UserLinux Continues Debate Over GUI

An anonymous reader writes "Following up the earlier Slashdot item on this, LinuxWorld is carrying both sides of the discussion as to whether UserLinux GUI should be GNOME only, as Bruce Perens last week decided "by fiat," or include KDE."

Comments

What's the big deal

[HairyCanary]

If you don't like the distribution, don't use it. Simple as that. Keeping the OS simple and maintainable as a laudable goal, and I would find it difficult to argue with them just because my personal choice GUI wasn't included (though neither Gnome or KDE are *my* personal choice :-)). The beauty of open source is that anyone can do this -- if you really disagree with their choice on which GUI to include, make your own distribution and include just KDE with it.

Re:why ignore the obvious solution? KDE only!

[iamplupp]

please dont start the KDE vs Gnome war... KDE and Gnome should both do everything they can to get better while sharing between them as much as it's possible without removing their individuality. . I would prefer to have not one but two great desktop environments to choose from.

Re:GNOME is a failure

[Ianoo]

Then comes this arrogant troll, named Miguel. He writes to the town's newspaper (Slashdot.org) about the evils of KDE. He claims that KDE is dependent on Qt and that Qt is EVIL. It is EVIL because it is not GPL. It is EVIL because it can take over the desktop just like MICROSOFT. And we know how EVIL MICROSOFT is, right? REALLY EVIL.

Well it seems that although QT is now GPL'd, licensing for the commercial version still has a lot to do with this debate. Read the article.

"A GNOME spreedsheet you want Miguel? Don't worry. The way things are looking, I can hack one out in a few days. We will borrow from X, Y, and Z projects since they have most of the functionality we need. It will be a matter of fitting them all together."

Go ahead and accuse GNOME of borrowing things - but just remember KDE picked the existing off-the-shelf commercial QT toolkit (then licensed under the QPL which is incompatible with the GPL) when they began their project.

Just what is wrong with this approach? KDE decided to write KHTML instead of using Gecko, whilst GNOME is now going to use Gecko as their primary HTML layout engine in the DE. Which is better? I'd say Gecko is much more standards compliant than KHTML, even with the latest patches. The point is that for really huge projects like a HTML layout engine, you need huge resources. A lot of KDE developers work on KHTML when if they'd used Gecko, they could be working on far more interesting things.

Also, surely it's better than free software projects share code. So many people are put off GNU/Linux & BSD by the fact there are 500 different text editors and not one of them works properly (except vi ;)). Ringfencing code is not something anyone should be doing.

As for the interface sucking... GNOME has that completely covered. In the time I watched over GNOME, it changed fundamental parts of its interface no less than, I'd say, 5+ times. _Nothing_ adheres to the recommended style-guide which was there from pretty much day one. And _nothing_ still does adhere to it, except perhaps projects which should almost not be considered seperate from GNOME.

Have you ever actually used GNOME? All the control panels, Nautilus, Epiphany, Evolution, Gnumeric, GIMP (v2+), Gaim and more now obey the HIG. KDE has changed their metaphors just as many times as GNOME, too. Whatever happened to the taskbar stuck to one side of the screen? KControl and Konqueror have had their menus and sections reorganised several times. So what?

Integration of GNOME software is nil.

Wrong again. GNOME applications use FreeDesktop's drag-and-drop specification (which works 95% of the time in the apps that I use), and there is the bonobo component model which works very nicely and is in many respects technically superior to KParts.

In conclusion, GNOME is a failure. GNOME's goal was a desktop for *ix that grandma could use. As someone else recommended.. try Ximian "they have it all worked out." Which is very much the point--to fill Miguel's wallet (reality hurts, boys and girls).

No, that was never GNOME's goal. GNOME's original goal was to create a desktop without the QPL/QT licensing issues that KDE had. Now that KDE no longer has these issues (for the most part), it is chugging along nicely as a good large free software project. Very few free software projects have definite roadmaps or even definite goals. As for Ximian/Novell/RedHat/Sun, their commercial support of GNOME makes it better, not worse. Their code is still available under the GPL and you can quite happily acquire it and use it and hack it without stuffing anyones' wallet.

In conclusion, you're a troll. Have a nice day.

Re:Holy War

[Svennig]

In all honesty, while having a single interface to deal with would be easier.. OSS has allways thrived on the competition between similar projects

This competition also gives OSS its greatest downfall - there just arent any standards. You wanna write for QT? do x. You wanna write for GTK? do y. You wanna write for something else? do z. Someone needs to make an standardised API for all linux guis and stick with it.

Say what you want about M$ Windows, but it provided a standard. The ability to program on one GUI and reach 80% of people is fantastic.

Re:What's the big deal

[ultrabot]

if you really disagree with their choice on which GUI to include, make your own distribution and include just KDE with it.

What's better, you can just apt-get kde on UserLinux.

Gnome will be the default, supported option. It's sensible to pick only one to "officially support", and let the hackers use the other to their heart's content.

Gnome is the better "supported" option because it doesn't require royalties for closed source development. This matters in countries where you can buy 3 developer months for single license of Qt (and for 3 developers, you need 3 licenses).

Re: why gnome over kde?

[Reziac]

[Reads article.. geez, the things I admit to doing around here...]

Yep, I don't see any holy war material either, even tho I like KDE and detest Gnome. What Bruce says boils down to "All right, I'm tired of arguing about this, it's time to pick ONE (because this here project is partly about a focused direction instead of including everything plus a dozen kitchen sinks), and this here SDK is what I prefer for those there reasons. So we'll go with the desktop that matches this here SDK."

Perfectly reasonable as a project decision, even if I personally disagree with the choice it led to.

Re:GNOME is a failure

[james_underscore]

Its an interesting point - GNOME was originally started because Qt, which KDE was based on, wasn't "free software". But now it seems KDE is more "free software" than GNOME is.

Remember part of the point of free software is not just that its free to use, but free to modify and use the code for new programs. The only "drawback" being that if you base your software on free software, you are required to make your modification free software too.

Perens says in the article that his decision is not because of one being technically superior, but because you can make proprietary GNOME software for free, but if you make KDE software it has to be either GPL or you pay a lot of money to the makers of Qt.

The reason for this, I assume, and I haven't got the time to check it out, is because GNOME libraries are mostly LGPL, whereas the core Qt library for KDE is GPL only. The "Lesser" LGPL license lets you make proprietary software by screwing over free software developers and using their libraries without giving anything back to the community that provided the entire platform you are developing on. Even GNU says you should not license you're free software libraries LGPL.

The irony is that, as you point out, GNOME was supposed to be a "free" alternative to KDE, with all the GNU zealots following behind it for that reason. But now it seems the GNOME developers are getting fucked by the "open source" crew that were originally blamed for the travesty of KDE using a non-free development kit.

Re:What's the big deal

[ultrabot]

Companies don't want to support multiple versions of Linux. Thus a single version is going to be what drives Linux in business.

There will be at least RHEL, SUSE, and now UL.

So much for Open Source ideals.

I don't see any conflict with OSS ideals. You are not forced to use UL, it's all Open Source, you can install whatever you want, you can install UL apps on other Linux platforms, etc.