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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.'"
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.
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.
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.
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?" `":" #");}
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:(
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.
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.
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.
Oh, yes, I do so enjoy the diversity of choices taken by application writers. It's wonderful, isn't it, that some may choose to allow me to exit their application with ctrl-Q, some with alt-Q, some with just q, some with :q, and some with Ctrl-X Ctrl-C?
And who couldn't appreciate the joy of searching for documentation in help menus, man pages, info pages, and in text, html, and xml files under /usr/share/doc/?
It's wonderful, isn't it, having the opportunity to learn a new scripting language and interface when it comes time to extend a new application? And who but the most small-minded panderer to the lowest common denominator could not appreciate the flowering in diversity of configuration methods? (How dull my life would be if I lacked the intellectual stimulation provided to me by the opportunity to puzzle through which of gconf, .Xresources, .cshrc, or .xsession is responsible for the fonts in my terminal windows!)
Ignore those so-called user-interface specialists and their petty concerns about "consistency" and "usability". It's All About Choice, after all!
--Bruce Fields
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.
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...
Gee, trolling about Trolltech. How novel. Okay, before any more people swallow this bait:
Two seconds of googling would show that this is not the case. Look at Trolltech's investors. For crying out loud, Borland owns a bigger stake in Trolltech than Canopy Group, and nearly 2/3 of the stock is owned by employees:
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.
A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
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.
Being a good example of a business model doesn't make an argument for choosing it as a foundation of a distro. It's Trolltech's business model, and a good one I admit (it's a great thing they abandoned their old Evil license), but why should UserLinux give Trolltech a free gift of larger userbase?
Quite the contrary. The fact that there is a commerical company with a successful business model based on Qt and the fact that there are so many commercial apps that use Qt make it a particularly nice selling point for UserLinux. Have you read GTK docs? Have you read Qt docs? There's a world of difference between the two.
Imagine, if you will :) , telling your prospect this about your os:
Qt + KDE is another matter entirely. There is commercial support for Qt, and there are well-defined standards for how to build a UI in KDE. Sure, some people still ignore them, but most Qt developers follow them. That's why almost every Qt app you use on Linux has a predictable and discoverable interface. GTK apps are a world apart (and behind) from KDE-based apps. Gnome has their own initiative to deal with this in the Gnome environment, but GTK predates Gnome by so long and is used by other desktops (Ice?) that gtk developers don't give a shit about UI conventions.
Granted, I prefer KDE over Gnome, but I also think that KDE is a better choice for a business desktop than Gnome. Gnome might one day catch up, but I doubt that. :)
Personally, I think the way to address the toolkit issue in the long-term is for someone to port wxWindows to KDE and build a Gnome port based on the GTK port. In doing so, it might be entirely possible to make a wxWindows app that behaves on KDE and Gnome the way you'd expect native apps to do so. Then you have the greatest benefits of all to offer developers with wxWindows. Not only will your apps run natively in KDE and Gnome, but they'll also run natively on Mac and Windows. All you have to do is compile them for each platform. (Yeah, theoretically, but wxWindows gets closer to that goal than anybody else)
Like what I said? You might like my music
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.
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
--
Obviously, you don't get it.
From a software maker's point of view, choosing Qt, you get:
With GTK, you save a week's salary but:
Sorry to break your believes, but for a commercial software vendor to choose GTK over Qt is just plain stupid.
Choosing KDE for UserLinux would have been smart: You could tell corporations: "See, you can develop your in-house apps with Qt and so you can have a slow painless transition - and you can also go back if it doesn't work out."
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
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.
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.