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An Interview with Jeff Waugh
An anonymous reader writes "LinuxWorld has published a nice interview with Jeff Waugh, one of the core members of the GNOME community. In the interview Waugh talks about the upcoming GNOME 2.6, his views on software patents and on the involvement of the big vendors in the GNOME development process. Waugh is the current chair of the GNOME release team."
"Well well well, what is he good for?" [Only the aussies here will get this. Nothing on *this* (Jeff) Waugh)]
Here is the unification roadmap:
KDE: ----------X
GNOME: ------------------->
</biased_gnome_user>
But, seriously, it doesnt make sense to talk about unifying them, as they are built around fundamentally different toolkits. ( Qt uses a modified subset of C++, GTK+ uses C as a base but has a nice C++ wrapper)
So they cant really be unified, though they can be made quite compatible.
I'm personally biased towards GNOME, because as a C++ programmer I love the stl, and thus hate Qt and the moc. But that doesnt mean I really think that KDE will die off: Free code is, after all, immortal.
A fundamental API like you're describing would be the 'lowest common denominator' between the two systems. No KIOSlaves for KDE and no Nautilus integration & panel applets on GNOME. Kinda like AWT from old java, and we all know how much that sucked.
A much saner approach is to ensure that the basic stuff is compatible. Window manager hints, preferences etc. Let application authors write with their preferred toolkit, but ensure it doesn't affect users.
Almost all linux users have both toolkits installed anyway. Yes, I realise some KDE users won't have gnome (Gentoo hackophiles etc.) however if they want to use CoolGnomeApp1.0 they'll just install some librarys and they're away.
Cheers Koz
In terms of the technology, we've basically got all of the desktop applications solved. Between OpenOffice.org, GNOME, Mozilla and a number of other projects, the stack of stuff people generally use on the desktop is pretty much there.
:)
Which really makes me wish that GNUCash was in that group. I do everything (word processing, email, spreadsheets, gaming) on Linux inside Gnome except for managing my finances. I keep a windows box with Quicken around for that. GNUCash could replace that for me but probably not before GNUCash-2 which is supposed to be GTK2. I heard they were short on developers and that was stalling progress on that. I guess personal finance doesn't have much of a place on a business desktop and gets less attention. I've been playing around with SQL-Ledger but thats a bit overkill for my needs.
That aside I love Gnome and am looking forward to 2.6 and Epiphany 1.2.
I don't understand how people keep saying that KDE and Gnome don't work together. They're different environments, but all they're parts are pretty darn interchangeable. A while ago, for the heck of it, I replaced gnome-panel in Session prefs with kicker. Worked perfectly. After reading your post, I called kwin --replace to switch from metacity to kde's wm.
... that's for running across OS's, not KDE/Gnome. Besides, Native Widget Framework is due for the next major release AFAIK.
... it uses gtk+ or gtk2, many of which would consider to be (sort of) Gnome. XUL is not a KDE/Gnome issue. Like OO.o, it's another platform issue.
And OO.org
Mozilla
Gnome and KDE don't need to converge. At this point, they're aiming at different markets. KDE is uber-customizable. Gnome is focusing on KISS usability issues. The important backend stuff is already being taken care of via freedesktop.org.
I've recently been introducing my staff at my day job to GNOME since we are moving away from OpenVMS to Unix. Since HP-UX will be coming with GNOME as a default in future releases, I figured it would be good to get the guys used to it by having them use it on a daily basis for basic work stuff. So far they have taken to it pretty well. The most amazing thing is that some of them actually find it EASIER and more FLEXIBLE than Windows. Thank you for a terrific project!
I try to be fu
I certainly agree that fragmentation is a bad thing when it reduces choise. Even Microsoft is starting to use the lack of integration against free desktops in their get the facts campaign. It would be nice if we could prove them wrong.
.freedesktop.org.
Even if Gnome/Gtk and KDE/Qt are very different toolkits, that should not prevent users from having a good user experience even if toolkits are mixed. The tookit choise should be a developer only issue.This is possible in windows and on MacOS so why not on free desktops.
E.g. why must each browser have their own bookmark file format and bookmark file lokation? Both Gnome and KDE use a folder as Trash, why not use the same location for that folder by default?
Both Gnome and KDE have a postit applet for small desktop notes, why not use the same file format and file location.
Why not make it possible to do drag&drop between nautilus and konqueror. After all there is a XDND standard that both KDE and Gnome tries to follow in other applications. And if we drag a file from konqueror to the Trash in Nautilus we should get the expected behavior.
Browsers and some other applications have icons that have similar functions in both Gnome and KDE. E.g. Back and Forward icons for browsers. Why not let the icons have the same name in both Gnome and KDE.
Perhaps all such config options and data that is common to both Gnome and KDE could be held in a separate folder named e.g.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER