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UserLinux May Go Without KDE
Anonymous BillyGoat writes "For the past few days, there has been considerable debate at the UserLinux mailing list about the (proposed) non-inclusion of KDE in the distro. The KDE developers have written a proposal opposing the decision to go with GNOME as the sole UserLinux GUI, while Bruce Perens has posted a response."
KDE is still one of the most-used desktop environments around. Ignoring KDE in favor of GNOME would be like only including VI and not Emacs (or Emacs and not VI), and forcing all users to use one.
This is a mistake if they don't include both.
Erioll
Except the User part because there won't be any.
Isn't KDE a lot smoother and more consistent over all then Gnome? I mean Linus uses it. Especially for business apps, KDE seems like a more natural choice.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The inclusion of two desktop environments, no matter how good they might be, will be confusing to ordinary end users. There might be some argument for including KDE and leaving GNOME out, but I feel that GNOME is less CPU-intensive and the included applications are a little better. The best argument for KDE would be that it would make the transition from Windows easier because it is so similar. That shouldn't be an issue, though. Nobody worries about users switching from Windows to the Mac being confused. It's a good call.
Help me. I've been modbombed by a few people with entirely too much time on their hands.
user mode linux != userlinux. HTH, HAND.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There is more than one way. Anyone that insists that there is only one way, and that is their way, is probably wrong. KDE has advatages over GNOME, and vice versa. Let the flame wars begin - err continue.
AngryPeopleRule
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
I don't primarily use KDE, but I still like the idea that should I want it, I can have it. I do use Gnome, but I like just knowing it's not my only option, even if I never get around to using KDE. Although it's not the end-all be-all (in my opinion), it would still be a mistake to not include it.
Damon,
http://actionPlant.com
Well things like OS/2 and all the stuff I wrote in 6502 assembly is pretty much useless now. As a small consolation, maybe there's a graveyard for these things in an alternate dimension.
What's with all this talk lately about linux distros and KDEs and such?
I can't believe it: Perens left the "e" out of userlinux.com in the link to his own whitepaper on his own site!
I thought linux was about choice. Guess some people have different ideas.
And Qt is made by Trolltech.
And Trolltech is part of the Canopy Group.
Which pulls SCO strings.
Do we need the threat of more lawsuits in the future?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Hasn't anyone proposed removing Gnome?
It seems to me (subjective experience, yadda yadda yadda) that KDE is less buggy, more feature-laden, more configurable, and with the new 3.2 betas even slightly faster than Gnome.
Does this have something to do with the QT developer license cost I've heard about? Is GTK devoid of such a cost?
Having used both, I have likes and dislikes about both of them - Gnome does look better, and "feels", whatever that means, like a more complete and professional product.
That said, KDE is faster. Much, much faster; On older hardware, this is a pronounced difference. Every time my old P2/233 goes bobbing for objects in the Corba barrel, it takes an awfully long time to come up for air.
If the UserLinux project is only meant to run on hardware made from this day forward, that's cool, I'd go with Gnome. But if not, I'd definitely include KDE - It's cruel to say so, but the choice between Gnome and KDE is, in my house, very much dependent on the choice between new or old hardware.
Mike Hoye
Newsforge still has a copy of the response that Bruce Perens posted before replacing it with is on www.userlinux.com/GUI.html now..
Get it here
GNOME was chosen because it allows the development and distribution of proprietary applications WITHOUT purchasing a license from Trolltech.
It isn't about if one is better than the other. He doesn't touch that argument with a 10 foot pole.
Read BP's white paper for his wording on it.
Not the cost of KDE, but what it costs to developed closed apps with QT. Selling companies on paying an additional 1300 USD for a dev license per dev can be a difficult thing to do.
You may not like it, but that is how things are sometimes done in the 'real' world.
I have never fully understood why distros come with both GUI environments. I realize that there is a lot of great software that one will miss out on either way, but users want simplicity.
I view Bruce's approach as being better than what Redhat has historically delivered (Gnome with half-assed KDE support). I would rather have KDE left out than finding broken features and diminished functionality after the install.
Especially for business apps, KDE seems like a more natural choice.
On the contrary, KDE is worse for the business apps. It's all about the license difference b/w GTK+ and QT. Choosing KDE would practically have forced the companies that want to ship closed source software to buy a expen$ive license for Qt (if they want to have the uniform "look", of course).
Personally, I use KDE. That's because I'm not a business, and I use what works (and KDE works better than Gnome ATM). But I wouldn't build my future on it.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
A distro without KDE is not going to get very far.
I user neither GNOME nor KDE, hell I don't even use Linux.
I run BSD's is console only, and use Windows for the desktop. But this is really stupid, I've tried both and KDE wins hands down.
I bet the people intended as the audience for this YALD (Yet Another Linux Distro) will laugh too.
And while I'm at it, I can't stand Brunce on his always so high horse and mostly ignorant and silly ideas. Why can't SANE people ever be put in charge of making decisions that effect others?
Sure, to your average ./ linux geek, not having the _choice_ of desktop environment is sacreligious, but in order to push linux into new markets, a unified, consistent GUI is one of the things needed. Support costs decrease. Documentation (user-level) can be written for a single interface. Users moving from one (UserLinux) system to another receive the same feedback, which reinforces their learning.
What linux _really_ needs (for the purpose of appeasing your everyday, business/home user) is to adopt the approach Apple took with MacOS X. It presents a single unified interface, well-designed apps, etc. but lets you add the rest yourself. It's powerful in the way that OS 9 wasn't. But because it's UNIX underneath, you know you can get in there and change it. You don't need to be an expert to do that - someone else will develop a little GUI wrapper to do it for you. But the fact is it's possible.
We've all known and loved this about Linux for years, but it's mass-market adoption is being stifled by lack of a unified interface. Aesthetics is something Apple learnt a long time ago. It counts.
The point of the various distributions is to target different audiences, to package things in different ways, to pursue different directions. If you don't like one particular distro, choose another. But we really need a distro that is consistent, and doesn't compromise on security (like Lindows). In fact, we need several. Let them fight it out. May the best distro win.
I'd personally be completely happy if they went with minimalist solutions to the various implementations. (ie gui, mail client, text editors, browser, etc). I guess this is a bit less feasible for business oreinted ends, but still... gnome? kde? Who tolerates the latency?!
..., using a Mandrake 9.x distro, for example Open Office works as fine on their KDE interface as KOffice works on their Gnome interface.
Programs in the background, interface in the foreground. That is all that end-users care about, libaries should not matter, they are a background thing.
Is the freedom to create a Linux distribution with only one desktop.
Why hasn't anyone made an OSS implementation of Qt? I don't see why it would be to hard to come up with a drop-in replacement, maybe even based on GTK, (though hopefully more low level).
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Although it might not be a good choice to select Gnome over KDE, I agree with this move.
I don't think Linux will become widely accepted on the desktop until there is a standard for installations. The amount of software you include in your packages is also taken into effect when you need to support these products (or not have to support them). I think this is why certain packages (i.e. Debian) will include every package, rather than selecting which goes in. Most of the support is kind of fix-it-yourself, and providing all packages allows them to do anything or fix any problem right? This approach is great for Geeks with the do-it-all-yourself type attitude, but it doesn't work elsewhere. This also relates to having to choose which windows manager to use when installing the OS. This division among windows managers has caused and will cause alot of problems in the future when relating to interoperability between applications and elsewhere. I personally feel that every Linux distro should go with 1 windows manager, and not allow people to chose between them (unless this is a Linux distro that caters to the "expert" - but which distro doesnt claim this?).
Who cares? It's ONE distro out of how many? It's probably good in the long run if it makes transition from another OS that much easier. KDE needs to follow suit...how many distros would happily use them?
There can be only one!
.NET -- and how heavily Novell/Ximian will be pursuing it. If this is the direction GNOME itself is going and MS suddenly pulls a patent-fit (released as open standards, blah blah...note SCO distributing their code under GPL doesn't shut them up).
Why GNOME over KDE, I don't know. Then again, I'm sure we all have our personal biases. (I happen to like KDE).
A possible danger here would be the road to
Support for both would be great, if not needed, though. I like kuickshow too much to give it up. I know that's a trivial app, but put a more heavily-relied-upon app in its place. There are people who couldn't work without at least KDE app support.
If in the end, there can be only one, I hope it's a product of convergence, and not the demise of one environment (to be technical, the rest of the environments).
The PERL mantra is CRAP. One of the desktop UI projects needs to concede, and they need to put their efforts together. KDE is good, but lacks some of what GNOME has. GNOME's recent offerings have been pretty screwed up, IMHO.
While competition is good, cannibalism isn't, and that is all the two projects do - cannibalize each other. Put the resources, people, time, brains TOGETHER. It's a hard decision to make, but they really need to do it, if either one wants to get better by the leaps and bounds we need.
The last few times I have dealt with new GNOME updates it gets WORSE AND WORSE. More bloat, more crap, less options, harder to figure out how to change things. There is nothing more frustrating that a feature you used to use all the time being taken away from you
Focus on cleanliness and efficiency. That doesn't mean that all the config options have to disappear (ahem, Metacity can bite my ass). It DOES mean that nautilus can't chew up 16 MB of memory per user just to SIT THERE.
Get it together guys, they're getting ahead of you further than you can catch up at this point.
yush
KDE will always be available in UserLinux, because UserLinux will be a subset of Debian. Want KDE? It'll be just a few clicks (or an "apt-get install kde") away. Want to run just a particular KDE or QT application? No problem; the libraries you need will be installed automatically. This is Debian, folks.
The conflict here is about defaults. UserLinux will include and install Gnome by default, and the developer effort will be geared toward GTK. Why? Because GTK is royalty-free in all situations, unlike QT, and UserLinux is building a royalty-free development environment.
Trolltech is an independent company, not controlled by Canopy. Canopy group owns 5.7% of TrollTech's shares, while Trolltech's employees and founders own 69.7%. This myth of Canopy controlling Trolltech is entirely untrue (but remarkably persistent, thanks to anti-KDE trolls). Read kdemyths.urbanlizard.com and be enlightened.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Seriously. So what? If you want to use KDE, use a different distro. This is a non-issue.
-Tom
-Tom
[END USER] I want to use application X.
[COMPUTER] You cannot use application X, it would confuse you too much.
This is the kind of reasoning that causes 100% of the flaws in Mac OS X
Releasing a distro without KDE ... is like going to war with France without the Germans.
Ok, flame me, but I found this funny. Btw. who the fuck could get flamebaited by that? People, these times are long gone.
In fact, I think it stands for the Gimp Toolkit and came out of the gimp project, although I could be wrong. The real question is, why hasn't anyone made an OSS implementation of the Qt API. Dosn't seem like it'd be that hard.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I've used linux for years, from back at redhat 4.2 I believe. I've also used a number of the GUIs and I have some pretty strong feelings about them. In every distribution that I've dealt with, Gnome just works. Sure, it has some bugs, but in general its a smoother user experience. I'm sure you can do everything in KDE, but that's if you want to spend hours configuring it. Gnome just works. I do like the power and options available in KDE, but if I was starting with linux, I wouldn't want that. In fact, when I migrate people to linux, they get Gnome. Once they learn the OS, then I might mention there are other GUIs, but for a migration or business oriented distro, go with the one that just works.
That said, I read the article *gasp* and it was about supporting the environments, not the relative qualities of the GUIs and I have to agree that its easier to standardize on one development environment.This is a good move for a new distro and helps to keep their costs down and quality up. I just hope that the fallout from the geeks doesn't kill them before they get going. I'd love another good Debian based distro
KDE is great, but too much is exposed. I don't need three text editors in a right click menu, I want one that just works, although I generally use vi and they never include that in the click menus:(
Is there are a reason KDE can't be used anyways? You'll just have to download it instead of it being distributed with the initial install.
If you like KDE... keeping using it. For the business world they get less complication and you still have choice.
yvan eht nioj
I will be modded down for heresy, but...
Until there is *The One True Linux Desktop*, you're going to have trouble getting the mainstream to accept it. You saw successes with Redhat (ok, maybe a bad example now) because we knew that Redhat n+1 was going to have roughly the same desktop as Redhat n.
There is no -1 "I disagree"
If Bruce Perens honestly wants this to be a Linux for business people (instead of the unwashed masses of normal users), he should not call it UserLinux but BusinessLinux or whatever.
I'm a user and I want KDE. Most people agree that KDE is more mature and robust than GNOME anyway, so from a business point of view it is obviously better suited. KDE also has more stability from other points of view, for example it doesn't change the default window manager for each major release, the groupware and the kiosk mode are very important as well. I'm not talking down on GNOME here, but KDE is more mature and all the major business wins Linux has had so far were with (and because of) KDE.
I think the maintainability argument is a fallacy. Admins already are completely unable to contain the complexities of different applications. Each major application and framework calls for its own class of admins. In large companies you have a Cisco admin for the networking infrastructure, you have an Oracle DBA, you have the Apache guy, you have the SuSE/RedHat/whatever admin, and the 5000 Windows reboot monkeys. Nobody expects all of this to go away if they switch to Linux. There will still be complexity. Deciding to standardize on GNOME will not make OpenOffice any less daunting to install and maintain in a multi-user environment. Or Mozilla. Or Apache.
And if we accept the argument, we would clearly choose the platform with the more robust administration interface, which clearly is KDE. kcontrol is integrated and pretty much all-encompassing, while GNOME is constantly shifting from CORBA over XML to a binary registry and back. GNOME has become so bad that they actually added a regedit style "config editor" and apparently really expect users to use it to configure applications. Hint: This is the kind of nightmare people want to get rid of when they switch from Windows to Linux.
Anyway, I don't see why we need to standardize on a GUI, and if we do, we standardize on KDE, of course, as it fulfils more of the requirements businesses have, hands down.
Perens and his cohorts are applying the rules of communist economics to this projects requirements. How many of the end users they hope for are participating in this requirements and design phase?
Why even bother calling it USER Linx?
They should take a look at how a good project involves it's target users. http://www.intellij.net
-... ---
UserLiGNUx. Sounds OK and with the right capitalisation
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
and let gnome and kde be add ons that are not included in the distros..
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
"...while Bruce Perens has posted a response."
and
"This is a mistake if they don't include both."
Pistols at dawn.
or
[Bugs Bunny]
"This means war!"
emacs in action
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
If you want to do commercial development with Qt, you have to pay a one time fee.
Bruce objected to that and is putting together a distribution that has NO payment requirements for commercial development.
That's his approach, that's his goal.
Whether he will succeed or not, only time will tell.
- m
- aicrosoft
or- M
- AICROSOFT
.Not trying to troll or anything, I just want a reasonable answer to this one:
I heard a ton of arguments why ther should be only One. Okay, development, toolsets, all that crap.
So, if KDE IN and GNOME IN is not an option, they go with KDE OUT, GNOME IN.
Why not KDE IN, GNOME OUT?
How is GNOME better than KDE?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Just because the Canopy Group and SCO invested in Trolltech, doesn't mean that Trolltech is part of the Canopy Group.
Alltogether, Canopy Group owns a grand total of 5.7% of Trolltech. They have practically no say in the operations of Trolltech.
People really need to stop dragging Trolltech's name through the mud with this pointless argument.
(Note:: I am not a Trolltech/QT/KDE fanboy. In fact I don't use any desktop environment. My WMs of choice are Enlightenment and BlackBox.)
End of line..
Ask yourself; would Linux as a GPL'd kernel be as successfull, if it required the applications running with it either be GPL, or that the developer had to pay Linux $1000 up front for the rights to release applications for Linux under a different license?
this is user-linux's project they can build it however they see fit, and KDE can go jump in a friggin lake if they don't like it...
on some distros KDE runs great, other distros i think KDE sucks, just depends on what the developers of a particular distro want to do, you would not like it if i came up to you are started telling you what to do with your project- show user-linux the same respect!!!
I'm amazed that this has got to +5..
yes, the canopy group still owns some shares in trolltech from when they weren't big-bad sco.
the amount if shares they own is small and insignifigant.
>50% of the trolltech shares are owned by trolltech's employees.
SCO does not have and never will have a controlling interest in trolltech.
I use KDE, I write KDE applications, and I've shipped apps in the KDE release, but I say good for UserLinux.
UI consistency is more than similar widgets and colors.
I wish this would teach the KDE people some lessons: stop being a follower, stop throwing away your own stuff for in favor of GNOME, and start going back to doing the things that made KDE great. Any other path just leads to KDE becoming treated as a GNOME auxillary, nice to have but optional when the real work has to be done.
First: I am not a developer and I have no stake in -any- OS outside of the business value proposition it offers; yes I am a pointy-haired manager type. OK, except at home where I've got a little of everything (Sun, OS X, Linux, Windows).
Mr. Perens approach is right on the mark. Reducing comlexity in the overall product reduces the cost to support the platform, thus making Userlinux more viable. Even if IT departments were the ones making the choice, in a lot of small & midsize shops you would have a good chance of getting a mixed desktop environment based on the 'technically correct' choice of the moment (i.e. ignoring an overall strategy that factors in business needs and downstream support... which raises costs.)
Choice is good, but an offering where a number of those choices have been made will ultimately present a stronger picture to business. Especially at the desktop level, there is less tolerance for a wide range of choices.
Many managers fear getting into a situation where they are so unique in their implementations that only existing staff can understand them and later choices are limited due to deviation from the norm. Even not controlling versions, of say, Windows/MS Office strategically can complicate the support picture and even reduce the overall efficency of the company. I know from the experience of cleaning it up, and from having made the mistake myself of allowing sys admins having too much choice (letting the purely technical override the strategic).
Clearly making choices at the time of putting a distribution together makes good sense from a Corporate point of view.
Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered KDE community when recently it was learned that UserLinux may not be including their desktop. Coming on the heels of the news of Novell's acquisition of Ximian and then SuSE, a once KDE-centric distro, KDE will lose more market share as SuSE switches to Ximian's GNOME desktop. You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict KDE's future. The hand writing is on the wall: KDE faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for KDE because KDE is dying.
Answer me this: why must every Linux distribution be about infinite choice?
I want to see more specialized Linux distributions, and less distribs that try to present all software to everyone. Instead of distribs that have 1/3rd of their GUIs break at various times, a distrib that picks one GUI and makes sure it works is great.
Don't like that GUI? Pick one that uses your GUI. Or pick one of the jack-of-all-trades distribs.
But stop pressuring every Linux distrib to offer every single damn software package under the sun.
"Score: 5, Interesting" on a untrue statement. Very sad moderation.
Buying stock in a company does not make that company "part" of the purchaser. I can not find anywhere on the Trolltech page the statement "a division of the Canopy Group."
The Canopy Group does not own a controlling share of Trolltech. They are not partners. They just own a small share of Trolltech stock. All companies own stock in other companies.
Perens and his cohorts are applying the rules of communist economics to this projects requirements.
In other words:
1. Set wildly unrealistic goals.
2. Compel large numbers of people to work toward said goals.
3. Lie about the results: goals will never be met, but always pretend they have been exceeded.
4. Arrest anyone who protests, and send them to the gulags.
5. Arrest those who know the truth, and send them to the gulags.
6. Arrest the original authors of the goals, and send them to the gulags.
7. Arrest some other people at random, and send them to the gulags. (Repeat as necessary.)
-kgj
-kgj
...but I'm sick of the KDE/GNOME debate. Let's just pick one. There are things I like about GNOME. There are things I like about KDE. I prefer KDE, but GNOME is a fine choice. It DOES look more professional, GNOME 2.4 happens to run faster than KDE 3.1 on my hardware. If someone made it as customizable as KDE, I'd switch to it in a heartbeat.
I kind of like the competition. It keeps both camps on their toes. But unified efforts might be a better idea. In doing that, Longhorn could end up looking paltry indeed.
Besides, if choosing GNOME can make GNOME pushersshut up then what are we waiting for!
Windows gives no choice. Windows rules the desktop. Windows ME/XP is (pick one: more | less) usable than the Windows 9X interface, but both succeeded.
IMHO, if more distributions picked a single UI and went with it, patching in the most annoying gaps, the biggest problem with Linux would quickly be solved. The idea that multiple choices with fewer developers is somehow superior to fewer choices better done seems disingenous at best.
I prefer KDE myself, but what I'd really like is for one to win and get most of the wrinkles ironed out. Either one. Because I don't have to worry about the UI choices in Windows, Mac, java apps, Palm apps or even PPC.
Remember, whatever choices we make apply only to what we choose to support as a group. Our choices don't cause the alternatives to be removed from Debian, they don't constrain what a service provider can support to their own customers...
IOW, if you want to use KDE, go ahead and use it, no one is stopping you. If they were making changes that made it impossible for KDE to run properly, then there may be a good basis for petition. Not having KDE included in distro XYZ in no way invalidates all the great work they've done to date. (I'm a happy KDE user)
Also the white paper suggests supporting MySQL as the database, Python as interpretive language, and Mozilla as the browser. I dont see postgreSQL, PERL, and Thunderbird development teams getting thier panties in a wad.
Don't forget that he isn't going to do anything that would pull KDE out of Debian. He isn't going to void the UserLinux certification of anyone who supports KDE. He is doing nothing against KDE.
If you want to be a certified UserLinux support guy, you will need to understand GNOME so you can support it. You will not need to understand GNOME to get the certification, but you can understand it if you want to. You can advertise yourself as a certified UserLinux expert who will support KDE, if you want.
So: UserLinux implies GNOME. UserLinux does not imply lack of KDE.
I think Bruce Perens is 100% correct on this issue. There is no reason to demand companies and consultants to grok two complete desktop environments, and there are good reasons why a standard distro like UserLinux should just have one. And if there is going to just be one, the one that is more free is the correct one. No one ever has to pay anyone for the privilege of writing apps for GNOME, even proprietary commercial apps, so it's the correct one.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
*every* time an artcle is posted about Linux/BSD vs. Windows/OS X usability, someone chimes in that 'if only the open source community could pick one developement platform, and limit user choice, then developers could focus on one platform, everything would work well, things would be easy, new users and business would love it, birds would sing, and MicroSoft would be overthrown'.
Then that guy gets modded up to +5.
Now, someone's making a serous effort to do *exactly that* and everyone's bitching about leaving out KDE and how it limits user choice, forces everyone to work on one platform, and how this will make things harder; when it appears that it has a large part to do with the licencing of QT vs. Gnome, and nothing about KDE or Gnome being 'better'.
Sheesh. And I'm sitting here posting about it. I can't think of what's sadder!
Sounds like a replay of Redhat's game playing Gnome and ignoring KDE. It was the time when Mandrake came into the game. Partly because Redhat believed it could dictate the direction. Mandrake took over lots of users from RH. Redhat had to adjust.
Again it might proof difficult giving out game plans to Linux users which ball they should have to use in their game. If they don't like the color of your ball, they'll simply look for another playground.
Gnome zealots need to get over it. KDE zealots do too. I use what works for me. It appears it does as well for the majority of Linux users
Trotting out the QT dead horse is a waste of effort. All the revelant libs are GPLed and have been for sometime. It's a non issue unless you are building commercial apps. Just like many developer tools you will have to pay if you use them in a commercial way. BFD. If you are writing commercial apps you should pay for your tools. It's a non issue.
Use what you like. I wouldn't use UserLinux if forced to use Gnome. I have plenty of Debian based KDE distros to choose from beside that one.
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
This is one danger of commercial entities involving themselves in OSS development. The commercial companies are choosing GNOME not because of technical advantages, but because of monetary advantages (LGPL = no Qt license fees). If GNOME goes from being the second biggest DE (according to most polls), to becoming the standard Linux desktop because of something as stupid as that, that'd royally suck. Especially since, in most areas, GNOME's technology lags behind KDE's.
I just hope this isn't yet another example of great technology dying because the commercial software industry has a tendency to preserve the status quo in lieu of pushing the envelope.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
One of the most painful things in life to do is to "grow up." We have seen many different projects over the years face off against one another for "market" dominance. Fact of the matter, there is going to come a time (such as this) where decisions will be made as to what software packages to provide to users.
Although one of the benefits of OSS is choice, it can also be a hinderance. People who are not used to any GNU/Linux (whatever you want to call them) distributions, really don't want to spend time trying to make choices as to what software they are going to use. They are interested in how easy and stable applications are to use.
Arguements over which software applications are moot. As we have seen in the past, it doesn't really matter which one is more techically sound. It's what appeals to the consumer that counts when you try to create a standard anything (look at VHS vs. Beta-Max).
I am glad so see somebody finally set up and make a stand when it comes to "too many" choices. I would love to see a distribution that doesn't require 1300+ packages to be installed.
Though consistency of interface is important in creating a distribution which is targeted at end-users, this does not have to come with the baggage which is associated with the current two leading DEs. A desktop should be simple, light, and operate well with anything which follows a set of standards; the standards, rather than the fact that all the applications are part of the same monolithic heavyweight project, should be the source of consistency. Most commercial companies would, I think, prefer a desktop which is development environment-agnostic over one which makes the choice for them, be the chosen environment lgpl'd or no.
I prefer QT over any other GUI toolkit available.
But if QT is not going to be included in this distribution, its just another distribution I won't consider to install or offer to my clients.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Did everyone forget that just because it ships without kde doesn't mean you can't download kde and install it. We are talking about linux here folks.
Whats funny about that? i dont get it.
I personally prefer KDE over gnome, but if Linux is ever going to make it into the corporate world in decent-sized rollouts, some hard decisions are going to have to be made. The Gnome interface looks less sophisticated than KDE, but I know for darn sure that I don't want to ask my users "are you using KDE or Gnome" and have them replying "I dunno", then having to figure out the difference. Yes, I *realise* that IT departments would set the standard and possibly would uninstall one or the other, but does anybody care about Windows not having a plethora of other desktop-systems?
As much as I bag the shit out of Microsoft for their products, their Windows interface is consistent and you know what you're dealing with. Linux will eventually be all the better for it if KDE and Gnome can just ditch one in favour of the other and focus their collective development efforts on one, kick-arse, desktop environment. I used to use WindowMaker before we had desktop environments, but I don't lose sleep at night because I switched to KDE.
You people might think that Gnome vs KDE are holy wars that must be fought, but it is this division that Microsoft are tickled-pink to witness. Ever heard of the saying "Divide, and conquer" (or should that be "Divide, and konquer"?
Get with the program you religious zealots and do something that benefits Linux for a change! At the end of the day, I couldn't care less which desktop environment wins out, just as long as one of those frigging things is a clear winner.
This is one of the main reasons why I still keep booting into Windows XP for a lot of things - because things are consistent and they interoperate seamlessly without me having to run memory-hogging applications like klipper just so the many different clipboard protocols appear to work "seamlessly"
Bruce says: "UserLinux is intended to be a system for business people."
OK, that's great, but why on earth call it UserLinux then? Shouldn't it be BusinessLinux?
Names are important. UserLinux sounds like a Linux distro intended for end users. Someone like my Mom, not someone like HP. Bruce may be right about GNOME being a better solution for business. I will, however, bet nickels to dollars that much of the controversy is because people assume that a distro called UserLinux should be about, well, users, and that's KDE's main focus.
I have assumed ever since the initial announcement that UserLinux might end up being my distro of choice, and I was upset when I heard about KDE's exclusion. Now that I read further, I see I have no reason to be upset, because UserLinux isn't intended for me.
It wouldn't surprise me to see the whole project fail because of this fundamental naming problem. Is a distro called UserLinux even going to register on a CIO's radar?
BusinessLinux might have. I don't think UserLinux will.
Begun, the flame wars have.
Okay, now that I have that troll (pun intended) out of the way.
I personally like KDE over Gnome. That being said, I am all for picking just ONE, desktop to be the ONE. I see arguements for BOTH. However, I think the inclusion of one over the other should NOT be made primarily on Religious/political grounds, but on Technical ones.
Things like USABILITY, SPEED, APPLICATIONS, and DEVELOPEMENT, should be the deciding factor. Of course much of that is very subjective, but a consensus can be reached.
Further, Userlinux can actually benifit marketing wise, if they just PICKED ONE as the ONE. No confusion on software boxes. "Requires Userlinux 4.0".
If people really want the option of the OTHER the softwarebox could say, "Requires Userlinux 4.0 with KDE".
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
"A distro without KDE is not going to get very far."
KDE, the "Red Hat"(1) of the OSS world.
(1) Remember when Red Hat was feared to be the next Microsoft?
then why not go purely fltk, eh?
i honestly cannot imagine a distro without gnome libraries. i'm sure they'll be there, just not in linkable form.
Non-GPL'd Qt development requires payments to Trolltech. Qt has the same license as Gnome under Linux.
Trolltech has licensed Qt under the GPL for Linux, which is the same license as Gnome. They will also sell you another license if you don't like the GPL and want to write apps that link to Qt using some other more restrictive license.
As far as I know, Gnome is only licensed under the GPL. Unless I'm mistaken, that means to me that with Gnome, you have one choice of license, whereas with Qt, you can opt to purchase a non-GPL license.
... does the slashdot linux pinguin icon have a bag over its head (it's face is blacked out)?
Certainly, with the express purpose to develop a user friendly desktop linux, one should settle on one user interface. As I read some of these replies, I feel some in the slashdot crowd overlook the fact the basic user may not have the desire or the spare time to tinker with different desktops to understand their various idiosyncrasies. A pretty destop may not be necessary but a consistent one is. A person who uses a computer as part of their profession would require a consistent layout. Commercial operating systems don't waste time with supporting different gui, so why should open spource developers, with less resources and who are working voluntarily on this project, be required to accomodate? Just because it is out there isn't a valid reason with respect to this goal.
Now, which gui is a different matter all together. KDE or Gnome seem to have equal support and function (at least from my perspective). One could just a as well flip a coin rather than do a comprehensive comparison of their various features.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
Personally, I am not happy with either environment (although Ximian Desktop 2 gets really close). I use XFCE. It's clean, lean, and works great.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Subject says it all, it would result in thousands of conistant apps and make Linux more paletable.
Of course it might be better for one of the desktops to just die. Merging two architectures isn't easy.
If they did merge I'm sure someone would fork a project off from the merged desktop.
Qt works equally well for applications developed on UNIX and Windows. Is the same true for GTK? Businesses demand cross platform support for their applications. GTK was not up to par with UNIX a year ago when I tried it out on Windows. Has it improved?
The more distributions started the better. I wish the best of luck to Bruce and i think he will pull this off.
I really love the cleaness of gnome and i do hope it wont get pregnant.
HTTP/1.1 400
anyone insists their way is the only way, and they are probably wrong. but if everyone insists there was is the only way, is that way right?
this is the other way. every other distro in the world has gnome and kde both. just as kde has advantages over gnome and gnome has advantages over kde, providing only one has advantages and disadvantages over providing both or neither.
it makes a helluva lot of sense for a buisness class distro, which is what UserLinux seems to want to be. a distro built around LGPL would really make a lot of sense for the buisness world: no suprises for your managers. put it on the front page: the power of linux plus no worries about viral gpl when you start writing gui software. the point is moot in the face of the fact that UserLinux has no such grand goals (i'm sure that'd go over better than saying no kde... lol). But it makes some sense, again, especially when you are talking about buisness.
Myren
KDE is a simpler, more familiar interface for average Joe end users to figure out.
And, Qt has a better license: GPL.
Never mind, gnome is GPL'd, but GTK+ (the toolkit, which is the proper parallel to draw to Qt) is LGPL, which is much less restrictive than the GPL.
I see Bruce's point. With GTK+, you can write GUI applicaitons, and not release your source code. The same activity with Qt requires a commercial license.
My mistake.
I am getting so tired of hearing KDE supporters bitching and moaning when ever a distro decideds to use Gnome as the default DE. I may be wrong but does anyone hear Gnome supporters bitching when KDE is chosen as the default? (Lycoris, Xandros, Lindows, Mandrake) Most of these distros are based on Debian so you can always install KDE if you wish to. As pointed out in numerous other posts, anyone who want's KDE installed will know where to get it and know how to install it. If they don't, then they probably don't need it. All I'm saying is that I think Gnome is a good choice in as far as it being simple to use and clean looking. KDE is always cluttered and hard to use. Lest we forget that we are targeting ease of use here. KDE in its default state is targeted at people who want choice and configurability. Being a network admin I can say that giving users that type of choice would only confuse them.
As a programmer, C is great because it is quick and low level. Operating systems are written in C. Network stacks are written in C.
.NET is you just extend classes already there. It's an elegant and tidy way to do things.
For a GUI, C is horrific. GUI just lends itself to Object Oriented programming. I know the hard core *NIX geeks will flame me for this, but why on earth would you NOT want to do a GUI in OOP. The beauty of coding for windows using MFC and
Languages like C with functions just turn code into a nightmare. Ever wonder why most game companies program in directX and NOT openGL? OpenGL is C, directX is not.
The commercial issue with QT is really a non-issue. It might even be possible companies and write inhouse software without paying a license fee (since the code is never redistributed.) If companies want to make money writing with QT they will. What do *companies* want, to pay a fee to QT and own their own code, or give it away with the GPL and Gnome?
When someone starts talking about something being "FREER" as in the gpl, I turn on my Stallman filter. These people claim the BSD license isn't free because the code can be 'hijacked' by closed source projects.
If you give something away, you give it away for good. The BSD license gives it away for EVERYONE to use, and doesn't discriminate.
When decisions are NOT based on technical merit, rather on politics, then you are no longer a geek. You are an activist.
Would you use a distro developed with activism placed over technical merit? This is why Linus carries so much weight. He doesn't get into politics.
Me english not so good. Please let me correct my previous post....
Qt works equally well for applications developed on UNIX and Windows. Is the same true for GTK+? Businesses demand cross platform support for their applications. GTK+ on Windows was not up to par with GTK+ on UNIX a year ago when I tried it. Has it improved?
Gnome is C-based and last I checked, not the friendliest system to write code for. Have things changed? It is up to par yet? I doubt it.
My question is, what would be wrong with just going with Motif, since it is now free and it has been tested for years. It is reliable and easy to program for. Why reinvent the wheel?
It will be dead in the water without KDE.
And in other breaking news, water = wet. Where are my informative modpoints?!?!
Probably because you're French.
Some people have said that Gnome has an advantage over KDE because you need to buy a licence to make commercial software with QT.
First of all, this is wrong. Read the QT FAQ. Developers can write commercial apps to their hearts content using QT with complete freedom (beer & speech) as long as your apps are GPL'd. Now, if a developer wants to write PROPRIETARY, NON-FREE apps -- programs where the developer keeps the source code secret and does not allow the users to review, change, or share the program or source with others -- well, the developer can do that, but then they need to buy a QT commercial licence from Trolltech.
And what is wrong with that? If a developer refuses to share his source freely with others, why should Trolltech have to share their source with him??!
This kind of licenceing encourages the development of free (as in speech) software (including commercial free software--COMMERCIAL NON-FREE). Isn't advancing free software supposed to be the whole point of userlinux?
Funny that people don't complain like this about those distros.
It's the most complex text editor ever written, used mainly by programmers to edit code and a million or so other things besides. Some programmers love it, others hate it, preferring the much more lightweight (but with its own UI issues) vi text editor, or alternatives like nedit. The jargon file's entry on EMACS gives some explanation, see also vi, and holy wars. If the above links are still too opaque, and you need more details on EMACS itself rather than the culture wars, see the Wikipedia entry on Emacs.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
According to these guys, Qt is distributed under the GPL.
Doubt it? Red Hat has always favored GNOME, and the new UserLinux project seems ready to make the same decision. Sun's Java Desktop is GNOME-based. And SuSE, while always partial to KDE, is now owned by Novell, which also owns a big development community at Ximian. It looks like the corporate world is poised to start embracing GNOME, leaving KDE for hobyists like me (and maybe you).
I quite like both desktops, and hope the choice remains for *nix users. Particularly with the Patent Wars looming ahead of us, a diversity of open source and free software projects is a useful thing. Think of what would happen if a patent infringement lawsuit was filed against Gecko developers, preventing its availability. There goes Mozilla, Epiphany, Firebird and others. What are we left with? KHTML. I hope the need to standardize doesn't kill off the great variety we have now.
Sorry to have to say it, but from the UserLinux people's point of view KDE isn't made here, so it's not their first choice. Neither cost nor freedom matter one fig to business. To think that they do is pure self deception.
KDE folks: Get over it, if you can't join them, beat them; and kome up with a really KooLinux.
It's more than possible by taking an appropriate subset of the Gentoo distribution and adding basic accounting functions ready to go. Now write an ebuild file and install with:-
emerge KooLinux
Now that would be a piece of cake. Granted it'll be time consuming to make, but it's far from rocket science, yet very VERY Kool.
While I agree that a decision must be made between KDE or Gnome for many reasons (less variations in deployed systems, consistency across the application base, ability to draw in more commercial support, etc..) I question the rational for simply discarding KDE due to commercial licensing cost.
.. doesn't that justify the relatively small costs?
Big advantages that I hear over and over again for QT is the consistent API, fast development time, ease of cross platform development, etc. Things that in and of themselves are very important when developing any type of software.
While I am not in a position to determine the relative strengths and weaknesses of each toolkit, I believe that this analysis NEEDS to be done before simply zeroing in on cost for commercial software development and discarding what is the #1 or #2 *nix desktop environment. It might cost some money for developers if they release commercial software, but if they are able to develop it faster, be able to port it to multiple platforms, and have cleaner code (due to a consistent, easy to use API)
If the only thing one had to worry about were ordinary end users, then maybe you would have a point. But what about developers? I have created applications in both Gnome and KDE and I must say that KDE is much easier to program in, because of Qt. I don't want to flamebait, so I invite you to try: get any development system you prefer and try to create two versions of any application, using both Qt and Gtk.
This KDE/GNOME choice is one being made every day, by people who want Linux on their desktop. The choice itself, with its ambiguous consequences, is a roadblock to many, perhaps most: some apps are cross-desktop, some aren't, many are n% coexistant, YMMV. Windows achieved market dominance with several incompatible OS versions (bound to their respective desktops) lumped together in a single "Windows market share", despite a fragmented platform. At one time, (and therefore today, as all these platforms are still running around the world) a developer or user had to choose between Win3.1, WinForWorkgroups, Win95, WinNT, WinForPenComputing, ModularWindows, and several other marginal platforms, including DOS. But market analysts gave Microsoft an illusory single market share, even though the actual markets were incompatible. Linux, with GNOME/KDE/etc, can't flimflam the analysts like Microsoft, especially when the separate desktops look different, unlike the confusingly similar Windows versions. The dependency trees of Linux software, which fork at the desktop layer, divide the potential market, and stop many people. Linunx developers must allow software to operate regardless of which desktop the user has installed, even if some "advanced" features that depend on a specific desktop are unavailable. And these desktop packages must be built with a tiered architecture, so they can peacefully coexist in multiple installations, without losing operational features when the graphic rendering is unavailable due to their displacement by the alternate desktop. Desktops of the world, unite your toolchains: you have nothing to lose but your smug good looks!
--
make install -not war
Oh man, quit modding the parent "insightful +1" -- it's "wrong -5" (see my other reply).
Oh, maybe they're trying to punish me...
Or sarcastic...
I have read the original Bruce Perens reasoning on the subject and i must say i mostly agree on the reasons he puts forth.
...
Meanwhile, if any KDE advocates try to recreate the UserLinux project with --Gnome and ++KDE, they could let the market decide
Or maybe that's a bad idea.
...gets keyboard navigation working sometime soon.
:)
If KDE is being 'phased out' in a major distribution, that is.
As a sysadmin, I have to look after legacy windows machines as well as linux boxes.
While overall the linux boxes are much easier to administer in large volumes than their Win2000/XP counterparts, the ones running GNOME lose out big time.
In windows I can navigate the whole machine entirely by keyboard. For example, I can shut down a group of logged-in machines by walking up to each one, hitting CRTL-ESC, UP, ENTER, 'S', ENTER. (there may be another 'S' in there, depending on where "Stand by" sits). This takes about two seconds per machine. I don't even have to look at the screen.
On the GNOME machines, I can try as many hotkey combinations as I can think of, and the bottom-left menu icon just sits there smiling at me. Eventually I give up in disgust and sit down to use the mouse.
This is one area where KDE is streets ahead of GNOME, although even it has a long way to go.
Of course, we'll have to get to work on porting the really cool KDE applications that (AFAIK) have no GNOME equivalent, such as Kstars and Kalzium. Maybe we could even give them sensible names? No, I don't mean Gstars and Galzium
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Qt is GPL.
Ignoring KDE in favor of GNOME would be like only including VI and not Emacs (or Emacs and not VI), and forcing all users to use one. This is a mistake if they don't include both.
I concur. And something in Bruce's response got me.
From Bruce Perens's response:
the Red Hat "Bluecurve" project has created a theme that makes the two GUIs look identical. Applications from KDE and GNOME run reasonably well together today. Users don't care what GUI toolkit their application was built with. But all of the efforts to unify these two desktops do not change the fact that there are two entirely different desktop software development kits. [....] Maintaining expertise in both of two GUI development kits is an expensive proposition.
I see what Bruce is getting at, but if the apps run fine under both KDE and GNOME, and look the same thanks to BlueCurve, and the users don't care whether the apps are built in Qt or GTK, then why not just pick one (GTK, fine), default to GNOME on the standard install, but keep access to the KDE packages there, even unsupported, so the user can run KDE if so inclined?
Of course, the UserLinux team is free to include (or not) whatever it wishes. It just seems a curious decision, and unless I'm misunderstanding him, Bruce has debunked his own justification.
I prefer gnome to KDE. And I see that KDE is more advanced.
;)
by this decision I see some hope for gnome to speed their development. That's why I think it is good.
I also hope that decision about mozilla and gumeric + OOffice will solve their greatest problem: its own widget set. (I prefer galeon to mozilla - mainly because of native widget set == less bloated)
to conclude: I think that Bruce made the best possible decissions, and I really hope it will be a great success.
(btw, sawfish is my WM, not gnome, which for me is too bloated
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
I always thought that Emacs was a desktop environment....
I feel so sig.
UserLinux is intended for the business USER. It's ineded for those who don't understand how to turn the computer on. Although it may be targetted at businesses, I'd recommend UserLinux to my grandmother, because finally she'd have an free (as in freedom) OS that she can USE. That's the intent to make it more USABLE than linux currently is. Linux was created by a nerd for nerds. It's called userlinux because it's intended for the non-nerd AKA as a User.
I think the term works out, it's got the right intentions. It's not intended to be built for businesses, but for users, particularily business users. There is a difference.
Don't believe me? Ask Richard Stallman.
If you want to do commercial development with Gtk, you cannot, it's GPL. Same as the "free" version of Qt. The fact is that Qt offers the developers two options: they either buy a licence to do "commercial" development OR distribute their work under the GPL.
KDE, please die. actually, i don't wish you terminated, but stay in a niche existance. Don't fuck with the universality progress and development of gnu/linux.
Xah
xahlee.org
http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html
If the intended user is buisiness, then concentrate on the UI that WORKS, with the
... Going back to Win 3.1.1 as far as feature set.
best code, and most complete feature set.
(I am a USER, old Amiga freak, linux user since `94. IANAP)
Gnome crashed/burned/died on me within 5 minutes every time I tried it for years, and by the point Gnome didn't as often, KDE just worked so well and was so comlete that switching to Gnome was like
Some of the apps for gnome rock. But the UI does NOT.
Give me KDE or give me XFCE/WM (both is best)
So, who is paying for the tunes Bruce is piping nowadays?
His whole points boil down to this: get rid of all GPL requirements, because it is "bad for business".
The idea of Free Software is to share, but it is also to "give back if you received". Qt, used under the GPL requires to give back code, while Qt used under a Commercial license requires to give back money (should you for some reasons not want to comply with the GPL) to the developers whose work you are utilizing....
Has Bruce forgotten the basics he taught me once (a long time ago)?
Bruce nowadays wants to change the emphasis more torwards an LPGL/BSD-style licensing. RMS' and Linus' comments on this move should be quite interesting reading!
Who is writing the secret agenda for UserLinux? Why is Bruce trying to forcefully kick out Qt/KDE?
It is deeply ironic that...
...the former fiercest critics of Qt (who where right then), demanding Qt should be GPL-ed, are today morphing into 'gratis LPGL/BSD' style license advocates, now that Qt really *is* 100% GPL!
...and that the KDE group has now become the fiercest defenders of Free Software and the GPL a la Stallman!
Ciao, a happy MacOSX user
so you payed 5 grand for a fucking girls computer to use a wheel mouse? I do that with my wife's dell running xp.
Listen; in this post I won't debate the merits/lack-there-of of say, konq vs nautilus or kicker vs gpanel, just as a question.
You can compile moz to sort-of use gtk and look like gtk. Same goes for Java. QT looks like windows on windows and sort-of like aqua on Mac OS X. Won't it make sense to have qt have a gtk/gdk backend? If gtk looks ugly, improve its looks. I'm just longing for a merger between the two camps.
The same is true for GNUstep. I acknowledge that a lot of people prefer the programming paradigms inherent to KDE or GNUstep, but it feels like the time to choose a sort-of standard widget toolkit is now, esp. with say Cairo nearing.
I'm not that much of a technical wizard, and I'm not intending to flame, just asking.
IMO he has also failed to adequately explain the exclusion of KDE. Yes I know what he has said about Debian and AFAICS is not a relevant excuse. I could easily say Gnome rules over KDE on Mandrake or any other distro.
Another point I find disturbing is this secret group of supporters. When will we know who they are and why do they need to hide? One of the greatest strengths of open source is it's transparency, I see none of this with Perens proposal, I see only deception. So I would really like to know his real motivations.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
The parent didn't say KDE was crashy.
Stable has many meanings.
Why is it called "UserLinux" when it is aimed at the business folks?
" I'm not talking down on GNOME here, but KDE is more mature and all the major business wins Linux has had so far were with (and because of) KDE."
Then what about Java Desktop, which includes only GNOME ?
and GTK+ working on Windows affect UserLinux how?
Forcing users to use only Emacs and not VI is The Good Thing (TM). VI should be dead together with Assembly language both are too primitive for modern tasks (but both still can be used for very specific tasks).
The comparison is not correct since both KDE and GNOME are not primitive (well, GNOME is better and more power and more applications, but this remark about GNOME is my personal opinion).
Less is more !
Bruce Perens is repeating all the same things with this "User Linux" idea he tried years ago with his "Linux Standard Base" idea. A standard distribution that should be the generic linux choice, based on Debian, using gnome not KDE, etc. etc.
Bruce Prens, no one liked your vision then, why do you think they will like it now? Or, is it in fact a different vision? If so, you need to try harder to make that clear, because right now it looks like you're just going to push the same ideas harder this time.
-josh
that's what he means by "commercial"!
Sounds to me like UserLinux is completely turning its back on Free-as-in-Speech, in favor of Free Beer. What's wrong with expecting companies to pay a nominal developer fee for use of an excellent API for proprietary software? They should be used to that, and I think they would understand and accept the value of the investment. By all accounts, Qt is a far superior toolkit to Gtk, and you get commercial support to boot. Plus, there's the incentive for the companies to actually contribute back to the community by GPL'ing their apps (since they would then avoid the Qt fee). Gtk may be free beer, but you get what you pay for.
This issue really clearly demonstrates the difference between the "Open Source" and "Free Software" philosophies. I generally respect and admire Mr. Perens, but I can't help feeling that he is selling out here, and selling the rest of us short, in a way.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
KDE vs. Gnome (QT vs. GTK) is really about two business models competingAE:
;-)
KDE: TrollTech pays for library development, but for proprietary software it'll cost you.
Gnome: No (direct) profit from libraries, but they can be used in commercial apps freely.
Both business models make sense, but Perens has chosen his favourite. So have I - and it's KDE. No need to flame Perens for that reason though, if he wants to do something stupid it's not my problem
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
First of all, the argument that GNOME is the better choice for multi-platform shops due to the lack of licensing issues is missing a crucial point: the Windows and Mac OS X ports of GTK suck hard. Just ask the CinePaint developers.
Second, if GNOME is so much faster and so much more stable then why are major VFX studios like Digital Domain and ILM using KDE?
Thirdly, the API for QT is 10x better than GTK's API. GTK can't even do MDI-style interfaces, for crying out loud. All of GTK's problems can be traced back to the fact that it was designed with The GIMP in mind (which in and of itself is no miracle of GUI or API design).
Fourthly, the documentation for QT is superior to GTK's barebones "documentation."
Fifthly, the KDE user interface is much more consistent. Virtually all KDE apps have the same basic interface. The same cannot be said of GNOME and programs that just use GTK.
They say that by removing GNOME, the business is given less of a choice, and somehow that is supposed to be better.
... I keep looking at UserLinux and wondering "Whats in it for us non debian using majority?"
So you remove the KDE/GNOME issue. But now add the LSB/UnitedLinux issue. Whats the point ? I think the KDE/GNOME issue is much smaller than choosing between LSB/UnitedLinux
Additionally LSB is already backed by Redhat, Mandrake, Novell/SuSE and many others, *AND* Debian itself is a participant of the LSB project (its even on LSB's front page
As a non-debian user
Additionally, Bruce has yet to respond to this comment
I'm not going to deny it, I for one think that UserLinux is going to fail, and rightly so.
Sunny Dubey
sorry mates,
I messed the two up. I mean to say UserLinux and NOT UnitedLinux
Sunny Dubey
I am really curious now. I have been using GNOME since before QT went GPL. I was opposed the KDE back in those days, but I have since used KDE a few times, but I have to say that I didn't really like it that much. Am I wrong?
GNOME seems like a logical choice for something like UserLinux. Licensing issues aside, GNOME 2.4 is simple, elegant, fast and very easy to use. But is is also powerful for the end users.
Why is GNOME being beaten up so much here on Slashdot?
The idea that Joe User will be confused by choices of desktop is somewhat bogus. He'll use whatever the default is. The reason for including both is that they can run each others apps. If the default is Gnome and he wants to fire up this konqueror browser someone told him about, he just does it and it works. He doesn't even need to know that KDE is a desktop environment.
Honestly not trying to troll here, but both kde and gnome, as they are installed by most popular distros atleast, suck. I've seen a lot of linux systems that boot into windows faster than they boot linux and start up gnome or kde.
KDE and Gnome are not good examples to use if you are against bloat of any kind. It'd seem wiser, albeit harder, to take a simpler window/desktop manager and build upon it to make something that was halfway useable and consistant in design.
Seems they are setting themselves up to be fragmented even before they get off the ground.
Regardless of the "better" choice, making any choice like this will cause that.
Personally ill go for the KDE fork.... but that's just me, as I think KDE is a the more consistent, businesslike environment.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
A few days ago, when I read Bruce Perens response (or rather defence) on his choice of GUI, there was one part of his response that caught my eye: He said that individual support companies can add KDE and support it if they want. "It's not that we are removing KDE from Debian" he said.
... so you see it isn't so much a "KDE passion", but a realism."
I contacted the UserLinux mailing list on behalf of a group/company that is considering becoming a support company for UserLinux in Iran. We badly need an Iranian distro with full support for the Farsi language, in Iran and as far as I can see there is a good market here for such a product. For months we have been thinking about wether we should roll out our own Debian-based distro, but haven't yet made our decision. (Well we have made Shabdix, which is a Live CD distro based on Knoppix). As everyone knows, maintaining a Linux distro is not a trivial task, and there is not enough financial incentive in it. UserLinux with it's proposed structure would have made an excellent choice for us.
The problem is, during the past 1.5 year, our small group of Linux enthusiasts translated KDE to Farsi. Currently it has (near) full Farsi support, and right now offers something which Windows does not: a Farsi Graphical User Interface. KDE is the only environment which has been translated to Farsi, and as far as I know no one is planning on translating Gnome to Farsi, anytime soon. The situation here, is that if people are going to use Linux in Iran, the only player here is KDE. Gnome (currently) lacks Farsi support.
Bruce's decision on GUI has made life hard for us. I Contacted UserLinux discussion mailing list to ask a couple of questions and to make things clear for myself (namely to ask how I as a support company will be able to add KDE, and still be considered UserLinux). Unfortunetely I didn't get a single reply on the mailing list. What actualy surprised me was that on UserLinux's only mailing list, most people were just trolls, engaging in endless flame wars. I didn't saw a single developer there, nothing cunstructive, just flame wars. Bruce Perens loudly speaks everywhere of UserLinux' more than 200 posts a day. What he doesn't speak about, is that these are mostly just flame wars.
However Aaron Seigo, a respected KDE developer took the time to address some of my questions, and he made me aware of the other side of the coin: what KDE developers are doing. I am posting some parts of his mails, so that the slashdot community can also use his thoughts.
He Wrote:
"I've cc'd the kde-debian list on this, since doing User Linux but with KDE is what this project is about! there's no need to sacrifice KDE, or deal with putting KDE into User Linux on your own. simply join our efforts and we can all work together on this solution. we have dozens already involved and code is being written.
After congradulating on his work I also wrote:
" However I should note that while I will look with greatinterest to your project, it is a shame that such an old issue (GnomeVs. KDE) has seperated the community in this way.
His responded:
"please note that this old issue was not raised by us (people interested in KDE) but by Bruce Perens and some random GNOME fanatics. my position was and is based on market realities and inclusivity that does not suffer from choice proliferation (e.g. the "10 CD players, 20 text editors" problem) nor from economic drags on support (as Bruce tried to submit).
I don't think GNOME should be excluded from User Linux, and i feel the same way about PostgreSQL vs MySQL as I do about GNOME vs KDE in User Linux, despite note liking MySQL as a RDBMs solution very much
I also wrote:
"UserLinux was/is a great idea, but it's strengh lies in the power of it's core organization,and how much it will be successful in getting IHV and ISV support Having two such projects competeing with each other will only damage both of these projects, as we all know that ISVs (and to so
--
What are the requirements they used to pick the toolkit? If they want a toolkit that's easy to use, portable, and well known by lots of people already, they picked the wrong one.
They should have used GNUStep.
FWIW back when my programming class included a shell account for compiling ada and fortran emacs took a couple of days to use quickly and well. Vi caused this painful throbing in my head and visual hallucinations cosisting primarily of brilliant flashes of colors. I thought it was a tumor, but a grad student saw me passed out, and waved his hands and spoke an arcane spidery language before clicking on the keyboard and managing to quit.
It only took a couple of minutes for someone to show me how to run the big brother data base out of emacs too.
Face it, emacs rules. Even more brilliant than guiness in a bottle.
The Qt Free Edition is provided under both the Q Public License ("QPL") and the GPL. This specifies that you may freely use the Qt Free Edition for:
Running software developed by others (e.g. KDE)
Development of open source/non-proprietary software
The Qt Professional / Enterprise Editions are available for development of commercial/proprietary software. If you wish to evaluate Qt/X11 for commercial use, please contact sales@trolltech.com.
I salute you! Kibo # 66
No mistake. This distro targets the bunsiness community. It'll be lucky if potential customers recognize the word "Linux", much less KDE and Gnome.
If you're paying for IT support, choice equals cost.(If you aren't paying for support, you're in trouble.) If you let your employees decide to use either KDE or Gnome, then you must train your support staff in both, and you must ensure that someone versed in both is always on duty.
No financial benefit here, just downside. Pick Gnome or KDE and be happy.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I'd rather see a someone take either project and standardize and codify it into a cleaner and more consistent environment. Neither Gnome nor KDE offer the consistency or utilitarian usefulness available with OSX or Windows and as totally unsexy as it is I think once its done we can get a lot more use out of Linux on the desktop. I think this should be considered our primary goal and instead of funding multiple separate projects I'd like to see Linux backing corporations backing a serious, unsexy one-size-fits-all desktop environment and until we have that we should not be considered a serious contender for the corporate or home desktop.
I'm not trying to start a flame war and I'm not saying that neither environment has its merits (I believe they both do). I am saying that basic standardization is on a level of importance that should supercede the unique benefits of having Linux distro's depend on a multitude of drop-in desktop environments.
Once we have a default standard in place interoperability between all window managers can be achieved, instead of programmers having to chose between one or the other themselves (not to mention the standard behavior of the applications!) they can focus on developing 'Linux' applications and fans of Gnome or KDE will have the benefit of being able to run them all, right in their native environment. That seems like something that would be worth focusing on.
Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah!
Quack, quack.
Perens wrote the installer for Debian. It has to be the worst installer I have ever used. I am not talking about eye candy but functionality. Why doesn't he fix what he started and not inflict us with another distro.
In Perens original white paper he writes:
"There are a number of Debian-derivative distributions that are naturals for this project. Notable are Skolelinux ("School Linux"), a project supported by governments and educational institutions of several European nations, the non-commercial projects Knoppix and Morphix, and the commercial Debian derivatives Progeny, Xandros, Libranet, and perhaps Lindows."
Well most of these are KDE-centric so how likely is it they are going to follow his path of dumping KDE. Not a chance
Have A Nice Day.
You just assigned the value of wet to water. You need to know your operators if you want to be modded up. And it doesn't hurt to be logged in, either.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The cost of a license for commercial development is not a valid argument. If a company develops an application for sale, the cost of a license is a fraction of the overall cost to develop, market, and maintain a product. As far as development kits go, the decision on which dev kit that gets chosen is based on quality, which will drive the cost of development in the long run, and company politics.
They can base thier stupid distro around gnome, it will only make it easier for Mandrake to get people to help them out.
Listen, GNOME 1.x was a dead end. I don't think anyone is going to dispute that. But the 2.x branch has been and is truly promising, with great things to come in 2.6.
Have you actually used GConf? Why don't you fire up GNOME 2.4 and take a look at it right now.
It is NOTHING but a standardized advanced option configuration interface just as is KDE's control center:
- Options are seperated by application
- Application options are further broken down in usually a coherent manner
- Most options provide a sentence or two long DESCRIPTION of their function, and use DESCRIPTIVE names.
- Most options are simple boolean checkboxes.
How in the hell is this better or worse than KDE's control center? Heck, it's even the same visual layout: tree on the left and options for selected node on the right.
At least GConf has a reasonably consistent interface. It would be interesting to count the number of options available in GConf vs. KDE control center. I wouldn't be at all suprised if it turns out that GNOME is actually MORE "configurable" for those that for whatever reason want to be hassled with that.
I remember when the GNU folks were leading the charge against Qt because it wasn't free. Now GNOME is picked over KDE simply because GTK+ is *less* free than Qt, and thus more convienient for businesses?
It seems like the Trolls are damned if they do, and damned if they don't.
...since it is going under without KDE technoloty built-in...
You KDE people are the biggest bunch of whiney bitches ever. So a distro chose Gnome instead of KDE; big friggin deal. Don't use it.
It case you haven't noticed, companies are going to choose Gnome over KDE every time. Who in their right mind wants to pay $1500/developer just to write commercial software when a better platform exists for free? Exactly.
Now, granted this was the situation as of a few years ago so situations may have changed, but I seriously doubt it anymore than Linux ever supporting journaling file systems or more than one processor.
-Marty McFly, the back to the future troll.
Trolltech has licensed Qt under the GPL for Linux, which is the same license as Gnome. They will also sell you another license if you don't like the GPL and want to write apps that link to Qt using some other more restrictive license.
That is correct. Commerical developers actually have more options with qt than with gnome, in that they can release commercial GPLed software under both, but if they want to release a non-GPLed version, then qt offers them this option for a price.
Whatever Bruce's reasons are for such a flame-inviting Jihad against KDE, the notion that qt doesn't allow commercial development and gtk/gnome does is absolutely fallacious. I suspect his reasons are not those described in this thread. I also suspect that this decision (to disregard the desktop choice of roughly half the Linux GUI-using population) will relegate his distribution to little more than Yet Another Fringe Curiosity, his name recognition nothwithstanding.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
It's possibly OK to choose one desktop environment (WM, panel, etc) to support, but they need to include both KDE and Gnome libraries.
KDE apps are better in some areas, and Gnome apps are better in some.
AbiWord and Gnumeric beat the tar out of KOffice. Not to mention Gimp, XChat, and Pan; also the best in their fields.
Similarly, you have things like Scribus which requires Qt/KDE and has no Gnome/GTK equivalent. I also think KMail is the best mail program on Linux (every time I tried Evolution, it failed miserably).
So they need to include libraries and some applications from both environments. As Bill O'Reilly would say, "To not do so would be ridiculous."
.. What I can't understand is that the development effort is *much* bigger [In the United States] for Gnome than for KDE"
In fact, KDE has a larger developer and user base than any other desktop environment (besides windows) in the world.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
Ralph J. Yarro who is Darl McBride's boss is on the the Trolltech board of directors. Read and weep.
and here
Trolltech should come clean on exactly what's it relationship is with Canopy and SCO.
Karma bombing pro-KDE posts will not make this issue go away.
If Trolltech is so independent, why don't they vote Canopy's bums off the Trolltech board?
I could go on to compare QT fans to Windows users... but that would be silly trolling :P
BTW, the #1 reason people prefer Photoshop over The GIMP is most certainly NOT the GIU. That you think that certainly is telling. The reason people prefer Photoshop is a. 99.9% of people don't know WTF The Gimp is, and b. Photoshop has loads of extremely useful features and plugins that The GIMP lacks.
In fact, I would argue that the latest versions of The GIMP have a much saner interface than Photoshop, but that doesn't nearly make up for the features The GIMP lacks.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
It used to be KDE that got no coverage here and was flamed to death in every story about how great Gnome was. Now Slashdot has sensed a power shift. More companies are supporting Gnome development, and fewer distros are using KDE as the default GUI. Since Slashdot interprets accepting any commercial help as whoring out the ideals of free software, it's time for them to start supporting KDE.
0 1 - just my two bits
Even if every outside investor (including Borland :-) were merely a shell corporation controlled by Canopy, they'd still have nowhere near the votes to influency anything at Trolltech.
5 66 .html
Oh, Canopy does sit on the Trolltech board. Sorry. That's influence.
http://www.linuxsa.org.au/mailing-list/2003-05/
" Under Ralph's direction, the Canopy Group has identified and invested
in promising open source and Internet infrastructure technologies.
Canopy's greatest strength lies in providing the companies that produce
these technologies a sheltered environment in which they can grow and
develop. Canopy companies are strongly encouraged to work with each in
synergistic partnerships.
Ralph also servers as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Angel
Partners, a 501(c)3 support organization for the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-Day Saints. He is also a Trustee for the Noorda Family Trust,
the Scenic View Center, and the Worth of a Soul Foundation. He is the
Chairman of the Board of Directors of Altiris, AP Software, Caldera
Systems, Center 7, Coresoft, and Helius. He sits on the Board of
Directors for: the Canopy Group, 2NetFX, Arcanvs, Cogito, DataCrystal,
Expressware, Global Prime, The Guy Store, HomePipeLine, iBase Systems,
Interworks, Lineo, MTI, ManageMyMoney, Nombas, Profit Pro, Recruit
Search, Troll Tech and TugNut."
This sounds eerily similar to Java Desktop except UserLinux is based off Debian instead of SuSE. Of course, UserLinux will be free as in Debian, but technically it seems they have the same goals.
I think the big issue here is that Bruce wants the support of all these boot-cd distributions like Knoppix, Licoris, Mepis, etc, but they rely primarily on KDE! Now, one or the other is fine as long as you agree. If you eat enough of your own dog food it's bound to get better. But getting these fast paced, highly unstable, and heavily KDE favored existing Debian desktops on your side just got a whole lot harder.
Bah, flame all you want. This is definitely the right thing to do. In over 4 years or so using Linux, I have never like KDE. Too windows-like. Gnome is a lot better choice and a better license all around.
This sig can be distributed under the LGPL license
1). bite my ==
2). who wants to be modded up?
3). actually take the time to create a login? jesus, next you'll be telling me to subscribe
I have to post anonymously as I'm the CTO for a Fortune 250 company. I'm going out of my way to post this in support of the linux community as a "whole." I wont get into the whole GNOME versus KDE war because, quite honestly, it's a waste of my time and the time of the linux community as a "whole." My apologies for not giving you any flame bait.
The whole reason that the business world as a whole has "NOT" switched to linux on a larger scale is the utter confusion of what's being offered. The amount of different distributions and packages out there is overwhelming to even the most seasoned corporate CTO that has a clue. Yes, we do exist! In the corporation that I work for there has been growing talk over the past year about moving to a purely linux environment. I am wholeheartedly in support of it, but I have continually shot it down officially to middle managment and to the board for the following reasons.
The linux community, although unified on the free software front and providing a viable and robust alternative to Microsoft, is still fragmented over several issues the first and foremost being the GUI issue. The GNOME versus KDE war being the foremost. If we are going to impliment a linux migration within the next 24 - 48 months, pay for developers to help us with our transition and possibly write proprietary applications for us, then we need to work in an envrionment that doesn't require we pay for a proprietary developer licensing fee. Two, linux is still overly geeked. It is "NOT" being developed for the idiot user. I will not recommend to my board that we spend even more money on user training and support, when many in the linux community still maintain that arrogant and snobbish attitude of "Read the FSCKING manual." Most of our computer users are going to give up after 20 seconds of having to searh for and read thru the man pages in their current form. If we impliment linux, it has to be idiot proof and easy for the average user.I realize that the last reason is going to be a big piece of flamebait for alot of you out there, so be it. I don't care, but that's the attitude of many if not "MOST" of the CTO's/CIO's out there. We realize this, you do not.
The bottom line is money, for any company. If it's going to cost us more money in the long run, long run in the corporate world being anything more than three quarters, to impliment a new operating system along with the software development and training associated with it you can just drop the whole idea. We realize this, you do not. We'd rather keep getting bent over the barrel by Microsoft and keep paying them their money because it keeps things going, so be it. We realize this, you do not.
Huzzah!!! Bruce for putting your foot down and saying "we're going to do it like this" and going forward. I was already considering the debian distro for deployment, but now I think our deployment of linux companywide might happen sooner than later. At the very least, this will give me the ammunition to bend Microsoft over the barrel for once and get a better deal from them until we deploy linux. Bottom line is money folks, in all the ways it's spent. We realize this, you do not.....
There is more than one way to make a distro. Some distros are about choice, others are about easy of deployment, administration, and development. UserLinux is intended for corporate desktops, and in that situation you don't want to have to support two desktop environments, one of which uses a toolkit you have to pay money to use in commercial development.
Bruce,
You say you are trying to "advance Free Software in business", yet choose and promote a license who's entire existence is to provide closed source, proprietary software for a free, open source operating system.
To me, this is hypocritical. You are not advancing Free Software in anyway when you choose to use the LGPL (i.e. GNOME). You are advancing closed source software.
Qt is GPL'd, and as such does not allow closed source applications to be developed for free.
Which toolkit advances Free Software more?
-- "Perceptions create reality. By changing your perceptions you change your reality."
I just started KCalc on my system and it took less than three seconds. I thought you might doubt it so, I restarted from the command line with time. Note that time counts until after KCalc is shut back down.
$ time kcalc
real 0m2.081s
user 0m0.910s
sys 0m0.060s
The system is a:
Compaq Deskpro EN
PII 400
128MB RAM
Red Hat 7.3
KDE 3.1.1
KCalc 1.3.2
Your system or its configuration is severly broken.
it might just mean that GNOME "wins" by virtue of commercial forces rather than technical ones.
So does that make KDE the Betamax to GNOME's VHS?
...then I'm not swimming. Both gnome and kde are great gui environments, but kio fish makes KDE a better choice for my multi-machine navigation. If that drops out of the picture (has the new gnome file system widget come out yet?) then I'm back on the fence preference-wise.
Abiword and Gnumeric are much stronger than their KOffice counterparts. Mozilla/GTK2 and its variants (Epiphany etc) destroy Konq. From an end-user app selection, there is no comparison. KDevelop is the only KDE app I know that destroys its GNOME competition.
Some quick quotes:
.... There are a number of Debian-derivative distributions that are naturals for this project.
I am interested in seeing the GUI argument end, as I've just read all of the postings in it and didn't learn much during those several hours.
That's what happens when you make up your mind before you even start the conversation. It's common in people who think they're smarter then everyone else and believe they know what's best.
But the most ludicrous aspect of the Fedora project is that with Fedora, Red Hat seeks to achieve what Debian did long ago.
Fedora is a fellow Linux distribution, worked on by people like you and me, hackers with ideas. There's no reason to call them ludicrous. It's rude and uncalled for.
The goals of UserLinux are compatible with Debian's Social Contract, which I created.
I'm starting to get numb to you tooting your own horn. Your achievements are impressive, but they're soured by all your boasting. Yeah, yeah.. you're great... blah blah blah
Mandrake sent an inquiry and we don't yet know how they'd fit.
This is interesting, as you're basing merit on whether or not a distro is Debian based. The initial mention of Mandrake could possibly have been from a corporate standpoint, but it's followed allmost immediately by the Debian reference, which assumes their worth simple because of their distro heritage. Clearly, being a Linux advocate/hacker isn't good enough unless you're a Debian advocate/hacker. This attitude is given more weight by the following line.
There have been suggestions regarding Linux platforms other than Red Hat and Debian, which I have classified as partisan.
Considering the previous, I guess this is no suprise.
You've got good goals Bruce. I don't think you'll find an arguement concerning you're overall idea. But you've got to stop being so self-centered and treat your fellow community with a little more respect, else you'll be dancing alone with your ego. Even if you do help to construct "billion dollar contracts", money can't buy you love, happiness, or my respect.
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
but they still hated CVS, one of the arguments used against it is that there's no support.
The thing about free software is that any firm is free to sell support for it, creating a free market in support. For example, here's a firm that sells support for CVS.
KDE is *very* poorly integrated on RedHat 9. I've spent the last month picking it apart to try to make it faster. You should ditch GDM (why is that the default with KDE?); that would at least prevent a few Gnome libraries from taking up memory and maybe make KDE start up faster. Add DISPLAYMANAGER="KDE" to /etc/sysconfig/desktop.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
I think Gnome is a hideous ugly desktop compared to KDE but for architectual reasons I think it is best to stick with GNOME. The best thing about GNOME is that the libs are based on C vs C++. Not all languages can deal very well with a C++ based library, which hurts integration capabilities with KDE. I think someone needs to go back and get corba out of GNOME. Corba was cool buzzword technology but is a bitch to program against and a pain in the arse dealing with compiled interface crap. Base the integration capabilities on something that can be hit easily from any language on any platform like XMLRPC. As much as I like KDE it pains me to say sticking with GNOME is a good idea for the long haul.
Got Code?
VMWare has a GUI? Maybe I'm missing the whole point of what VMWare is.
VMware is a dynamic recompiling[1] x86 emulator for the x86 PC. The program consists of the emulator plus a set of GUI forms used to configure the characteristics of the emulated chipset, and I'm assuming based on previous comments that these GUI forms use GTK+.
If you had actually used KDE, you would see that there is a big happy crystal themed ship life-ring thingy. This gives you access to KDE help, unix man pages, and IIRC the special Gnome wacko documentation.
"The KDE team welcomes you to user-friendly UNIX(R) computing"
Do people *really* demand choice? Did everyone DEMAND a big choice of window managers and desktop systems? No.. they really didn't... that's just how things evolved.
I use OSX all the time, and I'm traditionally that guy who uses linux and whatever window manager currently catches my eye.
It's not just about lack of choice.. it's about stability of the target. A developer can know clearly what his target audience has when developing applications for OSX. That's hard, with linux.
Though you may feel the classic MacOS environments were about lack of choice, and confining the user to an unchanging experience, that's not the case anymore.
I don't NEED to mess around with every aspect of my GUI.. I know it can be fun.. but if it was well designed in the first place, we would have a lot less people worrying about skinning it. Go look at a room full of OS X users.. most of the desktops look the same. Any one user could quickly make use of any other user's desktop.. and believe me, it's not because skinning and manipulating the GUI is any harder than it is with X (though I"m sure someone will come up with examples of things)
More important is the fact that the OS X Gui is designed *well*. IT's open; you can write apps for it easily. IT WORKS.. if you have never really sat down to use it, and spent an hour or two getting to know it, you don't know even know what a good GUI *IS*, because you've probably never used one. Windows is pale by comparison, KDE as well (it's on par with windows in my books, in terms of usability). Some GNOME setups I've seen are better... more well thought out, not just copying windows... but still a far cry from what Apple has achieved.
If the desktop is well designed, yet extensible, there is no reason to hvae 20 totally different versions floating around.
Also, it's not because the end user doesn't want choice.. tis' because the developer needs a stable target.
Ask yourself: If you want to write a state of the art gui app for linux, that interoprates with the OS properly, drag and drop, print menus, cut and paste, etc... how will you do it? what toolkits and libraries will you choose? KDE? Gnome? Neither, just use TK? Do it totally self contained, so it looks like a uniqe app, sort of like xmms?
That choice is clear with Apple, and clear with Microsoft.
that the installation CD will be only one and not 6.
If I buy Solaris I have to pay extra for the compiler
Or use GCC and Lesstif.
If I buy Windows I have to pay extra for the compiler
Or use GCC and the w32api package.
Making a specification that says quit is "CTRL+Q" is. Making a specification that says "this is how you handle a clipboard" is. Making a specification that says "this is how to handle drag-n-drop" is.
But by the time you've given a hundred such rules, you've reproduced either the GNOME human interface guidelines or those of KDE.
kde is only even NEARLY usable unix desktop environment and youre including 100000 years obsolate Gnome? good luck...
Application support, you fuckwad.
KDE has a better set of technologies underlying it, I think. And businesses don't care as much about liscense fees. That's what geeks care about. Free Software as in beer is a geek thing. People don't hoard to Linux because it's free; they do so because it's functional. If it costs more to have greater functionality, so be it. Free with lesser underlying technologies isn't any good.
This seems to me to be one man's idea's of what linux should be. Throwing out support for KDE on
such a grandious project is simply throwing away half of all linux users. UserLiniux seems to me to be a great way for one man to toot-his-own-horn at
the expense of the linux community. We've lived with KDE's (QT's) License for a while... it doesn't seem to stop people from using and developing for KDE. It's obvious with limitations imposed as a base distro; this is going to be a micro distro with alot of software limitations. I'll never use it.
Did I just see an ad for Slashdot personals? I'm sure that'll go well...
Haha.
Game... blouses.
Begun, the flame wars have.
Bingo.
I think the inclusion of one [major free X11 desktop environment] over the other should NOT be made primarily on Religious/political grounds, but on Technical ones.
Issues that some might characterize as "Religious/political" may more precisely be "economic." Perens would have one believe that it's less expensive to build and deploy an in-house GTK+ app than an in-house Qt app. If an app contains trade secrets, then GTK+'s weaker copyleft lets the app stay in-house, whereas Qt Proprietary costs four figures per developer per version, and Qt Free gives your employees the right to leak anything produced using it. In addition, even for apps that don't bear trade secrets, GTK+ is ported natively to a particular immensely popular proprietary operating system, whereas Qt Free needs the heavyweight Cygwin layer.
Developers can write commercial apps to their hearts content using QT with complete freedom (beer & speech) as long as your apps are GPL'd.
True, but deploying those apps to users of a particular immensely popular proprietary operating system currently requires an additional heavyweight API translation layer, which can eat performance when deploying an app in a heterogeneous computing environment or to users outside a company.
It really stands for:
Escape-Meta-Alt-Control-Shift
which should be obvious to anyone has ever used it.
The name also rang true for a long time, back when memory was a bit more expenisve, as:
Eight-Megs-And-Constantly-Swapping
That would be the advanage of having a standard. KDE and Gnome would be able to work with it seamlessly, it would just be that there would be a basic underlying principle at work underneath. I agree with you that we do need choice and it would be silly for me to advoce from anything that would stip that away. Think of the idea of a default 'standarized' DE as a basic starting point for new users or users that can't be bothered with their desktop's specifics (read: business). This way you end up with a standard they can use and compatability between YOUR paricular favorite DE and the defacto should be seamless (open standards, available source code, documentation). Until we have this we are basically just forming desktop factions.
Quack, quack.
The GPL promotes Free software development, because you are only allowed to create Free applications with it.
MOD THE CHILD UP!
UserLinux can't possibly be the first distro to drop one of the two environments, can it? There are Linux distros that fit in 10 Mb (Dragon Linux, for one), or even on a pair of floppies, and others that come on 4 CDs. Surely somewhere in that range is a distro that decided to include only one of the two, KDE or Gnome?
Who is John Cabal?
If you need to invest $2000 to write an app you want to sell for $15, you won't even write the $15 app.
For one thing, the point is to make it up in volume. For another, a typical developer's computer hardware itself probably cost four figures. Finally, if you need to invest sweat to write an app you want to sell for $15 but for which others are going to sell replacements for $0, you won't even write the $15 app.
While I think the default KDE is a bit raw compared to a default GNOME, the customizability of KDE allows distros to make it *very* usable. I'm a beta tester for Xandros Desktop 2, and with their base of KDE, they managed to make something far more usable than any version of GNOME I've found. It likely didn't take a large amount of work.
I didn't see any one else comment about this. Just today we learned that KDE has full accessibility support. Reading about accessibility in GNOME it definitely appears as if the KDE offering is much more comprehensive. (Please correct me if I'm reading this the wrong way.) Shouldn't accessibility support play an important part in the selection of a desktop?
Of course, all these problems can be addressed somewhat if you take enough time to architect the software carefully, it takes too much time for hobbyist-sized (several thousand lines) projects. Improperly architected C programs are not that far from good C programs (as long as good coding practices are used), but C++ programs will be very messy if some parts are put together ad hoc.
For object-oriented programming, I prefer simpler languages such as Smalltalk, Java and C#, if they suit the job.
I guess you don't want commercial apps like Photoshop then for linux?
Ah yes, Adobe will just LOVE the buggy, unstable, undocumented, and ugly GTK+ toolkit. They will really appreciate spending twice the time understanding, fixing and extending GTK than developing their software. All to save a measly $1k per Qt developer.
You might as well suggest to them moving all their programmers to a crumbling, rat-infested condemned building that's missing a roof. After all, it would save on rent, no?
You know it could be argued back and forth about which is 'better'. Gnome has some stong points too (like its 'open file' dialog). I like them both, but I find them about equally frustrating to use as a DE or a tool kit (I'm a Blackbox man).
What I think is important is that the underlying standards get some serious attention, and I don't think it matters so much which DE is used to do this. I would definately say choosing *one* would be a very important first step.
Once the standards have been hashed out why wouldn't KDE be able to use them? Linux based applications should be DE independant and I'm hoping this is the direction business will take us. In another 3 years I'd like to be able to use KDE with its fancy Karamba screen candy or the Slicker kicker replacement and have it work seamlessly with my favorite *Linux* applications. Down to the error dialogs and open file boxes. Someones going to have to step on some toes to make it happen, but I think in the end all camps win.
So basic Windows style functionality might not be the final goal, but there are some basics I think we forgot about in our excitement (and our freedom). Sexy standards aren't, but I'll bet with a solid foundation we can really show our stuff!
Quack, quack.
If you read through the 'User'Linux list archives, you'll see that the way it happened was:
1) Bruce released his whitepaper.
2) People began discussing the possibility of a standard DE, including the benefits/downsides of each and the benefits/downsides of supporting both.
3) *One* person stated that a $1500/year developer license for QT was cost-prohibitive.
4) After a week of discussion, Bruce *declared* that Gnome would be the choice because of this undue burden on proprietary developers and that the discussion was "over".
5) Lots of people pointed out that this only makes sense in comparison to the slave-wages of offshore development. They also pointed at the fact that KDE has a better IDE, better documentation, commercial support, and a larger developer following, even among commercial developers. Trolltech people said that they were willing to work with commercial developers who *seriously* couldn't afford their licensing fees.
6) More than a few complained that Bruce was dictatorial in his decision.
7) Bruce defended his decision by disclosing that, among his prospective clients, 4 out of 5 were leaning towards Gnome.
8) The KDE proponents realized what was going on began to talk of a split.
9) Most people generally realized that *users* had no bearing on 'User'Linux and talked of a name change.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Gnome is a good choice when you have to choose only one.
KDE is with qt an interesting option when you want to create a simply ported multiplatform application with GUI. But if you look at the currently available important (from target population market share point) applications...
You have to conclude that at this present moment most important Windows applications ARE NOT developed with qt and if they want to port to Linux, they have to choose a new GUI toolkit for their new 'Linux porting department' anyway.
They have to choose for an entirely new GUI toolkit anyway!
Would they choose for a crammy, not as widely used qt-toolkit with some commercial ties (to trolltech in one way or another - at least that's the perception). Or should they choose for an entirely free based, completely new GUI toolkit and different looking from Windows where they wanted to move from away?
The answer is clear. And more importantly the result: all the new 'important' applications are written in GTK and not in QT. The KDE people have written perfectly good QT equivalents. Congratulations. But if you have to choose only one...
It's only the GUI toolkit, not more...
It's more efficient to target your programming differences into other fields! If you look at it from an efficienty point of view!
So, ideally: the qt-designers should move forward to integrate the gtk toolkit into their own. Integration should be the ultimate proof that the OpenSource model works into a level which matches beyond the absurdity level of corporate software development.
Probably I'm dreaming. And probably I used too much drugs...
But what would happen if the KDE-core developer mailinglist and the core GLib mailinglist would suddenly merge into a new LinLib mailinglist....
But I'm probably dreaming out loud...
I would in any case send them a bottle of champaign to celebrate the move!
By Jasper Nuyens.
Founder Life - the linux company
Former GM Europe Linux Services VA Linux Inc.
CEO LinuxBe
CEO LinSpot
Amazing prediction. Call my pyschic.
Both window managers are improving. Strike a point up for Gnome and let the game continue.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I develop on QT. My company has a commercial QT license, and we distribute an application on Win32 using QT.
Qt is not supported by Microsoft. Qt is not supported by Windows. Windows doesn't come with Qt.
This doesn't stop us from putting a Qt-based application on the Windows desktop, and UserLinux's choice of GNOME won't stop anyone from putting a Qt-based application on UserLinux.
The UserLinux project is mainly about creating a standard distribution for clients and ISV's with standards. One thing that we can not do is support GNOME and KDE and a slew of apps in each without passing the support on to the projects themselves making a Enterprise Debian project useless. One of the misconceptions is that KDE won't work with UserLinux .... it will, but it will not be on the standard desktop installation. Any person can install KDE via apt-get or, if an ISV wishes, have it installed by default.
The UserLinux project also is not going to be shipping with qmail, or exim, or sendmail, or bluecurve, or yast2, etc.. Unfortunately, a small few people have raised a major stink over the decision to use GNOME even though the majority of the list wanted GNOME. Those few also personally attacked Bruce saying that he picked GNOME because of pride which is a groundless and nonproductive attack.
KDE is a great Desktop Environment, and no one is doign a thing to get it removed from Debian, but it is not shipping with UserLinux. If it's a problem to the clients, KDE will emerge.
If you really want to grok the true Unix experience, you use twm. tvtwm if you're feeling extra randy.
Anything else is training wheels.
Include both
Set up a poll and let users vote which one should be the preferred GUI.
The #1 reason people prefer Photoshop over the Gimp is that they already know how to use Photoshop and don't have a clue how to use the Gimp.
The last time I used Photoshop was when it was an Apple only application. As a result I'm absolutely incapable of using it today while I'm fairly comfortable with the Gimp. So of course I prefer the Gimp. Most people reason the same way.
Absolutely nothing to do with MDIs...
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
"In fact" or "in your head"?
The Gimp has zero competition in KDE land.
Mozilla/GTK2 destroys Konq (although this is arguable, maybe).
KDevelop is the only app for KDE that I know of that kills its GNOME parallel.
Obviously a lot of people, including Perens, are right about less choice being better in some respects. But in this specific case choice is actually not the issue. Why? Because Gnome and KDE are too different, so much that many people do not see them as "alternatives" to each other. There is actually no "choice" here.
Why isn't there a discussion about a "choice" between Mozilla and wget? Because they obviously cannot replace each other, although a lot of what they do are common. Putting softwares into "categories" is the misleading step here, since it implies one program can do roughly the same thing as another one from the same category. But "roughly" is vage, and when programs grow in their complexity, they become more and more unique, unreplacable.
Just by the amount of users defending KDE one can say that too many people don't feel Gnome is an alternative to KDE (although I'm personally not sure if KDE may indeed be an valid alternative for Gnome, if you consider the license fee for Qt to be negligible as I do). You cannot "choose" between two programs if they are not alternative to each other. It would be like choosing between vision and scent.
Why are you presuming that GNOME apps must be written in C?
Itch? Scratch!
Voila: KuserLinux!
Add Farsi support to GNOME or get another business model. From what I can see you are basically saying you want to pull in easy suport money but would prefer other people do the real work.
I'm not really a developer. I've compiled and configured an entire network of free software, but I could not code "hello world" without looking at a "{programing language} for dummys" book to save my life. I've used Gnome 2.4. I used if for a month both at work and at home. At the end, I was *so* happy I could go back to KDE. KDE just works. Now. I couldn't even get printing to be uniform in Gnome. I wish OpenOffice and Mozilla would have the option to use KDE's dialogs, but at least I have a consistant printing system with kprinter. KDE is lightyears ahead of Gnome. Gnome has no consistancy whatsoever. Things don't mesh well at all. It feels like a bunch of parts just thrown together. I have dabbled in programing. I've thrown together little bits and pieces to see how they go together. Never really gotten anywhere simply becouse I don't like programing enough. However, I do know that if I ever wanted to make an app, I would use QT. And it wouldn't matter if I wanted to use the GPL or make it commercial. The fee for a commercial license is pocket change for a commercial project. I would be able to call TrollTech for support. I have easy to read documentation for every single funtion in QT. I have no one to call for gtk support. Also, I have the assurance that if TrollTech ever went under, I would have the QT code since they have agreed to release it under a BSD style licence if that were to happen.
Here's a quick test using google seaches:
QT toolkit Technical Support
GTK toolkit Technical Support
Now, if I were a comercial company, which toolkit would I want to use? One with full technical support, excelent documentation, and a contract that assures I'm never left without the code that costs money?
Or a toolkit with no technical support, inferior documentation, no guarantee that development will continue thats free?
Using Gnome for a distribution geared toward business is a bad idea. Mark my words: This will end badly, even if the distribution is successful.
Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
You obviously have never had opportunity to use a bunch of different stoves, because if you did you would soon notice that the user interface is terribal and requires reading the manual. Fortunatly the manual is printed right next to each knob, because otherwise there would be no way of knowing which knob controled what. On my stove the far left knob controls the left front burner, while on my mom's the far left knob controls the left back burner (or is it the other way around? I've lived here for 2 years and cook all the time yet I often mess this up).
Will Lesstif apps transparently link to Motif libraries?
Perhaps. From the FAQ:
This is especially ironic considering the circumstances of the GNOME Project's foundation. Funny how GNOME is now being chosen since it is more 'accessible' to corporate developers because of its 'less Free' (in the spirit of Free software) nature as opposed to the GPLd KDE/Qt, while the initial argument against KDE/Qt was that it was non-Free and we needed a completely Free alternative. 'Lesser' GPL indeed.
1 to change the light bulb and to post that the light bulb has been changed ... another 6 to condemn those 6 as stupid
14 to share similar experiences of changing light bulbs and how the light bulb could have been changed differently
7 to caution about the dangers of changing light bulbs
1 to move it to the Lighting section
2 to argue then move it to the Electricals section
7 to point out spelling/grammar errors in posts about changing light bulbs
5 to flame the spell checkers
3 to correct spelling/grammar flames
6 to argue over whether it's "lightbulb" or "light bulb"
2 industry professionals to inform the group that the proper term is "lamp"
15 know-it-alls who claim they were in the industry, and that "light bulb" is perfectly correct
19 to post that this forum is not about light bulbs and to please take this discussion to a lightbulb forum
11 to defend the posting to this forum saying that we all use light bulbs and therefore the posts are relevant to this forum
36 to debate which method of changing light bulbs is superior, where to buy the best light bulbs, what brand of light bulbs work best for this technique and what brands are faulty
7 to post URL's where one can see examples of different light bulbs
4 to post that the URL's were posted incorrectly and then post the corrected URL's
3 to post about links they found from the URL's that are relevant to this group which makes light bulbs relevant to this group
13 to link all posts to date, quote them in their entirety including all headers and signatures, and add "Me too"
5 to post to the group that they will no longer post because they cannot handle the light bulb controversy
4 to say "didn't we go through this already a short time ago?"
13 to say "do a Google search on light bulbs before posting questions about light bulbs"
1 forum lurker to respond to the original post 6 months from now and start it all over again.
-------
Heh. I didn't write it, it came from here.
philcrissman.com.
Mod parent up
So let me get this straight. From the very beginning, Qt and KDE has had non-free (beer) commercial licensing requirements; and initially it did was not considered free (libre) by Richard Stallman and GNU, at least until their licenses were modified.
And it was precisely because of this non-free status that Mr. Stallman and other free software advocates heavily encouraged the development and use of GNOME over KDE, despite KDE's initial head start.
And yet now we find that GNOME is the choice for UserLinux because it better supports the development of proprietary software on Linux!
Oh excuse me, GNU/Linux.
I get it!
Actually don't get me wrong, I understand the logic, it's just a funny twist on an old rivalry.
i'm totally sold on teh flux, i'll never use Gnome again, unless i do :/
I have plenty of common sense, I just choose to ignore it. -- Calvin
Maybe part of the reason KDE is better is because they manage to make some money. Taxing proprietary software when they want to take advantage of your labor so that THEY can make money seems pretty reasonable to me. If THEY can make money charging users license fees, why not KDE?
Go to your respective corners and take a time-out! KDE this!...Gnome that!... How about a compromise, Free User Linux for Gnome, and Commercial User Linux for KDE. List the advantages of each and let the developer and/or end user choose, they will anyway. Two different default distributions for two different markets. Now someone get me some aspirin :-)
"We must be the change we wish to see in the world." Mahatma Gandhi
If at first you don't suceed, try RTFM or Man pages.
Maybe if Ximian released a Debian version of XD2, all of this would just go away...
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
As mentioned before, that's what an external developer costs per week. I bet that the great Qt API, docs and tools save many weeks per year.
...was mentioned. This fascinated me. I thought it was below most's radar. Too bad UserLinux doesn't go with that. True GNUstep may not be as caught up as the other two, but it's vastly superior IMO. If they ever wanted to build anything that approximated OS X, GNUstep is the place not to start, not with the bloated Windows Knock Off known as KDE or the "we're all free, but we have no Human Factors direction" Gnome.
One man's pink plane is another man's blue plane.
The only argument Perens makes that makes sense to me is that GTK+ can be used in a proprietary product without paying a licensing fee. Again, not trying to flame, but that more or less confirms that Bruce doesn't give a damn about Free Software. If he did, that wouldn't even be a point of contention for him.
Seriously, why do we keep seeing these heavy-handed tactics to kill KDE long after the licensing issues have been resolved? Other than the possibility of holding a grudge (and though I can't find it now, I swear I saw an RMS essay about continuing to treat KDE as a GPL-violator) I can't understand it.
You see, it's very simple. If you release your code under a GPL-compatible license and link against Qt, you're fine, since Qt is available under the GPL. If you want to release proprietary software, all you have to do is pay the licensing fee.
I know; I know. Someone's going to argue "but what about Joe Shmoe who wants to sell a text editor? What if he doesn't have the two grand?" Well, then, he can do what any other startup does: borrow money, and pay back the loan when the money starts coming in.
In no other business that I'm aware of is there the possibility of getting your tools for free, and then use those free tools to turn a profit. LGPL-using developers, you are aware, are you not, that your choice of license means that people are writing derivative works without giving back to you? You might as well be releasing your code under the BSD license (not a bad idea, IMHO, especially if you're not terribly interested in pursuing legal issues, though the BSD license isn't without strings, either.)
Couple the barely-valid cost-of-licensing complaint with the fact that GNOME is currently in a state of flux, the choice of GNOME is iffy at best. Where have all the features gone, and after usability work is done, when will the features come back? Why is the default GNOME 2.4 CD ripper incapable of allowing me to set a default MP3/Ogg Vorbis bitrate? If it's because it's assumed that the average GNOME user would become confused, is it really safe to assume that the average GNOME user is stupider than the average MacOS user? iTunes, at least, allows for some tweaking of settings; they're just not right out in the forefront, and limited to only a couple of important features.
I could go on for days, but to tell you the truth, had someone proposed this in the GNOME 2.0/2.2 days, I'd just have nodded my head; GNOME was a wee bit more bloated and had an ugly API, but if it became something of a standard, so be it. Now? Why are we burdening ourselves with this dumbed-down version of a UNIX desktop?
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
I think KDE has a too cluttered interface. In that sense Gnome looks cleaner. On the other hand, KDE is actually more usable, just that you get lost through the plethora of options. Oh yes and Nautilus is still tooooo sloooow.
See, you just flawed your argument right there with your "Guiness in a bottle" quip. It's not natural, and neither is EMACS.
"Nobody owns the fucking words man." - James Dean
And do they really let you order $2K software just because you say so? For me it takes several month to get "non-standard" software and if my purchase order has 4 digits it will likely be rejected. I tried to order $5K ARM BREW builder once and could never get any response.
Maybe it makes sense for the company to license Qt, but it doesn't make sense for me, as an individual developer, to fight for it. Easier to just suck it up and write a Java UI with JNI plugins for the existing C++ code. This way I still get an application that runs everywhere, modern OO toolkit and a profusion of RAD tools.
On the other hand, I would use LGPLed GTK+ if it was a nice programming interface. But both GTK+ and Qt suck compared to Cocoa.
Well, it's late in the game, there are a million other comments, and if there were points I was after, this would not be the time or place to write.
However, I feel I have to add my $0.02.
I recently wrote a mid-sized application using PHP-GTK. Reasoning being that it was to be a semi web-based product, it would be best to leverage the PHP code on the client and server sides, and the GTK toolkit can be used to write the UI.
It works well, and is achieving high acclaim in the marketplace in a way that the previous product based on VB simply didn't.
That said, GTK 1.x, which was bound to PHP 4, is a horrible mess.
1) Documentation is very spotty at best. I've at times had to query an object directly with get_class_methods() in order to find out what methods I can call, simply because there was no documentation for it.
2) The widgets are terribly inconsistent. For example, GtkCList (a table of text values) doesn't contain child widgets, even though portions of the widget are selectable! Thus, you cannot use something like tooltips (which creates a popup yellow text widget when you hover over a widget) for anything but the whole table!
3) Things that should be easy, like creating menus, are simply a pain in the rear.
4) The API for GTK is transient - what works in 1.3 largely won't work in 2.0. Thus, when PHP5 is bound to GTK2 (which is the official plan, AFAIK) I know there will be a *huge* porting effort just to get the application to recompile.
5) GTK objects don't have consistent means to access variables. Most of the time you use $object->Set_Data(). But, sometimes you use $object->Set_Row_Data(), or $object->Node_Set_Row_Data(). This is largely because of #2 above....
So, does it work? Yeah. Was it the best available at the time given our resources and needs? Yeah.
But there's a HELL of a lot of room for improvement. (I left a zillion notes in the online gtk.php.net documentation website as my contribution since I am not a c coder)
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
FVWM2
"A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself."
That will surely cure the cluttered menu problems people have been complaining about.
Also, in light of the recent defections of certain distros who had previously claimed to be committed to FOSS principles. Then after using the community for beta testing, user input, and help with support. Once their distros got to a point where they think its close to final, stable code, they've gone "paid for" only.
If I were a free code writer, I would filter my contributions to make sure this kind of thing won't happen in the future. Writing GTK only code, and moving toward Debian, would seem to work towards that end.
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me!"
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
But it's still not nice to call that thing the "standard" distribution for enterprises and then exclude half of its potential users!
Well, guess what. I once bought Windows, think it was 98. Then I found a bug in MSIE. And I reported it. I got yoyoed around between the head office and the office of my home country. Nobody cared. There's no support there, either.
No, there's absolutely no reason to think that such greed motivated their protest.
First of all, they would wouldn't be working on KDE if they didn't believe in KDE. From this perspective, it's only natural if they think of KDE being the best choice.
Secondly, they is reason for genuine concern about the future of KDE. As GNU/Linux becomes mainstream in the enterprise, very soon the vast majority of application development for GNU/Linux will be done by profit-oriented businesses. If all major "GNU/Linux for the enterprise" distros are focused on GNOME, it'll become very difficult for KDE to keep up. There used to be two major "GNU/Linux for the enterprise" distros, one with a focus on GNOME (Redhat) and one with focus on KDE (SuSE). Now with Novell having acquired both Ximian (so they're effectively leading GNOME now) and SuSE, chances are that the SuSE distro will switch to GNOME sooner or later. If also UserLinux decides to use GNOME, that might suffice in creating enough momentum to make GNOME the de-facto standard. When something is Free Software, and good enough for my needs, and it's the de-facto standard at my workplace, why would I want to use something different at home?
There are Gnome zealots and there are KDE zealots, and then there are the people who say, "They are both OK and neither is clearly better."
At risk of losing all my karma, I have to say that I disagree with all of the above. Both Gnome and KDE suck. In a world which has seen Windows, both UIs seem half-finished. For the developer, KDE's API is unsatisfactory (see Al Stevens' articles in Dr Dobbs in Sept/Oct 2001 - AFAIK they're not on the web, unfortunately) for details. And actually Gnome's is too, because Gnome's base is in C, not C++. Development is bogged down by being based on an obsolete language. True, there is now a C++ API glued on top of Gnome, but it's exactly that, with the inefficiency implied.
So we have two unsatisfactory UIs instead of one satisfactory UI. The quicker we pick one of them and run with it and fix it, the better.
Bruce Perens said he was going with GNOME from the off (Perhaps the customer who is funding the development wanted GNOME, I don't know). Then you get a load of KDE people screaming and shouting like stupid little kids, I read KDE's proposal to try and get in and it was very good, and also mature. however the decision was already made, Most of immature flamewar on the list has died down now, but you still get KDE people saying "I want to be able to RMB in XMMS and then it write a CD in K3B".
Don't like the way this one is forming, Form your own, or just add bits of Debian to it (it's debian based)
FULLY support this choice to leave kde out.
It's an excellent move.
We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully "designed" to have come into existence by chance.
Have you ever actually seen a commercial Gtk app ? Because the world abounds with commercial Qt apps, like you can see here:l
http://www.trolltech.com/success/index.htm
I very much appreciate Bruce Peren's activities and believe that we need people like him who want to promote Linux as a serious contender in the market of enterprise systems.
Having said that, I was quite surprised to read Bruce's reply to the KDE-group. Nowhere does he address the real issue, which in this case is not the question of providing for another desktop solution, it is the question of providing for an enterprise Linux as a worthy contender to other "solutions" on an enterprise level.
In that respect GNOME loses big time for the simple reason that no one in the GNOME foundation seems to have a clear vision of where their development is going, in particular with respect to these points:
- Central administration of large scale desktop deployments
- Enterprise level printing administration
- Enterprise level Resource Planning
and many others more which can be read in detail on http://desktop.kdenews.org/strategy.html
KDE provides its user base with a clear and focussed vision of where enterprise Linux is going.
Where are the GNOME visions in this regard? There are none.
If UserLinux (What a bad name, it should be called Enterprise Linux or Debian Enterprise, whatever) wants to reach its intended audience, it has to provide a stringent concept for usability, scalability, support and enterprise features and commitment to care for the development.
All of this is missing from GNOME and this makes the licensing argument rather moot.
Either UserLinux wants to reach enterprises on a comprehensive level, in which case it has to provide for a framework enterprises need, or it wants to deploy some servers and some desktops without the technical merits of a real enterprise solution. The latter case is fine, if you want to show people that Linux is not bad and works fine in an enterprise environment.
However, if we are talking real enterprise level, GNOME cannot come up with the necessary features and the long term vision to compete with the large solution vendors.
As a technical salesman I would have a hard time making decision makers understand why the GNOME-UI is of real merit to their enterprise. The different licensing scheme is of only marginal interest for large scale deployments of a comprehensive framework.
Given the KDE strategy and the nonexistence of such in GNOME, one can only wonder, why UserLinux thinks it will make a difference in the corporate world.
Why in the world is this modded to "+4, interesting"? Has Slashdot gone insane? Qt is released under the GPL, for $DEITY's sake. Just because Trolltech also licenses Qt under more restrictive and expensive terms for those who do not wisth to follow the terms of the GPL does not mean that Qt is not free.
Hi, You should get your facts straight. First of all, there is no Qt license per installed user. The license is per developer using Qt per year. Secondly, if you search google, you'll find a hell of a lot more commercial Qt apps than commercial Gtk apps. This must mean that companies looking for a toolkit for their apps don't care about the money they'll have to pay. They are indeed willing and able to pay for quality software. Third, the Qt license encourages free software development. If companies want to keep their code proprietary, and sell their software, I don't see why they wouldn't be able to pay for that, especially given the quality of the Qt toolkit.
it's the license, it's the license, it's the license. you didn't mention the license: KDE has no plan or vision for the license, except it's proprietary.
When companies want to have their own applications in-house (ie: not distributing the app to external parties), they just use the GPL. Whenever they have an application that they want to sell to third parties, the QT licence costs will probably be less than 1% of the total cost of developing the bloody thing. The licence cost is not an issue for 99.9% of the businesses out there.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
Bruce Linux would be a better name to reflect clearly that this effort has little to do with Users or Community and everything to do with Bruce being able to cash in on his name.
Ask Bruce about the companies that have promised him money to fuel this GNOME vs KDE flamewar.
As a desktop environment, I think KDE is better, but for applications, GTK based apps tend to be more mature, it seems. The included KDE apps (Konqueror, Kmail, and so on) seem unfinished and feature-lacking.
I signifigantly prefer the look of GNOME to KDE, though. KDE's window decorations are about twice as tall as they should be, and Keramik is so god-damned ugly that it could blind a person.
What I want to know is why, in KDE, can I not click one button (like in Gnome) to set ALL of the related styles? Unless I am missing something, in KDE you have to set the style and the colourscheme and some other things seperately, it is not grouped together as a 'theme' as in GNOME.
Am I missing something here? Also, where can I find a nice, clean (not ugly) looking theme without over-large decorations for KDE? (I consider Windows 2000/XP to be a relatively decent looking in Windows Classic mode).
Bruce Perens has displayed excellent leadership here. Which is what many open source projects lack.
.... exploding.....
I just dont understand why various comments try to defend KDE. QT has at its core a model that is not open. If you can accept this then why arn't you using OSX or Windows?
The mailing list had a great discusion amongst some highly knowledgeable people on this topic and then the leader made "the right choice". It makes me thing that UserLinux may really be the desktop linux distribution it has set out to be.
I dont why we feel we can comment at all really. But then I dont know why Im reading the comments either!... or why I'm making this post!!.... oooohhhh head
This simply ingores the realities of making a useful distro.
Many developers need KDE, plain and simple. Unfortunately it has caught hold, but that's because it is a well written functional GUI.
The desktop is less of an issue but the current user base has it's preferences, for many developers it means userlinux will be ignored as a development platform I for one want a one stop distro I can use for development, ignoring key components means that for some it won't be UserLinux. The claims about downloading the components yourself is nonsense, the whole point of a distro is that you don't have to download the key packages separately.
Yes the desktops and GUIs are complex, but that's the current situation. That these are large major components is a reason to include both, not ignore one, that's just crazy.
When I first heard about Perens' plans I thought 'great' something to save us from RH's abandonment, but I had my concerns. Now it looks like I was right to, Perens has managed to stuff this up royally with one decision "by fiat".
A lack of consensus should have told the guy something, but he completely ignored the message and is now claiming it doesn't restrict anyone supporting it themselves, rubbish! You could make ths same case about Fedora.
This is not Propietary Software, this is GNU.
And here we do things really different. If m$ says "We will remove this feature" lusers using m$s abominations has only two options: Keep the old version and keep the feature, or upgrade and loose the feature. But here, if you don't like the GUI that cames with that distro, just download and compile!, i don't see the trouble. As is said in the article: "Applications from KDE and GNOME run reasonably well together today", so you will be able to run the soft and specific config tools and stuff that comes with the distro from your hand-added KDE. Even, if you don't know how to compile KDE or just feel lazy, i am sure that someone will make a binary KDE pack for that distro, or even that an rpm, deb, tgz or whatever package made for other distro that uses the same glibc should work just fine. Besides, even if they don't include KDE; they should include QT Librarys, since there are lots of apps, many of them not KDE specific, that relys on them.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Really, why don't you KDE users admit that GNOME is just cooler? I mean, we've got a foot as our logo, and all you have is a fuckin' letter K? That is soooo weak!
Instead all I see is a lot of KDE users bitching that they rule and gnome is the sucks. Having read all the links in the post I think Bruce Perens is the adult here. He has a very difficult project to do that so far noone else has come even close to accomplising. A standard linux.
Is it needed? Well maybe. I use gentoo so have the choice of 2 dozen desktops/windows managers. I can deal with it. I don't really like either Gnome or KDE. HOWEVER I am not a big business looking at the choice between Microsofts windows, Suns Java Desktop, Mac OS X or Userlinux. Now tell me. How many desktops do the first three have? Good. Now tell me how many desktop should the last one have?
I think Bruce Perens is making the right choice to limit the default install to 1 desktop. I even think the choice for gnome is a good one. The KDE letter is crap as it completly fails to address the issue Mr Perens has with KDE. The license for qt.
However userlinux coming with gnome does not exclude KDE from being used with it. Nothing will stop the KDE team, least of all Bruce himself according to his post, from making their own debian packages to install KDE with Userlinux.
Anyway I think my sig really says it best. KDE vs Gnome arguments are totally pointless and the only thing I will tell all the KDE posters, please try to back up your arguments. I seen to many posts saying "KDE is better" without any evidence. No doubt if this was a story about gnome losing gnome users would do the same and it would be just as meaningless.
Oh and as a side note. I use virtual desktops to seperate my activities. KDE allows different backgrounds making it easy to identify where I am. However gnome is far faster in updating my transparant windows (yes I am graphics whore) but has only 1 wallpaper. Make of that what you will.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The posters today are mostly KDE users most of who can't read or just can't understand why someone does not choose their obviously superior desktop, it is ofcourse so obvious that no ones needs to link to any evidence.
So your comment is incorrect. Different people are allowed to have different ideas you know even if they post on the same forum :)
Oh and you might notice that most of the "KDE is better, bruce is a moron, gnome sucks" posts don't mention the license issue or get it totally wrong.
Of course there are exceptions and it is those that still make it worthwhile to read all the way to the bottom.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
you don't have to wonder when your image goes down the drain. Right thing for Troll Tech would be to separate from Canopy and SCO. As long as Canopy has a seat in Troll Tech's BoD, TT's image will be hurt.
Separating from Canopy will send a message to the industry.
KDE phreaks will wiggle and whine but the bottom line is that Darl McBride's boss, Ralph Yarro, sits on the Trolltech Board of Directors.
KDE users must pressure Trolltech to get with program and resist SCO and Canopy. It means voting them off of the Trolltech board. Only KDE Zealots waking up and smelling the coffee and giving some grief to Trolltech will make the take action.
KDE Zealots denial in this situation is NOT helpful.
And I'll never use RedHat. Ain't choice great?
Perens doesn't have the ability to dictate the direction of open source. But he does have the prerogative to make his own decisions for his own company ideas. If you don't like it - I fail to see why he should care.
The fact is, to gain widespread acceptance, he had to standardize. That means choosing one desktop - as many have said, there are very few casual users who care what a "desktop environment" is. They just want a computer. He chose GNOME. Had he chosen KDE, we would have seen just as much outrage from GNOME users.
You may not agree with the choices, but if his idea works, it will greatly increase the acceptance of desktop linux. And that will perhaps open doors for another user-oriented linux distro that is KDE-centric. In any case, it will benefit the entire community in the long run, so we would all do well to support his efforts.
-j
Disclaimer: I have no favorites. I use both GNOME and KDE daily.
This is one distro that I will not buy if I know at the ...oh boy....your linux x server crashes! This problem
outset that the only window manager available will
be the Gnome. Most distros include several
window managers, including the ICEwm and
Enlightenment as well as KDE. I know that Gnome
has a long history going back into the late 80's in
the old century, but the developers did not solve
some of its irritants. For one thing, there is the idea
of icon placement on the desktop. I have distros
using Gnome that don't seem to be able to see all
the hard drive partitions, or duplicate them again
and again. Madeningly, the duplicates can't be
erased without root use....sigh..n out and go back
in as root...may as well toot....more and more icon
duplicates appear and when you try to get rid of them
was repeatable as well. Some later versions seem
to have ameliorated this somewhat, but there are
other irritants. You have to double click on the icons
just like windows. You cannot get rid of pop-ups
or cookies or javascript or other mal ware in the
nautilus browser. X(s)imian is just like naughtylust
in this regard; it leaves you open to victimization
just like you were a window$$ computer.
Are you sure that ole bill gates isnt funding
gnome to use its foot to stamp out linux independence and computing freedom from
unwanted spam?!
...It's shiny!
(No, really, KDE is shinier. Every new user I've talked to as a tech has preferred KDE because it's more shiny.)
Isn't Gnome's own, independent, development near being trifled since Ximian took on? And, then, where does Ximian lead us for Free Desktops?
;)
See this:
The suggested retail price is $99 (U.S.)
In addition to the Bitstream fonts bundled with GNOME 2.2, Ximian Desktop 2 includes MS-Windows compatible fonts from AGFA*, so your applications, documents and web pages look their best. AGFA fonts available only with Ximian Professional Edition - Buy it now!
Access virtually all print, media, audio and video web content with the bundled Adobe Acrobat Reader, Real Audio Real Player, Macromedia Flash Player 6, and Java 2 Run-time Environment. Available only with Ximian Professional Edition - Buy it now!
In my view there are a lot of "By it now"s, being based on a "free desktop". When did a Windows user pay for Acrobat Reader, Real Audio Real Player, or Macromedia Flash Player 6; apart from the fancy versions?
Where is the incentive in opening the gates for Ximian hell here?! Who is duped? Perens?! Aren't Ximian just like any other money drainer?! To me, it sure looks like that. But, as always, I may be wrong again...
Adobe payed for using Qt and they can probably afford it. How many Mexicans can afford Miguel de Icaza's Ximian? 99$ for a desktop(!) with Acrobat Reader, Real Player, and Flash Player?!
How many Mexicans can afford Miguel de Icaza's Ximian, apart from Miguel himself?
Here are some brave words:
"Ximian is offering a complete, low-cost productivity solution for Linux."
Mike Rogers, VP and General Manager
Desktop and Office Productivity Software
Sun Microsystems
Hrmmmm... Somehow, my thoughts are in the direction that this LGPL talk is a setup for giving Ximian a get-go start harvesting all the multimillion dollar berries. But, I may be as wrong as many a time before.
Yes, sure: ftp://ftp.ximian.com/pub/xd2/redhat-9-i386. But, the one who has the copyright on the code does set the agenda to a large extent, and that may be what all this is about.
I have no idea who is pushing the LGPL agenda besides Perens, but Ximian seems to me being a likely candidate. Maybe, I should RTFA...
Opinions about GTK
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Opinions about GTK
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Opinions about GTK < 2.x and Gimp < 1.3.x are pretty much worthless at this point.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
The *are* partners. Ralph Yarro, leader of Canopy, is on the Trolltech Board of Directors !!!!
Major Partner if you ask me.
The sad moderation in this thread is the Pro-KDE zealots who refuse to deal with the truth.
It's like you can't handle it.
The cost of a license for commercial development is not a valid argument. If a company develops an application for sale, the cost of a license is a fraction of the overall cost to develop, market, and maintain a product.
I disagree:
1) Trolltech has to make a profit. The only way their product can be cheaper than creating it yourself is if they have a large enough userbase (as compared to your projected userbase) to account for their profit and then some.
2) UserLinux is not being created by a single company, nor for a single product. It is being created by a consortium for many products. IMHO, it is likely that the per-company expense is greater to maintain perpetual Qt licenses than to share in the improvement of a pre-existing solution.
That said, quality is also a key issue. If Qt is truly technically superior to GTK+ (and GTK+ is too damaged to "fix"), perhaps it would be in the consortium's best interest to buy Trolltech outright, re-licensing the code as they see fit.
The cost of a license for commercial development is not a valid argument.
Doch! Perhaps not for large software companies, but for small time developers, a free SDK is obviously a huge plus.
n/t
You give beggars money to buy crack?
KDE is better than GNOME. I know. But does it matters?
What matters is that KDE and QT were created and is owned (I'm mean mainly designed and developed) by european developers. GNOME is owned by USA developers.
Remember: Suse was bought by Novell (an american company).
I guess the americans companies are telling Bruce Perens they want to use a framework developed by americans and for americans (cynical slant added). Why? Imagine those companies trying to sell an application/system to the USA government and telling them its based on a foreign framework written by people who opposed the IRAQ invasion (cynical slant added again).
Hmm, just a few things I miss in GNOME, whenever I try it.
Is written in an OO-language. Fewer developers achieve more. Consistency is much easier to achieve in KDE than in GNOME.
kwin is much more powerful than metacity.
kioslaves are used everywhere.
All relevant apps are scriptable using DCOP. You can control KDE from a bash prompt.
Toolkit is faster and available commercially but natively for MacOsX and Win32.
Much better integration of all applications.
Has a scanning framework for all apps (kooka).
Has an extremely powerful and helpful printing system on top of CUPS (and also lpr,...) kdeprint rules. It is easier to add (network, usb, parallel, port) printers in KDE than in Windows.
Has a desktop wide encryption scheme used by all KDE apps.
Has a desktop wide addressbook used consistently by all KDE apps.
Has a GUI to configure all details of the desktop.
Every single feature can be locked, overridden and set centrally for users using the incredible KIOSK system. Don't want users to change the background? Lock the settings. It's easier than changing the bash prompt.
Moritz
But really, who cares? Isn't this just one of way too many distributions getting stuck up the old Slashdot "arguing over licenses" backwater?
If you absolutely, positively have to stick with whatever comes supplied with one distribution (KDE is laughably easy to install from source) move to one of the thousand or so distributions that include it, and shut up.
Really, get a grip and start doing something instead of just warming over the stupid "QT isn't free as in speech" argument for the millionth time.
I like everything about linux except the pathetic infighting.
Richard Stallman is all about freedom for the users. He likes the GPL because it guarantees that the users will always have source code -- he despises proprietary code because the users don't get the source.
Thus the GPL has the restriction that you must release the source to your code if your code uses GPL'ed stuff. This restriction does not make GPL code more free, but is intended to promote free code.
BSD-licensed code is almost completely free of restrictions... but that means there is nothing in the BSD license to compel people to share their code. Some people claim that BSD is the "most free" license since it has the fewest restrictions; others feel that GPL is "most free" since it compels the free release of source code.
So, if you want to help promote the free software ethos, GPL is the best choice. If you are interested in preserving options for the authors of software, you might choose another license, such as LGPL or even BSD.
Even RMS admits that there are times when LGPL is appropriate, which is why he created it. I agree with Bruce Perens that LGPL libraries are better for UserLinux. I would love to see the "cottage industry" of small shareware programs that Bruce Perens has talked about. (And no doubt some of thse shareware programs will in time be released as free, GPL software.)
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Trix are for kids.
Commercialism breeds lies, perhaps? Or just competition.
I still which the two camps could just merge.