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."

Comments

This lunar year

[Mod Me God Too]

Is a lunar leap year meaning it has 13 lunar months. Coincidence?

Re:This lunar year

[Anonymous Coward]

The lord giveth and takes.

Re:This lunar year

[Anonymous Coward]

no he doesn't

Re:This lunar year

[I confirm I'm not a]

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;)

Re:This lunar year

[kfg]

Well then what the hell is he doing with all that money he told me was going into my 401k?

KFG

Re:This lunar year

[Anonymous Coward]

14N4LC3 bu7 73h |un150|4r c4|3nd4r 15 4 5ub-d3f1n1710n 0f 73h |un4r c4|3nd4r.

Re:This lunar year

[I confirm I'm not a]

I reckon that could have been informative if you'd written that in English ;)

Translation:

I am not a Lunar Calendar Expert but the Lunisolar Calendar is a sub-definition of the Lunar Calendar

I disagree. It comprises aspects of both the Lunar- and the Solar-Calendars.

Re:This lunar year

[Anonymous Coward]

j00 4r3 c0rr3c7, 1 4m wr0ng. 1 5uck g4j 455 0n 73h 5p0k3 w17h cmdrt4c0'5 gr3453d up j0d4 d0|| 5tuck up my 455.

Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

Do people still use Gnome? My friends finally got me to try Linux a couple of weeks ago, and I did an FTP install of SuSE 9.0. As a newcomer to Linux who has tried both, I have NO idea why anyone would choose Gnome over KDE.

KDE is sweet. The widgets are cleaners, but most of all, things are where a life long windows user like myself expects them to be.

Anyhow, I'm converted to Linux forever - but it seems like the community's time would be better spent supporting a single GUI like KDE.

Thanks,
Eric

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

And vi? Who the hell uses vi these days. I installed emacs the other day and I haven't looked back - the cursor keys work, there's no stupid seperate "insert/edit/command" modes, it "just works".

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.

Re:Gnome

[SiGiN]

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 ;-)

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

Crap. It was another GNOME vs KDE troll. Newbie my ass, newbies do not write messages like that.

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. And the gconf-editor is a usability dream come true.

Re:Gnome

[wdnspoon]

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.

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Gnome

[deminisma]

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.

Re:Gnome

[zsau]

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.)

Re:Gnome

[digitect]

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.

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never had to use gconf-editor for anything. All the config options I need are available through the GUI.

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm afraid you will find this is an honest reaction from most users. It isn't trolling, it's the truth.

Re:Gnome

[no longer myself]

Now, mod me down for using WinXP

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...

Re:Gnome

[WWWWolf]

KDE is sweet. The widgets are cleaners, but most of all, things are where a life long windows user like myself expects them to be.

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. =)

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Gnome

[imr]

For many of us, the Windows interface is not ideal.
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?sor t_by=popularity&thumbnails_per_page=24
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.

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, mod me down for using WinXP ;-)

Nothing to be ashamed of. At least it's not *BSD.

Re:Gnome

[Malek the Damned]

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*

Re:Gnome

[digitect]

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.)

Re:Gnome

[10Ghz]

1. More consistentcy between apps due to the Human Interface Guidelines

KDE has HIG as well

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Well, Qt/KDE has all the apps I need and want ;). Stuff like K3B, Quanta, KDevelop, Konqueror, Juk etc. etc.

Re:Gnome

[Majix]

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.

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

1. More consistentcy between apps due to the Human Interface Guidelines

Their HIG stinks! We pulled it to pieces on the Syllable mailing list. Over a dozen mistakes in a single example screenshot! The entire guidelines is riddled with attrocious mistakes.

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

If they mod you down it will only make you stronger. Be one with the Evil :-)

Re:Gnome

[zsau]

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...

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

hehe u've a small peenis!

Re:Gnome

[Jameth]

"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.

Re:Gnome

[Lobo_Louie]

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)!

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

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)...

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

imo gnome is teh bestest distribution too. i never had to use a dos console like with window maker.

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I like licking male feet too. We should meet.

Re:Gnome

[Waffle Iron]

Options. Apart from Gconf, GNOME comes with far less options.

Let me guess... your grandfather must have worked for Henry Ford painting model Ts.

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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.

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Gnome

[_Sprocket_]

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.

Were you able to fix that yourself? Or did you have to call someone to get permission first? ;)

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

> 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.

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing to be ashamed of. At least it's not *BSD.

Which is dying. And all its users are assholes and leet-wannabes.

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, the usability hammer. People do not choose desktops on the basis of usability. Functionality? Definitely not.

Re:Gnome

[zhenlin]

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.

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Gnome

[Gilesx]

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?

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Gnome

[axxackall]

Besides, we all know we can't run EMACS on Amiga... yet.

Not if you run Linux on that Amiga. Wherever I run Linux I have Emacs.

Re:Gnome

[Coryoth]

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.

Re:Gnome

[psi42]

"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%

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Gnome

[teprrr]

1. More consistentcy between apps due to the Human Interface Guidelines
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! :) 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.

Re:Gnome

[Brandybuck]

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 :-)

Re:Gnome

[Brandybuck]

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!

Re:Gnome

[Brandybuck]

Funny, the more GNOME moves towards a Windows-style desktop, the more people say it's less like Windows. Why is this?

Re:Gnome

[imr]

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.
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! ..." They are nowhere close in terms of computer's behavior.

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.

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but your wife likes it.

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Gnome

[bryanthompson]

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.

Re:Gnome

[luisdom]

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?

Re:Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

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. :)

Re:Gnome

[squiggleslash]

GNU EMACS for the Amiga is obtainable here. Fairly old version though.

Year of the Monkey cant be that good...

[MrRTFM]

Developers, Developers, Developers!!!!!

We all know where this is going to lead :(

Re:Year of the Monkey cant be that good...

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome has developers?

Re:Year of the Monkey cant be that good...

[penis fish]

Communism?

Re:Year of the Monkey cant be that good...

[arvindn]

It should instead be:

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.

Re:Year of the Monkey cant be that good...

[larry bagina]

Bonobo? Like the filthy smelly monkeys notorious for their homosexual practices?

Sounds like the perfect mascot for gnome users.

Re:Year of the Monkey cant be that good...

[Jameth]

I beg to differ. In my experience, GNOME apps and KDE apps start at fairly similar rates, and I use BlackBox. That is, however, assuming they are comparable apps. Konqueror outpaces Galeon or Epiphany. KWord and Abiword have almost identical start times. GNumeric outdoes KSpread very marginally.

In general, KDE apps start very marginally slower if I have NO KDE apps started. If even one is started, it's pretty much on par.

DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS

[Anonymous Coward]

Developers Developers Developers

are they good or are they whack?

Gnome the way to go?

[armando_wall]

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?

Re:Gnome the way to go?

[pcbob]

Dropline is great! If you have fast connection, then installation is painless - just start the instaler, select few options, go outside (gasp!) and when you are back you new gnome is waiting for you.

I've been using it for some time now, and I haven't found anything missing (besides win32 video codec drivers :) I use Serbian Cyrillic trnaslations, and I'm glad that they included everyting, and it works out of box.

Also they update packages fairly often (stuff like mozilla); they even provide an applet for panel that checks for updates.

Overall, strongly recomended for any slacker outhere!

Re:Gnome the way to go?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dropline is great - except it also installs PAM, todd needs to rip that garbage out. Slackware has never and hopefully will never use pluggable auth modules.

Re:Gnome the way to go?

[arvindn]

While I have nothing against your being a C fan (its certainly way simpler to learn than C++), IMHO one of the advantages of Gtk+/Gnome is the availability of bindings in a large number of languages (python, perl, C#, ruby, C++ etc). Efficiency is not crucial in desktop apps, and so using a higher level language can lead to big gains in programmer productivity. (I have personal experience with this. I wrote gretools in a week, and that included learning python along the way.)

Re:Gnome the way to go?

[robotoverflow]

I use Serbian Cyrillic trnaslations...

You should probably look into submitting a bug report

Re:Gnome the way to go?

[H3g3m0n]

I just installed Dropline Gnome like 20min ago, IT RAWKS. Its heaps faster than the stock gnome install becasue it has optimization and other big words.

Re:Gnome the way to go?

[Zebbers]

Umm I went to the website...I dont see what is special they offer over 'regular' gnome?

BTW Kde 3.2RC1 is nice on slack 9.1(actually slack-current) but anyway..........

Re:Gnome the way to go?

[dolson]

I haven't used Dropline, but I do use Gnome, and I was in your position. I had very bad luck with Gnome until version 2.0. I used to swear by KDE and swear at Gnome, but as you mentioned, it has vastly improved. I can't go back to KDE now. I just love how GTK looks compared to Qt. All of my favorite apps are GTK-based anyhow. So all is well.

I hope it continues, and I like that people have the choice to use KDE as well. It's all good.

Re:Gnome the way to go?

[jimbrewer]

It was a godsend in getting Gnome 2 on my 8.1 system a year+ ago. Other than that, it just bundles in a bunch of bunch of gnome apps (& backend libraries) tweaked for look & feel that Pat doesn't include in 9.0, and gives you regular updates for all the gnomey goodness. It's not a revolutionary upgrade that'll bring KDE users over from the dark side... just a contantly evolving, functional and semi-glossy desktop.

Re:Gnome the way to go?

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that the only language that Qt doesn't have a binding for on your list is C#, and no-one in their right mind uses that trainwreck of a lame Java imitation (no mandatory-checked exceptions meant C# was instantly disregarded in my company).

It's truly stupid that some peole think just because Qt is WRITTEN in C++ that you have to use C++ to use it.

Re:Gnome the way to go?

[ShortBeard]

I first started using Gnome on a 333 iMac. It saw my settings a little better than KDE and was a little lighter weight for the limited RAM the iMac had.

I have now installed Linux on my G4 (main machine) and have not run KDE once. My only gripe is that sometimes it cannot umount a floppy because the floppy is busy.

year of the monkey

[Dreadlord]

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.

Re:year of the monkey

[kfg]

GNOME's logo desn't look like a monkey's print anyway.

It's just a pretty rare species is all. And not a monkey really, an ape. The Great Octal Ape. Found only in the deepest jungles of Cambridge, MA.

They do have a cousin though, the Lesser Bonoboctal Ape, found only in the misty, magical land known as Berserkly.

KFG

Re:year of the monkey

[I confirm I'm not a]

Yes, but, where are they in the poll? ;)

Re:year of the monkey

[Dreadlord]

yeah the poll sucks, no tux, KDE's dragon, Mozilla's lizrad, just a bunch of not so much popular mascots.

Re:year of the monkey

[bconway]

Huh? Year of The Monkey can only be good for Ximian Desktop.

Don't forget Bucky Katt.

All I can say

[Angry Prick]

is This

c coding is great, but not for this

[Anonymous Coward]

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 ..).

China is rising

[Anonymous Coward]

have you been noticing how with each passing year, the number of times China is mentioned in the news, culturally, and in general conversation increases at the same rate as its GDP growth?

Truly, I expect we'll be learning Chinese en masse in a few decades, all the movies will be in Chinese, and we'll have to wait for software to be translated. You think this won't happen? They would've said the same about English replacing French once.

Re:China is rising

[kfg]

Dude, the movies have all been in Chinese since Bruce Lee. What rock have you been hiding under? Go rent Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. They aren't even bothering to overdub them anymore they feel so confident.

"In German, und English, I know how to count down.
Und I'm learing Chineeeeese" says Werner von Braun.

KFG

Developing countries?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Developing countries?

[Anonymous Coward]

"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."

I completely agree with this. My "old" hardware took a big performance hit when i went from win98 to GNU/linux. I was actually expecting a preformance increase because of its reputation for speed. I'm hoping 2.6 will make a difference...

Re:Developing countries?

[hermeshome.se]

Yes, I do agree with parent. The main problem, as I see it, is that the project seems to focus on a) look/feel like Windows/MacOS and b) adding new features instead of optimizing the code in the source tree. Letem take a look on what they have, and make it totally awsome. Then add new features.

Sure, I should probably stfu and contribut, but no one would really like my helloworld.cpp. ;)

Re:Developing countries?

[digitect]

[GNOME and KDE] don't feel much faster than Windows XP

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?

Re:Developing countries?

[Quill_28]

I was reading Maximum PC the other, and there was an article about installing linux, mandrake was the dist.
It said you should have 1GHz proc and 1GB of RAM if you were going to use KDE or GNOME!
I usually run icewm and fvwm2, but what is up with those specs!
Typos?

Re:Developing countries?

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE 3.2 have made some real improvements in their RAM usage and speed. You should try it when it comes out. OpenOffice.org are trying very hard to reduce their speed too. OpenOffice 1.1 was impressive, but the latest developer snapshots are even faster! KDE is designed to be modular, and with the minimal packages it is really fast!

Re:Developing countries?

[Anonymous Coward]

but memory is cheap. What's the big deal?

The big deal is that some people use GNU/linux because they can get it for $0.

We don't want Little Johnny to have to ask his parents to upgrade before he can give GNU/linux a whirl.

Re:Developing countries?

[Homology]

As you say, RAM does matter (I have 262Mb on the home machine) but memory is cheap. What's the big deal?

Read the parent post again, and note what he writes about developing countries and older PCs.

Memory is not cheap when you are poor, so, it's indeed a big deal.

For those of us that are priviliged, and still want to use older machines, we may have trouble getting more memory. For instance, I've got a Dell Dimension L466cx that can only use PC100 memory. Now, the online stores in my country only sells PC133 memory, so more memory may be hard to get.

Re:Developing countries?

[arvindn]

Linux was always known as the speedy, svelte and lighweight OS

You mean on the server. Which it still is. The *nix DEs never had much of a reputation for speed (except maybe wmaker and other niche WMs). Please don't confuse the two. I remember KDE 1.x being very slow on the hardware of the day. Today's KDE and GNOME are certainly way faster on today's hardware.

Re:Developing countries?

[Tim C]

Well, personally, any machine I use for anything beyond email and surfing is going to have to have a much faster proc than 1GHz, but I mostly play games and do Java & a bit of .NET development....

The gig of RAM figure is pure bullshit though; you don't need anything like that much just for KDE or GNOME. They should be perfectly happy with 256meg of RAM. That may sound like a lot, but it's entry level for a modern machine, and very cheap to buy to upgrade an older machine with if necessary. I'd be rather suspicious of the 1GHz spec for the proc too, personally, but these days that's well below entry level.

Re:Developing countries?

[digitect]

Are you saying the machine he's going to run it on was free? RAM is 5% the cost of a machine. You pay more for a video card.

I'll re-iterate my point: I use Linux as my sole OS on a 5 year old consumer quality machine. It does great, and with the improvements in the 2.6 kernal I hear about, I probably won't need to upgrade my hardware for several more years.

Re:Developing countries?

[aldoman]

PC133 RAM works fine in PC100 mobos - it just runs at the speed of the slowest denominator (in this case, the motherboard)...

Re:Developing countries?

[mindstrm]

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.

Re:Developing countries?

[wastaz]

I dont mean to sound trollish or be mean to the folks at mandrake. God knows that dist is awesome and probably the most newbie-friendly dist Ive ever tried. However, it is a resource hog. It eats power for breakfast. It's really easy to learn and install and use, but for resources I can understand that estimation because it does run sluggishly on my 1ghz with 256mb ram when I tried it. Running the same configs on gentoo flies fast as heck. (not meant to say that gentoo is better than mandrake, which it might be in some aspects, but is not in others)

Re:Developing countries?

[NixLuver]

You make a valid point; RAM is extremely important to Gnome/KDE performance. I'm not certain what the baseline system is in 'developing countries' - but let me point out that I can run Gnome convincingly on a p5-133mmx laptop (compared to win95, that shipped with it). It dual boots - BOTH feel extremely slow with the 64 mb RAM (it's gnome 1.4 on RH 7.3) compared to more modern offerings, but the performance is certainly on a par with the OS that shipped with the box. I think working on 2Ghz+ machines with 1 GB RAM biases us; and since many of us would not consider putting Windows of any sort on a p5-133 (too damn slow) we forget what it used to be like.

On the other hand, Ximian D2 on RH9 is awesome on my wife's Toshiba 8100 733Mhz pIII laptop with 256 MB RAM - MUCH faster than XP or 2000 on the same machine, and many times as stable on that hardware platform.

In any case, chosing XFCE or ICEwm doesn't prohibit our developing country linux user from useing Gnome applications, including things like the gnome panel on top of ICEWM, etc. The nicest thing about Gnome (I prefer KDE from a global perspective, but on slower machines I like gnome for this reason) is that I can pick and chose components much more easily than I can with KDE. I can run the WM of choice, and run the panel, and even nautilus, without the entire gnome infrastructure.

Re:Developing countries?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, lots of kids are in possession of "hand-me-down" computers, usually from aunts and uncles and suchlike.

Re:Developing countries?

[mindriot]

How is GNOME becoming popular in developing countries when it's geared towards newer machines?

Most developing countries use quite different locales. So I think it might have to do with the fact that GNOME's Pango engine is very great for truly internationalized apps, including very good bidirectional support.

Then again, I don't really know about KDE's i18n/l10n capabilities since I've hardly used it for quite a while.

Re:Developing countries?

[Anonymous Coward]

As you say, RAM does matter (I have 262Mb on the home machine) but memory is cheap. What's the big deal?

It is attitudes like that that cause poverty in the first place. That's the big deal.

You can see nothing wrong with needing 262mb of ram to boot up? Were you even alive when we had computers with 1mb of ram?

Re:Developing countries?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up.

Re:Developing countries?

[Homology]

PC133 RAM works fine in PC100 mobos - it just runs at the speed of the slowest denominator (in this case, the motherboard)...

No, that is not the case for all motherboards.

Re:Developing countries?

[gnu-generation-one]

"We don't want Little Johnny to have to ask his parents to upgrade before he can give GNU/linux a whirl."

I've got 128Mb memory here (134 "Mb" for the decimal counters), and Linux desktop seems to run every bit as fast as my Win2K machine at work with however many gigabytes of memory that thing has.

Of course, I don't run Visual Studio at home...

You can probably get a machine like mine for less than the cost of a Windows license now... so I don't think that should be any problem for your "little johnny" who probably has the latest and greatest "multimedia experience" from a Gateway advert in the Times anyway...

Re:Developing countries?

[Enahs]

I agree. Someone else who replied posted the comment "RAM is cheap" but is that necessarily true in developing countries? I used to use GMC with Window Maker on a machine that only had 64MB of RAM. This was in my college days and the year after I got married. True, memory was "cheap" but every time I had $100 bucks or so extra, I'd get a flat tire, or my car would need some sort of repairs, or would need a new pair of pants (because an older pair had worn out) or what have you.

In the heady days of 1999, I could see GNOME getting popular amongst the "I want a GUI, but not necessarily the Windows-style GUI" mix-and-match crowd, and I even recommended my Window Maker + GMC + GNOME menu Perl script combo to other poor computer users out there. Nowadays all GNOME seems to be is a Windows-alike desktop with slightly higher memory usage than KDE. :-(

Re:Developing countries?

[PishiGorbeh]

How do you figure that "developing" countries have these old machines with little memory? I have a couple of computers and one of them is a PII 300. I can't find additional memory for it here (in Iran). All I can get is the latest and greatest stuff. In New York however, As of a year ago I could still buy a P 100 off the shelf down on 14th street. Because we live in developing countries we don't have that legacy stuff. It's all new (and cheap too). For example, We have never had analogue or celular mobiles.. It's all GSM. The infrastructure here is brand new and growing. PS. My P4 Dell with 1 Gig of RAM runs Gnome very well and the box only cost me $800 USD 650,000 Toman, new!

Re:Developing countries?

[beforewisdom]

Peformance is the bastard step child of contemporary software development.

Proprietary software managers are more conerned with OO & reusability to save on costs of production.

OS developers are concerned about adding features or giving some lame excuse at how since computers are faster its not worth the bother.

In short software is slow all around these days and it is becuase developers don't care or are not allowed to care.

Steve

Re:Developing countries?

[digitect]

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.

Re:Developing countries?

[Anonymous Coward]

On my PII-233 with 192MB, I dual boot Windows 2k and freebsd 4.9 with kde and gnome. kde (3.14) feels as fast as win2k. gnome doesn't. Click on a menu. Go get a sandwhich while it draws. Yes, it's almost that bad. Previous versions seemed almost as fast as win2k, but they've gone downhill.

Re:Developing countries?

[haruchai]

I think the real problem here is Dell. I've never had a problem mixing and matching Standard SDRAM when the RAM speed was higher than the system bus speed.
I have a dual-cpu MSI board with a 66MHZ bus that currently has both PC100 and PC133 DIMMs installed.
On the other hand, I was given a Dell Optiplex GX-150 which, although it only has a Celeron with a 100 MHZ bus, will not accept anything other than PC133 memory.
The P3 versions of this desktop have 133 MHz buses and use the same memory. So, as I see it, this is a deliberate limitation by Dell - and I don't see any performance advantage over OEM mainboards.

Re:Developing countries?

[Homology]

I think the real problem here is Dell.

The PC I had problems with were all Dells, ranging from Celeron to dual PIII. The dual PIII's where using PC600 memory, and would not accept most of the PC800 available today. We're using those old dual PIII (1GHz) for development, and on those machines we should actually have 1GB memory for comfortable debugging. Of all the PC800 I tried, just one older 64MB didn't hang the PC.

Re:Developing countries?

[bogie]

Actually Linux still is a speedy, svelte, lightweight OS. I don't think your right when you just say server. That's just not a realistic outlook on how everyone uses Linux. There are a ton of Linux Window Managers out there at this point that are pretty darn light on the resources. Just because 2 of the more popular DE's take a hefty system to run doesn't mean that you can just categorically say Linux isn't lightweight anymore

Also KDE 1.x performed pretty well on the hardware of the day IMO. At least when you compared it to an OS which equaled its functionality, ala Windows 95. A P200 w 64MB worked pretty well. It was KDE 2.x that was a total dog and dragged ass. Also I found that pre-KDE desktops like fvwm, afterstep etc were all pretty quick and responsive. Mostly because they didn't offer much in the way of functionality. So the notion that traditionally Linux was a speedy desktop really wasn't unwarranted, the same goes today when you avoid GNOME and KDE.

As you mentioned though, luckily for Gnome and KDE today's hardware is such overkill.

Re:Developing countries?

[nerdin]

I'm from a developing country: We don't mind about performance, but price.

You can't complain about performance if you *never* touch a PC, right? You can't have a reference frame when you can't simply use a computer.

I need pretty much the same hardware to run Win 2000/Office/MS Development tools, and still pay a few thousand bucks to MS if I want to perform any other action than play solitaire (is solitaire still in XP?). And it's that or use pirated versions...

For being productive as a developer in Windows you need:

- Office Suite: $400
- Programming Suite (VS .NET) $1,000
- Server/Server Edition (at least HTTP server): $650.
- Probably a non-toy DB (SQL Server + 5 licences): $1,200

So even 1 GB RAM (About $100 here), a fast processor and a LICENSED distro become peanuts against those licensing prices and I still need decent hardware.

I make a living using an old PII@350 MHz / 256 MB RAM with all of aforementioned software and have some hacking, business and leisure for less than I'd pay for a *single* MS application by only adding RAM and a non-sucking video card.

Performance is a small price tag where a decent programmer hourly rate is around $3. Anyway we can brew some coffee while OOO opens or have time off when compiling Nautilus and still be on the cheap side.

So, no... we don't mind if *anything* is slow on GNOME.

Re:Developing countries?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then we have different memories.

I remember KDE 1.1.3 being okay fast on my P2/400 with 128 MB RAM. It didn't had much eyecandy though. Then came KDE 2.x, being _slow_. Both 2.0 as well as 2.1, 2.2, 2.2.2. There's still a distribution which ships this: Lycoris. But it was a lot better than KDE 1.x regarding functionality, eyecandy, licensing issues with QT, etc.

Then came around KDE 3.x. 3.0, 3.0.1, 3.1, 3.1.1, 3.1.2, etc. etc. etc. etc. and that was _faster_ than KDE 2.x. And better, and nices, etc.

Nowadays i'm not running KDE anymore. I prefer a smaller, faster, WM with lots of eyecandy ;)

Re:Developing countries?

[axxackall]

PCs with 32MB have equal performnce problems with all modern systemss, both commercial and open-sourced. Although in case of open-source, they have more chance of support and *latest* updates from FVWM or like that (which development is not stopped) than from Win-95 (which support is dropped from Microdropt).

However my point is not about 32MB PCs, because as I can see there is lots of much better PC around in developing countries I was visiting. In profitable commercial companies and in goverment agencies 64-128 MB PS are more typical case, and even 256-512MB PCs are are not that rare. 128-256 MB of RAM is enough to run GNOME - I know it from my practice. But even 64Mb PC will run Gnome faster than any Windows.

Memory is cheap today and popularity of morepower PCs is growing in the 3rd world. But license prices of Windows are not dropping and newer versions of Windows are demanding even more power PCs. That's why GNOME, along with open-source software overall, is getting more and more installations in developing countries.

Re:Developing countries?

[Anonymous Coward]

The *nix DEs never had much of a reputation for speed (except maybe wmaker and other niche WMs)

Windowmaker is reasonably light, but it was never the lightweight wm. It takes up 1.5 meg resident memory. There are fully functional themeable dockapp-supporting wm's which have on-disk binary sizes of less than 300k (like pwm).

Back when I ran debian on a 20 meg 486 laptop switching from windowmaker to pwm made a noticeable difference. With pwm I could actually run opera on it without swapping, which made browsing possible on a day-to-day basis. Really fun tweaking out that laptop to optimize memory use.

I still like windowmaker better though. There's something excessively cool about the efficiency of the openstep look and feel.

Re:Developing countries?

[be-fan]

KDE 1.x was very fast. It was KDE 2.x that was really slow. Today's KDE 3.2 is very fast in all respects except startup speed.

Re:Developing countries?

[dasunt]

As you say, RAM does matter (I have 262Mb on the home machine) but memory is cheap. What's the big deal?

Memory is not cheap! Take an old pentium-era computer (without 168pin SDR DIMMS) and try to buy enough memory to bump it up to 256M.

Ne'ermind that in some areas, there is shipping costs, and tariffs on that memory.

Finally, if you are doing things the *right* way, the $20 pricewatch special isn't the way to go - you want quality memory chips from a quality manufacturer.

Re:Developing countries?

[digitect]

Pentium-era computer? I once tried to load Windows 95 on a Pentium 90 and it took five minutes just to boot up. Once it did, it was too slow to be usable. (This was back when the machine was less than a year old, it was the latest in consumer technology.)

If we're going to contemplate the memory and processing required by GNOME and the computer resources available to the poverty stricken, we at least need to consider the possibility that *no* usable desktop may be available. GNOME may not be as light as a window manager environment, but it is as good or competitive with any other multi-tasking desktop environment and application collection that is widely distributed, let alone one that supports internationalization, accessibility, and is Free.

And who is going to blow more money on RAM to upgrade a machine that is still slower than a cheaper, newer-technology box? (I didn't say new, just newer.)

Re:Developing countries?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Then again, I don't really know about KDE's i18n/l10n capabilities since I've hardly used it for quite a while.

Qt has supported most of Pango's capabilities several years before Pango (since Qt 2.0, circa 1999); except for one notable exception: bidirectional text. That came out with Qt 3.0, which came out several months after Pango did.

Nowadays, they are nearly equal in i18n/i10n.

Re:Developing countries?

[DA-MAN]

You must have had some really Piece of Shit hardware. I had no issues with my P100 and it ran Windows NT 4, Windows 95, 98, Linux and FreeBSD.

It ran very decent, all things considered, especially with my Voodoo!

Re:Developing countries?

[tunah]

I'm fairly sure PC133 memory will run fine at the 100 speed.

Re:Developing countries?

[Homology]

I'm fairly sure PC133 memory will run fine at the 100 speed.

I wrote that this is not the case, didn't I? I've been around several Dells with this particular problem.

Re:Developing countries?

[Anonymous Coward]

As you say, RAM does matter (I have 262Mb on the home machine) but memory is cheap. What's the big deal?

Memory is not so cheap when you have to buy a new PC in order to install more of it. I imagine there are a lot of old PCs -- maybe PCs that can't use more than 64 MB of RAM -- being used in the developing countries. (A RAM upgrade may be impossible even if there's an open socket. Is EDO RAM even sold any more?) Think Iraq, which has been under UN sanctions for 10+ years. For that matter, think of the US, where some kids get old and slow PCs from thrift stores.

And handheld systems will always be resource-poor compared to their big brothers on the desktop. 256 MB of RAM may not cost much more than 128 MB of RAM when compared to the purchase price of a handheld, but the extra memory needs a bigger case, bigger circuit board, and more electrical power (and hence, shorter battery life). These network effects drive up the cost, and if it's a high-volume consumer device, every penny counts.

And finally, consider what the extra RAM and CPU is being used for. More often than not, it's for user-interface chrome and other "fluff". I think software would suck a lot less if developers were forced to come up with something that could run well on systems with 16 meg of RAM. If QNX can put a POSIX realtime kernel, TCP/IP, GUI, and web browser on a 1.44 meg floppy, then what the hell is everyone else doing?

Re:Developing countries?

[bzzzt]

Only if the memory has the pc100 timings in its eeprom which is often not the case with the cheap stuff.

Re:Gnome - vi

[virid]

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.

Re:Gnome - vi

[ciaran_o_riordan]

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.

Does anyone care about gnome anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm really curious. I thoght that the Gnome project was dead. I rember the day well, September 11 2003, Gnome 2.4 was just released, and it still was plauged with problems. In summary, the problems were

• Still had a primitive file dialog
• Still was hard to use, due to the flaws in the human interface guidelines
• Still had to be configured manualy with text files and a registry editor like tool

Mandrake 9.2 made the mistake of rushing Gnome 2.4 into its release, which caused a lot of problems for it. Including dead cdrom drives and hundreds of megs of patches. A true disaster for Mandrake. Other distros decided to play it safe. SuSE 9.0 used Gnome 2.2, which is a older, but stable gnome. But it was hidden under t he K-lines. Then RedHat in November decided to kill off their distro. It is obvious why, they didnt want to support a defective Gnome. Even Debian, which is famously known for its bleeding edge "unstable" version didnt decide to include it for months becasue of the bugs. The Epiphany web browser for example has gone through 7 bug fix releases! The Gnome developers even admitted that Gnome 2.4 was a buggy and extremley unstable, and recommended people to stay with the old 2.2 codebase, while they worked on 2.6. Gnome 2.6, is like longhorn in its state, with very unusual concepts being floated around, with vapurware aplenty. It is very unlikley that Gnome 2.6, or 3.0 will be released until 2005/6. So Gnome distributions in the meantime are getting older and older, with just bug fixes for their legacy packages. Meanwhile, KDE 3.2 will be out soon, and it is not vapourware, it is real compilable product, which is googals of parsecs ahead of gnome! Slated for the feburary release, it is a revolution in usability, gushes of eye candy and loaded with features and most importantly it is extremley fast. If Gnome cant release Gnome 2.6 in time, then its market share will probably fall down to less than 5%, and become a Niche desktop like XFCE, Blackbox and Enlightenment are. Those who fail to learn from history (Enlightenment) are doomed to repeat it (Vapourware).

Re:Gnome - vi

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Another QT vs. Gtk debate....

[bangular]

I think it's really dumb so many companies are backing gnome when, it's really an inferior window manager. First of all, it's a package maintainers nightmare. Gnome is split up into eleventy twelve bazillion packages. While Kde really only needs QT, Kdelibs, and Kdebase to get up and running. QT is more mature, more stable, and simple a better toolkit than Gtk. Gtk is much more of a pain in the ass to program in than QT. Gnome was a project that came out of RedHat... 'nuff said ;-) KDE has more to it. Things like KHtml and the kde regular expression library. A browser that's much more integrated into the wm than Galeon (have you tried the latest KDE rc? Konq opens faster than IE on windows). KWallet is awesome. Not saying Gnome should go away. It's got some good individual packages. IIRC, Gnome is responsible for the XML related packages for linux. But why are so many supporting Gnome while ignoring KDE when it is such a great wm.

Innovation

[arvindn]

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!

Re:Innovation

[Elektroschock]

What's really important is a common strqategy with KDE.

Re:Innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

If by "innovation" you mean "no ability to move windows above the top of the screen", "no way to disable the ugly Metacity animations", "no proper alphabetized keybindings for the main menu a la Windows 95", "no wireframe mode" (essential for networked X setups), and a zillion others...

GNOME has turned from a cool hacker project into a corporate buzzword project. The UNIX philosophy of simplicity, performance and stability is gone. Instead we have bloat, confusion, a huge XML registry for settings, and bugs aplenty.

Gimme IceWM any day. I can work 5x faster than any GNOME user with that...

Re:Innovation

[_Sprocket_]

If by "innovation" you mean "no ability to move windows above the top of the screen", "no way to disable the ugly Metacity animations", "no proper alphabetized keybindings for the main menu a la Windows 95", "no wireframe mode" (essential for networked X setups), and a zillion others...

This sounds more like issues with Metacity than GNOME. While Metacity may be the default window manager for GNOME environments, there are plenty of others that play nice with GNOME. Move to one of those.

Gimme IceWM any day. I can work 5x faster than any GNOME user with that...

Works with GNOME. There are even compile-time options (and associated binary packages) available to integrate the environment a bit more.

Re:Innovation

[CRCulver]

Hasn't Dashboard been abandoned? I've heard that Nat Friedman threw it together to show the capabilities of Mono, but then stopped once he saw that it was possible to make such a project with the current state of GTK#. Perhaps someone has more recent news.

21 reasons why Gnome sucks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Discalimer : This not troll or flamebait, it is an OPINION and I as an Anymous Coward am entitled to have one! If you disagree visit anti-slash.

1. Its named after people who live in my garden
2. It hides all the options
3. Nautlilus has too much eye candy and no functionallity like split pane, command line support, integrated web browser and so on
4. Bruce perens use it
5. It is a crappy Mac clone
6. Its file dialog is from Windows 1.01
7. It contains a fish
8. It is fragmenting the linux market
9. You cant change the colour scheme
10. You have to use a registry editor
11. Resizing windows is buggy
12. Its Zip program wont let you extract files from the context menu
13. It removed tear off menu suport
14. Its Web browser has no bookmark system
15. It claims to have human interface guidelines, yet anyone can see that it blatently violates them, eg the Foot menu
16. Its support for i18n is poor
17. ]
18. It dosent let you have multiple wallpapers
19. Developers dont like it
20. It only has 30% of the Linux market share
21. GTK is slow, hard to write for (even with language bindings) and has no decent themes
22. It is dying!

Fortune?

[imr]

"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?

Re:Fortune?

[peragrin]

proprietary software vendors will stab you in the back. Think of all the small vendors that microsoft, got close to, stole their ideas, and then destroyed them.

Re:Fortune?

[Epeeist]

Absolutely - think of Stac and Spyglass.

Hopefully we won't have to add "and Mono" to the list.

Re:Fortune?

[hey]

Yeah, Gnome just has to ditch mono.
Saying the obvious: Gnome started as a reaction
to KDE based on closed Qt. So what does Gnome do...
they begin to based on Mono. Nuts.

Re:Fortune?

[mrroach]

> So what does Gnome do...
> they begin to based on Mono. Nuts.

They do? Which modules? (Hint: they don't. none.)

-Mark

Re:Fortune?

[DA-MAN]

In the defense of Microsoft, Spyglass handled everything very stupidly. Instead of licensing their browser technology to Microsoft for a price, they got greedy and wanted a cut of each sale of IE.

Unfortunately for Spyglass, Microsoft gave away IE for free. Any percentage of 0 is still 0. Spyglass however should have come back and sued the pants off of Microsoft for a percent of each copy of Windows when Microsoft told the DOJ that separating IE from Windows was impossible because Windows is IE and IE is Windows...

Re:Fortune?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Mono is just one option. An really, if the Gnome folks said to Ximian, "stop working on Mono", because we don't want it, Miguel de Icaza and company would simply start working on QT# for Mono.

It's insurance. Microsoft has a lot of influence, and that's going to lead to colleges spitting out lots of C# programmers in the coming years. When those programmers go to look at developing for other platforms, they're going to want to see a way to do it in C#.

Re:Fortune?

[trouser]

Nothing in Gnome is based on Mono.

Besides, Mono is a GPL implementation of the .NET development framework and I don't see anything wrong with that.

I don't like Microsoft's business practices and I can't stand Windows, MS Office, etc. but Mono, C#, the CLR and, by inference, .NET are all pretty cool if you can get past the basic aversion to anything that comes out of Redmond.

"Rapidly Becoming Popular"

[mumblestheclown]

Gnome is "rapidly becoming popular."

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!)

From my observations...

[Xpilot]

...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.

Re:From my observations...

[insomaniac]

Well for my tastes gnome is a little too bloated, sure this is fine if you want all the menus and (ugh) nautilus. But I prefer a desktop based on the nice light gtk based XFCE4 and replace it's desktop module with the sweet gtk based rox desktop/filer. But I guess it's all about personal taste.

Re:From my observations...

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm... Galeon and Evolution _definitely_ require GNOME (libs etc.). They're not vanilla GTK apps. If you like a GTK desktop, go with XFce -- it's sooo much faster and lighter, and a joy to use.

Where's the news?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Where's the news?

[_Sprocket_]

Hmmm. Sally Struthers pitching GNOME. I was going to write out a parody script... but as I started, I realized that I couldn't stand the pain.

Want to remove Gnome?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here are the instructions for the most common distros.

Generic
rm -rf /opt/gnome
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!

Re:Want to remove Gnome?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lycoris would be an awesome replacement, with KDE 2.2!! WERD@$$!$#!$#!$!!@$

Re:Want to remove Gnome?

[twener]

TurboLinux contains GNOME. And the K in Knoppix stands for Knopper.

Performance.

[Anonymous Coward]

> 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.

Re:Performance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Damned KDE zealots! GNOME is not replacing Bonobo (which is based on Corba), not is CORBA slow and bloated. KDE originally picked CORBA for their component system. Stupidly, they picked the slowest and most bloated academically developed ORB they could find: MICO. GNOME did the right thing and wrote its own CORBA ORB (ORBit), which for in-process communications is the same speed as KDE's much cruder and far less flexible DCOP.

Ever since KDE made its original stupid mistake, KDE zealots have been decrying CORBA as slow and bloated... with no evidence or clue.

Re:Performance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, De Icaza himself admits that CORBA causes all sorts of problems (slowness is only one of them). I think I'll trust Icaza's word about GNOME more than an AC's, sorry, especially when it's so easy to verify that De Icaza is perfectly right (even the improvements he announces there for GNOME 2 are somewhat underwhelming where speed is concerned, partly due to marshalling penalties, as he explains). GNOME is much slower than KDE; either deal in silence, or submit code to help improve GNOME, goddammit. Overtly lying to both yourself and the /. readership won't fix things magically, you know.

Oh, also, GNOME .IS. moving to DCOP-inspired D-BUS for interprocess communication, so apparently the devs also disagree with you about your amusing claims regarding DCOP.

KDE has the best technology and it's a GOOD thing that GNOME are starting to follow their lead. Don't like it? Start your own GNOME fork or shut up, please. Thank you.

Re:Performance.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can take Icaza's story just fine! Except, you don't understand what he is saying, like most KDE bigots, you are a clueless knob who has no understanding of anything but mindless cheerleading.

1. Icaza's article refers to GNOME 1.x -- THREE fucking years ago. He even mentions that many of the problems are being solved in the 2.x revisions of GNOME, as indeed they have been.

2. One of the aims of Bonobo was to eliminate the need for language bindings... a job it failed to do... and job all component systems have conspicuously failed to do. This is one reason MONO was started.

Oh, also, GNOME .IS. moving to DCOP-inspired D-BUS for interprocess communication, so apparently the devs also disagree with you about your amusing claims regarding DCOP.

GNOME is using DBUS as a system event BUS (hence the name) -- you do not understand this. It is not flexible of powerful enough to handle the job of being a full binary component system, and neither is KDE's DCOP.

GNOME IS NOT DROPPING CORBA AND MOVING TO DBUS... they do different jobs extremely well.

I'd suggest you try to learn critical reading skills -- it will help you when exercising your pitiful debating skills. Also, try to do *anything* other than cluelessly cheer KDE. To develop good software requires someone to take a good long look at what is wrong with the current version -- and this is a process which KDE fails miserably.

You KDE zealots disgust me. You are loud, stupid, ignorant and have no scruples about posting ancient technical code reviews by developers as though they are marketing material. Kindly shut the fuck up and go back to playing with Qt Designer.

great to see

[Hemorrhoids]

it is great to see gnome doing so welll! it is my fav. desktop distro, much preferential to kde

Re:Gnome - vi

[NixLuver]

Guys, Guys, it was Sarcasm... sheesh. Use the editor that works the way you think, and learn to recognize humor... *sigh*

Tried KDE 3.2? Gnome has a lot of work ahead..

[ultrabot]

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...

Re:Tried KDE 3.2? Gnome has a lot of work ahead..

[FooBarWidget]

"Does Nautilus have a shortage of developers"

Yes.

Re:Tried KDE 3.2? Gnome has a lot of work ahead..

[Elektroschock]

But Gnome and Windows will not support my language Plattduutsch very soon, however a KDE op platt project is annouced,

I don't want to play with monkeys... I want konquer the net. :-)

Re:Tried KDE 3.2? Gnome has a lot of work ahead..

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, and this got modded as interesting?

This was the first time a Linux desktop passed winxp in point-and-drool usability.

Point-and-drool != usability. If you want fancy graphics run a 3d desktop. If you want usability, develop interface guidelines and make sure every app included on the desktop accomplishes them (just an example).

I'm waiting for Gnome 2.6, hoping it will be snappier (and less buggy) than 2.4.

So gnome 2.4 is buggy? How? Care to explain which outstanding bugs refrain you from using 2.4 on a daily basis?

but meanwhile, KDE continues to Work Better (tm) and I will continue using it on my home desktop.

How does it work better for you? I too can say that gnome/xfce/twm works better, but that's still an empty statement. Is it faster? fancier? more efficient?

Re:Tried KDE 3.2? Gnome has a lot of work ahead..

[ultrabot]

So gnome 2.4 is buggy? How? Care to explain which outstanding bugs refrain you from using 2.4 on a daily basis?

The keyboard layout switcher doesn't work. I run Gnome 2.4 on Fedora, and haven't seen a fix, so I guess the bug is still here. It renders the system unusable for me.

How does it work better for you?

It's mostly about Konqueror being better than Nautilus. I use "multicolumn" view on Konq to see as many files as possible, and Nautilus doesn't offer that. I can also right-click for "create new file" in Konq, not so for Nautilus. When I use gnome I do pretty much all my file management in a terminal, while using KDE I've actually caught myself *gasp* using the file manager for the desktop.

Is it faster? fancier? more efficient?

Yes, dunno, yes.

Re:Tried KDE 3.2? Gnome has a lot of work ahead..

[Anonymous Coward]

The keyboard layout switcher doesn't work. I run Gnome 2.4 on Fedora, and haven't seen a fix, so I guess the bug is still here. It renders the system unusable for me.

Works fine on debian sid. Distro bug. Add to that that keyboard switcher (gswitchit) is an official part of gnome just on 2.5+ versions, not 2.4.

It's mostly about Konqueror being better than Nautilus. I use "multicolumn" view on Konq to see as many files as possible, and Nautilus doesn't offer that.

Need to see more files? Decrease zoom on icon view.

I can also right-click for "create new file" in Konq, not so for Nautilus.

True, that's the only feature (not bug) missing in 2.4 and added for 2.6. You can create new files from user-created templates.

Is it faster? fancier? more efficient?

Yes, dunno, yes.

As I said before: provide valid points.

That was all?

Re:Tried KDE 3.2? Gnome has a lot of work ahead..

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to play with monkeys... I want konquer the net. :-)

I play with monkeys AND Conquer the net.

Re:Tried KDE 3.2? Gnome has a lot of work ahead..

[ultrabot]

Need to see more files? Decrease zoom on icon view.

Been there, done that. It doesn't work like on windows and KDE, instead the listing becomes "sparse", and the icons are still above the name, instead of the left side where the listing would be much more compact and readable.

As I said before: provide valid points.

I don't know what points I could provide to illustrate the fact that KDE is faster. It just feels faster.

That was all?

Pretty much. If Gnome fixed the points I list in their 2.6 release I would be more than happy to switch. I would prefer using Gnome for ideological reasons anyway...

Re:Tried KDE 3.2? Gnome has a lot of work ahead..

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it faster? fancier? more efficient?
-- Yes, dunno, yes.
As I said before: provide valid points.

Those are very valid points. Even you must admit that the Gnome UI is damned slow to use. Nautilus is so piggy I don't even use it on my 2 GHz workstation. I'm not going to sit around for 3 seconds waiting for another window to open up. I want the interface to respond instantly.

I still mostly use Gnome apps because they work better. I just wish they would respond faster! A port of Konqueror would be brilliant. Nautilus is such a boat anchor. (And if KDE were smart, they'd port Gnumeric to Qt and drop KSpread.)

Re:Tried KDE 3.2? Gnome has a lot of work ahead..

[Anonymous Coward]

All two Low Saxon speaking Linux users will be very grateful.

Or not, usually localized softare is POS and English is way to go.

Re:Gnome - vi

[Anonymous Coward]

learn to recognize humor

For humor to be recognized on .SLASH, please include the humorous part in

<quote alt="Obligatory Futurama Quote"> such tags </quote>

to put the moderation bot in humorous mode.

You're new here.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:You're new here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in 1999, Slashdot was pro-GNOME/anti-KDE.

Back in the day we didn't have as many Windows users raised into thinking that Windows is the ultimate definition of perfection, and that every desktop environment should strive to look and feel *just like Windows* (and yet if an open source program did look Windows-ish or had similar features, they'd bash it to death for "copying Windows").

Re:You're new here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if you really go back in time, slashdot was pro "Enlightenment" (what happened to that?), and pro WindowMaker (taco used to have some dock widgets for download) and anti-anything like a "DE".

Re:You're new here.

[macshit]

Hmmm, I don't find that to be the case at all.

The KDE `fans' on slashdot can be pretty um, vocal about their preference, but in general there seems to be a preference for Gnome/GTK.

Indeed, Gnome's influence seems to be increasing rapidly; to the extent that it matters, KDE's license change appears to have happened a little too late.

[This mirrors what I see in the non-slashdot world, BTW.]

Dropline rocks!

[Lispy]

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.

Understanding the options dilemma

[the-matt-mobile]

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.

Re:Understanding the options dilemma

[10Ghz]

And what will you do in the case, when you want to change some option in GNOME, only to find out that you can't do it? Unless you use GConf, a system with similar UI to Windows Registry? How is that "easier to use"?

GNOME gives you the possibility to change some basic-settings via a GUI. KDE does that as well, and in addition to that, you can also change some advanced settings via GUI as well. But if you want to mess with only the few basic options, you can do that just fine. And once you know where to find those settings in question, it's not actually rocket-science to change them in the future. Just because there are options to change god knows what, does not mean that you are required to go anywhere near those particular options.

I remember when I started using the KDE Control Center. Yes, there are lots of options there. It took me maybe 15 minutes to get a good idea on where to find what. After that, it was not a problem at all. And in most cases, running KPersonaliser is enough to get the basic-settings adjusted to your liking.

You talk about "zillions of buttons" and "clutter". You can trim that clutter out. Don't like the buttons in the toolbar? remove them! Don't like the toolbar at all? Get rid of it!

What people complain about when it comes to KDE is the _default settings_. But few seem to know that those settings can be easily adjusted to your liking (and quite easily too, thanks to those all too often despised configuration-options). By default GNOME has less busy UI than KDE does. But KDE can be toned down just as well. The options in KDE don't prevent you from getting things done AT ALL. I mean, how often do we REALLY tweak the settings? Not very often. True, we might change the wallpaper now and then or something, but it doesn't take a rocket-scientist to do that (even on KDE!).

Re:Understanding the options dilemma

[FooBarWidget]

"And what will you do in the case, when you want to change some option in GNOME, only to find out that you can't do it?"

Think a step further. Why do you want to change it? If you want to change it then there's probably something wrong with the default configuration, or you want to unbreak something. The obvious solution is to either fix the bug, or provide a better default configuration.

And this, my friend, is the GNOME philosophy.
GNOME is not KDE. It has different goals and is targeted towards a different audience. Saying KDE is better than GNOME is like saying apples are better than oranges.

Re:Understanding the options dilemma

[Jameth]

"If you want to change it then there's probably something wrong with the default configuration"

I'd have to say there are actually good odds that you are an INDIVIDUAL. That means things like, you have personal tastes, you don't think identically to the teaming masses, you are in some manner unique.

The problem with GNOME is, it aims for the lowest common denominator. And, guess what, that's only hitting about 40% of the population. I'm not saying KDE is better at the moment. However, in the long run it can be better, because it can hit each of the other 6 groups of 10% of the population, as well as that 40%.

What it needs are a few better defaults, but at least it has the ABILITY to be better, which is what I always find lacking in GNOME. (And don't tell me I needed to look harder. That's not the way it works. If I look hard, and it can't be found, it needs to be easier to do. Once again KDE sucks as well, just marginally less)

Re:Understanding the options dilemma

[10Ghz]

Think a step further. Why do you want to change it?

Duh, because not all people think and behave identically. Desktop that was configurated accodring to your needs and wants might not be suitable for me for example. Some of use lots and lots of virtual desktop, some use just one. Others want their toolbar vertically, others want it horizontally. There is no "correct" way to set things like that up, we all bave personal needs.

If you want to change it then there's probably something wrong with the default configuration, or you want to unbreak something. The obvious solution is to either fix the bug, or provide a better default configuration.

If I want something to look or behave differently does not mean that it's a "bug". There might not be anything wrong with the default configuration as such. It might just be designed by someone who works differently than I do. You can't create an UI that satisfies everyone.

If the toolbar is at the bottom of the screen by default, and I want it at the top of the screen instead, is that a "bug"? Does that mean that the default settings are somehow flawed? How do you suppose that "bug" should be fixed? Should the toolbar be at the top of the screen by default just because I say so? What about all those people who want the toolbar at the bottom of the screen? You can't fix that "bug", what you can do is to make is so that the user can decide for himself.

It is impossible to create a default configuration that would fit each and every user perfectly. So what you can do is either to make the UI tweakable or try to force the users to adapt themselves around the UI, instead of vice-versa. And I don't like that latter option.

And this, my friend, is the GNOME philosophy.

What? Force-feeding certain things since "this is the right way to do it! If you disagree, you must be a moron! What we say is the correct thing to do, IS the correct thing to do!"? OK, I'm exaggarating a bit there ;).

GNOME is not KDE. It has different goals and is targeted towards a different audience. Saying KDE is better than GNOME is like saying apples are better than oranges.

I can understand why some people use GNOME and I didn't say it's worse. I said why it's better for me. And I commented on few things listed as GNOME's strenths, since IMO they aren't really "strenghts", since KDE has them as well.

Re:Understanding the options dilemma

[Anonymous Coward]

> If the toolbar is at the bottom of the screen by default, and I want it at the top of the screen instead, is that a "bug"?

No. That's why there is a possibility to change that :-)

Re:Understanding the options dilemma

[10Ghz]

But according to the reply I got, if I want to change the position of the toolbar it either means that the default configuration is flawed and should be fixed, or there's a bug. So which one is it?

I guess I'm really confused.

[Lobo_Louie]

I'm a KDE guy, but my favorite apps are Galeon, gFTP, Evolution. Can't stand Konquerer & KMail.

Re:I guess I'm really confused.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a KDE guy, but my favorite apps are Galeon, gFTP, Evolution. Can't stand Konquerer & KMail.

There's nothing confused about that. Since you're a KDE guy you'll have used Konquerer and KMail. Having used them it's hardly surprising that you'd hate them. All seems to follow naturally enough to me.

Re:I guess I'm really confused.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Can't stand Konquerer & KMail.

I used to hate them too, until the new 3.2. They are a LOT improved.

I never liked gftp for whatever reasons though. And I liked firebird over galeon.

Re:I guess I'm really confused.

[akc]

I have tried unsuccessfully to find a better mail program than kmail

Things that it does that I haven't found another mail client to do for me

1) allow me to purge old mail messages automatically from a folder after they get to a certain age (essential if you are reading high volume mailing lists)

2) Single key (space bar) navigation down each message, unread messages in folder, over all folders (except trash)

Those two simple things have kept me back from switching from KDE to Gnome.

Re:I guess I'm really confused.

[Baloo Ursidae]

1) allow me to purge old mail messages automatically from a folder after they get to a certain age (essential if you are reading high volume mailing lists)

Mutt will do this with folder-hooks.

2) Single key (space bar) navigation down each message, unread messages in folder, over all folders (except trash)

Mutt will do this easily, just rebind the keys.

Re:I guess I'm really confused.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now tell me that as a young boy you loved to play with dolls, wear pink skirts amd that you still like to wear your hair long and open -- and I know where you come from ....

Re:I guess I'm really confused.

[bogolisk]

GNUS has been able to do that for ages.
My DE is neither Gnome nor KDE, it's Gnu Emacs. When at home I just ssh to my workstation at work and type

gnudoit '(make-frame-on-display "xx.xx.xx.xx:0.0")'

Et voila, my DE appears on my home machine along with: currently edited buffers, tags, mails, news, blog, wiki, rss, diary, calendar, planners...

Re:I guess I'm really confused.

[bogolisk]

I thought I'm a Gnome fan until I realized I only use one gnome app (window manager doesn't count): gnome-terminal

Funny attitude towards lobbyists....

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't GNOME itself founded for political reasons? Isn't it still considered technically inferior to the project it was created to compete/fight against? And doesn't it owe much of its success to Miguel's and Nat's marketing and takeovers? And aren't those GNOME leaders also on the board of a commercial company these days?

"East Asia is our friend. East Asia has always been our friend. Eurasia is the enemy, and always has been"

Re:Funny attitude towards lobbyists....

[FooBarWidget]

"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.

Message from SCO

[Anonymous Coward]

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 ....
We are also in talks with the INS to have Migual arrested on violation of the DMCA. Thank you ...Darth Mcbride

Re:Gnome - vi

[yomegaman]

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.

Re:Gnome - vi

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah because meta-control-s is so easy to type with mittens on. :wq

Re:Gnome - vi

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Emacs is for smart users

[axxackall]

There's no way an experienced Emacs user can beat an experienced vi user in a file editing contest.

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.

yes!

[a_hofmann]

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. ;)

Re:Gnome - vi

[OdinHuntr]

The mp3 player is called 'emms'.

KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE, the K is for Krap!

Re:KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

GNOME, the G is for Grap!

Blashphemor!

[Anonymous Coward]

VI (Thats CAPITOL VI) is far superior to emacs in every way!

Damned treehugging hippies! dont know whats good for you.


--
KHAAAN!

Re:Gnome - vi

[bogolisk]

Well, none of the vi expert I asked can come up with the vi-equivalent of emacs's

query-replace-regexp-eval

command. That's the ultimate command for regexp-based search-n-replace.

Dashboard

[njm]

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.

Never turn your back to a lobbyist--OSAIA

[dcgaber]

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.

Re:Gnome - vi

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you're right - awesome!

The LGPL killing open source

[Axoiv]

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...

Cuff 'em, boys

[Anonymous Coward]

Dirty bastard Windows users need to be locked up!

sorry wrong analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Fleshy, the Gnome mascot

[L10N]

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 about the monkeys?

[Anonymous Coward]

(won't somebody please think of the monkeys?)

It doesn't

[rsilvergun]

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.