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GNOME in the Year of the Monkey
An anonymous reader writes "GNOME Foundation's Tim Ney describes some of
the project's efforts marking the Lunar New
Year of the Monkey with a tip, "Never sit with your back to a lobbyist for proprietary software." GNOME is rapidly becoming popular
in developing countries and you can donate to
help."
The lord giveth and takes.
Developers, Developers, Developers!!!!!
:(
We all know where this is going to lead
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just because some watery tart threw a sword at you
no he doesn't
I'm a big fan of KDE, and a few years ago I found Gnome a little bit cumbersome to use on a daily basis (this is not troll... those days I didn't find KDE too special either).
However... recently, I've tried it once or twice, and man, how it has improved!
I always liked Gnome because of its GTK+ (C coding is great!).
I'm even considering switching to it, thanks to Dropline Gnome, a version especially crafted for Slackware. I'd like some opinions from its users (Dropline Gnome).... anyone around?
Strictly, the Chinese calendar is a lunisolar calendar, not a lunar calendar. I believe that lunisolar calendars have leap years whenever 12 months won't fit easily into one year. Hopefully this means Gnome will enjoy many leaps;)
This is where the serious fun begins.
Well then what the hell is he doing with all that money he told me was going into my 401k?
KFG
GNOME Foundation's Tim Ney describes some of the project's efforts marking the Lunar New Year of the Monkey with a tip.
Huh? Year of The Monkey can only be good for Ximian Desktop.
GNOME's logo desn't look like a monkey's print anyway.
The IT section color scheme sucks.
I have NO idea why anyone would choose vi over EMACS. Perhaps it's time the supporters of VIM and BSD switched to supporting EMACS instead.
Also does anyone use Macs these days? I just got an Amiga and it is shhweeet. Decent pre-emptive multitasking and a real command line, not like a Mac where you have to install the Multifinder just to have more than one app running at once. Command line? Ha.
Anyway, I'm converted to Amigas and EMACS forever, I do hope the community gains control over its senses and switches to supporting just these two.
I must confess - I am an WinXP/2000 user. My Linux experience, currently is limited to Cygwin, which is more than enough for me.
;-)
But it isn't always like that - once per year, I try to install 2-3 distro's, and watch what will come out of it.
Usually everything goes smooth, until I have to choose - KDE or Gnome. And to be honest, while KDE isn't always feel comfortable for me, its A LOT easier to understand than Gnome, especially when you switch from Win.
The only positive point about Gnome over KDE, I occassionaly have in mind, is that it ran without any problem with VMWare, while KDE needed some tweaking (Slackware it was, probably.. Not sure)
But after a while, I usually remove partition(s) with linux(and swap) altogether.. That thing, yet not for me, for various (well known) reasons.
Now, mod me down for using WinXP
Dephine URL
Here we have a new user relating his own personal experience installing Linux and telling us why he prefers KDE, and you have to go and be a smart-ass.
We should listen to these people and learn from them, not mock them, asshat. It is the only way we'll ever get Linux into the mainstream.
Programming in c is error prone is too low level for building guis. An object-oriented language is more adapted for this (ocaml, c++, java..). Fortunately bindings for those languages are provided (lablgtk, gtkshap, gtkmm ..).
Crap. It was another GNOME vs KDE troll. Newbie my ass, newbies do not write messages like that.
How is GNOME becoming popular in developing countries when it's geared towards newer machines? I mean, you need at least 128M of RAM to run GNOME smoothly, and many systems in developing countries have 16, 32 and (just possibly) 64M of RAM. I would've thought they'd use IceWM or perhaps XFce.
This is the only problem I see for GNOME and KDE. Powerful and flexible as they are, they're so bulky and huge that they don't feel much faster than Windows XP. If we want to give people an incentive to switch, we want them to FEEL that their machines are faster under Linux. Instead, you can see on message boards around the Net first-timers stating that Linux is "slow" and "bloated" because of this.
I hope at some point KDE and GNOME developers really make headway into the bloat and performance, because otherwise it's not only unusable for any machine built earlier than 2001, but also doesn't give a good impression. Linux was always known as the speedy, svelte and lighweight OS - this image is being eroded.
Once you know how vi works it's very easy to edit your files using a simple regular expressions. I'm not saying anything is wrong with Emacs, but vi is just perfect: lightweight, fast, and powerful. Also, you won't find Emacs on every unix system you log into, like you will vi. There's no way an experienced Emacs user can beat an experienced vi user in a file editing contest.
"The world only exists in your eyes. You can make it as big or as small as you want." - F Scott Fitzgerald
Ummm.. Gnome is moving well ahead of KDE in terms of functionality and usability. KDE has become a usability nightmare with hundreds of configuration options exposed in menus.
Yep. And the gconf-editor is a usability dream come true.
I think that initially, Gnome did lag behind KDE in many areas. Qt had a lot of advantages over the old GTK. The big advantage that Gnome has is a much more open development model. Gnome is not only friendly to its users, but also its developers. This has encouraged Gnome to grow faster than KDE (and GTK faster than Qt). Right now, I'd place Gnome and KDE as being about equal to eachother. I switched completely to Gnome because I believe that Gnome will continue to surpass KDE.
I'm a newcomer to GNU/L too and honestly Gnome and KDE seem pretty much the same to me. I think multiple desktop environments is part of the reason GNU/L is cooler then windows. I use IceWM for speed.
Gnome is not going anywhere, because part of the GNU project.
Yeah - I use GNOME. Why you ask?
1. More consistentcy between apps due to the Human Interface Guidelines
2. Nicer interface layout. Better spacing, and I like the OS 9 style menu up the top, feels less like a windows clone, taking the best from both worlds. Also less flashly, more standard than KDE.
3. Options. Apart from Gconf, GNOME comes with far less options. KDE is nice, but trying to locate an option in the KDE Control Center is hell. GConf is a far better way to go.
4. Apps. GNOME/GTK2+ has all the apps I want. Gems like Rhythmbox and the GIMP when there is nothing that compares on KDE. Also the old standbys like Abiword, Bluefish and Gnumeric.
5. Lastly, the GNOME community! Sites like planet.gnome.org and gnomedesktop.org help GNOME rock just that much more.
There's no way an experienced Emacs user can beat an experienced vi user in a file editing contest.
An experienced emacs user with mittens on would beat an experience vi user. You'll outgrow vi. You'll cling to it for as long as you can because you've invested so much time in using it, but emacs is the only editor that scales to very advanced usage.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
1. More consistentcy between apps due to the Human Interface Guidelines
:)
This used to be a point in favor of KDE didn't it?
2. Nicer interface layout. Better spacing, and I like the OS 9 style menu up the top, feels less like a windows clone, taking the best from both worlds. Also less flashly, more standard than KDE.
The menubar isn't OS 9 style. KDE can do an OS9 style menubar up the top, GTK can't. OS9 style menubars are per-application, not for the desktop. The two are incomparible because they create a different user intereface style, one that focusses on the application more than the file.
(Disclaimer: I prefer Gnome-apps to KDE apps, but run ROX.)
Look out!
I think Emacs is great. I'm certainly going to install it the moment I get a new hard drive. It's so cool that it can be a browser and a complete development environment. My co-worker doesn't even use a shell, he launches directly into Emacs. He has little calendar functions built in. He has an address book installed. He has an Eliza clone. He doesn't use a shell because it's built into Emacs. He doesn't have a separate MP3 player because, yup, he has it in Emacs. It's so insanely cool that a text editor can be all these things. Yup, emacs certainly has everything. I mean it, soon as I get some more hard drive space I'm installing it.
Note that desktop environment usability should not be judged on its similarity to another. If you've only ever used Windows, and you like the Windows interface, and you judge everything against Windows, KDE may seem more appealing. But that doesn't mean KDE (or GNOME) is better.
For many of us, the Windows interface is not ideal. I might also question the quality of the SuSE GNOME environment, too, since they have long been a KDE based desktop (confession: I've never tried it). Try a GNOME-centric distribution (like Fedora) and try GNOME, you might find it more appealing.
Finally, GNOME's widgets can all be themed, did you only use the default? art.gnome.org hosts tons of widget, window and icon themes with which I could nearly convince you your environment was any number of other OSs.
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
14N4LC3 bu7 73h |un150|4r c4|3nd4r 15 4 5ub-d3f1n1710n 0f 73h |un4r c4|3nd4r.
I've never had to use gconf-editor for anything. All the config options I need are available through the GUI.
The GNOME people have always been bold in trying out new strategies. After the gnome2 drive to simplify the UI and move away from featuritis it has come a long way. There are some exciting developments like dashboard, gstreamer and desktop integration bounty hunt. Watch out for 2.6!
Also does anyone use Macs these days? I just got an Amiga and it is shhweeet. Decent pre-emptive multitasking and a real command line, not like a Mac where you have to install the Multifinder just to have more than one app running at once. Command line? Ha.
Come on, an Amiga? If I see one more damned "Guru Meditation" screen I'm gonna barf. Talk about non-standard. About the only thing the Amiga can do that the Atari ST can't is some decent graphics. But the Atari ST is faster and its monochrome screen is the clearest thing you'll ever see. Man, the Amiga looks like a toy. And that keyboard really sucks. The AtariST was made for business people. That's why it has built in DEC VT52 emulation. That's why it's built on an industry standard GEM interface.
I'm afraid you will find this is an honest reaction from most users. It isn't trolling, it's the truth.
WinXP is it's own punishment. I can swap out my motherboard, change my video card, and use a different hard drive, re-install Linux in 15 minutes, and never have to report to Gates Inc as to why the registry keys don't add up.
But I see your point. KDE is more like MS Windows, and you can even make it look and feel almost exactly the same, though most Windows users never figure out the "how", and most Linux users never justify the "why". Gnome is a little more light-weight though, and if it weren't for the smelly foot logo, I'd probably have stuck with it.
It doesn't surprise me that we've seen a lot of push for Gnome recently. They do have a better deal for a would-be developer. KDE's license is just too scary for those of us who wear protective tin-foil head gear.
For right now I need a more compelling reason to switch to Gnome. "Just 'cause," isn't good enough. I need solid reasons... That, and a quick primer on converting my e-mail archives out of KMail...
Yeah, but in WindowMaker, all of the stuff is where God intended them to be... =)
I use a strange mixed desktop that mostly consists of GTK+ apps, and most do use GNOME libraries. Quite a few of these apps are still from GTK+/GNOME 1.x days, though - XEmacs GNOME port, Gabber, xlogmaster, xmms, just to list a few. Then there's a whole bunch of GTK+ 2.0 and GNOME 2.x apps: Mozilla Firebird, Nautilus, Dictionary, Logjam, GIMP 1.3, Sodipodi, Ethereal, etc. And then there's GNUMail.app and Terminal.app from GNUStep. There's only one Qt app that I use: Scribus. And then there's always the odd app with most queer and unusual widget sets: ALSAMixerGui (fltk), Blender (GHOST), Acrobat Reader (Motif), TlkEdit (Swing)...
I'm not supporting a single GUI. I'm supporting apps that do the stuff I need. There isn't that much difference between the widget chaos in Linux and the widget chaos in Windows and Mac. Damn it, I click on the app and it does shit, what else do you expect??? Consistent look? Overrated, completely overrated. =)
1. More consistentcy between apps due to the Human Interface Guidelines
LOL! So that's the reason why there are still so many discussions about missing consistency in gnome? Besides, you obviously don't know it, but with kde-apps a lot of consistency is provided by qt and kde, so it's not a matter of the developer of a certain application sticking to the HIG or not.
2. Nicer interface layout. Better spacing, and I like the OS 9 style menu up the top, feels less like a windows clone, taking the best from both worlds. Also less flashly, more standard than KDE.
Again you show a deep understanding of what you are talking about. Just because you can place the panel on the top doesn't mean you've got a OS 9 style menu. Besides, you can place the kde-panel on the top and you can even add a global menu to it, so that in fact you have a OS 9 style menubar. This is not possible with gnome.
4. Apps. GNOME/GTK2+ has all the apps I want. Gems like Rhythmbox and the GIMP when there is nothing that compares on KDE. Also the old standbys like Abiword, Bluefish and Gnumeric.
Yup, nice apps, but you can find a replacement for every one of them for kde besides gimp. But guess what, gimp runs on kde.
Oh and besides, what was the gtk-replacement for kile again?
5. Lastly, the GNOME community! Sites like planet.gnome.org and gnomedesktop.org help GNOME rock just that much more.
Yup, great community. But what's your point? That there isn't a community of people using kde?
"Never sit with your back to a lobbyist for proprietary software."
I don't get it.
Is it some kind of ximian-mono/redmond-# joke?
I was a KDE user for the first half of 2003 and then switched to Gnome to see what was up, and stayed with it until now. The main reason for me to switch was almost all of the apps I was using were using GTK+. Gnome 2.4 did everything KDE did, and it is faster and lighter. Nautilus was a bit weak before, but recent versions are pretty good. Gnome has a lot of nice things once you spend a little time learning it. It looks better than KDE. Try Gnome with Industrial window borders and Industrial controls (and any icon set). Its fast and nice looking. I could never get KDE to look good, and I've tried a lot of themes.
The ability to drag and drop just about anything is good. Try dragging and dropping a file from Nautilus into a Gnome file dialog. It switches to that file and its directory. That eliminates any complaints I have about the file dialog. Also, little things, like the theme configuration menu, you can drag and drop a theme onto it. You can drag and drop a file onto a program shortcut to execute the program with that file.
Gnome panels are pretty nice. All the little mini-apps you can add to them are cool (weather, mail checker, etc). The drawers are pretty nice, too.
And then there's the apps:
Gaim, Evolution, Rhythmbox, Totem, Gimp, etc.
KDE is great, but Gnome is great, too, and fits much better for me and has made my Linux experience much nicer.
BTW, I know I'm responding to a troll (the part about supporting a single GUI gave it away), but I'm sure someone is truthfully saying exactly what this guy is saying.
If you haven't, try the latest Gnome. And I'll try the next KDE release when it comes out of beta. I'm not committed to either, I'll use the one that works the best for me. Right now that one is Gnome.
In a recent topic we had an "increasing trend in bad documentation" as if people completely forgot the acres of bad documentation of years past.
Sure, i'm sure there is somebody out there in a developing nation who is adopting gnome, so for him, it is indeed rapidly becoming popular. but without real evidence, this is just so much foofaa. (not to mention bad journalism, but remember where we are!)
...I've always found slashdot to be rather GNOME-hostile, with many vocal critics always bashing it rather nastily (especially in comparison to the more "integrated" KDE). I use GNOME, and I don't get the hang-ups over "integration" and "consistency". I care more about applications (My favourites are Evolution, Gaim, Galeon, XChat...all of them GTK apps), so even though I don't require GNOME to use them, it seems all of my favourite stuff uses GTK, so using the GTK-based GNOME is only natural.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Seriously, I can't find any. So gnome is developing and there will be some conferences and things. So? How can this be newsworthy?
Oh, and thanks for pointing out that I can donate and somehow mixing it with developing countries, so that you get the impression you are not only helping gnome (wich of course is a good thing to do), but also developing countries. Maybe you could also ad a picture of a starving child next time around.
For many of us, the Windows interface is not ideal.r t_by=popularity&thumbnails_per_page=24
and
art.gnome.org hosts tons of widget
And there you find that the most download theme is eXperience.
http://art.gnome.org/themes/metacity/index.php?so
gnome developpers need some monkey to shout to them "users! users! users!".
Users are used to one interface and NEED to find it when they use their computer, before they switch the interface, if ever. Most USERS i know Dont want to switch interfaces, whether they are on windows or on one of the 2 desktop environment.
For the same reason, they NEED the OK button to be on the place they are used to it, but no, some usability expert said since people read from left to right, we must change that, and then USERS switch to kde, because they find it more userfriendly because it respects their habits.
Users are all habits, unless your target is users who doesnt know computers yet. DOnt respect that, and you're pissing against the wind.
Here are the instructions for the most common distros.
/opt/gnome
Generic
rm -rf
Debian.
apt-get remove gnome
Mandrake
Menu > Configuration > Packaging > Remove software then search for gnome and tick all instances off
Red hat
Just uninstall red hat altogether, it is closely interwined with Gnome that is better getting a gnome hostile distribution.
Sun Java Desktop.
Get SuSE 8.2, its the same thing but without gnome installed
Gnome free distributions. These distributions dont contain gnome.
Arklinux
Xandros
Lindows
Lycoris
TurboLinux
Knoppix the K in it stands for KDE!
> I hope at some point KDE and GNOME developers really make
> headway into the bloat and performance
This point would be right now. As of version 3.2, KDE apps are routinely faster and lighter than equivalent third-party apps (mostly because of their strong policy of code reuse, I think, up to 80% of any given app's logic is exported to libs that are shared with all the other KDE apps, and only need to be loaded once). I've successfully run it on a Pentium-class computer. It works completely fine.
And GNOME seems on their way to significant performance increase as well, with the replacement of their slow and heavy CORBA infrastructure with the much lighter D-BUS system.
The hell with that. Everyone wise up and use Enlightenment =)
Although I have to confess to running E as the wm, with the KDE kicker bar down the side. What can I say, it's nice having all the frequently used apps that accessable. I also run the zoopee patch to E16.6 - makes for much nicer iconbox management.
In as far as kde/qt vs. gnome/gtk debate, i just like the look of kde better. It feels nice to work with, i find it more responsive, blah blah. I also think GTK is ugly as all hell =).
ps. clap clap to using whatever works for you. That's why we have all these different desktops; there's something for everyone. even the unEnlightened. *grin*
Heh, the theme you linked to prove your point was only uploaded today. Downloads per day at art.gnome.org is calculated over a very recent period. (Like maybe even 24 hours.) So popularity is nowhere close to indicating the most number of downloads.
GNOME users are not some homogeneous group. (Are the other desktop's users?) We come from Mac9, MacX, Win95, WinXP, KDE, Solaris, the command line, and others. So to define your "one interface" is perhaps not as simple as you seem to think it is.
Half of the real question about the quality of a desktop environment is how well it works for someone who has never used a computer before. (The other half being for someone who has.)
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
I reckon that could have been informative if you'd written that in English ;)
Translation:
I disagree. It comprises aspects of both the Lunar- and the Solar-Calendars.
This is where the serious fun begins.
KDE has HIG as well
KDE also has (if you wan to) OS 9 style menu. UI is a matter of the taste, but it's alot easier for KDE to tweak their UI than it is for GNOME to create a background-technology (Kparts, KIO, DCOP etc.) that rivals that of KDE.
This I don't understand. I mean, one of the most common complaints about KDE is "it has too many options!". Well, how is GNOME better? It has less options, fine. But you could achieve that in KDE as well: just don't change the options! Just because KDE gives you the tools to change everything in the UI does not mean that you should spend all your time tweaking those options. GNOME gives you less control (apart from GConf), and people somehow assume that's "better and easier to use", when you could achieve the same just fine in KDE: limit yourself to just few options. There, less options to tweak, just as easy.
And is GConf REALLY that much easier than KDE's Control Center? I seriously doubt it.
That said, I don't really have any problems navigating the KDE Control Center (it does have search-functionality). For starters: I have gotten used to it. Secondly, I don't spend all my time tweaking options, so how easy (or difficult) it is to change some options is more or less irrevelevant to me.
Well, Qt/KDE has all the apps I need and want
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
This used to be a point in favor of KDE didn't it? :)
;)
Perhaps, but KDE really hasn't radically changed UI or HIG wise since 2.0 came out. What was state of the art back then is not acceptable today, so just by working as it always has done before it has actually become relatively worse. I'm not knocking KDE, they're really on the right track with 3.2, which fixes a lot of the problems I have with it (like the current on-crack context menus). The same can't be said for the "new and improved" Debian installer
The menubar isn't OS 9 style. KDE can do an OS9 style menubar up the top, GTK can't.
It used to be possible with a set of patches. I'd guess that they can't be applied anymore, since nobody seems to be interested in them anymore. In my opinion having a global menu becomes a bad idea as the desktop size keeps growing and the monitor resolution improving and you have more and more windows open.
Guys, Guys, it was Sarcasm... sheesh. Use the editor that works the way you think, and learn to recognize humor... *sigh*
Thinking outside my Head
Right now, I'd place Gnome and KDE as being about equal to eachother. I switched completely to Gnome because I believe that Gnome will continue to surpass KDE.
Have you tried KDE 3.2 beta or rc? I'm currently running on KDE 3.2 rc, and I'm not all that sure whether Gnome will continue (or even start) surpassing KDE. The 3.2 preversions still have some bugs, but boy, is it snappy and sweet! This was the first time a Linux desktop passed winxp in point-and-drool usability.
Gnome is doing alright, I guess, but it still doesn't approach KDE. I'm waiting for Gnome 2.6, hoping it will be snappier (and less buggy) than 2.4. There are no reasons why Gnome wouldn't "win" KDE in the "end", with all the corporate support (at least in spirit, if not developer hours) and superior licensing (LGPL vs. GPL-or-pay-up), but meanwhile, KDE continues to Work Better (tm) and I will continue using it on my home desktop. I give every new version of Gnome a chance, trying to keep using it for a few weeks or so, but I always go back to KDE.
For starters, Konqueror just kills Nautilus. Does Nautilus have a shortage of developers or what is wrong with them? If Konqueror could just be ported to use GTK...
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Uhm... GNOME... lightweight? Is this the gconfd-2 that's taking up 20 megs (yes, RSS) in the background? 20 megs for a configuration back-end?
Or the Metacity that's muhcing up 5 megs? ie more than IceWM, WMaker, FVWM or any other window manager with 5x the featureset?
GNOME is a shocking demonstration of poor programming. It's all features, features, features, (and making half of them only accessible via a Windows-like registry), and no consideration for performance or memory constraints.
It'll kill Linux on the desktop at this rate. Microsoft may well put a lot of work into making Longhorn fast, and we'll be left with these massive, clunky and slow desktops.
Heavens.
If they mod you down it will only make you stronger. Be one with the Evil :-)
For humor to be recognized on
I'd guess that they can't be applied anymore, since nobody seems to be interested in them anymore.
Being based on Gnome 1.4, that would seem a valid conclusion.
In my opinion having a global menu becomes a bad idea as the desktop size keeps growing and the monitor resolution improving and you have more and more windows open.
I'll agree there. It also gives application-based UI design, I prefer file-based (object-based?). Personally I prefer to have the menu under my pointer. This, though, has some discoverability problems...
Look out!
hehe u've a small peenis!
"LOL! So that's the reason why there are still so many discussions about missing consistency in gnome? Besides, you obviously don't know it, but with kde-apps a lot of consistency is provided by qt and kde, so it's not a matter of the developer of a certain application sticking to the HIG or not."
If you knew more about what HIGs are about, you would know that a toolkit and back-end libraries don't count for shit, its a design issue.
That being said, the GNOME HIGs are bad and their apps break them in even worse ways. KDE isn't better, but it isn't worse, either. Also, since KDE has more power in many of its tools, if is easier to move it to a good interface.
You're new here. Well, you're not, but you're not old enough...
Back in 1999, Slashdot was pro-GNOME/anti-KDE.
Once KDE started to pull ahead feature-wise, the people here started loving it. Oh, and Qt going GPL didn't hurt either.
j00 4r3 c0rr3c7, 1 4m wr0ng. 1 5uck g4j 455 0n 73h 5p0k3 w17h cmdrt4c0'5 gr3453d up j0d4 d0|| 5tuck up my 455.
Yikes, ya should've read the emacs/vi civil war we had on nmlug.org last week. It was one for the ages (whatever that phrase means)!
the strange thing is (for me), while KDE LOOKS more like Windows out-of-box, GNOME's internals are more like windows. KDE is more like Mac or Amiga inside, but GNOME... heck, it's even recreated the registry, complete with preferences you can change ONLY in regedit^Hgconf, flakey file format (okay, gconf is XML, a step up from binary, but a step backwards from KDE and Unix separate files in separate .directories imho)...
imo gnome is teh bestest distribution too. i never had to use a dos console like with window maker.
You should definetly go for it. I have so much fun with it and the best thing is you get all the latest software in neat i586-packages installed on your box without the hassle of searching for a slack-tgz.
This I don't understand. I mean, one of the most common complaints about KDE is "it has too many options!". Well, how is GNOME better? It has less options, fine. But you could achieve that in KDE as well: just don't change the options!
From a newbie perspective (which is what I am - honest) this actually is a problem for me. The "too many options" thing is difficult not because fewer options is necessarily better, but because it's extremely difficult to find the specific options I'm looking for with all the extra clutter! I actually switched from Knoppix to PCLinuxOS (Gnoppix is still beta and it shows) because I just like the lack of clutter that GNOME provides and I wanted that choice. I'm not saying that gearing a desktop towards a newbie is better. Actually, as potentially an eventual power user I want to have the... well, the power. But, there's nothing I despise more than clutter when I'm just trying to get things done. Each person will have their own preferences, and I'm not arguing that your preference for KDE is wrong - for me it was just things like Konq's vertical sidebar with zillions of unnecessary buttons and the control panel without an easily navigable organization that lead me to just like the simplicity and the look of GNOME better.
Yes, I like licking male feet too. We should meet.
I'm a KDE guy, but my favorite apps are Galeon, gFTP, Evolution. Can't stand Konquerer & KMail.
Let me guess... your grandfather must have worked for Henry Ford painting model Ts.
KDE LOOKS more like windows out-of-box, granted (easily changed...) BUT -
GNOME IS more like Windows inside, right down to stupid registry-like thingy being REQUIRED to be used for certain customisations, general absence of choice AND shitty COM-like object model (compared to KDE/Qt's almost STEP/ObjC model)
Speaking of which, what happened to GNUStep? THAT could have been a decent desktop...
That's great. While testing for memory problems, I removed all my cards. When I added them back, my video card ended up in a different slot. windows 2k didn't care. BeOS didn't care. XFree86 locked up and made my entire linux system unusable.
Those pesky video cards! You have to keep your eyes on them all the time, or else they'll be plugging themselves in all over the place.
it has come to my attention that 500 headers are using SCO IP, please inform the GNOME leaders that they owe us 5 million dollars .... ...Darth Mcbride
We are also in talks with the INS to have Migual arrested on violation of the DMCA. Thank you
Be careful with that joke, it's an antique!
These jokes about the size of emacs might have been funny or relevant 15 years ago when 32MB hard drives where the norm, but really, emacs is drawfed by just about every other application I use these days.
...wearing a skin-tight topless leather jumpsuit, with cutaway buttocks and transparent crotch panel.
yeah because meta-control-s is so easy to type with mittens on. :wq
"Wasn't GNOME itself founded for political reasons?"
Just because it was doesn't mean it still is. If GNOME *only* exists because of political reasons then it must have died a long time ago because QT is now GPL'ed. Yet it still exists. That means GNOME's existance is definitely not entirely political.
And GNOME's goals are differen than KDE's. Comparing the one to the other and say A must die because B is "better" is like saying oranges must die because apples are better.
"Isn't it still considered technically inferior to the project it was created to compete/fight against?"
No. It's technically different, not inferior.
"And doesn't it owe much of its success to Miguel's and Nat's marketing and takeovers?"
GNOME was popular long before Ximian/HelixCode was founded.
"And aren't those GNOME leaders also on the board of a commercial company these days?"
So? Everybody these days keeps complaining that Linux needs more commercial software.
Were you able to fix that yourself? Or did you have to call someone to get permission first?
> Gnome is moving well ahead of KDE in terms
> of functionality and usability
This is absolute nonsense. Gnome is far behind when it comes to usability. One of the most used things in a desktop environment is certainly the file dialog. It has been promised to be fixed for Gnome in every single release since Gnome 1.4. And they have always delayed it. I consider your claim and praising of Gnome to be superior in terms of usability ridiculous at best.
And justifying the lack of features in Gnome by usability is laughable at best.
Nothing to be ashamed of. At least it's not *BSD.
Which is dying. And all its users are assholes and leet-wannabes.
Oh, the usability hammer. People do not choose desktops on the basis of usability. Functionality? Definitely not.
Hmm, what is the origin of this particular piece of flamebait? Seems quite old. Apple System Software and Multifinder died quite some time ago. MacOS cooperative multitasking and no-CLI died with OS 9.
Besides, we all know we can't run EMACS on Amiga... yet.
Sigh...
1.- Who cares if in the past it was a point in favor of KDE? Gnome's present HIG now kick KDE's ass. Just give them a quick read to notice which one favors usability the best.
2.- He clearly referred to the "Applications" menu being placed on the top on a default install, not working the same as in mac os 9. It's more consistent with the fact that apps' menus are in the top of the window, so it makes sense to do the same with the main desktop menu. You can manually override it if you don't like it, though.
If you're so sure of that, why did you post as AC? Scared of being exposed and modded down as the troll you really are?
Sunday you're Thinking Different, Monday you're a huge tool, paying too much and waiting to think like everyone else.
No, I can't be arsed to log in and respond to every bit of crap. Besides, it doesn't stop me from getting modded down.
I doubt it was a joke. Other than the MP3 player, which I don't know about, I know the other features are actually features of Emacs. It has (NNTP) newsreading and email built in, a web browser, and yes, an Eliza implementation - M-x doctor if you ever want to play with it.
Not if you run Linux on that Amiga. Wherever I run Linux I have Emacs.
Less is more !
Just did. We had to edit many (few thousands) files on several programming languages with several formats of configuration files and with syncronizing of some data elements in those files with few databases.
The vi guy quickly gave up to do it only in vi and finally decided to create Java program that would do all the work of such big refactorying.
I've finished defining and debugging the last macros in elisp before he finished his first Java class. Then we went home to discover morning that my set of macroses finished all the job 2 hours before.
Conclusion: you can type fast in vi, but don't expect typing smart *AND* fast. Smartness is the major reason people love Emacs.
Less is more !
this is where the true advantage of gnome over kde is. it's ui guidelines make sense and are used and direct manipulation and consistency are guaranteed everywhere.
;)
besides osx the only really user friendly interface is gnome - and its developing fast.
Oh and besides, what was the gtk-replacement for kile again?
I must admit to going hunting for one after I got very annoyed by the auto-line breaking in KatePart constantly completely fucking up my formatting. That and having to rejig all the keybindings away from windows style defaults.
In the end I discovered CVS Emacs compiles with GTK+ these days (and looks very nice when it does so!). Voila, excellent autolinebreaking, on the fly spell checking, superior syntax highlighting, and (unsurprisingly) emacs keybindings!
I do miss some aspects of kile - I think it is a fabulous program, and don't mean to knock it at all really - as I say, primarily my issue was with KatePart, and its bafflingly stupid line breaking behaviour.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
"Half of the real question about the quality of a desktop environment is how well it works for someone who has never used a computer before."
Then all of them would score at best 50%
Defenestrate Windows...
The gimp is NOT a gnome app. It does not integrate with gnome other than by look (not feel), and that only because gnome apps use the gimp's toolkit. Use a gtk theme that looks identical to a qt theme (there are good matches out there), and the gimp blends in just as well in kde as in gnome.
And does abiword integrate any better in gnome? I must admit I don't have clear recollection here, but I assume that it's just a gtk app, and that it tries to not depend on gnome for anything. Am I mistaken?
I disagree with the community thing too. Not that gnome doesn't have a community, but to an outsider it doesn't seem any bigger or more closely knit than the kde community.
The mp3 player is called 'emms'.
1. More consistentcy between apps due to the Human Interface Guidelines
:)
:) Sites like Dot aka news.kde.org, KDE-Look and KDE-Apps are pretty actives and you can see from those what's happening there in community. For developer stuff there's KDEDevelopers site with developer blogs on it.
And at last there's a good wiki (KDE Community Wiki Site) maintained by developers and users of KDE.
And this has been a big problem in KDE?
2. Nicer interface layout. Better spacing, and I like the OS 9 style menu up the top, feels less like a windows clone, taking the best from both worlds. Also less flashly, more standard than KDE.
Well, I like the KDE one is better, and ofcourse you can customize them as you like. Not big problem.. Btw, what do you mean with more standard?
3. Options. Apart from Gconf, GNOME comes with far less options. KDE is nice, but trying to locate an option in the KDE Control Center is hell. GConf is a far better way to go.
Have you tried the search of kcontrol? Anyways yes, it's too complicated imho too. But it's far more userfriendly than gconf.. But if you like gconf is better, maybe you should try kconfedit when it comes out (don't ask me when
4. Apps. GNOME/GTK2+ has all the apps I want. Gems like Rhythmbox and the GIMP when there is nothing that compares on KDE. Also the old standbys like Abiword, Bluefish and Gnumeric.
Oh, since when GIMP has been a gnome app? Yes I've heard something work on this is going on, but it isn't yet here.. And there is JuK in KDE which is pretty similiar Rhythmbox, I think.. And how about koffice stuff? Bluefish is HTML editor right? Quanta+ then..
5. Lastly, the GNOME community! Sites like planet.gnome.org and gnomedesktop.org help GNOME rock just that much more.
Yes, I love KDE community a lot too!
KDE, the K is for Krap!
My Linux experience, currently is limited to Cygwin
:-)
Which isn't saying much. It's like saying your experience with Chinese culture is limited to ordering dim sum
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
VI (Thats CAPITOL VI) is far superior to emacs in every way!
Damned treehugging hippies! dont know whats good for you.
--
KHAAAN!
KDE has become a usability nightmare with hundreds of configuration options exposed in menus.
Oh horrors! Someone forgot to weld the car's hood shut!
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Funny, the more GNOME moves towards a Windows-style desktop, the more people say it's less like Windows. Why is this?
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
command. That's the ultimate command for regexp-based search-n-replace.
Bogus
Well, Nat certainly has cooled off his work on the project, though I don't think "abandoned" is completely accurate. Check out Nat's dashboard blog, and you'll notice a few updates since this summer (when development was really cruising). Also, it seems as though some outside parties have begun picking up where Nat left off (e.g. here). My guess is that Nat just got overwhelmed by the whole Novell acquisition.
Heh, the theme you linked to prove your point was only uploaded today....So popularity is nowhere close to indicating the most number of downloads.
..." They are nowhere close in terms of computer's behavior.
You're right.
GNOME users are not some homogeneous group. (Are the other desktop's users?) We come from Mac9, MacX, Win95, WinXP, KDE, Solaris, the command line, and others.
Are you talking about users or developpers? I was explicitly referring to users and implicitly excluding developpers by the reference to steve ballmer's "developpers!
So to define your "one interface" is perhaps not as simple as you seem to think it is.
If uou understand that I'm referring to users, and that most of those are USING windows right now, that one interface is not difficult to define. Yes, I was talking of the windows one, of course since it's where the users are and where the first experince to computers of most are done nowadays.
Half of the real question about the quality of a desktop environment is how well it works for someone who has never used a computer before.
Yes, absolutly right from a theorical point of vue and if you want to talk about usability and such theories but unconnected to the reality of users.
But if you want to stay pragmatic, the answer is more interresting and it is "terrible" whatever desktop you're using.
Have you looked at a pc keyboard from a "fresh user" point of vue?
And the vocabulary:
"press escape!"
"what?"
"click on the icones in the windows"
"where?"
"on your screen"
"the computer?"
"right click it to bring the contextual menu"
"help! help! help! I'm being repressed!"
In that perspective, the default position of the ok button just doesnt matter. Whatever desktop behavior will do, they have more difficult things to cope with.
(The other half being for someone who has.)
The other "half" being 90 percent of the people likely to use a linux desktop, and 90 percent of those being USED to windows.
My opinon is this one: both kde and gnome desktop can be customised. They both can be customised to imitate the habits most users have taken. This should be made the default for "new but windows spoiled" users first experience, and information should be made available for them to change those settings into something that might appeal to their experience of the desktop, afterwards.
To enforce ONE behavior to those users is making their day by day discovery of the linux desktop a pita since they can't start by what they are used to.
What usability is that that take for granted that people don't know computers or that windows is not the main known interface?
That's a developper's dream.
Yes, but your wife likes it.
Just to give a plug for OSAIA, and because it is mentioned in the article. We just added a "write your rep" section to our website. Check it out, it has some bullet points to include in a letter to Congress on OS in general and the SCO suit (responding to SCO's letter to Congress).
You can get your Congressperson's contact info on that site also. We recommend faxing your letter as well as sending it via post mail. The mail facilities at the capitol still are not 100% after the anthrax incidents of a few years ago. Fax and mail will guarantee it gets there.
Emacs was ported to the amiga before it appeared on linux, actually. The amiga had a port of the GNU toolchain called ixemul.library, vaguely akin to cygwin.
And the older amigas (1984-86!) shipped with MicroEMACS, a cut-down emacs variant!
Wow, you're right - awesome!
You obviously don't get it so let me clue you in: gconf-editor is not supposed to be "user-friendly", its supposed to be there for geeks and power users WHO NEED IT just like regedit is in windows (expect that in the gconf registry ALL options are DOCUMENTED).
You can't put all the fucking options in the preferences GUI because a) it confuses the shit out of newbies who need to perform simple customizations b) it makes finding the important commonly changed preferences hard to find for geeks and impossible to find for newbies.
Throwing every option for an application into the preferences dialogs is a huge mistake: any moderately complex application's preferences become a nightmare to use.
Try asking your grandmother to change the screen resolution in GNOME and KDE and see which method she likes better.
Yes, the LGPL is dangerous. Why? Because you can make proprietary apps without contributing back to the community. Thus making it possible to outrun the free competition. We don't want this... > Timothy Ney > Executive Director Mkay...
I know a lot of people who install linux, then remove it after a month of frustration. It's cool that they want to try it out, but the only way to really get into it is to cut that safety line. I finally did that two years ago, and have been using Redhat ever since. I'm no Linux expert, but I've been able to figure out most everything I've tried.
What's holding you back from going all the way to linux? For me it was Dreamweaver and Games. Now I use Quanta for web stuff and play less games. I do have a banished windows drive for games, but it's not spun in months.
Dirty bastard Windows users need to be locked up!
Here's a better one: would you like every configurable aspect of your engine to be exposed when you open the hood? Or would you like only the important frequently used aspects exposed like the dipstick, battery, and windshield wiper fluid, while the more problematic, dangerous, less commonly used ones are somewhere safe and not in your way, but still accessible if you really need them.
People want computers to just work, just like their cars, and that's what GNOME is trying to do.
Yeah - I use KDE. Why you ask?
1. More consistency between apps due to not having gimp among the native apps
2. Nicer interface layout. Better spacing, and while I don't like the OS 9 style menu up the top, I have the option. Also nicer, more eye-candy options.
3. Options. GNOME has very few options. GNOME is nice, but I like to configure things my way and Gconf is hell. KDE Control Center is a far better way to go.
4. Apps. KDE/Qt has all the apps I want. Gems like KOffice (PDF edition) and K3b when there is nothing that compares on GNOME. Also the old standbys like KDevelop and Konqueror.
5. Lastly, the KDE community! Too many sites to cite here, and already done in this thread.
Come on, mods. Score:5, Informative? What the hell do you drink on weekends?
I agree it is ashame that everyone's favorite mascot, Fleshy Necrotising fasciitis of the foot, lovingly known as Fleshy was left off the poll. Never was there a more recognized and loved lethal infection than Fleshy.
Three cheers for Necrotising fasciitis!
"What we do in life echoes in eternity." Maximus Decimus Meridius
How's that "Insightful"?
:)
I generally find myself yearning for options that aren't to be found in either GUI settings (where they should be) or gconf-editor (where they should not be).
And I still prefer GNOME over KDE.
GNU EMACS for the Amiga is obtainable here. Fairly old version though.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
(won't somebody please think of the monkeys?)
I've got 2.6 running on an old p200 with 64 megs of ram, and it's just not enough. The processor can keep up but the memory (and harddisk) can't. I've been told on another thread that some of the packages I'm using are compiled for i686 and running them on a p200 (i.e. an i586) results in an emulation layer being called and slowing things down. So better package selection might help. Somebody suggested Debian, but I've been trying to avoid it since I can't boot off the CD drive and doing a floppy install's a pain the in rear. I've finnally got my network up, maybe I'll try a network install.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/