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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."
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?
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
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.
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.
Have to disagree with you there. I use GNOME on a P3-450Mhz at home, and it feels almost as fast as the WinXP I use on a P4-2600Mhz at work; nearly five times the machine!
As you say, RAM does matter (I have 262Mb on the home machine) but memory is cheap. What's the big deal?
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
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!
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...
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?
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.
Do you think that developing nations all use ancient equipment? That's not exactly true.
Often older equipment is more expensive and harder to get, and harder to get support on.
Developing countries have computers... it's the software licenses that dwarf the cost of those computers that hurts.
Components, Components, Components!! ("Universal coupling").
Seriously, GNOME needs more work going into bonobo. IMHO its the only area where it lags behind KDE. That's the reason why you hear Abiword and gnumeric a lot more than kword and kspread, but you hear of koffice but not of gnome-office.
Loose coupling is not necessarily a bad idea though. For example gnome apps start quickly when you're in KDE but not vice versa.
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
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.
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)...
Uh, first of all, I was in high school before IBM's first PC. I'm not some flippant high schooler who doesn't understand the concept of value and investment... and neither, hopefully, are my kids.
Second, half the PC100 RAM in my machine came from my company who was going to throw it away! I'm not proposing you go out and buy a new machine to use GNOME. Just the opposite!
Lastly, poverty is not caused by making wise use of current resources, which is exactly what I'm talking about. There's no insistance that one use GNOME with a brand new machine, or even a two year old one. (Elsewhere, I've already stated that my machine if 5 years old, beyond the lifetime for a typical business class machine.)
To say that GNOME is memory intensive is a huge overstatment considering the typical spec sold today. You won't run it with 64Mb, but 128 does just fine. I think that's entirely reasonable, even for someone without a lot of financial resources.
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...