The Definite Desktop Environment Comparison

Gentu writes "OSNews posted a very long and interesting comparison between the most popular desktop environments today: Windows XP Luna, Mac OS X Aqua, BeOS/Zeta and Unix's KDE and Gnome. Some of the points in the article can be thought to be 'subjective', but overall many good points are made and it seems that there is room for improvement for all DEs."

Comments

Summary from the page...load of crapola, BTW

[djupedal]

Final Rating:
Windows XP 8.55
MacOSX 8.33
BeOS 8.22
KDE 6.72
Gnome 6.61
[subjective....gee...what was your first clue? Maybe the list of target OSs, perhaps? Since when is KDE/GNOME an OS?]

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:stability

[embedded_C]

As I was so kindly corrected, "He" is a "She". And from her website ....

I own a dual Intel Celeron 2x533 Mhz system with a 3Dfx Voodoo5, Creative SBlive! and 256 MB SDRAM, powered by the best Operating System out there, the BeOS (among 6-7 more OSes also installed, including QNX RtP, Windows XP PRO, Gentoo, Mandrake, Lycoris, Xandros, & Red Hat Linux, Syllable and MacOS 8.1 under emulation).

http://www.eugenia.co.uk/

Mac OS X does not have vector icons

[green pizza]

The article claims that Mac OS X has vector (resolution independant) icons. This is incorrect. Mac OS X uses 128 x 128 pixel icons, which are scaled to the requested size.

The only desktop environment i can think of with vector based icons is SGI's "Indigo Magic" or "IRIX Interactive Desktop".

Re:Mac OS X does not have vector icons

[Ig0r]

GNOME 2.2 supports SVG icons everywhere that PNG and others can be used.

underlying technology

[g4dget]

Therefore the technology used behind these DEs is an important factor on this comparison. In fact, this factor can be what allows a DE to do, or what locks a DE to not be able to do because the back-end functionality is not there or because architecture or legacy problems might prevent the creation of new cool stuff (and that's bad for the future potential of any DE). [...] MacOSX takes the lead here regarding the technology used. Double buffering everywhere, non-flickered UI, vector icons, good font rendering engine, "real" transparency support, PDF-based, QuartzExtreme for 3D assistance on the 2D space of the desktop and my personal favorite "smooth window dragging" (for lack of a better naming of a VSYNC'ed desktop).

It's a myth that Mac OS X has any advantage here over either X11 or Windows. X11 has support for all those features, including VSYNC (which has been in there since the mid-1980's). X11, in fact, has support for pretty much exactly the Mac OS X graphics model through DisplayPostscript.

The reason why these features are not used much in Gnome and KDE (or XP, for that matter) are partly historical and partly technical. Technically, it is not clear whether they are even desirable at this point. In particular, while the Mac does a few things like dragging windows around really well, on most normal graphics tasks, it is quite slow and consumes a lot of resources.

Basically, this guy's review is essentially a reiteration of common pre-conceptions: "XP is usable", "OS X is technically superior", and "Gnome/KDE is just third rate". Well, that's not news. It's also wrong.

Re:underlying technology

[Anonymous Coward]

X11, in fact, has support for pretty much exactly the Mac OS X graphics model through DisplayPostscript.

Uh, what?

Display Postscript is proprietary and costs money to license from Adobe. Tell me how to get it running on my RH8 box please.

Of course it won't matter anyway, because no other RH8 box will have DPS and as a developer I can't assume it exists.

Apple didn't even bother licensing Postscript, that's why they use PDF everywhere which doesn't require a license. Apple's implementation is not from Adobe. You remember that the old NeXT boxes that OS X is based on used DPS? So Apple actually dumped DPS when it created OS X.

Saying X11 can do everything Mac OS X is true only in the sense that a C compiler and a frame buffer can do everything Doom III can do. Technically true, but practically a JOKE.

In a very REAL practical sense, I can't do stuff in Gnome or KDE that I can do easily in Mac OS X. How do I make a window transparent so the background shows through? On X11, how do I put one transparent window in front of another window, and then start typing in the background window and have it show through "live"? On my Mac, I can edit the name of an icon on my desktop behind transparent window title bars and not even think twice about it. I can put a quicktime movie in a sticky note, make the note transparent and the movie becomes transparent too. How the HELL do I do this on any common X11 distribution? (i.e., red hat).

Maybe this isn't "practical" or it's just "eye candy"? No, here's a counter-example: on Mac OS X, the windows have no borders. They just have drop-shadows which are translucent. So you can see the contents of the window underneath inside the drop-shadow. No wasted space! It goes right from window #1 to window#2 with a drop shadow, no thick border taking up space. How do I do this on X11?

Re:stability

[Trogre]

Uhh, the konqueror isn't just a web browser, it's also the KDE file manager.

What file manager do you use?

To have a great DE but a buggy file manager effectively renders the DE useless if you use the DE for any kind of file manipulation.

You say that KDE has never crashed on you but Konqueror has? What's the difference? Were you browsing the web, or a list of files at the time?

Re:"Definitive"?

[nfg05]

It wasn't the "definitive" desktop review! Do people not even read the Slashdot summaries anymore?

This was a "definite" desktop review.

Some people may not read the "summaries" (headlines as I like to call them, but whatever), but I wouldn't be so quick to judge because you quite obviously didn't read the article. check it out here and read the TITLE of the article. The article calls itself "The Definitive Desktop Environment Comparison", not the definite comparison as CowboyNeal calls it. In fact, I suspected that "definite" was a typo when I first read it and still do. Point being, the parent of your post was referring to the ARTICLE TITLE, not cowboyneals (most likely) typo in the summary. And if your post was all a joke, I apologize for making a big racket about nothing. That is all.

Definitive? I don't think so.

[Daimaou]

Anyone who has visited OSNews more than twice knows that Eugenia has an unhealthy infatuation with Windows XP (it used to be with BeOS, but perhaps she has finally come to grips with the fact that BeOS is dead).

I usually skip over any "definitive" or "unbiased" OS reviews from Eugenia since the outcome is always: Linux sucks; OS X is okay but still sucks; XP has some minor flaws, but they pale in comparison to how absolutely dreamy XP is.

Anyway, I found the article ill-informed and very biased and a far cry from definitive (more like diminutive). It must have been a slow news day at OSNews.

Ratings summaries...

[Chymaera]

Look and Feel: Windows XP 8.0, MacOSX 9.0, KDE 6.5, BeOS 7.0, Gnome 6.5.

Usability: Windows XP 9, MacOSX 8.5, KDE 6.5, BeOS 8.5, Gnome 7.

Consistency, Integration, Flexibility: Windows XP 7, MacOSX 7, KDE 8, BeOS 7, Gnome 7.5.

Speed, Stability and Bugs: Windows XP 9.5, MacOSX 9, KDE 7, BeOS 7.5, Gnome 8.

Technology, Programming Framework: Windows XP 8, MacOSX 10, KDE 7.5, BeOS 8.5, Gnome 7.5.

Final Rating:
Windows XP 8.55
MacOSX 8.33
BeOS 8.22
KDE 6.72
Gnome 6.61

Re:if you are used to Windows...

[MeanMF]

Why is it so hard to access the Device Manager in XP? Its the only part of the control panel I use regularly.

Create a shortcut to devmgmt.msc and you're all set...

Enough complaining about XP's default theme

[blincoln]

If you don't like it, change it. No commercial software is required.

I'm running a sci-fi-esque shiny black theme right now, and it works perfectly. It even replaced the huge Start menu button with one that's much more manageable.