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

Blackbox

[Anonymous Coward]

It should be Blackbox or Fluxbox.

Flamewar

[drowstar]

Feel free to post any comments on "DE flaming" here.
:-)

Window

[grub]

I'll be the sole vote for WindowMaker. Small, fast, compatible with KDE & Gnome etc..

Re:Why I'm not optimistic for UserLinux

[Anonymous Coward]

$Revision: 1.33 $ $Date: 2003/12/19 23:45:12 $

NEW! Revised and updated!


The State Of KDE

We have seen a lot of important news regarding the KDE project over recent weeks, so it is worth pausing to consider the ramifications.

Let us start with the recent acquisition of SUSE by Novell. SUSE was the biggest Linux distributor (though still dwarfed by Red Hat) to use KDE as its default desktop. SUSE has, for many years, neglected to package the GNOME desktop properly or even do basic Q&A... much to the delight of KDE fanatics. Now, however, Novell has purchased the SUSE Linux distribution and Ximian, a company best known for the producing the most polished and professional desktop available for Linux (GNOME-based). The obvious conclusion to be drawn from these actions is that KDE is about to lose its main commercial support.

Let us take a look at some of the reasons why this is so:

• GNOME has always been the commercial desktop of choice. It has long been focussed on getting the basics right and building from there... as opposed to the KDE Project, which is entirely aimed at pleasing the slashdot peanut gallery with pointless eye-candy. KDE features are thrown into the mix with little or no regard for usability, or even good taste. The end result is disasterous, as can be seen by anyone unforunate enough to be forced into using it.
• KDE is extremely expensive to develop for, unless you intend to produce GPL software. TrollTech, the owners of KDE and Qt, license the X11 version of their Qt toolkit under the GPL. This forces anyone wanting to develop applications built on top of Qt and KDE to be either (L)GPL licensed, or pay for a TrollTech Qt commercial license; costing $3000* for every developer working on the application (per annum.) -- 10 developers: $30,000, and that is just to license the toolkit. No extra development tools and such... just the right to use it. You may find this difficult to believe, but developing for KDE is more expensive than developing for Microsoft Windows!
  
  * The $3000 figure is just for Linux. If you want to develop for the Mac, Linux and Windows the amount reaches a staggering $6000 per developer.
• TrollTech is also vulnerable to takeover by companies hostile to Free software and good corporate lawyers who can blow holes in the laughable FreeQt agreements.
• Qt's/KDE lack of accessiblity. Accessiblity is vital feature for a modern desktop. A desktop cannot be sold to the U.S. government unless it supports the features necessary for disabled users to make full use of it. The lack of said feature effectively cuts it off from the biggest software purchaser of all. GNOME has spent the last 18 months and more doing the ground-work and developing/polishing the accessiblity of the GNOME desktop (thanks to the fine work of Sun engineers). KDE has spent the time making *fake* translucent menus to help make impressive screenshots. Over the next few months you can expect increasing numbers of near-orgasmic announcements of weak accessiblity support from the KDE project, as the full extent of their folly and just how far they are behind GNOME finally becomes obvious to them. The end result will be, as with all KDE features, half-assed and broken -- designed only to function as a marketing feature tick-box filler. Note: The KDE project has begun announcing FULL accessiblity support thanks to using GNOME/GTK code, however (and as usual) the KDE developers are being disingenuous. Accessiblity is more than just toolkit support, it requires work to ensure that all aspects of the desktop are accessible, including auditing applications and (especially) custom widgets, themes and fundementally changing the thought processes of developers. THIS IS THE TIME CONSUMING PART... merely copying GNOME code into KDE/Qt and then posting stories to the morons at slashdot announcing full support is not enough. As predicted, KDE is preannouncing half-finished accessiblity features in a desperate effort to keep up with GNOME

almost time for another storIE already?

[Anonymous Coward]

let's do one about robbIE's gnu 'dating' service? what's that all about anyway? is it 'free' as in, of disease/criminals etc...? we're guessing there's sum monIE involved somewhere, so that's all that really matters, right? end of storIE? tell 'em robbIE? don't save everything for the interview?

Is this move truly based only on technical merit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like in many political realms, there is a large US vs. Europe theme going on.

The Iraq war, and Europe's drive towards further independance militarily for instance are political debates with serious financial underpinnings. The rationalizations are simplified on both sides of the debates for the consumption of the masses.

I don't buy Peren's explanation for why he would want to make that choice. Like other political moves, this is just another one to "circle the wagons." If his project gains momentum, and enough influence, the choice to cut off KDE could have serious financial implications for the organizations supporting each project. His rationalization is just that, a rationalization.

Free software has been co-opted by the big players, and we are at the beginning of a war similar to VHS vs. Beta a long while ago. There are two general camps in this war, an American consortium of RedHat, Novell, Sun and Ximian, and a largely European group of SuSE (for now anyway), Mandrake, TrollTech, etc. My take on it is that IBM is sitting it out to see which wins. My fear is that again, the product that is technically superior (KDE) will lose out to Gnome because of the clout of the companies backing it rather than technical merit.