, but lately they have become a bunch of buerocrats and politicians. KDE vs GNOME is pretty similar to Linux vs. the Hurd. - Pragmatism versus Politics. It has improved lately, at least GNOME's primary goal doesn't seem to be killing off KDE anymore and they seem to even cooperate.
• GNOME made the big mistake in listening to bashers. The bashers (= non GNOME users) said GNOME was too complicated so the politicians (see above) decided that many configuration options must go in Gnome2. That pissed off many real users but attracted not a single new user. (The drooling moron that was targetted by this decision doesn't use anything else other than what is preinstalled anyway. And even if he does (or it is preinstalled), he doesn't dig around config options anyway and uses the defaults, so any "complexity" doesn't hurt him.)
• C. KDE/Qt/C++ programming is faster and more elegant. Again, this was a rather political decision. (Almost all GNU software is C-based, therefore GNOME has to be C-based, too) Yes, in theory many non-C language bindings exist, but in the real world none of them are used for any non-trivial project.

Re:The problems of GNOME

[msaavedra]

GNOME made the big mistake in listening to bashers. The bashers (= non GNOME users) said GNOME was too complicated

No, they didn't listen to bashers. They listened to the usability tests that Sun and Ximian have done, with user skills from beginners to those very experienced with UNIX.

Yes, in theory many non-C language bindings exist, but in the real world none of them are used for any non-trivial project.

Not true again. Galeon is written in C++. A large portion of redhat's system tools, including their installer, are written with the python bindings. Sawfish is mostly written in a weird dialect of Lisp called Rep. None of these are trivial apps.

I think your idea that Gnome is very politically oriented is a bit off. After all, they've refused to elect Richard Stallman to the Gnome Foundation Board :^)

Re:The problems of GNOME

[deaddrunk]

Drooling moron? I wish you smelly, pedantic bores would realise that most people don't want to hand-hack some poorly documented config file, they want to play games, browse the web, do their taxes and all the other things that Windows allows them to do (albeit sometimes in shades of blue).

Don't diss peope like my dad just because he's got better things to do. If you took your head out of your backside occasionally you might be able to see this for yourself.

Re:The problems of GNOME

[koh]

Some clarifications are needed here.

It was created in a political effort (to replace (=kill) KDE.) and politics is still very involved in GNOME. I really acknowledge what GNU has done in the 80's and early 90's, but lately they have become a bunch of buerocrats and politicians. KDE vs GNOME is pretty similar to Linux vs. the Hurd. - Pragmatism versus Politics.

Once upon a time, a couple of students coding an image manipulation program (The Gimp) decided to design their own X toolkit as the existing ones didn't satisfy them. They called it gtk+, and it soon became the toolkit of choice for many coders, since QT was still affected by license sickness at the time.

Gnome came up later not as a KDE killer, but as a higher-level UI API to design applications on top of gtk+. The K desktop environment is an environment, Gnome was supposed to be a toolkit (and in many aspects still is).

It has improved lately, at least GNOME's primary goal doesn't seem to be killing off KDE anymore and they seem to even cooperate.

The KDE vs Gnome flamewar was started, battled in, and lost by the same people who bash emacs vs vi or linux vs windows : users. The Gnome developpers and project leaders never tried to "kill" KDE AFAIK, and it wasn't the other way around either.

GNOME made the big mistake in listening to bashers. The bashers (= non GNOME users) said GNOME was too complicated so the politicians (see above) decided that many configuration options must go in Gnome2. That pissed off many real users but attracted not a single new user.

What they did is try to "innovate" in a "corporate" way by producing UI guidelines and following them. This may have been a political decision indeed, but the real problem here is that the UI specs just get in the way. Gnome is trying to be an environment, but, as a toolkit, it has to coexist nicely with former versions of itself. Having gnome1 and gnome2 apps running simultaneously (often you can't avoid it, e.g. everything you run is gnome2 except evolution which is still gnome1) brings chaos to your desktop. The preferences have to be defined twice, once for gnome then gnome2, and some overlap and mess things up.

C. KDE/Qt/C++ programming is faster and more elegant. Again, this was a rather political decision. (Almost all GNU software is C-based, therefore GNOME has to be C-based, too) Yes, in theory many non-C language bindings exist, but in the real world none of them are used for any non-trivial project.

C was chosen because not everyone could afford C++ compilers when gtk+ was designed. The choice has stuck ever since. Many language bindings do exist, and since you found no non-trivial project using these, did you consider the possibility it may be so because the _original_, _raw_, _C_ toolkit is easy enough to get the job done ? ;)

As I final word, I have to say my main concern about gnome these days really, genuinely is gconf. I know about it being not evil, not really a registry, XML based, easy to modify, and such. I don't buy it. It is a registry. It means that every emerge -u world I issue that upgrades gnome2 may result in me and my users having to lose 20 minutes reconfiguring. Because some applet in your panel changed its gconf property format. Or everything keeps crashing because a major component has. And you can't be bothered to dig the gconf repository (ha!) to find the offending key, because, well, it's time to go to work. Which means deletion of .gconf and .gnome* so defaults can be restored and things can run again.

Some registry upgrade strategy is required I believe...

Re:The problems of GNOME

[Anonymous Coward]

> Not true again. Galeon is written in C++.

Get a clue. Galeon is written in C so is Epiphany.

> No, they didn't listen to bashers. They listened to the usability tests that Sun and Ximian.

Ximian is not responsible for the usability tests because they don't have the money to make some and the Sun tests are cut out of arse because the people used for this test where apes. Oh by the way SUN where responsible for CDE that everyone hates. So they can't be wrong making such tests :)

Re:The problems of GNOME

[Anonymous Coward]

Both are older than any decent C++ standard.

Re:The problems of GNOME

[slux]

Yes!

I've only started to really like GNOME after 2.x where they made it simple and elegant. There used to be millions of little options in the control center, WM, everything, just like there still is in KDE. The usability test have really improved GNOME a lot.

Customizability is only a good thing up to a certain point. You can't really be easy to use *and* ultra-customizable at the same time. I have a lot of respect for KDE (and the file picker dialog really is better because of offering easy shortcuts to desktop, floppy, CD etc. even if a little busy... I bet GNOME will adopt those).

So, you basically have to make some sort of a compromise between intuitive, ultra-customizable and efficient to use. GNOME has just decided to have the ease of use as the top priority and I applaud them for that. Fortunately, we can all choose between GNOME, KDE or something else (I'm currently using ion which could fall to the concentrate on efficiency above all category)

Re:The problems of GNOME

[lordcorusa]

Gnome has gone with usability tests because the first thing you learn in any Human-Computer Interaction course is that developers know squat about how regular people use computers. Gnome, through Red Hat, Sun, Ximian and others, are targetting regular people with their software, so it is natural that they perform usability tests. If Linux is going to remain relevant in the long term, we must gain users, and guess what, those users will be mostly regular people, not developers. Both Apple and MS make extensive use of such tests, I'm glad to see that we (the Linux community) are too.

The Internet really doesn't tell you much, as only geeks like us ;-) comment on computer interfaces online, and we aren't necessarily the people they are targetting. That's not to say Gnome doesn't care about retaining existing users, as most Gnome users I know, except for a couple of die-hard "I must customize everything" uber-geeks, love 2.0. It just means that they want feedback from a new source, regular people, and the only way to get that is to conduct tests.

The results are about to pay off. Gnome made massive usability steps forward with 2.0. 2.2 didn't really improve the interface as noticably, but 2.4 will include such things as improved file dialogs, and many other fixes to a lot of the currently outstanding interface complaints.

As to your complaint about removal of features. Enlightenment was "removed" because Enlightenment's maintainers were moving it in a direction opposite of where Gnome's maintainers wanted to go. Sawfish was removed b/c its code was extremely complex (messy) and I believe I heard that its maintainer was quitting, hence Gnome wanted a lightweight WM that they could *properly* integrate into the desktop. As Metacity matures, expect to see it gain some more functionality, although it will never be as customizable (bloated) as Sawfish. Finally, I do not know what you mean by Balsa being removed. Sure, Evolution is now the default email client, because it offers an easier and more feature-rich interface than Balsa, but Balsa is still in active development and is only one install away from being on your system!

As far as your last comment on using politics as an excuse for the things they are doing, what they are doing is making the interface easier to use and attracting new users, all while making sure that the code is more easily maintainable for the future. Does that sound like the result of politics or pragmatism?

Question on licensing

[Tyreth]

I used to be a GNOME man myself, but have recently become sold on KDE, because it really does shine. Not that long ago, both projects were at a similar level. Now kde has shot ahead, and gnome is left unconfigurable, empty. But that's not why I'm writing...

Something concerns me with the Qt licensing. I'm asking people who likewise share a love for the freedom that free software gives us, not to those who don't really care.

Imagine 3 years from now KDE has overtaken the Linux desktop, and GNOME/GTK+ has faded to obscurity. The Linux desktop is beginning to look bright and we start to have many commercial applications made for us (free is always better, but commercial is necessary).
With GNOME or KDE it is possible to make commercial applications. With GNOME the developer merely takes advantage of the LGPL license. In KDE however, the developer would need to purchase a license from Trolltech for Qt.

Now I have no problem with making companies pay - it's an incentive to make free software. But what I don't like, is if Qt becomes the necessary standard, that we have a commercial company that is the controller of the fate of commercial applications. I don't like the thought of commercial apps for Linux being in the hands of another company - I'd much rather if the community controlled such a mechanism.

So I want to know if others think my concerns are legitimate or misinformed?

Re:Question on licensing

[twener]

Let the companies decide: Obviously Adobe, Borland, Hancom, Opera and others have no problem with Qt being available either under GPL or QPL license. In my opinion the price for Qt under QPL and for support are peanuts for these (and smaller) companies. They are glad to have someone who can give them support for the tool kit. Who offers commercial support for Gtk?

Re:Why do some many prefer Gnome then ?

[rseuhs]

Perhaps this indicates that Red Hat users are more objective then, since Linux isn't yet ready for the desktop.

Because you say so?

KDE is a complete mess of feature and preference overload, with little apparent thought given to design. GNOME has the design part down a lot better, and has a far more sane attitude towards preferences, but is lacking in some features, a few of them major. (No, I don't mean stupid sh*t like edge-flipping - I'm talking about stuff like a lock-down system for administrators, a must-have in office environments!)

There cannot be such a thing as "preference overload" because you only set preferences once, but use features daily. The maybe 10 seconds that it takes longer to find your preference in a preference-rich control-panel is irrelevant compared to the features you gain.

The drooling morons just use the defaults anyway and never use the control panel, so they are the least affected user group

Neither desktop is quite ready for Joe Consumer use - but I predict that one or both will get damn close this year, either by GNOME filling in a few feature gaps, or KDE getting serious about consumer-level usability.* We're not there yet, but we are damn close.

Nonsense. KDE and even GNOME (yes, I'm a KDE fan, but while GNOME isn't that great anymore for power users, it's still good enough for basic users) is technically ready for Joe Consumer.

All problems have nothing to do with KDE or GNOME itself:

• We need Win32 application support. Hopefully Wine will get good enough this year to run most Win32 apps flawlessly, some Win32 apps with no equivalent on Linux are keeping a lot of people on Windows.
• We need PC-makers to preinstall Linux. The best desktop in the world (which is IMO KDE) won't make an impression when it's not preinstalled. The Win32-compatibility will be of great help convincing PC-makers, too.
• We need better marketing. At first the "Linux is too complicated" FUD has to stop (yes, I'm also talking about you), simply because it's no longer true. kcontrol may be complicated, but it's far easier to find something in it than it is to find the right tool in the Windows control panel. (kcontrol is organized in a tree, the Windows control panel is just a folder with tools thrown in) So if KDE isn't ready, neither is Windows. In reality both are good enough anyway.

* side note to Mosfet-worshippers: "organization" will not save you - kontrol center is drowning in useless preferences. Some of them simply have to go

Gooddamn, that's nonsense. You only need to set preferences *once*, so any time-gains are negletible and the so-called mysterious "average user" doesn't change the preferences at all, so using the "average user" as a reason to reduce kcontrol functionality is pretty moronic.

OK, now in all-tabs, otherwise you won't get it:

SHOW ME A SINGLE PROGRAM THAT IS SUCCESSFUL BECAUSE IT HAS REDUCED CONFIGURATION FUNCTIONALITY

Name one. Everyone *I* know, ICQ, Winamp, Photoshop, MS Office, etc. is loaded with configuration options, and every version more are added. MS Office alone probably has more configuration options than KDE in it's full glory.

Name a single program that has become successful because it has removed configuration options. Just a single one.

So according to you, MS Office can't be used by "Joe average", right?

You are dead wrong, sorry. I'm a Wordprocessing-newbie (well actually not really a newbie, I use them for several years, but only about once every 2 months, so I'm at the same skill level as a newbie, but I disgress) and I can get my work done using the defaults in OpenOffice. If I would use it more often, I would dig around and customize it to fit my needs - and I would be very happy to find the options I need.

Gnome VS Kde and Linux

[westyvw]

Right now, and I am telling you this becasue you are geeks. No MATTER what I do, KDE, GNOME, Redhat, Mandrake, Evil, and all the others..........THEY BREAK! I have broken every installation possible, except maybe Knoppix, but thats in a class by itself. When I setup a SERVER I dont give a damn about the GUI interface. I want stability. And thats what I get. Redhat 7.3 on my servers. Redhat 8 with no gui on my firewall seems to work OK but is a pain in the ass. The point is that NO xwindows system has got it down cold. I want a review of the Xwindows server that knows my vid card, knows my sound card, knows that I have hardware graphics etc. My redhat 8 using KDE has become broke at my work. Sound card is busy. Always busy. Windows doesnt complain only Linux. Configure till my ass is blue and its still refusing to play XMMS. WTF. More important then KDE or GNOME is that linux gets its act together. Yes I know a new X is out. Sorry to say this but windows slogan was "where do you want to go today" and Linux under a graphical interface is "What do you want to break toaday?"

The Direction of GNOME

[psr]

There has been a lot said about the usability of GNOME, and a lot of work done to make the user interface more consistant. However I think that it has mostly been a waste of time. The people who are writing the GNOME Human interface guidelines are forgetting that the majority of GNOME users are going to be UNIX/Linux users, and that to these people it is not necessarily atractive to use a desktop environment which tries simply to be a better Windowss than windows. Take for example key bindings. In the Unix world there have always been two different sets of keybindings that people use, emacs keys and vi keys. I think that it is fair to say that the majority of unix users spend a lot of thier time in either emacs or vi. Gnome used to try to emulate some of the emacs default keybindings, but now they all seem to have been replaced with windows keybindings.

Another good example is the "too many clocks" problem. A Sun sponsored ethnographic study into GNOME usability said that users were confused when trying to add a clock to a panel, because there was a multiplicity of clock applets. The people who write these things make a basic mistake of thinking that a windows user should be able to walk up to a UNIX machine, grab the mouse and go, and that makes for good user interface. Well its not true. The old MacOS is often cited as a good UI. The first time I tried to use it, I didn't have a clue what was going on. The menu bar at the top confused the hell out of me. That doesn't mean that it wasn't a good UI, it just means that it wasn't TWM or windows 3.11, which is what I was used to at the time. So I was pissed off when I upgraded my version of gnome and half the applets I used had gone!

Don't even get me started on window managers with maximise buttons!

Developers should remember who they are developing for, and give more precedence to unix traditions than to windows traditions. It is nice to be able to attract new users from other platforms, but it shouldn't be at the price of losing users on the current one. Users from MacOS or windows should have to learn how to use a new user interface. If theres nothing different then theres no point in changing.

Re:It's nice to see

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the ridiculous attitude to have is to presume that you can sit, having made absolutely no contributions aside from a retarded comment about a "killer app ... new GUI system," and tell coders what they should be doing with their time.

What exactly do you expect? Some sort of magical new alternative to dialogs, start menus, and taskbars? Those have been the staple of GUI design, not only for Windows, but for MacOS, BeOS, OS/2, and basically all other GUI systems.

Have people tried to create radically new desktops before? Yes, and those have always been spectacular failures. The second someone finds something better, EVERYONE will switch. For now, this is the paradigm we have, and every group tries to creates its own vision of that paradigm. These are not "half-assed clones".

Believe it or not, but some people actually prefer using Linux desktop environments over Windows. I'm one of those people. I can't stand Windows at all, so I use Gnome. It's not perfect, but neither is Windows. I use what gets the job done quickly and get the bonus of not having to be constantly irritated by the Windows feel.

Whenever a program is cloned, it is usually for good cause -- sometimes Microsoft or some other company creates a good program or adds something interesting to the UI that others overlooked before. To not take advantage of a proven design for the sake of being different is sheer arrogance. I've noticed that Gnome and several GTK apps draw their influence from various sources to create programs that have their own personality. (I've never really used KDE, but I'm sure the same can be said about it.)

Which leads me to this: Your comment is total nonsense. Every one of your five paragraphs have at least one major flaw. Some have more. I don't think I'll be able to influence your opinion on the matter at all, so I won't even try. But since you've given your opinion, I thought I'd give mine.

Re:Gnome's very problem

[vandel405]

Obviously we have some mods who are impressed by big words and are in awe of mensa. This comment is BS the guys is pulling your leg.

Re:It's nice to see

[Gordonjcp]

... which is in turn a copy of stuff that Mac System 4 did four years before that, which in turn was a copy of Xerox's GUI work in the mid-to-late 70s, which in turn based itself around the work done at SAIL in the late 60s, which itself ripped off the Lascaux cave paintings. Yes, we know.

Innovation?

[FooBarWidget]

"or innovate and create something people will actually want to use."

But that is the problem. People don't WANT to learn something new!
"Average users" want things to just work. They want zero learning curve. They DEMAND things to work the like the way they used to.

"Innovation" will NOT make people switch.

Re:Did something really go "wrong"?

[nonmaskable]

>My guess is that, at some level, Qt really is better than GTK. I don't know if it's C vs. C++, or KParts vs. Corba, Glade vs. KDevelop

Bingo. I've worked with both on different projects over the last five years and there's no comparison - a (non-trivial) KDE app is much easier. Also, the way the framework and dev tools are designed, you have to work at it to write an app that isn't consistent with KDE environment standards. Not the case with GNOME.

Also, C++ is a much more natural fit for gui app development than C. Yeah, you can make a C library look somewhat OO, but if you've got C++ coding skills, why try to make a pig fly?

The language and framework baggage that the GNOME developers are saddled with make them work twice as hard to achieve the same thing. Thus, less time available to make things polished, bug-free, etc. Maybe this is why the GNOME leadership is pushing the super-stripped newbie desktop direction.

Yes, these are all my subjective opinions, but I've seen them played out over and over throughout the last several years of KDE and GNOME releases. Better performance (and art pre KDE 3.1) for GNOME, better consistency and integration on KDE. And every release of GNOME, more promises that the latest set of brainfarts will be fixed in the next release.

Re:Need a new GUI paradigm

[FooBarWidget]

Because that won't work. You can "innovate" as much as you want to, people simply won't switch.

Yeah, you can give people a whole different desktop methaphor, but average users don't WANT to learn! They demand things to Just Work(tm) and to work like they used too. Too many people are used to Windows; they will not use something that's even slightly different.
People are resistant to change, especially regarding to computers. If I put my mother behind a different desktop, she will NOT like it, no matter how "innovative" it is.

"Innovation" is only an argument for geeks. And since Slashdot is a geek community, of course posts about "innovation" gets modded up. But the average user don't care.

Provocative Article

[Yokaze]

Ignore the comparison with KDE for a moment. And the fact that he is pro-KDE. The article is written in such a way, that it provokes. This is the purpose of it. So that people discuss it.

He raises some valid "problems" of GNOME. Those problems are more metaphyiscal, so they might don't actually have to concern you.

He raises the valid question: "What does GNOME stand for?"

The whole project seem to lack consistency in its development process. The whole core parts have been totally replaced. (WM 3 times, Configuration once, FM once). The laudible idea of an "GNU Network Object Model Environment" has been dropped in favour of being a language agnostic desktop enviroment.

Those aren't real problems, but they are probably the reason for the deficiencies of the Gnome desktop in respect to UI consistency, which is the part KDE concentrated on. And meanwhile, KDE gained some language independency of its own.

Please note, that I didn't say that the GNOME Desktop is better or worse than the KDE. It primarily means, GNOME could be better than it currently is, when it had concentrated on their primary goal (Being GNOME).

In the authors admittently slightly provoking words:
"GNOME's higher purpose was forgotten somewhere along the line, after which it degenerated into a LAME Franken-GUI."

Re:Provocative Article

[0x0d0a]

The whole project seem to lack consistency in its development process. The whole core parts have been totally replaced. (WM 3 times, Configuration once, FM once). The laudible idea of an "GNU Network Object Model Environment" has been dropped in favour of being a language agnostic desktop enviroment.

Yeah, but the problem is that he ignores that KDE's done the same thing (KDE 1, 2, 3...) What happened to the old mail program, the old WM?

Re:It's nice to see

[khuber]

You're better off doing GUIs in a way people are familiar with. The familiar has become intuitive. When you change it, you are just making the computer get in the way. Those are common human factors / usability ideas.

Why do you think you can do a better GUI and make better widgets? You probably can't. Why do I have all these Linux apps with their own widgets and UI paradigm that work poorly? There is no good reason.

People don't want your avant garde hyperdimensional pie menu and mp3 visualizer scrollbar thingy, they just want to be able to use an app instead of fighting it.

-Kevin

Re:It's nice to see

[Anonymous Coward]

In KDE 2.x you could open a audio-CD with a konqueror and inside there would be two directories: ogg and mp3. If you copy those directories to the hard-drive, konqueror would automatically rip and encode songs to the mp3/ogg-format.

I don't know about XP, but this feature wasn't present in Windows 2000. Can we stop that "kde/gnome are just copying windows BS"?

But it makes up in one huge way....

[SerpentMage]

While GNOME has its issues there are a couple of things. (ironic because last night at the LUGS Linux User Group Switzerland, we talked about this)

1) KDE looks nice, but it has X different messy icons, GNOME or in my case BlueCurve tries to keep things simple and consistent
2) Can I write a closed source program in KDE without having to pay QT 1500 USD? NOT LIKELY....

I like KDE, but because of the fact you have to pay big money to write closed source is a reason I always avoid KDE. It is not that I am going to write closed source myself, but when I consult client I have to lay down the options. These days that kind of cash is hard to get, for what is essentially only a set of API's!!! Which comes for free on most platforms....

Re:But it makes up in one huge way....

[infiniti99]

"OpenQT" ? I guess you're thinking of the Harmony project, in which the goal was to write a Free implementation of Qt back when Qt was not considered Free. This is no longer needed, as Qt is available as GPL now, and has been for many years.

No one is going to reimplement Qt just to have an LGPL/BSD license. The only people that need such a thing are commercial developers, who are the least likely to ever create such a free project in the first place.

Sorry commercial developer, pay your dues to Trolltech, so that in turn my KDE is made better. Thank you :)

Re:But it makes up in one huge way....

[Anonymous Coward]

2) Can I write a closed source program in KDE without having to pay QT 1500 USD? NOT LIKELY....

So you are basically saying that GNOME is better, because it encourages the production of closed-source software?

Oh! The irony.

Re:But it makes up in one huge way....

[10Ghz]

2) Can I write a closed source program in KDE without having to pay QT 1500 USD? NOT LIKELY....

So you insist that Trolltech must offer their product to you for free so you could write closed & proprietary software with it?

Before, GPL-fanatics whined because Qt was under QPL and not GPL. Now that is't GPL'ed, those same people whine because they cant use Qt for free to write closed-source software. They want to deny Trolltech the right to profit from their software, and in the same time, they insist on using the product for free to profit themselves. Hypocrisy. Plain and simple.

"Do as I say, not as I do!". That seems to be the core of their argument.

Re:But it makes up in one huge way....

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a bullshit argument. Do Windows developers have to pay Microsoft a licensing fee for every closed source MFC application they develop for a profit? No, of course not.

They only thing keeping KDE from being a viable option is the fact that you have to pay QT for the right to develop applications for it. Not a particularly good way to grow a powerful base of applications.

Re:But it makes up in one huge way....

[Espectr0]

2) Can I write a closed source program in KDE without having to pay QT 1500 USD? NOT LIKELY....

Can you write a closed source program with GPL software? NOT LIKELY...

Re:Why do some many prefer Gnome then ?

[entrox]

Show me a single program that is successful because it has a ridiculous number of configuration options.

Emacs

Re:Why do some many prefer Gnome then ?

[mickwd]

"* side note to Mosfet-worshippers: "organization" will not save you - kontrol center is drowning in useless preferences. Some of them simply have to go"

I do so love being told what I can and can't do with my own computer.

But yes, good organisation can sort out this situation. Why is it so difficult to choose a sensible level of "standard" options, well-thought-out and well presented, and hide more advanced options behind an "advanced" button in the appropriate dialogs ? Some applications already do - Microsoft also uses this idea in places.

And if you insist that you're dealing with people that can't deal with "advanced" configuration options, I would suggest two solutions:
1) All advanced dialogs to have a "Restore to Defaults" button (some applications already do this). In fact, this would probably be a good idea on all dialogs;
2) Have some single centralised option, controllable by root or a system administrator, which simply turns off all "Advanced" dialogs (and the buttons which acccess them) if you insist that users can't be trusted to use them, and will only be confused by them (or that their use will make a system administration / support harder).

Re:Why do some many prefer Gnome then ?

[blibbleblobble]

"I've settled on Gnome as I find it faster, more intuitive and less "bloated" than KDE, yet the authour of the article finds pretty much the opposite to be true."

I think the author of this article would agree with you, although he doesn't cover such issues in the article. Take his example of file-select box. He has a screenshot of KDE file-select, with bookmarks, favourites icons, an image-previewer, an optional directory-tree, a browser toolbar, and little icons by each type of file.

He then gives a screenshot of the Gnome file-select, with a listbox and a "parent directory" dropdown, and goes on to note how basic it is. Yes, but how long did the K take to load? How much memory is that file-select using? How long does it take to redraw a directory with thousands of files?

For me, speed is not the issue so much as reliability. I've had problems with KDE and Gnome crashing (Fixed in whichever version comes with the Drake 9) which lost me more time than any delays in the operating environment.

WindowMaker is very good, for people who've not tried it yet. You can run you Gnome and KDE programs the same, but the environment is more stable and robust, and it loads in less than a second.

Re:Did something really go "wrong"?

[macshit]

The file dialog is not good, and is being fixed, but there is a lot of applications out there that just use GTK+ and not the rest of GNOME.

BTW, what is it about Gnome's file dialog that everybody hates so? It seems OK to me (it's certainly as good as the one in windows). Also, the fact that the TAB key works properly is a big point in Gnome's favor...

Re:VS.

[@madeus]

Redhat choses to use Gnome while most of the "Pure" distros like KDE as do I

Painting a picture that it's only Red Hat who like GNOME and that everybody else uses KDE is entirely false.

According to http://counter.li.org/reports/machines.htm, which is just about the most reliable source of information on the subject (due the lack of actual retail figures it's very difficult to count accurately), the most popular core distributions are*:

- Red Hat (~ 29%)
- Debian (~ 14.5%)
- SuSE (~ 11.5%)
- Slackware (~ 11%)

It should be noted that Mandrake is the second most popular distribution of all with over 17.5% market share, though it is not a 'core' or 'pure' distribution as it is based on Red Hat.

* = These figures are taken for a random sampling of 110,000 GNU/Linux users.

Out of these distributions:

- Red Hat - primarily supports GNOME
- Debian - primarily supports GNOME
- SuSE - primarily supports KDE
- Slackware - no notable preference exhibited

Anaecdotally - even when you include Mandrake's slight predisposition towards KDE - this puts GNOME's market share at ~ 43.5% and KDE's at ~ 29%.

With all of these distributions you can obtain GNOME packages or opt to use the GNOME desktop. There is clearly no case to be made that 'core' distributions choose to use KDE to GNOME or even prefer KDE to GNOME, if anything, GNOME seems to have greater market share, not less.

In my opinion, Gnome is turning into the Frankenstein of the open sourced world.

It should be noted that GNOME and KDE are NOT trying to meet entirely the same goals!

KDE works very well 'out of the box' - all the applications are tightly integrated and it works with little fuss as most of the core components are built and written by a core set of KDE developers.

GNOME however, has become a vastly more ambitious project, it is about building a scaleable, flexible, and to some degree language agnostic graphical environment. It is perhaps not surprising that someone might think it has become a Frankensein product - but that is to misunderstand the point of GNOME.

GNOME is a platform for developing and rolling out great best-of-breed applications from disparate developers - software such a GIMP, Gnumeric, Abiword and Nautilus - having them interoperate with each other - and, most importantly - having them interoperate with the user and the desktop environment in a consistent and user focused way. The fruits of this are visible clearly in most current release of GNOME.

GNOME is being developed with long term goals of usability and expandability in mind. It's not just about creating a desktop for the here and now - to borrow a phrase being used recently by Sun - it's about building a product that can "stand the test of time", an expandable product the developers can be proud of and an environment that others will want to build their applications around.

The current incompleteness of GNOME means that many users will prefer the convenience and tight integration of KDE at present - KDE certainly better meets many of the shared GNOME/KDE goals, like the provision of a useful default set of software tools and a coherent control panel. In such an imperfect world it's certainly important for users to have choice - but with regard to the future and long term desktop dominance I belive GNOME is a much more likely canidate than KDE.

Re:Everyone is ignoring so much stuff!!

[Anonymous Coward]

> Good for him, but mentioning only KDE's good
> points and only Gnome's bad points isn't a
> useful comparison to anyone else.

And the Good points in GNOME are ?

> I'm surpised at how poorly informed the people
> who discuss Gnome vs KDE are. No one has
> mentioned any of the new accomplishments both
> environments has achieved. It's still all "file
> selector" this and "configuration options" that.

Yes the minor issues for one are the biggest buggers for others.

> Anyone here even know about the massive time
> spent on building a rich and powerful
> "accessibility toolkit" ATK?

Yeah but SUN is primarily working and maintaining ATK the other GNOME developers still care for GNOME itself.

> Or the very well thought out multimedia
> framework GStreamer that's currently in
> development.

Exactly IN DEVELOPMENT that's what it is. I wonder if it's stable for anytime usage one day. Till yet I have more issues with GStreamer than with anything else.

> I've only seen a few mentions of the
> establishment and accomplishments of
> freedesktop.org - whose goal is to set standards
> (such as the HIG) which both Gnome and KDE can
> follow to achieve consistency and
> inoperatability.

You write about people being missinformed and you are missinformed on your own.

Freedesktop.org was set up by Havoc Pennington (GNOME) and was meant to be a discussion place to collect all the Window Standards and specifications on one place. Freedesktop.org is in my opinion NO place to collect new standards for. Who is this person that claims his standards are better than others. That's no serious place to discuss about these things. These so called new standards break a shitload of applications who don't support these GNOME decided standards. It's the same like soemone is comming up and set up a forum and webpage and says 'my page is the right source for HTML everything else is not the right place'. Freedesktop.org is just a discussion forum for either KDE and GNOME to suggest good solutions howto do things nothign else. No official authentic place for standardicing things. No committee of people that do the work nothing. Have you seen how many application totally broke up and behave strangely under GNOME these days ? like apps not doing fullscreen correctly and other things ? When you report these issues to bugzilla.gnome.org you get a reply telling you that the desired app is broken because it doesnt follow the specs defined on freedesktop.org. When I then go over to contact the person responsible for the app he replies 'fuck off i dont care for gnome or kde'. As long as there is no official comitee of people declaring real standards as long I'm not going to accept freedesktop.org as official place for standards.

> One thing I need to add: Most complaints about
> GConf that I've read are miss-informed. Yes, the
> closest approximation is the Windows registry.
> But it was created with the strengths of that
> registry in mind, and steps taken to get rid of
> the problems that the registry had.

The strenghts of Windows Registry IS Windows Regsitry and no poorly written wannabe immitation. Gconf caused more damage than anything good. I am able to count a lot of disadvantages about GConf but then it may sound like a rant in your eyes.

> For example, ALL keys are documented. Which is
> easier? Hand editing a text file, or going down
> a list of fully documented options in a gui
> editor - toggling boolean keys, editing strings,
> etc.

Yeah what an ideal world eh ? On my GNOME 2.2 CVS installation that I compiled last night only 1/10 of the keys are commented the others are not. And this from a standard GNOME only installation no addational applications.

Dude, seriously you are totally biassed. Get real and investigate real before writing so much shit that people tend to belive. By the way I'm a GNOME user myself.

n00b Linux user comments...

[AtomicX]

I have to say that while the GNOME environment is fairly attractive and initially less daunting than KDE's GUI, there are many faults which once you scratch beneath the surface, put KDE in a far superior position:

• GNOME's utilities are generally VERY inflexible, the PPP Dialer is a good example, KDE's one is quick, easy to use and gets good results. GNOME's dialer is prettier but is missing many important options and simply doesn't work as well for any non-straightforward tasks
• GNOME's file explorer is a lot less useful than Konqueror. It looks pretty but once again, KDE's one is functionally superior.
• In many areas the GNOME GUI falls foul of one of Linux' biggest problems - It wasn't designed with end-users in mind. Sometimes you have to do things in illogical ways which can make the interface tiresome to use.
• KDE has a far larger userbase and as a result, it recieves far more extensions and updates from the community - we have a Catch 22 situation here from which GNOME cannot easily escape

Re:GNOME and Sawfish

[TheRaven64]

I think GNOME needs something like Sawfish -- something with useful features rather than just a Microsoft clone.

Finally, someone has said something sensible. A large number of people I've spoken to (geeks and non-geeks) have said that their next computer is going to be a Mac. Most of them have not actually bought Macs, because they are so expensive. Why do they like OS X?

It has the power of of a real OS. So does *BSD, and even Linux.

It has a powerful, yet easy to use UI. Ooops. Sorry but KDE/Gome on X doesn't come close to Aqua on Quartz Extreme. There are two main problems.

1. Open source developers, in general, do not like following UI guidelines (neither do commercial developers, but they have less choice).
2. X is aging. As a network-abstract way of putting pixels on the screen, it's great, but beyond that it just doesn't cut it anymore. Compare remote X with a Citrix or Apple remote desktop. It's painful. A remote windows display is usable over a modem, a remote X is just about usable over a 10Mbit LAN (as long as it's switched).

If the OSS community could throw away X (or at least relegate it to running legacy Apps) and agree on some kind of certification program (possibly on a peer review model) for apps that actually did conform to UI guidelines, then *NIX might be ready for the desktop. Apple have shown it can be done, OS X is ready for the desktop, and a far better thing for the OSS community to be copying from than Windows. A machine at x86 prices with Apple usability levels would popular. Even more so if it ran a version of wine that atually worked (the current versions are almost there), and was seemlessly integrated into the OS.

Open Software Closing Door to Wider Use

[reallocate]

>> XML is human-readable

And so are C++, x86 assembly, and calculus. But why should someone need to learn them, or XML, to configure a desktop?

Software can be as open and free as you can make it, but it will remain closed to the real world so long as it comes with a "For Geeks Only" label.

Re:VS.

[Xpilot]

Well put :)

I'm a Slackware and GNOME user, and I'm sometimes amused by remarks such as "all the popular distros except Redhat use KDE as their default desktop". In Slackware, there is no "default desktop". You get to choose between KDE, GNOME or the lighterweights at install time, and switching between all of them is as easy as xwmconfig.

At Distrowatch, Slackware's default desktop is given as "KDE", and I wonder why. Maybe it's becaused KDE is listed on top of GNOME in the selection menu? ;)

As for other popular distros, it's also quite easy to choose your desktop, so I don't really get why the notion of a "default" desktop is even an issue.

Re:Did something really go "wrong"?

[Knuckles]

what is it about Gnome's file dialog that everybody hates so? [...] the fact that the TAB key works properly is a big point

The reason everybody complains is that nobody knows that normal shell tab completion is possible in the dialog. I don't know if that works in KDE at all. People clickety-click their ways through it. Of course the gtk dialog sucks then. I once filed a bug that the selector should have a text saying "Use tab completion here" over the text enter area, but was turned down (rightly so :)

Since...

[triptolemeus]

Linux is taking over the world anyway, I personally wouldn't mind if we were left with at least choice, when it comes to desktops.

The world is big enough for the two to hang around.

stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid!!!

[swordgeek]

OK, I like GNOME. I'm a Solaris admin, and it's a great desktop to use daily, vs. the horror of CDE.

This guy doesn't like GNOME? Fine! Go away! Use KDE! Use a command line, use CDE or Openwindows (in the Unix and Sun world), use whatever you want. I don't give a shit what you use, or why you don't like GNOME! Nobody else does either.

Somehow too much of the Linux community has turned into evangelical zealots, bent on conquering the world. At one point the Linux cry was that it was all about CHOICE! Now that they're gaining strength, it's all about CRUSHING THE EVIL MS EMPIRE. Drill one level down, and it's all about CRUSHING THE OTHER UNICES (Sun, HP, IBM, etc.). Beyond that, it moves to CRUSHING THE INFIDEL DISTROS which happen to be everything other than the one you use. Then we get to the level of CRUSHING ALL PRETENDERS TO THE ONE TRUE DESKTOP.

Well bugger it. Variation is good. Non-uniformity makes for healthy competition and robustness. Did this guy read about one of the root servers being changed away from BIND? Did he understand WHY they did that? (Hint: It wasn't because BIND was inferior)

This stupid squabbling is pointless. Articles like this shouldn't even be published by a supposedly newsworthy organisation.

Re:stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid!!!

[Istealmymusic]

On the contrary; this article is constructive criticism. The author doesn't make vague generalizations on why KDE > GNOME, he actually points out specific weeknesses. Which can be fixed. So take any comments on KDE's superiority which a grain of salt; it may do some things better, but it also does some things worse. Without articles like this, how can anything improve?

Good Article

[swestbrook]

Much like the infamous Halloween documents of past years, it shows the Gnome developers where to really concentrate their efforts. The Halloween documents and other FUD from Microsoft has shown Linus where he needs to work on the Linux kernel -- this is much of the same thing. It is a cry to fix certain parts of Gnome that definitely needs to be improved and at the same time, might bring Gnome back to its original calling, to be a damn good interface for *nix users.

fighting over the best flavor of ice cream

[Anonymous Coward]

perhaps I am just odd, but I feel that if you have different window managers and environments alltogether that you should in fact be different for a reason... diversity. No, the real term not the PC one. What if you held a party and decided to play some Country music at it (you have a live band)? Across town you have another party that plays Metal along with others of various music types scattered about. Some may go (like they do with bar or club hopping) from one to the other. Yet should we not argue over who is best and thus waste energy best spent on improving each individual party? Of course we should NEVER adopt things that work at one party to ours as that would be just as much a sign of weakness as saying "excuse me" or "sorry" when running into someone. Actually, it might be better to just send people over to the other parties and crash the party for everyone who is enjoying it (and who may have just recently been or thinking of coming to your own party). Of course, as with politics we will shout down anyone who is annoyingly making sense by employing logic and reason.

More and more society is showing signs that it is nothing but a crowd of dirty, stingy children fighting over who's bright colored oversized pencil is the prettiest. What happens usually in such a situation is that violence errupts, dragging the innocent along with it... or the "enforcer" teacher steps in to kick the shit out of everyone causing trouble. Unfortunately, through either unavoidable circumstance or just plain old bad leadership many innocent will fall under the blanket punishment policy and the majority of the worst trouble causers go unpunished eventually leading to a "Red Carpet" treatment to the trouble causers.

Yes you can

[elliotj]

Yes, you certainly can write closed source software with GPL software. The tools you use to create your software do not necessarily impose license restrictions.

Unless I'm mistaken, I can write a GTK+ application closed source so long as I'm not using any GPL'd code in my app. All I do is tell people who buy my product that they need to get the free GTK+ libraries in order to run it.

Your argument would be the equivalent of saying you can't write closed source software to run on Linux because Linux is GPL'd. That is simply not the case.

My experience

[dotgain]

Gnome (1.?) (redhat 6.0) -> Gnome 1.4 (liked it a little) -> Gnome 2.0 -> /usr/X11R6/bin/twm

Now [in Gnome2] even the (dismal) file requester takes about five seconds to draw up. I think Gnome is going the wrong way. It's only a good desktop for those that like to fire up a number of apps / windows, and then sit there looking at it / fire screenshots around the globe.

Apart from adding a bit of spiff, all I can find are features removed. I heard someone type 'gnome 2.2...now you can have transparency in the panel'. Well, 1.4 had that, 2.0 didn't.

I started using Gnome about three months after I started using Linux, about five years ago. I've been hoping it hasn't, but all I've seen (apart from a glimmer of hope in 1.4) is Gnome go to shit. I think I'm going to get the 1.4 source, maintain it myself and keep using that.

Not trolling, I'm genuinely disappointed that Gnome has given Linux a bad name, not because Gnome is Linux, but Joe Public who's used to a Windows system thinks that, he can't draw an abstraction between a desktop environment and an OS, and I think that's why a lot of people think Linux sucks. I also think adoption of Gnome by Sun is a bad move. Sure CDE sucks, but it runs.

Re:lets compare apps...

[Kourino]

In my experience, Konqueror's rendering times are faster than Galeon's. Other things aren't as fast. (And yes, somebody needs to fix Konqueror's tabs. Fast. :3 ) Galeon crashes a fair amount on my Debian system. GTK programs have a tendency to do that. Haven't run KDE stuff on that system much, so I can't compare.

I've only ever had one problem with advanced CSS or some such in Konqueror. (The shopping cart at HMV which is some drop-down thing.)

Konqueror looks like IE? What version of IE are you talking about? The Longhorn version that doesn't exist?

MAME? You mean that arcade emulator thing? That's not exactly a major, universal application ~_^

No offense, but I wouldn't make any judgements based on the preferences of the Mplayer maintainers, either.

XMMS will be disappearing for me as soon as I can replace it. Why? mp3 support at the moment is ... weird. The mpg123 plugin opens *almost* all my files, and gives horrible artifacts when it encounters stream errors. The libmad plugin handles stream errors very well, but some files crash it and it won't recognize all of them. (No matter how much I patch it, this hasn't gone away.) Since I haven't been able to get source material for all the stuff I have mp3s for yet, I can't just make Vorbis files out of these ... even if I did, there would be some artifacts (though MUCH less noticeable with libmad).

Also, I don't like XMMS' refusal to pick up on toolkit appearance. That's probably also a reason why "KDE try (sic) to make a KDE tool for everything" ... so that a user's apps all look alike, which historically has been one of the biggest complaints about Unix GUIs.