UserLinux Will Support KDE

Makes good business sense... by bc90021 · 2004-02-01 04:14 · Score: 4, Interesting

...and I quote:

"I already have a customer asking for Perens LLC to provide commercial support for KDE on the UserLinux platform. And we will do so, even though KDE is not the chosen GUI of the UserLinux project. This is an
option for any UserLinux service provider."

So, in other words, if your customers want it, you should provide it. Makes sense to me. ;)

--
libertarianswag.com

Re:Makes good business sense... by craXORjack · 2004-02-01 04:17 · Score: 5, Funny

And the name of the customer is... ...Trolltech!

--
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
Re:Makes good business sense... by Elektroschock · 2004-02-01 07:39 · Score: 2, Interesting

Why should somebody provide KDE support who hates it. I haven't seen Perens Vaporware yet. UserLinux, this is no product, this was just another initiative. I prefer distribution projects that keep silent and actually help to improve Debian. Such as Skolelinux, a Linux environment for schools that can be used by an idiot as admin.

Forget about the business people, Bruce. They are talking trash. Such as the great supporter IBM that also kindly provides us with software patent law in Europe. -- a real nice friend.

I am intrested in code, not in words!!
Re:Makes good business sense... by TrentC · 2004-02-01 08:25 · Score: 3, Informative

I haven't seen Perens Vaporware yet.

You're not looking very hard if you can't find the installation instructions using Debian unstable as a base (once a couple of needed dependancies filter down into testing, that will be the minimum required).

True, there is no install CD yet, but that's because UserLinux is going to use the new Debian installer for sarge.

Jay (=

Choice is good... by _Pinky_ · 2004-02-01 04:20 · Score: 5, Interesting

Thats the one driving force, even above open source, that I think pulls people to GNU/Linux...

I mean people clammer about window manager themes almost as much as the window managers themselves...

Think of the solitary driving force, it's choice... Even as far to the point where if you don't like a certain aspect of a piece of software you can look at the source and change it...

So, to exclude any piece of software would, at heart, be hypocritical, given the open source method.

Just my two cents as a staunch Gnome user...

Re:Choice is good... by _|()|\| · 2004-02-01 05:06 · Score: 2, Insightful

to exclude any piece of software would, at heart, be hypocritical
It should not be the responsibility of the distro to package every piece of software a user could conceivably want. In fact, the more software a distro includes, the less confident I am that they can maintain it properly.
While a distro should include the libraries necessary to run KDE, GNOME, and Motif applications, it's fine for it to standardize on one desktop environment / window manager. After all, one aspect of choice is choosing a distro in the first place.

Perens LLC, not UserLinux by valkadesh · 2004-02-01 04:25 · Score: 4, Informative

What Perens is saying is that is own consulting company will offer support for KDE as a service provider. Gnome is still the only chosen GUI for UserLinux.

Re:Perens LLC, not UserLinux by yanestra · 2004-02-01 04:37 · Score: 3, Funny

What Perens is saying is that is own consulting company will offer support for KDE as a service provider. Gnome is still the only chosen GUI for UserLinux.
Uncool.
More people like you and /. will cease to exist.
Stop spoiling /. discussions with unnecessary realism or old-fashioned think patterns like truth and false.
Re:Perens LLC, not UserLinux by Anonymous Coward · 2004-02-01 04:51 · Score: 4, Insightful

> KDE is at least as good as Gnome

KDE is technically not AS GOOD as GNOME, no it's far supperior over GNOME in many ways. Something usually developers can talk about since they offer the technical skills to do so.

The normal people usually bash about what they prefer to use rather than giving good constructive feedback.

> So why are only a select few distro's using it as the default WM?

First of all, neither KDE nor GNOME are Window Managers, they are Desktop Environments. A complete different thing but important word to say. People usually talk about GNOME and KDE but don't even know the difference about WM's and DE's and thus it makes me wonder why they talk at all.

Actually KDE is being used in a wide range of distributions and the amount of distros using KDE as default Desktop Environment is far higher than you want to make us believe here.

Please first learn the difference between WM and DE and then come back talking and judging about KDE.
Re:Perens LLC, not UserLinux by manyoso · 2004-02-01 04:55 · Score: 5, Interesting

... which completely breaks Bruce's latest rationale for excluding KDE in the first place:

"it's just too hard to support both..."

also throws some cold water on the other ridiculous rationales he uses from time to time, depending upon if the mood suits him:

"Qt can't support a coveted cottage industry of proprietary developers..."

yah, well, except for the current 'cottage industry' that overwhelmingly has chosen Qt for commercial development...

so Bruce's is left with one rationale for his decision to exclude KDE from the default of UL:

"I've already made the choice ... inertia"
Re:Perens LLC, not UserLinux by 10Ghz · 2004-02-01 04:56 · Score: 3, Insightful

Well, there's SUSE, Mandrake, Lindows, Xandros, Lycoris, Conectiva and several others that use KDE as their default. Distros that use GNOME as default are Red Hat/Fedora and UserLinux (are there others?). Rest are desktop-agnostic.

So it would seem that there are more distros useing KDE as default than there are distros using GNOME as default.

--
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Re:Perens LLC, not UserLinux by 10Ghz · 2004-02-01 05:10 · Score: 2, Insightful

Conectiva is the leading distro in Brazil and I beliave in entire South-America. Lindows and the others are propably not in the same target-market you happen to be in (same can be said for Conectiva).

Just because YOU don't happen to know anyone who uses those distros, doesn't mean that they are not used. Hell, I don't know anyone who uses Red Hat, so I guess Red Hat is not videly used, eh?

--
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Re:Perens LLC, not UserLinux by Anonymous Coward · 2004-02-01 05:41 · Score: 2, Interesting

> The point actually seems to be that you're annoyed when they do talk about the things that matter to them.

Actually no. I am not annoyed with that. I am annoyed with people who don't know anything but try to talk and convince others by bringing up a lot of nonsense.

Say stuff like this:

- GNOME is LGPL, KDE uses a propritary QT license.

This thing has been chewed over and over so even the last and most retarded person living in a dark cave should have understood it by now.

- GNOME is better integrated and has nicer ICONS.

While we all know that there is NO integration at all in GNOME because their framework doesn't offer full integration. Everything stands on it's own and a lot of stuff is re-invention from scratch. By the way I do come from the GNOME world and developed quite some stuff on and with it. I am only sick about the nonsense people spread. While I do favorite GNOME myself I on the otherhand don't fool myself with lies or bullshit by assuming that GNOME is so what supperior while I do know from technical standpoints that it lacks behind KDE in many many ways.

- Nautilus is faster than Konqueror. ... and a hell less usable or stable or reliable. A lot of problems with Nautilus like permanently crashing in bad situations and then respawning, No flexibility like Konqueror and not even using KParts like system. Not to mention that gnome-vfs is hell of broken (technically) and that it requires 20 developers just to work on gnome-vfs and another 20 developers to just work on Nautilus.

Not to mention all the problems around GNOME like not having a unified bookmarks solution, no objects (e.g. there was a bounty to change the Panel Calendar in GNOME, now the Calendar in Panel has a hack that looks into Evolution database for schedules and stuff like that) but the object Calendar hasn't been changed so other apps won't benefit from it.

Stuff like this and these are just a part from the entire mountain of other problems that is easy to discover. Yet people claim that GNOME and KDE are closeup but reality is that they are NOT close up, maybe from looks with fancy icons but not technically. KDE is improving in huge and large steps while GNOME is sticking around in tiny things but no real progress.
Re:Perens LLC, not UserLinux by jrexilius · 2004-02-01 05:48 · Score: 4, Informative

I dont think the support is overwhelming and I I think Perens discussed the issues earlier surounding this debate. He is a level-headed guy and laid out good reasons why he was opting for one particular desktop.

The two key points are that 1) there is the licensing issue with Qt and 2) the desire to simplify end-user configurations that need to be supported by vendors and service providers.

The second point, in my opinion, is the more important of the two. UserLinux is just another distro for a specific purpose and shaping it to suit that purpose is effectively is Perens job.

If you want KDE on a desktop distro get suse or lindows. He is not eliminating choice just by customizing a distro for a specific purpose.
Re:Perens LLC, not UserLinux by HiThere · 2004-02-01 06:05 · Score: 2, Insightful

True, all true, but...

I don't understand the super-simplification that is being done with the more recent Gnome editions. Now I don't pay close attention to implementations, so this is understandable, but in an earlier version there were lots of choices where now there aren't any. One can easily argue that there were too many choices before, but the current approach is much too far the other way. I think this is a Window Manager issue, and I understand that it's still possible to replace MetaCity with SawMill/Fish. But it's easier for me to switch to KDE. (Well, I have both installed anyway, and occasionally use both. But KDE has come to predominate, where that isn't what I would have predicted a year and a half ago.)

Licensing issues are important, and I can understand why companies that develop commercial software would prefer the Gnome libraries. It offers the promise of cross-platform development without the payment of license fees. But as an end-user (and one who intends his software to be GPL) that's not too significant. More significant is that more alternates find it easy to link with C code than with C++ code. Yes, it OUGHT to be significant. But it isn't. I doubt that I'll have significant penetration on Linux, and I sure don't want to try to support MSWind. (OTOH, the preference for a C linkage style is also an argument in favor of the Gnome libraries. So I didn't need to consider the other factors.)

As an end-user, however, I prefer the KDE desktop by a sizeable margin. (OTOH, this is not an insurmountable margin. But since most distros are roughly equal, pluses and minuses tending to cancel out, lack of KDE would be a sizeable enough block that I probably wouldn't even look seriously at it.)

--

I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Re:Perens LLC, not UserLinux by Narcissus · 2004-02-01 07:14 · Score: 2, Interesting

OK, so I guess I was wrong on that. I've tried to do a bit more research, and you're right in that I'm wrong, but I still don't agree with what you're saying.
So I can't find a link to the original announcement, but according to this link, I see no mention of his support company. Yes, I know he was talking about LLC in this last message, but I'm talking about at the start.
Firstly, (in the link) there is no real mention of a difficulty in supporting Qt. The difficulty and *expense* lies in supporting two frameworks, and that difficulty and expense is in reference to any support provider, not Perens' in particular: "For developers and support staff, maintaining expertise in both of two GUIs is an expensive proposition" and "The difference between one and two GUIs may spell profitability or bankruptcy for some of our service providers".
So, still, no preference for GNOME/GTK over KDE/Qt. The decision at this point is that, to reduce economic strains for any support provider, UserLinux will only have one GUI.
The decision then has to come down to something else, and that decision was made on licensing: Qt is GPL, GTK is LGPL. The LGPL is better for commercial users of UserLinux. As "in order to get any Free Software into businesses, our Free system must promote the creation of a large collection of proprietary solutions that do not exist today" it's better in *this* instance to pick the LGPL library. Hence, we make a defacto decision to use GNOME.
Now, in reference to "keeping up with the distro". I look at Mandrake, and see that KDE has been "tweaked" for Mandrake. I assume GNOME is the same. Red Hat, the same. I guess most (if not all) distros don't just take the default desktop and ship with that. They value add, either through extra components, through themes, through different menus, whatever. UL's GNOME support being just one meta-package is to be expected: UserLinux doesn't really exist yet! However, when it does, you can be sure that it'll be tweaked, with a little extra config app over here, and pretty buttons over there.
From what I can remember, when RedHat started using their BlueCurve themes (I think that's the name), of the few positive comments about it most of them were along the lines of "well, you gotta hand it to them: its not easy to get KDE and GNOME to have such similar and consistent themes". That's what I mean when I say keeping up with the distro: apparently theming and everything else is difficult to keep consistent across desktop environments, and any time changes are made to the "distribution" (as in from a top level "marketing" point of view) those changes will now only need to be reflected in one desktop environment.
Finally, fair enough: the KDE developers providing the effort "required" answers the problem that I just discussed, but would they also provide all of the support that the customer facing support providers could not? No, and again we come back to supporting the GUIs at a user level, and attempting to reduce the cost of running *any* support company.

Re:Simple business decision. Why is this news ? by kfg · 2004-02-01 04:28 · Score: 5, Funny

Slow news day perhaps...

Well yeah. SCO's down.

KFG

Nothing new here by TrentC · 2004-02-01 04:33 · Score: 4, Informative

This is just a rehash of what Bruce Perens has been saying all along; even though UserLinux's standard GUI desktop environment will be GNOME, KDE will still work on it, and will be supported on demand for customers who want it.

I already have a customer asking for Perens LLC to provide commercial support for KDE on the UserLinux platform. [emphasis mine] And we will do so, even though KDE is not the chosen GUI of the UserLinux project. This is an option for any UserLinux service provider.

So really, nothing has changed.

Jay (=

Re:Nothing new here by StormReaver · 2004-02-01 04:44 · Score: 4, Insightful

"So really, nothing has changed."

Something has changed. This customer will not have to go out of his way to get Qt/KDE onto his systems, as Perens LLC will make sure that they are preloaded.

We all should be painfully aware of the power of preloads vs. the weakness of non-preloads. All desktop systems should be have both GNOME and KDE preloaded and ready, as neither desktop has a lock on desirable applications, and both desktops have higly useful applications.

The only predictable result of not doing so is a large segment of somewhat pissed users who will claim that Linux is hard because it makes users work too hard to get the basic libraries in place for the applications they want to run.
Re:Nothing new here by LarryRiedel · 2004-02-01 05:29 · Score: 2, Informative

"So really, nothing has changed."
Something has changed. This customer will not have to go out of his way to get Qt/KDE onto his systems, as Perens LLC will make sure that they are preloaded.

I do not see anything in the referenced message which states, implies, or even remotely suggests that Perens LLC will make sure that Qt or KDE is preloaded anywhere. Where did he say that?

Larry
Re:Nothing new here by TrentC · 2004-02-01 05:35 · Score: 5, Informative

You seem to be confusing "Bruce Perens notes that he has a customer who wants a UserLinux system with KDE, which he will provide" with "UserLinux will offer both GNOME by default and KDE as an option".

This is not a change for the UserLinux project. GNOME is still the only officially supported desktop environment for the project, and Perens has said all along that providers using UserLinux can customize the distro however their customers want.

Jay (=

The article has confused wording by mjrauhal · 2004-02-01 04:34 · Score: 5, Informative

This is not about UserLinux including KDE
or supporting it. This is about Perens LLC offering
support for UserLinux with KDE added on for paying
customers. Perens has always maintained
that this is an option for any support provider,
as any support provider may offer support for,
say, UserLinux with MySQL added on.

This also means that a service provider supporting UserLinux
does not have to support KDE (or MySQL for that
matter) to live up to their advertising.

Re:Perens LLC by _Pinky_ · 2004-02-01 04:34 · Score: 5, Informative

I'm just guessing all this animosity toward Bruce is done without the recollection of how much he has given back to the opensource community...

He co-founded the Open Source Initiative with ESR..
He was a primary author of the Debian Social Contract..
He helped introduce Linux into the main stream corporate world by being a Linux proponent at HP.
He stood his ground, touting Linux over Microsoft, with disregard toward his employment with HP...
He routinely has showed up any SCO claims...
He often posts here on slashdot!
And, my favorite, he authored ElectricFence, which many of us have used...

And there are probably many, MANY other contributions he has given which I have overlooked..

So please, do give some consideration toward what he has done for all of the Linux community...

Reality 1. Bruce 0. by manyoso · 2004-02-01 04:47 · Score: 2, Insightful

... because that's what his customers are asking for.

It was stupid not to in the first place.

Bruce's decisions about UL and the exclusion of anything Qt has undergone numerous transformations. First, it was because Qt couldn't produce a 'cottage industry' of commercial support. When this was pointed out to be demonstrably false, Bruce retreated into the, 'but Qt isn't free' argument... knowingly choosing to obfuscate the old 'Free (libre) VS free (gratis) canard of the community. When Free Software developers called him on this reprehensible tactic, Bruce retreated into the, 'but we just can't possibly support everything' argument.

Now, Bruce is learning from real commercial companies that KDE/Qt support is mandatory and he's having to distance himself from the craving anti-Qt trolls on his own list. The sad thing? Bruce missed a valuable opportunity to really work with KDE developers and the broader community by choosing instead to cater to his own bias and that of his sympathetic community of anti-Qt trolls. Now, he has lost a lot of his credibility in the eyes of many.

Re:Reality 1. Bruce 0. by Pentagram · 2004-02-01 05:15 · Score: 4, Insightful

So he's listened to his critics, considered the arguments, changed his mind to come around to your point of view and you're flaming him anyway? That's not exactly the best way to gain future converts.
Re:Reality 1. Bruce 0. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-02-01 05:49 · Score: 2, Interesting

Ahhh..but that's the point. He has never listened to people about KDE and his pet project.

However, now a customer has asked for it, he is willing to consider it.

It is always useful to look at peoples actions to understand their attitudes.

Bruce's prejudice towards KDE does not bode well for future co-operation with KDE users/developers.
Re:Reality 1. Bruce 0. by Axoiv · 2004-02-01 06:38 · Score: 2, Insightful

But it gives a hint to what kind of guy this Bruce really is...
Re:Reality 1. Bruce 0. by manyoso · 2004-02-01 06:46 · Score: 2, Insightful

If pointing out the facts about Bruce's ill-considered choice to exclude KDE is 'flaming'... and Bruce has come around as a result of bumping head first into reality, not as a result of listening to a critique of his erroneous reasoning and then abandoning that reasoning.

Commercial Customers.. by vpscolo · 2004-02-01 04:48 · Score: 2, Insightful

..wants something that works and is supported. As both KDE and Gnome are supported thats a good thing

Rus

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kettle calling pot black by iksrazal_br · 2004-02-01 04:53 · Score: 3, Insightful

I'm confused. Perens prefers not to include KDE because they have a lgpl strategy to make money, yet userlinux will charge money to include it. WTF?

Ignore KDE and I ignore userlinux, its that simple.

Which will be news... by fm6 · 2004-02-01 04:57 · Score: 2, Insightful

...if UserLinux is ever more than VaporWare.

Look. by IANAAC · 2004-02-01 05:02 · Score: 2, Insightful

He said he has a customer asking for KDE. That's hardly clamoring for KDE/Qt (and not at all what he said).

That said, I believe that both should be offered from the get-go.

That's uncalled for by The+Tyro · 2004-02-01 05:06 · Score: 3, Interesting

Perens has given a good deal of his time and energy to the open source community... and as another poster already mentioned, is a frequent /. contributor.

Not to mention (near and dear to my heart) the fact that he's an active HAM radio guy.

Ah well, it wouldn't be /. without ACs taking potshots at everyone...

--
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.

To many toolkits! by BillyBlaze · 2004-02-01 05:07 · Score: 5, Interesting

UserLinux is showing us that it's not yet possible to make a Linux distro with fewer than two GUI toolkits. Actually more, when you figure in FLTK, Motif, XAW, XUL, FOX and so on. This wastes disk space, memory, and developer time, and the end result is an inconsistent GUI with no single place to change the look-n-feel.

I think what Linux on the Desktop needs is something just like X, but with server-side widget-drawing and window management code. The client-server design is what makes X great, and should be kept. But with a default widget set, there'd be one place to change fonts, window decorations, colors, etc. And there'd be less repetition.

It wouldn't be inflexible. A good X replacemnt would have an X-server client so that X programs could run as part of it. So it would still be easy to use your own toolkit if you really wanted to. And the server would have a plugin system to allow a wide range of widget and window styles.

At the moment, I run KDE. I suppose X's architecture is better than Windows's putting everything in kernel-space, but it still pains me. I can't wait until I can easily run something like PicoGUI or Fresco on my desktop.

Re:To many toolkits! by be-fan · 2004-02-01 07:19 · Score: 2

Um, you're completely wrong. What significant apps really use FLTK, Motif, XAW, etc? You can even avoid XUL if you use a program like Epiphany. For most practical purposes, GTK+ and Qt are the only toolkits that matter, especially now that OpenOffice is being ported to native toolkits.

Oh, and note, the situation isn't any worse than on Windows. Its almost impossible to stick with a single toolkit in Windows, because the major Microsoft apps (Internet Explorer, MS Office, Visual Studio) all use different toolkits!

The key to fixing things is not to standardize on a single toolkit, but to have a central configuration repository for stuff like fonts, window, etc.

--
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...

Re:Perens LLC by iksrazal_br · 2004-02-01 05:12 · Score: 2, Interesting

Suse has made clear they plan on staying with kde at least for the "mid term" . My guess they are more interested in mono then gnome.

Can't believe the outrage by GauteL · 2004-02-01 05:23 · Score: 4, Insightful

There are several KDE-only distributions around (Xandros, Lycoris, Lindows), yet no GNOMErs seem to care all that much.

The minute someone tries to create a GNOME-only desktop system, like UserLinux, a flock of people (slashbots) go mental about it. What is the point? There is plenty of room for an integrated GNOME-only desktop.

Choice is good people say, but including both desktop-systems make integration issues a lot more difficult, and resources could be better spent elsewhere.

Plus if choice is good, then having the choice of a GNOME-only desktop is good. Include KDElibs and Qt, and people can still run their KDE-apps.

Re:Can't believe the outrage by morgajel · 2004-02-01 07:15 · Score: 3, Interesting

the big deal is that this is supposed to be a unifying representative of the linux community- a professional and polished face to show the world.

it's not very representational if they don't at lease offer the choice one of the most widely used desktop environments.

I personally think it will be much more likely to be adopted if KDE is included. I base this off of a personal test I performed. when I switched my wife from windows to linux, I let her try several different DE's to see if she could find one she liked. she ended up choosing KDE because it was the most intuitive for a former windows user. This isn't to say that KDE isn't without it's flaws- far from it. it has lots of little problems that irritate the hell out of me.

It all comes down to what their main goal is- if they're trying to steal windows marketshare, they need to (sad to say it) emulate windows as much as possible. I'd bet, given the *choice* between kde and gnome, you're average geek might choose gnome... this this isn't about the average geek. it's a out secretaries and librarians, sales reps and architects. Try explaining "middle click" on a 2 button mouse to your grandfather- I had a hard enough time getting people to learn what "right-click" meant. They're gonna choose the path of lease resistance, and if kde is an *OPTION*, they may choose it simply because it looks and feels more like windows

As you said, Choice is good. But I think "Choice of a ______-only" anything is not a very good choice and will hence go the way of the dodo. It's sorta like getting spending $300 on an Ipod that could only play RealAudio files. userlinux needs every advantage they can get to compete with redhat, windows, and every other distro out there. I think kde *support* would be a great help. I'm not saying to make it the default, just keep include it.

The reason they'd not be including KDE is because of it's use of QT, so I doubt they'll be including QT, meaning kde-based apps won't run. This pretty much destroys your last comments chance of ever happening

This whole thing is a convoluted mess and I'll be the first to admit I don't fully understand WTF is going on. I am curious what the chances are of bruce being able to talk trolltech into releasing an lgpl license of QT, but I get the feeling it's very unlikely.

I'm all for learning so if anyone can help us understand the whole issue, let us know. That being said, back to my gnome workstation.

--
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Re:Can't believe the outrage by be-fan · 2004-02-01 07:21 · Score: 2

Those distros all offer GNOME libs. UserLinux will not offer kdelibs and Qt at all, and that's the problem!

--
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Re:Can't believe the outrage by twener · 2004-02-01 08:23 · Score: 2

> Include KDElibs and Qt, and people can still run their KDE-apps.

And this is prevented by Bruce. Look forward to huge applications coming with static Qt library each.

Debian by magellanic · 2004-02-01 05:36 · Score: 2, Insightful

Different Linux distributions exist because they are designed for a different purpose. Trying to augment various, unique features of these well established distributions will inevitably reduce user choice. Surely, creating a standardized, "super-distro" is contrary to open-source philosophy.

If there is an attempt to create such a distribution, it should at least have a firm base. Support for new hardware is one of the factors preventing Windows users migrating to Linux, such a project should not use a distribution as outdated as Debian.

KDE should be developed into an enterprise desktop by StressGuy · 2004-02-01 05:43 · Score: 3, Interesting

I finally had the chance to compare Gnome (2.4) and KDE (3.1.4) head-to-head. While there are things I like about Gnome, I came away feeling that KDE was the better desktop overall. Specifically:
.
While I prefer Mozilla as my browser, Konqueror is a good compliment to it as it will render Microsoft specific pages better than Mozilla. Galeon and Epiphany render the same as Mozilla.
.
I need to get to my office files via FTP and KDE is not only more intuitive, but I can't even get Nautilus to get to all my files because of the non-standard set up of the server.
.
.
Don't get me wrong, I think Gnome is good and I can even see some people prefering it. In fact, there are some things about Nautilus that I really like. However, KDE better suits my needs right now.

--
A goal is a dream with a deadline

A bit sad by unoengborg · 2004-02-01 05:51 · Score: 2, Interesting

Not becasuse I don't like KDE, I really do.
But it's sad to see that they couldn't focus on what I assume they liked the best.

Now we probably end up with another KDE support fiasco a la Red Hat. It would be much better if people who liked and was good at KDE created pure KDE distros and people who prefered Gnome did Gnome distros.

It's usually better to download and complie KDE yourself on a Gnome oreinted distro ( I guess the same is true for Gnome on KDE oriented distros)

--
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER

And KDE 3.2 is out on Monday by akc · 2004-02-01 05:57 · Score: 3, Interesting

You will find even more to like when 3.2 is out on Monday. I am running a pre-release here, and it is faster, Konqueror seems less dodgy on rendering sites, and there are a range of new facilities,

I don't see any change in his position. by khasim · 2004-02-01 06:19 · Score: 3, Insightful

His COMPANY is willing to provide KDE on UL for a PAYING CUSTOMER.

He is NOT saying that KDE will be included with UL.

He never said that KDE could NOT support a "cottege industry". What he had said was that he wanted to give anyone setting up a "cottege industry" the option to do so without having to pay any license fees to anyone.

He never said that QT wasn't free. He said that, in this instance, he wanted the LGPL instead of the GPL. Again, this is for his "cottege industry".

He has still NOT changed his choice to limit the software included in UL. He still isn't including KDE, but his company will add it on FOR A PRICE.

Hey, if you don't like UL, then don't use it. If it was based on poor choices, then it will fail.

For my part, seeing that Bruce ALREADY has a PAYING CUSTOMER lined up for his company, it seems he has made the correct choice. Bruce will have credibility amongst the people who use UL. I'm sure he doesn't lose any sleep over what other people think.

QT license issues by solprovider · 2004-02-01 06:19 · Score: 3, Interesting

Nobody summarized them this time, so...

Gnome uses GTK+ which is LGPL. Both FSS and proprietary software writers can use it without paying anybody.

KDE uses QT which is dual-licensed GPL and "pay us if you sell an application":
- FSS developers MUST release their software as GPL.
- Proprietary developers MUST pay.

As a software developer, you are better with Gnome or Microsoft than with QT. If all you release is GPL, then it does not matter. If all you ever want to use is GPL, then it does not matter. But if you want to see Adobe Photoshop on Linux, expect your stupid QT license issues to matter, because Photoshop will not be sold with QT.

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I spent the last week switching between Gnome (RedHat) and KDE (Slackware and a little SuSE) about hourly. I like KDE slightly better AS A USER, but I would not write commercial software for it.

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I spend my life entertaining my brain.

Re:QT license issues by tackat · 2004-02-01 06:53 · Score: 5, Informative

> As a software developer, you are better
> with Gnome or Microsoft than with QT.

This would be correct if the cost of the Qt license would actually matter compared to the benefits you get by actually using Qt.

In reality the licensing costs for Qt are being weight out by the advantages that you get when using Qt and amortize within less than a month.

Just guess why companies like Adobe, Ati, Boeing, BP, Daimler Chrysler, Disney, Fujitsu, General Electric, Hitachi, Honda, HP, IBM, Intel, Motorola, NASA, NEC, Samsung, Sharp, Shell, Siemens, Sony, Toshiba, Toyota are actually using Qt already for their products.

> But if you want to see Adobe Photoshop on Linux, ... you are wrong concerning this as well.
Adobe already _does_ use Qt for their Adobe PhotoAlbum and there are rumors that they will use it for their other software as well.

Tackat

Re:Ho hum by Trejkaz · 2004-02-01 10:41 · Score: 2, Interesting

Damn right. All distributions should be based on Gentoo, precompiled to binaries if necessary and packaged as LiveCDs. Then we could focus on getting every package correctly integrated with every appropriate package, and since every distro would be based on the same meta-distro we would be saving a lot of time not having to reinvent the wheel.

(... calmly waits to get thwapped.)

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Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!

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