KDE And Gnome Together At Last?

HangingChad writes "eWeek is reporting about Novell's plan to combine elements of both into a unified desktop. Apparently the work has already started. Chris Schlager, vice president of research and development for SUSE, thinks the differences between KDE and Gnome developers have been overstated. Apparently he's not a regular /. reader."

Comments

Gnome and KDE?

[nick-less]

Whats next? Cats sleeping with dogs?

Re:Gnome and KDE?

[iminplaya]

Or apples growing on an orange tree?

Re:Gnome and KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

Venkman: This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
Mayor: What do you mean, biblical?
Ray: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor... real Wrath-of-God-type stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies.
Venkman: Rivers and seas boiling!
Egon: 40 years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanos.
Winston:The dead rising from the grave!
Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats, living together... mass hysteria!

Re:Gnome and KDE?

[Alan Cox]

I seem to remember that being done for Red Hat 8, making them fit together isnt that hard now days, and all the joint work KDE and GNOME people have been doing at freedesktop.org on common specifications helps even more.

Its the peanut gallery who seem wedded to the 'gnome v kde war'

Re:Gnome and KDE?

[Tandoori Haggis]

Re "cats sleeping with dogs"

Seriously,there was a song about that already. "Can your pussy do the dog?"

Re:Gnome and KDE?

[jokell82]

"Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!" /Ghostbusters

Re:Gnome and KDE?

[gorre]

RH just used themes to make them look similar. The integration was no more than skin deep.

Re:Gnome and KDE?

[Cliffy03]

Well if it is going to be that easy, I say do it. If I can do the things in Gnome that I prefer to do from KDE, or vice versa, I like it.

Now don't ask me to give a technical answer for why, I for some reason prefer Gnome for admin stuff but like KDE for playing. Both desktops are an acheivement, they can only get better, and what a way to get better.

Re:Gnome and KDE?

[BigDuke]

The image that comes to my mind is the Cat-Mouse antidote machine from Dune that the Baron gives to Foofer (sp?) which he must milk every day to survive.

Re:Gnome and KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

awesome, i just got dissed by the real AC. bitchin dude.

Re:Gnome and KDE?

[Ilan Volow]

Two different toolkits will always have some differences in user-interaction. They will have lots of little different things that are done in little different ways resuling in little different behaviors, ultimately adding up into one big inconsistent and problematic user experience when combined. No matter how much effort it is made to smooth over the differences, some inconsistency will leak through. It was dumb mistake to have two different toolkits in the first place, and is an even dumber mistake for the same people who had committed the first mistake (and defended it for years) to try to merge the two environments when they realized the first mistake had bitten them in the ass (after years of HCI people on the fringes of the FLOSS community telling them that this is exactly what would happen).

If Red Hat had really wanted to solve this problem, they wouldn't have created the BlueCurve theme; if they had really wanted to solve this problem they would have used some of the $700,000,000 they had spent on buying a compiler company and several dot-coms and spent it buying out Trolltech and making Qt the Linux UI standard whose license everyone could agree with.

It's the kernel hackers and like minded systems people/unix geeks who are absolutely clueless about interface design who seem to think you can simply cobble together to different environments, make all the icons look the same, and not have any problems. Unfortunately, these are the people who have the coding skill, and thus, all the decisions about how the UI design of linux will progress.

Current Linux UI's are designed by programmers. And it shows.

Re:Gnome and KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

where do you think dats and cogs come from :P

Re:Gnome and KDE?

[kernelfoobar]

Who you gonna call?

Gnomebusters!

Actually, I prefer Gnome myself, KDE is too MS Windows-like. But combining KDE and Gnome, isn't what RedHat's Bluecurve is all about?
note: IDRTFA

Re:Gnome and KDE?

[toddler99]

wish i had the picture of my 90 pound yellow lab sleeping next to our old 20 pound cat online :)

Re:Gnome and KDE?

[codemachine]

How many different interfaces to win32 are there right now? And how many tookits on the Mac? I seem to remember that there are many, but that there is some integration work there that keeps the system somewhat consistent.

There is no reason why you can't have a single Linux desktop with multiple methods to program for it. Those who like C and GTK can use that, those who like C++ and QT use it, and those who like Java can use Java (and Python already interfaces well with all of these languages and toolkits). The KDE desktop already has a fair bit of integration code in place that allows GTK developers to build native KDE applications. The GNOME people could do the same for KDE/QT, and Sun could create integration for both toolkits in their 3D desktop.

All we need is for it to be as seemless as ObjectiveC/Cocoa, C++/Carbon, and Java/Swing are on Mac OS X (although Java with Swing on the Mac JVM is just a fairly good skin, you do have the option to do Java/Cocoa too).

Re:Gnome and KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I think that for a full Intigration that KDE would have to be re done with a C++ widget library based on GTK like WxWidgets perhaps. If that happened then both C and C++ programmers would be using GTK based widgets. Right now the two different desktops are using two entirely different widget sets with two entirely different licensing arrangements. (GPL/proprietary for QT in KDE and LGPL for GTK in GNOME). Don't think that will work.

Re:Gnome and KDE?

[checkup21]

regarding litestep on win32 and several other shell replacements, they give a damn about consistency.

The leading question is the one about the toolkit to use. They path you described that has been followed on on the macosx platform, is only caused by the omnipresence of cocoa, nothing else. Why not interface to it !? And now ? Cocoa is nowhere available besides macosx, developers get in the same situation they come by following mfc !

So todays question is in fact "gtk, or qt".
And the answer is simple : gtk didn't succeed.

It made it hard for the developers, it didn't force the devs to follow the most basic UI demands
and it's by far not at the level of integration as qt/kde gets.

I assume the whole discussion about "desktop unification" is driven by managers seeing SuSe and RedHat and stating "why not unifiy them ?".

The question itself shows that there has been no understanding of the materia.

The to me best way to face the future is to give the gtk People easy interfaces to get to the lookandfeel of qt. This helps us, the users, and the business. The question who has won is answered by the appearance of kde3.2 and gnome2.6. It hardly shows that the way gnome has to go to reach kde is in fact too long.

I even would say that we should take care of getting gnome out of all mainstream distris because it slows down linux penetration on th desktop. Let's focus all on kde.

Re:Gnome and KDE?

[trezor]

• Well if it is going to be that easy, I say do it.

What? A serious and optimistic post? I obviously missed slashdot somewhere around the corner. I thought this were going to be a flamewar of bilical prpotions...

C'mon! Gnome and KDE? Together? What should all those zealots who have arisen from the "Windows vs. Linux" level troll about then?

Re:Gnome and KDE?

[smittyoneeach]

Or Apple emerge-ing the KDE and Gnome trees?

Re:Gnome and KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or Microsoft acknowledging Apples superiority and abandoning the PC?

Re:Gnome and KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

But if I'm wrong I'll go to jail, happily...

But if you had just held a single high level cabinet meeting, think about it... Duyba, you could have saved the lives of thousands political donors.

Re:Gnome and KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think MS would disagree that the two companies target different market segments.
'superiority' is a real iceberg tip, though; you've got to quantify what you're about there...

Re:Gnome and KDE?

[Directrix1]

Obviously, if they would just work with each other to create standard modularization points for different components of the system. And if they would just use standardized locations and types for shortcuts and other common things, this wouldn't even be a problem. It would be a feature. If the system was properly componentized then we would all win. I think the two projects need to merge, but the ability to select which feature from which one you want should be included. Or better yet, have a generic component interface defined for every feature and have whatever program fits the bill, fill the need.

Re:Gnome and KDE?

[juhaz]

As if Gnome project would just shut down and went home if Qt licence would change.

There are probably quite a some people out there who like the GTK not only because of licence. RedHat being one of companies most focused on that directions. Why, of course they should've made an U-turn and waste everything they've done on that front because YOU think Qt is better.

If you want to bitch about someone not buying off Trolltech, blame SuSE, or Mandrake, they're the Qt houses.

Sorry, but wake up, there will NEVER, EVER be just one toolkit that "everyone can agree with".

Re:Gnome and KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can pry my Gnome desktop from my cold, dead hands.

Fucking KDE morons always think they own the whole world, or even that they ARE ahead in something (other than idiotism, of course. THAT is one area they REALLY excel at, you being a perfect example).

Re:Gnome and KDE?

[cbreaker]

Yea, you're right, but it also made installing non-Redhat RPM's or tarballs very difficult. They switched around how their version of KDE saves configuration, plugin, theme, etc stuff. Installing anything took modification.

I am not saying that I don't like the psuedo integration aspect, but I'd rather just pick Gnome OR KDE for a particular workstation instead of being able to hop between the two.

Re:Gnome and KDE?

[Frizzle Fry]

What should all those zealots who have arisen from the "Windows vs. Linux" level troll about then?

I guess they'll just have to make the leap from directly from Windows vs. Linux to vi vs. emacs.

Apparently he's not a regular /. reader.

[GMFTatsujin]

Maybe he browses at +5. :)

Re:Apparently he's not a regular /. reader.

[Quadfreak0]

think he would have replied by now if he was a reader?

Re:Apparently he's not a regular /. reader.

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I could browse and only see the -1, +4 and +5 posts. That would be a good feature.

Re:Apparently he's not a regular /. reader.

[GMFTatsujin]

Yay! Now he'll see my post!

Re:Apparently he's not a regular /. reader.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pff... this is a PR press release. He makes it quite clear that they cannot be combined technically. He's talking about the same kind of "togetherness" that Red Hat did... making the joins less obvious. This is a sop to keep KDE fanatics quiet -- they've been screaming like banshees as it has become obvious their desktop is dead in the water as far as business are concerned.

Novell's future business desktop is GNOME based. So is Sun's, and so is IBM's.

Re:Apparently he's not a regular /. reader.

[lavalyn]

Well I suppose you could go (if you were a registered user)

Threshold +4
Flamebait +5
Offtopic +5
Troll +5

Re:Apparently he's not a regular /. reader.

[Enahs]

People seem to be fond of claiming that business wants GNOME instead of KDE; I'd like to see some real numbers on that rather than the usual hand-waving.

The reason it seems strange to me is because KDE (IMHO) offers precisely what I'd look for in a desktop environment in a business environment. You have a system that, given a relatively "standard" system, can handle init, can handle cron jobs, can handle printers, etc. and do so from a centralized app. Also, KDE has more polished automation features (read: app scriptability.) Now, granted, GNOME can do much of what KDE can do these days, but given that KDE project leaders have even done government contract work (read: Germany) I have to wonder just how much more popular GNOME is in business circles.

Yes, I know the argument. Use GNOME, and if you ever develop proprietary apps, you don't have to pay a licensing fee! Hooray, GNOME wins with the crooks, hucksters, and sheisters who want to get ahead by finding suckers willing to get ripped off. Yes, I firmly believe in the concept of Free Software but Miguel and Co. is truly deluded if they think they're attracting quality business clients when their main selling point is "you can do everything for free...and we won't sue!"

Re:Apparently he's not a regular /. reader.

[yobbo]

Looks like they know where the mirrors and release notes are then.

Re:Apparently he's not a regular /. reader.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to wonder just how much more popular GNOME is in business circles.

Think, this:

*Novell's future business desktop is GNOME based. So is Sun's, and so is IBM's.

Answers your point...as for KDE "leaders" doing government work, in Germany. The *only* place in the world where KDE has any traction is Germany, and it isn't much. The most you've seen, even in Germany, is a bit of government money put into a contact system and a few extensions for KMail. Pfff.

Yes, I firmly believe in the concept of Free Software but Miguel and Co. is truly deluded if they think they're attracting quality business clients when their main selling point is "you can do everything for free...and we won't sue!"

Well, this is a non-sequiter for a start. Your belief has no bearing on what businesses think, and the main selling point of GNOME is not just that it is avoid any licensing hang ups (and that includes not having to track the installations, which is a huge hidden cost in software licensing). GNOME is also far cleaner, faster and simpler to use than KDE... not mention that it has far superior applications, and the support of the main tech corps. It really is a no-brainer for business.

You may now return to deluding yourself about "scriptability" or cron jobs (bwahahaha).

Re:Apparently he's not a regular /. reader.

[3247]

"Answers your point...as for KDE "leaders" doing government work, in Germany. The *only* place in the world where KDE has any traction is Germany, and it isn't much."

One of driving forces behind KDE has been SuSE, which is based in Germany. Now SuSE is owned by Novell ... and they are already pushing GNOME.

Re:Apparently he's not a regular /. reader.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but most of the -1 stuff worth reading is stuff that's been censored by moderators abusing the stupid Overrated option. And there's no way to cancel out the effects of that one.

Re:Apparently he's not a regular /. reader.

[Anonymous Coward]

And Novell is pushing KDE once they bought suse. Ximian and GNOME were both integreated more in Novell already because they had bought Ximian way back in August.

Wow!

[Bishop, Martin]

I can't wait for KGplayer, twice the features, double the resource usage!

Re:Wow!

[iminplaya]

Doesn't resource usage increase to the square of added features?

Re:Wow!

[thestarz]

I can't wait for KGplayer, twice the features, double the resource usage!

I think you mean: "Twice the features, quadruple the resource usage."

Re:Wow!

[potmos]

Microsoft already made that. It's called Windows Media Player.

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that Novell should forget about Gnome and KDE. Instead they should focus their efforts on Enlightenment DR17. I want this baby to see the light of day. E was great. I keep wondering if Rasterman/E camp can do it again? The more time that passes the more I doubt, but I still have a twinge of hope.

Actually, there are things that annoyed me from every desktop I've used. I wish for some kind of hybrid from windows, kde, gnome, enlightenment, fvwm, beos, osx, and windowmaker done right that doesn't have anything annoying about it, and can be really fast and light. That would be cool.

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

Even better. If you run Windows Media Player in wine you can have half the features with 8 times higher resource usage.

Re:Wow!

[Moraelin]

Nah, you're not thinking far enough. Let's really merge them.

Let's have a desktop which now starts _two_ sound daemons on startup. Nevermind that ALSA already can mix sounds very well on its own. We're hackers. We want to write yet another complex handler, especially if it involves threads. In fact, let's write a third sound daemon, whose job is just to interface with the other two.

Let's also load and initialize two damn huge graphics libraries, and the usual gazillion wrappers around each of them, right on startup. (E.g., each of them just has to come with its very own clever font renderer.) Of course, that also goes without saying for each of the gazillions of other personalized libraries that KDE and Gnome just had to include. And, of course, the gazillion programs and applets that each of them just has to load into RAM on startup.

Now we can really compete with Windows XP. If not on ease of use or mindshare, at least in the hundreds of megabytes of RAM used and minutes to wait on startup and shutdown. But, hey, it's a start. It worked for Microsoft.

Me? I'll be the guy running XFCE 4. It does everything I ever wanted from a desktop and window manager, and starts in a quarter of a second.

Re:Wow!

[plj]

So slowly? I always thougt it would be a NP class problem if the features from both KDE and GNOME apps are added to one app...

Or was that a combination of OOo and Mozilla? Well, nevermind. ;-)

Early leak

[salimma]

Obviously, this must have been meant for publication on April 1st!

Re:Early leak

[B3ryllium]

Well, yeah, either that or the Novell team BLATANTLY STOLE the Gnome source code after cracking their web server ... heheh :)

Re:Early leak

[Elektroschock]

Not really, this is a Novell blabla statement. They have to explain their shareholders why they bought Ximian and thois has little influence on SuSes comittment to KDE. I hope that the ximian marketing guerilla will have no impact on Novell and SuSe. KDE is the desktop of choice of SuSE and Gnome products have to be better integrated. Last year a lot of efforts were taken to bridge the gap. And KDE now has mono bindings.

What's next on Novell's agenda?

[metallicagoaltender]

Are they planning on unifying emacs and vi?!?

Re:What's next on Novell's agenda?

[Anonymous Coward]

why? it's like trying to combine windows and linux

Re:What's next on Novell's agenda?

[Anonymous Coward]

Behold, the new WinApple

Re:What's next on Novell's agenda?

[AndrewRUK]

Who needs to unify them?
Emacs can pretend to be vi (M-x viper-mode) and vi can pretend to be emacs (vimacs.)

(And anyway, why would anyone use anything other than emacs - yeah, trying to remember all the keystrokes will drive you insane, but M-x doctor is there to help ;-) )

Re:What's next on Novell's agenda?

[aardvarkjoe]

And anyway, why would anyone use anything other than emacs...

Well, I would use emacs, but I couldn't afford an extra 100 GB disk to use as a swap partition. So I just use the standard -- ed.

Re:What's next on Novell's agenda?

[sketerpot]

It's really funny to me that emacs was once considered a really big and bloated text editor. Compared with just about anything Microsoft makes these days (this isn't MS bashing, I just happen to have quite a bit of MS software handy to compare emacs with at the moment), emacs is extremely zippy and lightweight.

Re:What's next on Novell's agenda?

[Mr. Piddle]

viper-mode works quite well. For a programmer, using vi for efficiency and emacs in vi mode for large files is an awesome combination of tools. One key command set, two complementary tools.

Yes, I did say it: vi and emacs are complementary. Oh, Slashdotters why do you cry out in pain?!?

Re:What's next on Novell's agenda?

[hazem]

yeah, trying to remember all the keystrokes will drive you insane

Too late! I'm already insane, but now I understand why!

Re:What's next on Novell's agenda?

[krumms]

Here's my session with the emacs doctor:

I am the psychotherapist. Please, describe your problems. Each time
you are finished talking, type RET twice.

help me

Why do you say help you?

because I'm a loonatic

Is it because you are a loonatic that you came to me?

yes!

I see... Well, what makes you believe this is so?

well, I keep thinking "Hey, vi is pretty cool" but then I discover
something about it that sucks so I'm like "Wahey, fuck it"

Are you afraid of sex? ... what?

Can you elaborate on that?

elaborate ... on sex?

Tell me about something about your sexual history.

I'm going now.

Earlier you said you are a loonatic?

Fuck off creep!

I would appreciate it if you would talk about your sex life...

Re:What's next on Novell's agenda?

[Mr. Slippery]

The best is M-x psychoanalyze-pinhead, where Zippy meets ELIZA:

I am the psychotherapist. Please, describe your problems. Each time you are finished talking, type RET twice.

The PILLSBURY DOUGHBOY is CRYING for an END to BURT REYNOLDS movies!!

Why do you say that?

You can't hurt me!! I have an ASSUMABLE MORTGAGE!!

What makes you believe you have an assumable mortgage?

A GRAM?? A BRAM... A GROOM... A BROOM... Oh, Yeh!! Wash the ROOM!!

Maybe your plans have something to do with this.

You should all JUMP UP AND DOWN for TWO HOURS while I decide on a NEW CAREER!!

What happened when you decide on a new career?

My BIOLOGICAL ALARM CLOCK just went off.. It has noiseless DOZE FUNCTION and full kitchen!!

Is it because of your life that you say it has noiseless doze function and full kitchen?

I have many CHARTS and DIAGRAMS..

Are you sure that you have many charts and diagrams?

.. my NOSE is NUMB!

...Perhaps this has something to do with hangups you have?

Psychoanalysis?? I thought this was a nude rap session!!!

Is it because of your inhibitions that you say you thought this was a nude rap session?

I just put lots of the EGG SALAD in the SILK SOCKS --

I don't understand.

CONGRATULATIONS! Now should I make thinly veiled comments about DIGNITY, self-esteem and finding TRUE FUN in your RIGHT VENTRICLE??

Re:What's next on Novell's agenda?

[Malc]

That's not your session. You didn't come up with that! "M-x psychoanalyze-pinhead" produced the same output on my version of Emacs... and lots more.

Re:What's next on Novell's agenda?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am posting anonymously because it doesn't take a Zen Buddhist to know what this would do to my karma, but do not let that make you think I am anything but completely sincere when I say this.

One reason which alone makes vim infinitely superior to emacs in viper-mode is simply that when I use vim, those jerkbuckets who use emacs can't use my editor.

Re:What's next on Novell's agenda?

[roguebfl]

Who needs to unify them?

your right who needs them, I use pico 8)

Do they call it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Knome or GDE?

Re:Do they call it...

[Elshar]

I'd think they'd call it KludGe. Afterall, they DID Kludge it all together :)

Re:Do they call it...

[Cnik70]

If RMS has his way it will be GNU/Knome

Re:Do they call it...

[alder]

My vote goes for "GDE?" (in Russia they'll read it "Where?" ;-))

Re:Do they call it...

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Knuth?

I think we'd do a just homage to a guy who contributed a lot to graphics presentation, not to mention other little things... :-)

Re:Do they call it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up!

Ouch

[BSDKaffee]

I'd think getting your foot caught in a giant gear would hurt!

KDE Compromise

[TwistedSquare]

Maybe if KDE gets compromised too it could bring them closer together? *ducks*

Re:KDE Compromise

[nick-less]

Maybe if KDE gets compromised too it could bring them closer together? *ducks*


Guess who compromised Gnomes servers ;-)

Re:KDE Compromise

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE will NEVER be compromised.

It will be Kompromised.

(runs)

Re:KDE Compromise

[Mr. Piddle]

If KDE and Gnome have common-blight pity sex, what will their offspring look like?

Re:KDE Compromise

[HenchmenResources]

As a KDE user all I have to say is:

:D rofl

Re:KDE Compromise

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently very ugly.
kde monkey

Ok, so I'm no artist. But I needed to try out gimp2 on something.

Re:KDE Compromise

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come on mods, can't you tell a +5 Funny when you see one! :)

Re:KDE Compromise

[bobaferret]

Where are my mod points when I need them.

Re:KDE Compromise

[pklong]

Even more important, do they use the k or g prefix. I can't wait for kgword to to come out :)

Gnome/KDE

[Melvin Daniels]

You have to admit both have strong qualities that the other does not. For instance, the Gnome stuff has a tendency to run a little better for me while the KDE stuff looks a bit cleaner. Aesthetics, yes, but it sells it to me. Maybe they just want to offer that whole 'choice' thing Open Source keeps talking about.

Re:Gnome/KDE

[Skater]

You're right! The Gnome stuff DOES run better for you! I'll switch today! :)

Seriously, I've found that the KDE stuff seems to work the best for me. But I regularly use programs for both, and I'm glad the integration is getting better all the time.

My major wish for the two projects at this point is to settle on one sound server, esound or arts. Running esound through artsdsp has some odd effects. Is there really a need to have two separate sound servers that (appear to) do the same thing?

--RJ

Re:Gnome/KDE

[Brandybuck]

And when they settle on one sound server, make it desktop neutral! Just like libxml. Keep glib2 and Qt out of it.

Re:Gnome/KDE

[optikSmoke]

Oh god no!!!!!!!!!!!

I would also like them to settle on one sound architecture. However, it is fortunate that things seem to be heading in the direction of Gstreamer at the moment, because esound has always been buggy and arts is barely maintained and besides, isn't the fastest kid on the block. I mean, come on -- it only runs well if running setuid so it can have higher priority than other processes. Besides security issues, the thing has the potential to bring your whole system down! Magic sysrq keys have saved me a few times when arts has sucked up so much of my system I can't even ssh or telnet in to kill it. More arts? No thanks.

I await the day linux has good userland sound mixing to complement its now-beautiful ALSA sound drivers. For now, I'm stuck with arts because amarok's gstreamer support isn't there yet (and xmms doesn't compare to amarok).

Re:Gnome/KDE

[mark_lybarger]

gnome runs better? you must be on a P90 machine w/ 32MB perhaps? nothing about kde is "slow" or sluggish except for initial login time. i haven't compared it to gnome, but i don't go around logging in/out all the time. gnome just plain looks too much like ... well crap ... that to me there's no sense using it. their nice HID puts buttons on the wrong side. their widgets in general are too big with too much extra space around them. gtk is nice and portable and nice and lgpl and all, but really. that commercialness of qt really shows through.

i'm wondering how long it will be before qt will release a subset of their widgets under the lgpl lincense.

Re:Gnome/KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

MAS would be a better idea, the X.org sound server implementation, far better then ESD and ARTS

Re:Gnome/KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just wondering, if you haven't compared it to gnome, how do you know what runs better?

Re:Gnome/KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Calm down zealot... take a deep breath and re-read what you just wrote. See the logical inconsistencies and bullshit, and be ashamed.

Re:Gnome/KDE

[HenchmenResources]

While I have to agree with you to some degree when you say that gnome is not the best looking GUI out there. Remember though that Novell will be approching the Gnome/KDE mix of thing with their newfound expertise in the form of Ximian desktop which in my humble opinion looks stunning, even though I found it slightly hard to configure in the short amount of time I played with it. Again I didn't play with it for long and it may have a nice config tool that I failed to find.

Re:Gnome/KDE

[cubic6]

They should completely dump the sound servers and use JACK. It's a lot faster, and isn't tied to one or the other.

Re:Gnome/KDE

[cubic6]

I'm on a P4 1.8 Ghz with 368mb ram, and KDE isn't exactly speedy. Konqueror takes about 7 seconds to open a new window, and it goes unresponsive for about a second when I open a new tab. Nautilus opens new windows instantly.

Gnome is really strange with regards to their design... some of their UI is very good, and some just sucks. I really wish KDE would steal their code for shading the selection rectangle and shading icons when you're dragging something over them so you can actually *tell* whether you're over the icon or not.

Re:Gnome/KDE

[be-fan]

Eh? I'm on a 2.0GHz P4 with 640MB of RAM, and Konqueror takes less then a second to open a new window (CTRL-N). New tabs open instantly. My configuration isn't anything special --- KDE 3.2.1 on Debian.

Re:Gnome/KDE

[Matrix9180]

just from the vague descriptions of your systems you two gave I'd say MAYBE KDE needs more memory than Gnome... since you have about double what he has and yours is super fast while his is slow... who'dathunkit

Re:Gnome/KDE

[Requiem Aristos]

Or not;

I'm using a Pentium M 1.5 GHz with 256 MB RAM, and it's less than a second here too. (Course, this is a Gentoo system.)

(Course, about a year ago on a different system Nautilus was /very/ slow while Konq was moderately zippy. Strange.)

Re:Gnome/KDE

[cubic6]

Ok, I tried using Ctrl-N, and that's instant. Thanks for the tip! Why doesn't Konqueror do that when you open a copy from the K menu?

Re:Gnome/KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

STOP USING REDHAT!

err seriously. there's something wrong. i've a 1gig tbird and can open a konqueror window in less than a second (wish i could say the same for nautilus).

Re:Gnome/KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

you open konqueror from the k-menu every time you want a new window?

you're wasting ten seconds finding it. why care how long it takes to load?

Re:Gnome/KDE

[pebs]

gnome just plain looks too much like ... well crap ... that to me there's no sense using it. their nice HID puts buttons on the wrong side.

This is personal preference. Although I really like KDE/Qt for a lot of reasons, I think it looks rather dull, and GTK+ apps look MUCH better.

I find the "Industrial" controls in Gnome look great and are very fast (I also use "Industrial" window controls). None of the default included KDE themes look good to me. I have done some searching, but have not found anything I like. There is supposedly a KDE theme that looks like Gnome's Industrial, but it failed to install. I'll try it again, but from the screenshots, it doesn't really look better than other KDE themes. It is much easier to install themes in Gnome, you just drag and drop the file into the theme dialog.

There are some great KDE apps, but it certainly isn't the look of them that is great. Konqueror is excellent. JuK works much better than Rhythmbox. And I use KHotKeys in Gnome. KDevelop is very useful. Kuickshow will be a great ACDSee clone once they fix a few bugs. Kopete is not bad, but its look and UI in general made me switch back to Gaim.

I can see why you might feel GTK+ widgets are too big. But I believe you can resize them. The default size may be too big for 1024x768, but perfect for 1600x1200.

Re:Gnome/KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean they should stop using sound servers completely... and then use the Jack sound server?

Do you even know what you're talking about?

Re:Gnome/KDE

[pebs]

Also check out KHotKeys (configure it in the KDE control panel). Very useful app. I actually use it in Gnome.

Also, if you are using Gnome, and you find KDE apps loading slow under it, run kdeinit (you can put it in your .xsessions file or just run it). They will load just as fast as they do in KDE.

Re:Gnome/KDE

[mark_lybarger]

i don't understand how a control can be "fast"? ok, i've used some early AWT java apps, and they're definately are "slow" toolkits, but most people will agree that kde isn't in that league.

it all boils down to personal preferance. in my early days of using linux systems, i was a gnome enthusiest purely on my lack of knowledge of kde licensing issues. i tried kde once, and after that can't quite get the gnome camp. personal preference. both knock the socks off the CDE desktop that's available on our outdated solaris machine.

Re:Gnome/KDE

[ae]

Glib doesn't have much to do with the rest of GNOME. The connection is historic, just like libxml. Glib only provides things (like data structures) that should probably have been a part of libc.

Re:Gnome/KDE

[cubic6]

Yeah, technically JACK's a sound server, but it's much simpler than aRts or esound. All it does is provide low-latency software mixing without being tied to one desktop environment. It doesn't do network transparency or simulate a "complete analog synthesizer". aRts and esound are overkill for 99% of users out there, and the fact that most apps are hardcoded for one or the other hurts the usability of Linux for multimedia.

Re:Gnome/KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

that commercialness of qt really shows through.

Yeah. Kind of like commercialness of Windows.

Both are crap.

Re:Gnome/KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so you probably do know what you're talking about. I'm downloading Jack right now :-)

Thanks, sir.

Re:Gnome/KDE

[pebs]

i don't understand how a control can be "fast"?

I was speaking of a particular theme of controls, not GTK+ or Qt controls in general. A set of controls will be faster or slower depending on how many resources it takes to render them. A KDE example would be Keramik widget style might be slower than .Net widget style. In Gnome, the "Industrial" theme doesn't require a lot of resources to render so it renders quickly. I've tried a few themes that copy some of the look of Mac OS X and they are noticably slower. I run on slower hardware (Duron 1.1GHz / Geforce2), so I notice these things, but it wouldn't bother me anyways.

it all boils down to personal preferance. in my early days of using linux systems, i was a gnome enthusiest purely on my lack of knowledge of kde licensing issues.

True.. For me, it was the opposite. I used KDE for quite a while before I gave Gnome a serious try with version 2.2 (and before that, I didn't pay much attention to desktop environments or WM's, the GUI was just something to open terminals in and maybe run Netscape). 2.4 had all the features I liked so I stuck with that.

Now, well, they both are really great, and make Linux a perfectly usable desktop OS. I look forward to more integration between the two.

Gno way

[Anonymous Coward]

Kant happen.

Re:Gno way

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be GNU here...

It's about time

[garompa]

I know all of us in linuxland love to have many desktops to choose from, but it would be great to have the best of gnome and kde in one.

Re:It's about time

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think so...
So far, KDE has gone for lots of options and more eyecandy, while Gnome has gone for Run smooth and Simple.

Both those directions serve different purposes, so I personally think they should both stick around.

Maybe just some unifying ideas though, such as using the same damn "Desktop" folder and changing a similar config in one will change it for the other (if you want it to do so of course)?

Better yet, bring Blackbox to the mix...

[AvantLegion]

... and unveil the next generation of X desktop environments: KGB

Re:Better yet, bring Blackbox to the mix...

[LordK3nn3th]

I for one welcome our new Russion desktop overlords.

Re:Better yet, bring Blackbox to the mix...

[HungWeiLo]

OK, might as well get it over with:

In Soviet Russia, the KGB unveils you!

Re:Better yet, bring Blackbox to the mix...

[bsharitt]

Don't the new Russian desktop overlords welcome you?

Re:Better yet, bring Blackbox to the mix...

[druhol]

Now all we need is to add an "all your base" joke, and this thread would reach critical meme-mass.

Re:Better yet, bring Blackbox to the mix...

[focitrixilous P]

In soviet russia, overlords welcome you!

Wait. desktop overlords welcome you... Post that again backwards and I'll try again.

Re:Better yet, bring Blackbox to the mix...

[xenoandroid]

In soviet russia, dead horses beat you to death.

Re:Better yet, bring Blackbox to the mix...

[pantherace]

Nazi, ... thread finished. :)

Re:Better yet, bring Blackbox to the mix...

[Feztaa]

In Soviet Russia, all your welcomed overlords are belong to base, you insensitive clod!

Re:Better yet, bring Blackbox to the mix...

[lewp]

The Jargon File says:

However there is also a widely- recognized codicil that any intentional triggering of Godwin's Law in order to invoke its thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful.

Let the thread continue!

Re:Better yet, bring Blackbox to the mix...

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, all your welcomed overlords are belong to base, you insensitive clod!

Now imagine a Beowulf cluster of those!

Re:Better yet, bring Blackbox to the mix...

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, all your welcomed overlords are belong to a Beowulf of Natalie Portman's base, you insensitive clod!

Re:Didn't RH do this?

[gilesjuk]

Nope, they tweaked KDE to make it look like Gnome and did some other changes to make it work with Gnome config tools.

Next week, Apple buys Novell

[Anonymous Coward]

and introduces the iKG...no wait...the iGnoKDE...no.. the, shit, I got nothin'.

Gnome? KDE?

[WwWonka]

This will be the best Knome over I've seen since the last episode of The Apprentice!

A mutant GUI

[Bull999999]

Reminds me of an episod of The Simpsons where Homer puts the Santa's Little Helper (dog) and Snowball II (cat) in to a sack because he wanted to cross breed them out of bordom.

Re:A mutant GUI

[Anonymous Coward]

An animal with the loyalty of a cat, and the cleanliness of a dog...

Soup to Nuts

[Anonymous Coward]

quote -
"He said he thinks the ability to offer customers a complete, soup-to-nuts solution will be a valuable addition. "We've learned our lesson from Microsoft." "

Does anyone feel a bit uneasy with that expression 'soup-to-nuts'?

Hot soup can burn my lips - I'm not a bout to put that you-know-where!!

Re:Soup to Nuts

[Anonymous Coward]

customer "I'll have a short soup with a hint of scrotum sweat".

5 mins later - screams coming from Kitchen.

Perhaps "soup-to-nuts" is what Microsoft's competitors get?

Re:Soup to Nuts

[Anonymous Coward]

It's still got to be better than nuts-to-soup...

Re:woo

[i23098]

what about license nazi's that don't like qt's license?

If they don't like GPL they don't use Linux :-P
Just because something is available in a dual license form it doesn't turn it in non-GPL... That being said, I don't think it will last, but I sure hope I'm wrong as what linux really need it's a unified window manager.

Coincidence?

[cascino]

Gnome.org hacked? Gnome and KDE working together?
Coicidence?
I think not.

Re:Coincidence?

[KarmaMB84]

It's one of the lessons they're learning from Microsoft. :p

Re:Coincidence?

[Anonymous Coward]

re 2-levels-up && lessons from uSoft...
"... the cleanliness of a Dog and the Loyalty of a Cat" - Homer

Gnome v kde

[joshp]

I have tried gnome could no stind it. There can be only one KDE

Re:Gnome v kde

[gilesjuk]

KDE is a bit easier for users who have spent a lot of time on Windows. The first logon to a KDE desktop presents the Desktop wizard where you can choose if you want Windows or MAC style key and mouse shortcuts. This is a big plus for KDE.

Re:Gnome v kde

[hayden]

I find the problem with GNOME is they hide all the useful options. If you want to do exactly what they think is "user friendly" then you're set. If not then it's only marginally less frustrating than windows.

But not in the World According to Microsoft where users are idiots and
Wizards claim a monopoly on common sense. I want smart software, but if
I can't have that, I want dumb software that knows it is dumb and comes
to me for help, not dumb software that thinks it is smart and tells me
lies it believes to be true.
- jfieber@indiana.edu in RISKS 20.63 on
route planning software saying you can't get there from here

Pretty much sums it up really.

Re:Gnome v kde

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, KDE is a lot easier for users who have never enjoyed using a Mac, but that's not the same thing as users who have only used Windows, although there is certainly a lot of overlap.

People who have never enjoyed using a Mac fall into two categories: Those who have used one and didn't enjoy it, and those who haven't used one at all.

There's very little to "intuitive interfaces" except that they need to be internally consistent, and they need to make it hard to accidentally do the wrong thing. The two Windows 95 blunders that exemplify this are having the main system menu spring up from the bottom of the screen while having the application menus come down from the top (inconsistent) and putting the window close button in the upper right corner (easy to do the wrong thing).

Macs also have UI bugs. The shared menu bar that changes depending on which application has the focus is very inconsistent, and the button order on applications is reversed from natural language order (i.e. "No or Yes" instead of "Yes or No"), making it easy for people to click the wrong thing.

Both KDE and Gnome can emulate or avoid most of these bugs via their configuration options. However, you cannot switch around Gnome's button order--so it will continue to be the more difficult of the two interfaces, except for people who had already grown accustomed to the non-intuitive button order on Macs.

Re:Gnome v kde

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE is easier for win junkies, but it's too slow. The problem, as I see it, is that it takes so bloody long for KDE to get past that lingering train of icons lighting up, that my attention span has wandered back to 20-second WinXP boot times.

Forget KDE. Just use Gnome. I wish SuSE would come to my conclusion.

Re:Gnome v kde

[value_added]

Doesn't "hid[ing] the useful options" make it *exactly* like Windows?

Re:Gnome v kde

[Anonymous Coward]

Auuugh!!! WINDOWS or MAC style??? How about traditional Unix style? Would that be too much to ask?

Re:Gnome v kde

[salparadyse]

i don't get it what have mandrake been doing for at least the last four releases? gnome and kde menus are combined whichever desktop you're in it works perfectly

Re:Gnome v kde

[chefren]

I thought the idea with the button order was to always have the "accepting" to the right regardless of the button text. It could be "yes", "ok", "save", "close" or whatever, but the most commonly used button pressed to close dialogs would always be in the same place. That seems consistent to me.

Re:Gnome v kde

[Tigen]

Traditional Unix style? That would be commandline shell.

Not a good idea

[dealsites]

Different desktops exist for different people. It's easy to change back and forth to figure out the one you like best. I think that merging the two would stiffle features in the long run. It's best to have 2 competing platforms. Ultimately each group will incorporate the ideas from the other platform, but competition is what drives innovation.

--
Tons of electronics deals updated in real-time. The most powerful listing known to man.

Re:Not a good idea

[Goaway]

Yes, the lack of desktop alternatives is one of the main reasons Windows has been so unsuccessful.

Re:Not a good idea

[FlipmodePlaya]

I can't see bad coming from this. KDE and Gnome will continue to exist and compete, but there will be yet another desktop thrown into the mix that just happens to resemble the two of them.

Re:Not a good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

There is lots of choice of desktop on Windows: Win3.11, Win98, WinXP, Blue Screen ...

Re:Not a good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

competition is what drives innovation.

More, like, in open source, competition is what drives ego-driven reimplementations of the same ideas.

This isn't "choice", nobody (outside the geek crowd) gives a shit about the desktop environment. It's like going into the supermarket and seeing the same identical cola, with nearly identical branding, but with.. different metals in the cans! Woohoo!!!! And some metallurgy geek going on and on about how much better metal X is over metal Y, but it's the same damn cola in the cans, the same colors on the outside, and the same tab to open them.

There's very little "innovation" between the two. Look at Windows for an example of how unimportant the desktop environment is.

KDE vs. Gnome is just a waste of time. Unify them.

Re:Not a good idea

[dealsites]

Windows had a huge head-start. KDE and Gnome are now as stable and have more features, so I bet Micosoft will be taking cues from these desktops soon. Not to mention that a new windows desktop comes out ever few years at best. KDE and Gnome add features regularly.

--
Mad crazy deals. You ain't see nothing yet!

Re:Not a good idea

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

>I think that merging the two would stiffle features in the long run.

I really can't imagine them totally merged. More likely, we would wind up with more deesktops rather than fewer: KDE, Gnome, and KDG or GnoDE or, god help us, both of those.

Re:Not a good idea

[RoboB0B]

competition is what drives innovation Unless you have the monopoly then you suppress innovation because change can't be predicted well enough for stock holders. So you just buy out or crush the competition and never have innovation....*cough*microsoft*cough*

Re:Not a good idea

[The Bungi]

I heard someone say that in 1998. I think it was right after I also heard that Linux would take over the desktop market in a year's time.

Re:Not a good idea

[budgenator]

I find I use both depending on what I'm doing, I use gnome if I'll need a few more system resources, and KDE if not. Windowmaker if I need a ton more.

Re:Not a good idea

[Pecisk]

No one will push you to use 'Novell's desktop'. You could still use pure GNOME or KDE. Altought I think some kind of integration between them SHOULD be made.

Re:Not a good idea

[Pecisk]

No, Windows have been 'successful' (or should I really say Microsoft?) due of other things, not usability or lack of choise. Oh, wait, it wasn't something about bad monopoly pratices? It couldn't be those Billy guys who got their ass kicked from EU, could be?

Re:Not a good idea

[Jahf]

+1 Sarcastic :)

Re:Not a good idea

[Nailer]

Different desktops exist for different people.

So what makes KDE and Gnome different anyway? The developers of both are aiming to look and function, well, exactly like each other in most cases.

• A panel at the bottom of screen
  
• Various panel applets
  
• One of those being a menu of applications located at the far left
  
• A few shortcuts for commonyl used apps beside that
  
• A taskbar besides that, including pop up listy boxes for duplicate apps
  
• Some panel apps beside that, for the weather or whatever else
  
• A clock over on the right
  
• Icons on the desktop
  
• A file manager
  
• A web browser
  
• An email app
  

What makes KDE and Gnome different for end users? Certainly not anything most people cares about. KDE has a better save dialog, Gnome will in its next release. And Gnome puts questions suggesting the negative first, because some Apple researcher said that was a good idea ages ago.

Oh, and different keyboard shortcuts, mime types, etc. These don't attract end users, they annoy them.

Re:Not a good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, a sarcasm detector. Now that's a useful invention.

Re:Not a good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

+inf sarcasm.

Re:Not a good idea

[Endive4Ever]

You make it sound like you reboot, or at the minimum, reload your entire desktop, quite often.

A desktop should be loaded, then there should be windows open on the various virtual desktops that you look over at and say 'yeah, last Tuesday I was working on that.'

I remember once a system that I had used for a few weeks. I logged onto one of the other virtual consoles and noticed there wasn't a hostname on the prompt. I thought 'shit, the networking is screwed up.'

Then I remembered that I'd installed the system a few weeks ago and had configured and setup the network, but that that particular console prompt was from me logging before I'd configured the network.

I can't imagine flitting in and out of various Window Managers. It seems almost as distasteful as dualbooting.

Re:Not a good idea

[nvrrobx]

Corporations regularly push out restrictive Windows policies to stop users from tweaking the desktop beyond repair.

IT departments want a unified desktop - it'll lower support costs. Picture this help desk call:

HD: Sir, what desktop are you using?
User: I dunno.

HD: Do you see a K or a foot in the lower left?
User: Ummm, it's a foot.

HD: Hold on while I transfer you to a GNOME specialist.
User: A what? I'm not a gnome!

Re:Not a good idea

[Sleepy]

Best to have competing platforms?? You do realize this is not the BSD page, right?
(Just kidding, BSD'ers... :-)

Seriously, merging KDE and GNOME piece by piece will NOT remove choices. No one is going to put a gun to anyone's head, developer or user and force a switch.

It's strange that so many people cry out against desktop unification. I suspect the same people note with uncomfortable silence as freedesktop.org continues to take away "choice", by working out interoperability issues among free desktops.

You get innovation and ideas in development branches, and temporary forks.

People just want KDE and GNOME to "work" together. I don't mind a little software bloat in exchange for rapid development, but any GNOME/KDE user can tell you it's pretty slow firing up Konqueror/Evolution from the "other" desktop. You get two of everything that the "alien" app wanted. Yuck.

I'm sure it's a real pain in the ass for commercial developers also. Code for both?? No thank you! Of course, some users will see this as a big IBM/Novell/Microsoft-Mono-Ximian conspiracy.

Re:Not a good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

> * A panel at the bottom of screen
> * Various panel applets
> * Icons on the desktop
> .
> .
> .
> * A file manager
> * A web browser
> * An email app

Sounds and looks like CDE to me...

Re:Not a good idea

[jbolden]

I heard it back in 1994 regarding the server market.... Funny isn't that pretty much what's been happening since then?

Re:Not a good idea

[Mr2cents]

the IO slaves? I don't know gnome well, so they could have it as well.

BTW, you should know this little trick: you can browse through folders on any computer with a ssh login. Just type fish://your-login@computer-with-ssh-access.domain in konqueror (or in the run dialog), it will show your remote home directory as if it were a local directory. There are lots of other io slaves, too (see all available protocols using K->system->info center->protocols).

Re:Not a good idea

[akajerry]

Well if you look at this from Novell's prospective; they're trying to build a brand. For the industry at large and for the consumer choice is ultimately a good thing, but for any particularly company trying to build a brand, choice can dilute the brand.

Michaela Draganska Assistant Professor of Marketing at Stanford Graduate School of Business has done some interesting research on how Too Much Choice Can Hurt Brand Performance .

Re:Not a good idea

[anagama]

I didn't know this. I just tried it out and holy-cow, that's cool! Just drag and drop a file - easier then ssh to poke around, then scp the file to get it. neat!

Re:Not a good idea

[enjo13]

But isn't the ultimate competition other platforms? I think that KDE vs. Gnome competition has really accomplished very little but make the Linux story more complex.. it's created a situation in which putting Linux into the enterprise means giving up some of the features you may want/need because neither desktop environment supports the full breadth of features..

A common unified desktop is best for Linux. It's best for innovation. The real competition is always going to be the Microsofts and Apples of the world after all.

Re:Not a good idea

[iso]

One of the most impressive IO Slaves is audiocd:/. It displays a CD in your drive as having a bunch of folders: "By Name," "By Track," "MP3," and "OGG" for instance. If you want an MP3 of a track you put in the CD, access it through audiocd:/ in Konqueror, go to the MP3 directory and copy the MP3 "file" to your hard disk. It's an unbelievably intuitive way to search an audio CD.

Re:Not a good idea

[superjaded]

gnome-vfs is essentially gnome's answer to KDE's IOSlaves, I believe.
And while I don't believe gnome-vfs has quite the breadth of fs modules that KDE has, it does has some of the more "important" ones like smb and ftp that I can think of offhand. It also supports a "sftp://" protocol (which, obviously, lets you access the ftp subsystem of ssh), as well as a "ssh://" protocol of which I'm not sure how it's supposed to work.

Of course, for simple SMB on LAN use I still think smbfs coupled with automount is still the best solution. gnome-vfs seems to create quite a bit of overhead*, not to mention that the smb:// URIs will only work in gnome-vfs powered programs, which makes me wonder if I would even be able to open a document in gedit for example via Nautilus and save it without any weirdness happening since GTK+ doesn't have support for gnome-vfs.

And just to see what happened, I did just that -- the "Save as" dialogue brought me back to my home directory and obviously wouldn't let me CTRL+L to my smb:// mount.

Re:Not a good idea

[Jagasian]

This is a common aspect of Gnome vs KDE. KDE is well designed, highly modular, and therefore all KDE based apps can load files from a host of different file systems, protocols, etc... ftp, smb, scp, etc...

Gnome on the other hand lacks modularity, lacks a coherent design, and therefore each app must re-invent each wheel.

Re:Not a good idea

[r_j_prahad]

HD: Do you see a K or a foot in the lower left?

User: Dude, it's neither! it's like a green fish face or something!

Re:Not a good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

What a load of shit.

Re:Not a good idea

[Hooded One]

Whoa. I didn't know you could rip mp3/ogg like that. Frickin' awesome. I guess *that's* what the Audio CD item in Control Center was for.

I only wish I could pop a disc in either of my two drives and have it automatically determine which one has an audio CD in it.

Re:Not a good idea

[Quarters]

Yeah, and my parents went out and bought the VCR that has 10 interchangeable faceplates. They figure that if they keep changing the layout of the thing they might eventually stumble across the way to make it stop blinking, "12:00".

Only geeks want the choice that multiple desktop systems bring. If Linux is ever going to become a viable desktop alternative it is going to have to make inroads into the mass-market home user crowd. Those people want an appliance. They don't know or care about the underpinnings of a system. They certainly don't want to have to know about multiple desktop managers.

Re:Not a good idea

[cubic6]

Does that use some builtin KDE ripper/encoder, or can I make it use cdparanoia and lame? I'd *kill* to be able to use Konqueror and drag-and-drop to rip with them.

Re:Not a good idea

[Mr2cents]

I told it to my father when I learned about it, and he now has a folder icon on his desktop that connects to the server at work. It works like a charm, he has access to all the documents he needs, as if it were local, and without the need for a vpn!

Re:Not a good idea

[Grishnakh]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't most motherboards and sound cards only have one input for CD audio, that's connected to the CD drive? So if you have two drives (pretty common these days; I have a DVD reader and a CD-RW), you have to just pick one to use for playing audio CDs.

This, of course, only matters if you're trying to play audio CDs directly, not rip them.

Re:Not a good idea

[Requiem Aristos]

I believe it uses cdparanoia and the lame libraries already.

Re:Not a good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like SFTP, which I use on every computer, including windows (which fish doesn't support)?

fish:// is a perfect example of pointless overengineering. SFTP works great already, and doesn't add any complexity to the desktop environment, and works fine on my Mac and Windows machines. Why doesn't KDE just allow different programs to run when you enter an unknown protocol in konqueror (sftp://.. for instance) and let somebody write a good sftp client?

Re:Not a good idea

[LibrePensador]

Or you could always use KAudioCreator

Re:Not a good idea

[codemachine]

I actually got a few IBM towers with multiple drives (DVD and CD Burner). They shipped a cable that can connect both of those drives to 1 sound plug on the board. Of course I have seen some boards that have multiple inputs as well.

So likely it is very possible to have both devices on the sound card.

Re:Not a good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

You're exactly right on everything. These slashdweebs just don't get it. Things would be so much better and simpler with one "dominant" desktop. It doesn't evenf fucking mean that there wouldn't be others, it just means that you can always target one and know it will be there.

Re:Not a good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

To be a monopoly and practice bad monopoly practices you need to already be successful.

Re:Not a good idea

[zsau]

I suspect you haven't used the latest Gnome releases. They have for a while had a bar at the top with separate Applications and Actions menus. The taskbar remains at the bottom. There is work going on to unify MIME types (using a library developed for ROX), though many people will tell you it's a bad idea.

As an end user, Gnome seems gratuitously unconfigurable but nicely simple, whereas KDE seems gratuitously configurable and overly complicated (though I've never played with it long enough to see if that's just a surface impression). As a power end-user, I realise that Gnome actually has some quite advanced configurations possible (e.g. I'm using ROX-Filer and XFwm4 rather than Nautilus and Metacity), without compromising its simplicity.

Personally, I think the underlying technologies should be merged as unlikely as that is, but the end-user interfaces should continue to diverge (as they have been, with KDE staying closer to its roots but Gnome developing a more Macky look and feel).

Re:Not a good idea

[teprrr]

Or you could always use KAudioCreator
KAudioCreator uses audiocd ioslave afaik...

Re:Not a good idea

[ReinoutS]

Having to type audiocd:/ is intuitive?

Anyway I've just fired up konqueror and tried it. It just took me to Google. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong, but again this is hardly intuitive.

Re:Not a good idea

[3247]

GNOME has VFS, which is basically the same as KDE's IO slaves.

Re:Not a good idea

[3247]

You can just connect the second CD (or DVD) drive to one of the "aux" or "line in" plugs. Or you could buy/build an adaptor (that contains a few resistors) and hook them to a single port on your sound card.

Having three optical drives in my system, I actually have done both. ;-)

Re:Not a good idea

[nutshell42]

Yes but how do you want to combine them?

From a user-interface POV the only way is a new DE with all the features of KDE but a GNOME-compatibility-interface which removes most of them. (No trolling here, just stating the facts)

But to avoid the problem of having all necessary libs twice you have to create one unified architecture and that can only be GTK (LGPL - *the* major advantage of GTK over QT).

I can't see that happening. So we'll have the RH approach again which won't be able to achieve both goals and will cripple one of the DEs while trying. Even worse while the apps will look similar the will behave fundamentally different and therefore alienate users. (Many Windows apps are different from the rest of the bunch but problems normally occur where you expect them to work like the rest)

Re:Not a good idea

[jsebrech]

Do you have the audiocd io slave installed? It's an optional install, from one of the extras packages.

Re:Not a good idea

[jsebrech]

# One of those being a menu of applications located at the far left
# A few shortcuts for commonyl used apps beside that
# Icons on the desktop

Shared menu's, shared icon themes

# A taskbar besides that, including pop up listy boxes for duplicate apps

Shared window manager specs, so any app will be known to a taskbar which supports the spec, and will be controllable by it.

# Some panel apps beside that, for the weather or whatever else
# A clock over on the right

Shared system tray

# A file manager
# A web browser
# An email app

All of these use shared communication protocols (http, imap, pop, smtp) or file formats (bookmarks.html, mbox). The only thing not common (yet) is the ioslave/gnomevfs duality.

Oh, and different keyboard shortcuts, mime types, etc. These don't attract end users, they annoy them.

Shared mime database, shared default key bindings (that last one is in the planning stage)

The difference between gnome and kde is getting to be quite minimal. I fully expect there to come a point where the two desktops will just be two skins on the same backend.

Re:Not a good idea

[Uggy]

The same could be said for all the different cultures and languages of the world. We're all pretty much the same, so let's just unify the the whole shebang and be done with it.

In reality, there is so much to be learned by doing, living and creating stuff. If we all only created the same stuff, we wouldn't be able to diversify progress.

Personally, I am continually amazed at how little I have understood of a problem until I solve it my way. I imagine lots of groups of people have different approaches, different learning styles, best modes of operation. What is useful to one is confusing to another. With choices and configuration options, we can deliver solutions to users whatever their mindset. And cross pollination of ideas among the various projects can make them ALL better, just like genetic variation makes a species stronger.

Nature does not reward single pardigms, why should we?

Re:Not a good idea

[Cardbox]

There is no such thing as "the Linux GUI" and until such a thing exists no serious porting effort of commercial software takes place. I don't care which **the** Linux GUI is but I am not going to (a) run two parallel development projects or (b) bet my company on whether VHS or Beta will win in the marketplace.
It doesn't matter if it's Gnome or KDE or something inferior to both, as long as there's one of it and it's universal.

Re:Not a good idea

[Tim C]

No, but clicking on the appropriate shortcut icon to access the CD player is; as long as you have everything installed, then it Just Works. It's been a while since I used KDE (or Linux, for that matter), but that was a *seriously* cool feature.

Re:Not a good idea

[bobaferret]

If they unify these two things, what the heck are we going to be able to have religious wars over? vi vs. emacs? we already know Xemacs won that one.

I swear this was funny when I thought it out in my head.

Re:Not a good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

> it does has some of the more "important" ones like smb and ftp that I can think of offhand. It also supports a "sftp://" protocol (which, obviously, lets you access the ftp subsystem of ssh), as well as a "ssh://" protocol of which I'm not sure how it's supposed to work.

In my experience, the gnome vfs modules just don't work as reliably as the kde ones (which is a shame, because i perfer GNOME)

Re:Not a good idea

[Empty Threats]

Interesting that you should say that.

We're all pretty much the same, and a homogenous world culture is happening as we speak.

American popular culture, Western dress, and the English language are widely recognized and widely used. Fewer and fewer places acknowledge their native culture because it is neither profitable nor practical to do so.

I, for one, hail our monoculture overlords.

Re:Not a good idea

[Kashif Shaikh]

A panel at the bottom of screen
Various panel applets
One of those being a menu of applications located at the far left
A few shortcuts for commonyl used apps beside that
A taskbar besides that, including pop up listy boxes for duplicate apps
Some panel apps beside that, for the weather or whatever else
A clock over on the right
Icons on the desktop
A file manager
A web browser
An email app

Yes, but there is no integration between any of 'em. On KDE you can vividly see component re-use and integration between apps(i.e. kdevelop using kate or kvim, konqueror viewing pdfs, web content, filesystem, etc). And the problem is there is hardly any integration between KDE and Gnome apps as they use different methodologies(i.e. gconf v.s. kde rc files).

Re:Not a good idea

[iso]

It does seem to use liblame0 for MP3 encoding, but I'm not sure what it uses to read the CD.

Re:Not a good idea

[NamShubCMX]

There's a shortcut on the sidebar, afaik.

Re:Not a good idea

[Roberto]

Well, why don't you just put a sftp url in konqueror and see what happens?

Konqueror *is* a sftp client.

But anyway, here's the good part. Open a file in any KDE app. Then choose "save as". Then type sftp://blah.whatever in the location bar.

Neat hah?

Re:Not a good idea

[The Bungi]

Only 10 years, wow.

Re:Not a good idea

[3dmdev]

Do you measure success by the number of users or by the number of satisfied users?

Re:Not a good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but how do you want to combine them?

Piece by piece, my friend... when and where it makes sense. That seems to be the mission of freedesktop.org, and they are doing quite well without biting off more than they can chew.

This will take time.

I'm not a developer really (Perl hacker), so I don't speak from authority.

Best comment ever

[Anonymous Coward]

It's good to get a laugh before going to bed. :-)

I metamod every day for months on end and I never get mod points. If I had, I would have saved it for the parent comment.

Re:woo

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, let's see:

Gnome: GPL
KDE: GPL
Qt, as long as you are developing Free Software with it: GPL
Qt, if you want to develop proprietary apps: proprietary license.

In other words, there is no licensing problem between Gnome and KDE. Hasn't been for several years. The fact that Qt can be obtained with a proprietary license has absolutely no affect on KDE. KDE is GPLed software built on a GPLed toolkit. End of story.

While there may be some wailing gnashing of teeth over Novell's plan (you'd think that in light of Bluecurve, they'd know better than to do something like this), anyone who attempts to frame it in terms of a licensing issue is just raising a straw man.

It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Novell is wasting its time. Integration between KDE and GNOME will never surface. Their programming philosophies, tool kits and target audience are just different.

GNOME's focus is on users, usability and simplicity, to mention a few. KDE's focus is on power, flexibility and reconfigurability, to mention a few. How do you blend those two disparate attitudes towards software development into one unifying pot?

I just don't see how it will work. Good luck to Novell.

Re:It won't work

[neurojab]

>GNOME's focus is on users, usability and simplicity, to mention a few. KDE's focus is on power, flexibility and reconfigurability, to mention a few.

Are you sure that's not backwards?

Re:It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

GNOME's focus is on users, usability and simplicity, to mention a few. KDE's focus is on power, flexibility and reconfigurability... How do you blend those two disparate attitudes...

Easy!

Power-Users, Usable-Flexibility, Simple-Reconfigurability.

Re:It won't work

[aaron240]

This is a great point. Depending who you ask, KDE is either the user-focused simple one or the power-user's heaven--same goes for Gnome. So, which is it? Does either Gnome or KDE claim to be powerful and complex or simple and useable?

Personally, I liked Gnome before 2.0 with sawfish. It was the powerful, configurable, unrefined beauty, but now it's a toss-up.

Re:woo

[pavon]

What about license nazi's that don't like qt's license?

You mean the GPL?

how will they feel if it's 'unified' with gpl'd gnome?

Umm, since they are the same licence I don't think they'd mind at all. The parts of GNOME that are LGPL won't be an issue either.

Re:Didn't RH do this?

[LordK3nn3th]

Basically, an improved version of KDE.

That's who cracked the gnome servers

[Anonymous Coward]

It was obviously the KDE developers trying to get access to the GNOME source so that they could integrate it into KDE. Oh wait. Nevermind.

Classified?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought KG devices were classified?

THIS WEEK ON IRON SLASHDOT

[Anonymous Coward]

BATTLE: DESKTOP

Re:THIS WEEK ON IRON SLASHDOT

[jelloburn]

Whose GUI-ine reigns supreme!?

And what will they call it

[kensai]

Chimera

not that different

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like GPL vs. BSD or other similar arguments. To a "normal" person, they are nearly identical. Or Emacs vs. vi .. to my boss, they are both cryptic editors for geeks to confuse people with.

The average Joe just wants the computer to work. He thinks in terms of tasks and software to accomplish the tasks, not the underlying nuts and bolts which are just different ways of accomplishing the same boring things.

So the more we (the free software community) can unify these desktop environments and smooth out these incompatibilites, the better. It's not like we don't all run desktop environment A but still use apps from environment B under it.

Personally, I think they both stink. I can't wait to see the unpronouncable app names. :-)

Re:not that different

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not like we don't all run desktop environment A but still use apps from environment B under it.

Confusing sentense.. the negatives get me confused..

Re:not that different

[Anonymous Coward]

please stop telling people "what the average joe" wants

they want things that work, and people some how thing windows does that?

Re:not that different

[spectecjr]

please stop telling people "what the average joe" wants

they want things that work, and people some how thing windows does that?


That's because outside of your Slashdot la-la land, Windows works much better than Linux for the average joe. They think it works better because it does work better.

Re:not that different

[checkup21]

this is in fact _wrong_. The only thing i found out that the barrier to linux is higher. But if you find someone gets _all_ the stuff you want installed and running, you would wonder how productive you can be with koffice and kdepim.

Re:not that different

[RKloti]

To a normal person, there is almost no difference between a diesel motor and a petrol motor. That doesn't mean they are the same thing, in fact, there are some fundamental differences between the two; for example: A petrol motor uses electrical ignition, while a diesel motor doesn't have any ignition at all, since the air is compressed enough to heat it beyond the flash point of diesel. Try putting some diesel in a petrol motor (or visa versa) and see what happens.

Just because somethings may seem superficially similiar to "average Joe" doesn't mean you can glue them together and expect them to work. GNOME and KDE are programmed in different languages (C vs C++, though each has bindings for the other) and use different toolkits - Gtk+ and Qt, respectively - as well as different object models - Bonobo vs KParts. Trying to merge them would achieve nothing, rather than a unified desktop you would get a third desktop standard, most likely partially or mostly incompatible with the existing ones to the same or a similiar extent that they are incompatible with each other.

The future doesn't lie in integration, it lies in interoperability. For example, it is very important that clipboard functionality between KDE and GNOME is harmonised, as this is likely to be one thing that normal users will notice. Also desirable is the adoption of a common sound server, such as JACK and some way to embed Bonobo components in KDE applications and KParts in GNOME applications.

Re:not that different

[Rudeboy777]

The average Joe just wants the computer to work

That's funny, when I tried using joe, I wasn't able to do anything (I couldn't even figure out how to exit the damn thing!)

Bluecurve?

[PineHall]

How is this different from Red Hat's Bluecurve?
And will there be a big outcry as there was when Red Hat combined looks and features?

Re:Bluecurve?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this different from Red Hat's Bluecurve? And will there be a big outcry as there was when Red Hat combined looks and features?
I think the changes will be bigger than just blue curve cause Novell now has the pull to make changes to both. They are the only ones who pay many developers in both desktops and zealots will give them the benifit of the doubt. Not to mention they're not #1 so we are not as fast to cry treason.
Though I don't peticularly like the way Novell is now trying to give off the smell they're the only ones doing anything. We have had freedesktop, gnome/kde guys working on this for quite some time and now they step in and make it sound like they're initiating this working together. Thier PR guys are in full force IMO and the press releases are starting to get annoying. "we have the first 2.6 kernel" wow gee thanks novell! That works fine for your business partners but many of us have apt-get'd or emerged 2.6 kernels our venders supplied for months now.

Re:Bluecurve?

[hansreiser]

Bluecurve was an exercise in plagiarism, which I hope this will not be. Bluecurve
was mostly about putting redhat logos everywhere and removing all those K's.

Getting the developers of KDE and Gnome to actually work together, that will be a real accomplishment that deserves praise. I would so like to use sawfish with kde.

GNOME

[Anonymous Coward]

That's their own problem for not recognizing good software when they see it. Conversely, GNOME belongs in a bicycle basket in front of the moon.

and what about Trolltech's alliance with Canopy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are those same "nazis" going to complain about Darl Mcbride's boss, a one Mr. Ralph Yarro, sitting on the board of directors of Trolltech? Are they going to complain about SCO and Canopy owning Trolltech stock? Are they going to complain about Trolltech not fully explaining their relationship with Canopy and SCO? Are they going to ask "does Trolltech owe Canopy money?" or "Does Canopy own warrants on Trolltech?".

I hope they don't ask these questions.

How dare they ?!

Why mix them?

[digitalpeer]

I thought RedHat did a decent job of not mixing them, but making them look the same. Besides, licensing will never let them be mixed code wise. The article states that they arn't being combined anyway. It simply says they are taking the best features from each and making one interface. The slashdot and article titles are misleading.

Re:Why mix them?

[pavon]

Actually licencing is not an issue and hasn't been for years. They are both a combination of GPL and LGPL.

Argh, I wish they had interviewed a developer. This article is extremely vague. It says they are not merging KDE and gnome code bases - just making a single desktop with all their features. So which one? Are they adding gnome features to KDE, or KDE features to gnome? What features are we talking about here?

Re:Why mix them?

[ignipotentis]

What, they can't make a new one composing of what they feel are the best features in each?

Re:Why mix them?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually licencing is not an issue and hasn't been for years. They are both a combination of GPL and LGPL.

Lies and the lying liars who tell them. Qt is the GPLed library that sits at the heart of KDE -- if you want to write KDE apps that are closed-source*, you have to pay TrollTech a great deal of money and subject yourself to their licensing conditions.

There is no such restriction in GNOME -- there is a clear separation between libraries and apps... LGPL and GPL. You do not need to purchase or sign up for anything to write GNOME apps, no matter what license you choose to use.

* and please, lets not resort to "If you charge for your software, you should pay trolltech"... if that applied to the rest of the software stack (which has had even more work put in to it), the cost of Linux software development would be astronomical... as it is, developing with KDE/Qt is more expensive that with Microsoft Windows.

Re:woo

[Ianoo]

Erm no. Gnome is LGPL. Also there's no legal way that Trolltech can prevent you from selling apps you write with QT, provided you publish the source code under the GPL.

Shut your mouth, Comrade!

[fm6]

Resource usage is a state secret!

Re:Shut your mouth, Comrade!

[rifter]

Resource usage is a state secret!

In Soviet Russia, resources use YOU!

Re:Didn't RH do this?

[gilesjuk]

If you like Gnome yes, but for KDE purists like me it made using KDE harder as the expected behaviour of certain things couldn't be relied upon.

KF Gnomes?

[Tandoori Haggis]

I just broke my all time Klines (Kolour Lines) record today. To get my meagre 708 points, a lot of bouncing spheres had to go up in flames.

Now just imagine we get KGlines...

Thousands of exploding gnomes !

Kentucky Fried Gnomes?

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

That was great, thank you.

Re:Mod parent up

[Uncle Warthog]

I think this is in fact the most likely interpretation.

I do too. I've been both a SuSE Linux and NetWare user for years and had a long chat with my Novell rep. about this just after the buyout was announced. This is exactly what he told me _wouldn't_ be happening after I expressed concerns to him about it.

I like KDE and want to stay with it so it sounds like it's time to hunt out a new Linux distro. (And before anyone chimes in, no, Mandrake is not an option.)

Re:Mod parent up

[codemachine]

> Mandrake is not an option.

Just curious. Why not Mandrake?

Re:Mod parent up

[Uncle Warthog]

Just curious. Why not Mandrake?

In my experience, it's too unstable compared to SuSE (or RedHat or Debian for that matter).

Re:Mod parent up

[codemachine]

I'd agree to a point. Some releases have been extremely stable (I've had almost a year of uptime on a desktop with flakey hardware), some have been very poor. Seems the QA at Mandrake is a bit unpredictable at times.

But with the new movement towards a community release, followed by an "official" release 3 months later, I think we'll start to see some very stable "official" releases from Mandrake.

Of course Debian stable lives up to its name as well, if you really want stability. Or FreeBSD and NetBSD for that matter.

To create an editor of pure evil!

[Westacular]

Of course! They can call it evics, where commands have the same names as vi commands... except you have hit both colon AND escape while holding down all the keys in the command name at once. Plus a couple function keys, just for good measure.

Mutually exclusive option

[gujo-odori]

KDE camp: But, but, the best feature of KDE is that it's not Gnome!

Gnome camp: But, but, the best feature of Gnome is that it's not KDE!

Just how do they propose to reconcile this into a unified desktop? I'm pretty sure no compile-time option can override that :-)

Re:Mutually exclusive option

[Anonymous Coward]

A better analogy would be like those old 'you got chocolate in my peanut butter' commercials only it would go something like this:

"You got shit in my krap"
"No, you got krap in my shit"

Re:Mutually exclusive option

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is how to combine the best of both without upsetting anybody:

bash $

Re:Mutually exclusive option

[NDPTAL85]

Simple.

The Best feature of Linux is that its not Windows.

Re:Mutually exclusive option

[Anonymous Coward]

Blah! Everybody knows tcsh is the best shell out there.
I'm upset with your idea.

hidden fruit

[spectre_be]

i for one am quite fond of both gnome and kde and i do indeed agree they both have their own qualities. As far as i care this is just another choice added to the equation, and i don't really see any losers in this.
actually i'm quite curious what they're gonna make of it :-) even if it just automates the process of trying to make gtk and qt apps all look alike than i say i'm all for it!
respect to both the teams

differences between KDE and Gnome developers

[Anonymous Coward]

"thinks the differences between KDE and Gnome developers have been overstated."
Yeah, right.
And now you are going to move the mountain that separates both camps alone :)

Of course he doesn't "Read" slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Rob Malda doesn't even read it.

Well it's obvious who did this

[hayden]

It's those evil Novell people stealing GNOME's valuable source code to include in KDE.

This was so coming......

[nighty5]

The writing was on the wall for this article to arise sooner or later.

No matter which desktop you prefer, the nativeness of your desktop will be lost somewhere in the conversation.

This is what moved me away from Redhat, and that is why I now run a community based Linux distribution.

Don't read slashdot???

[dokebi]

How about the second paragraph of the article:
Supporters of the two interfaces have often sparred with each other in flame wars on Slashdot, mailing lists and newsgroups.

Looks like submitters don't read articles either.

Already done...

[plasmaroo]

>> reporting about Novell's plan to combine elements of both into a unified desktop. Apparently the work has already started

Way ahead of you, SuSE: clicky!

Re:Already done...

[TravisWatkins]

Holy crap, you have to tell me how you did that!

Re:Already done...

[ziggamon]

It is cool in deed to have two panels, and one unified theme - but what good does it make? I't perfectly happy running only one GNOME panel, and selecting whatever KDE apps I want from it! I say what I've always said: There should be only one window manager and session manager, but there can be many toolkits (QT, GTK, etc)

Re:Already done...

[Brandybuck]

Easy. That's old hat. The only slightly interesting thing about it is that he's using the new week-old Plastik theme for Mozilla.

Re:Already done...

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? Did you get Konqueror and Mozilla confused?

Re:Already done...

[Brandybuck]

Another look. No, Mozilla isn't running the Plastik theme. Must have been a brain fart.

Moving SUSE to GNOME

[Anonymous Coward]

To me the article clearly suggests that Novel will be replacing KDE with Ximian GNOME in future releases:

"we're going to migrate to a single Linux desktop."

Read, we will not support GNOME and KDE.

"Technically, you can't combine them, but we are working toward having the best features of both in a single interface. We'll implement all the best features in one technology."

Read, we're not even going to try to combine them, but our sales guys will explain how Ximian GNOME has all the same great features as KDE.

Much like the Red Hat "Blue Curve" fiasco.

[freeio]

This really looks to me like tilting at windmills. Red Hat Tried this with their eminently forgettable "Blue Curve" standard look and feel, and the result pleased no one that I have asked. It is possible to skin them to look alike, of course, but below decks there is little enough similarity to make them mix as well as oil and water.

The real question is "Why Bother?" If both libraries are present, apps from both work well enough together to make the whole question moot. This is a marketing driven decision, with no real respect to the technical merits of the question.

Re:Much like the Red Hat "Blue Curve" fiasco.

[Pecisk]

I won't call a 'Blue Curve' fiasco. It was based on usability tests and that theme really rocked. How successful was RedHat on marketing it, it is another story.

Re:Much like the Red Hat "Blue Curve" fiasco.

[Jason Earl]

Novell probably will be a little more successful than Red Hat simply because they now employ both the folks at Ximian and the bulk of the KDE hackers (who used to work for SuSE). Red Hat, on the other hand, employed very few KDE hackers (and the one outspoken KDE hacker they did employ quit :).

My guess is that the folks at Ximian and SuSE are likely to see more eye to eye seeing as how their paycheck will depend on them getting along.

Re:Much like the Red Hat "Blue Curve" fiasco.

[bogie]

"Red Hat Tried this with their eminently forgettable "Blue Curve" standard look and feel"

You say "tried" but most people I know including the IT Press liked the way Blue Curve looked. They liked that everything finally looked the same in both Gnome and KDE. Blue Curve wasn't the failure your implying.

Novell also isn't trying to merge the two and until I see what they come out with its hard for me to comment on it. Most distros let you launch either QT or GTK apps from either environment. Perhaps they'll stick with KDE but use the gtk wrapper thing so that it all looks seamless?
Throw in some admin tools that can call on either qt or gtk apps but have them looks the same and there you have it. Gnome and KDE unified. Sort of.

Re:Much like the Red Hat "Blue Curve" fiasco.

[Anonymous Coward]

This really looks to me like tilting at windmills. Red Hat Tried this with their eminently forgettable "Blue Curve" standard look and feel, and the result pleased no one that I have asked.

I use BlueCurve... it's one of the nicest, cleanest and most pleasant theme I've ever seen. The fiasco you refer to was purely of KDE invention... there are still idiots claiming that Red Hat broke (or sabotaged) their version of KDE, even though such rubbish has been comprehensively debunked repeatedly.

Re:Much like the Red Hat "Blue Curve" fiasco.

[Kethinov]

and the result [of Bluecurve] pleased no one that I have asked.

I adore Bluecurve. It's the biggest reason I am so interested in Fedora. But to be quite honest, imho if it doesn't use apt-get, it's not a distro worth using. Bluecurve in Debian/Knoppix would be a fantastic accomplishment, and I hope Bruce Perens uses Bluecurve or another unified theme with UserLinux.

Re:Much like the Red Hat "Blue Curve" fiasco.

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one hated Blue Curve, it was the reason I dropped Red Hat and moved to SuSE.

Suppose I'd better start looking at Debian.

Re:Much like the Red Hat "Blue Curve" fiasco.

[SunBug]

Apt for Fedora Core 1.90 is available here.

It's all I use, and it works great (much better than yum or up2date did).

Re:Much like the Red Hat "Blue Curve" fiasco.

[kundor]

Apt-get. Urpmi. Emerge.

There's no functional difference, beyond that emerge takes a heck of a lot longer.

Re:Much like the Red Hat "Blue Curve" fiasco.

[Anonymous Coward]

A fucking GUI theme made you change the entire distribution? You know it can be changed, right? That's like buying a new car because you don't like the damn steering wheel cover.

WTF?

Re:Much like the Red Hat "Blue Curve" fiasco.

[Cro Magnon]

I thought BlewCurve sucked. But, to be fair, there was more wrong with RH8/9 than just the GUI, and my gripes with the whole system spilled over to the interface.

Re:Much like the Red Hat "Blue Curve" fiasco.

[Anonymous Coward]

> I use BlueCurve... it's one of the nicest, cleanest and most pleasant theme I've ever seen. The fiasco you refer to was purely of KDE invention... there are still idiots claiming that Red Hat broke (or sabotaged) their version of KDE, even though such rubbish has been comprehensively debunked repeatedly.

Debunked so much that 100% of Redhat's KDE team (e.g, bero) quit?

Re:Much like the Red Hat "Blue Curve" fiasco.

[juhaz]

Shouldn't Yum be included in that list?

Re:Much like the Red Hat "Blue Curve" fiasco.

[kundor]

Sure, and apt-rpm. I have no experience with those though.

Server Desktop integration

[bangular]

One of the most interesting coming out of brainshare is Novell's strong commitment to having linux on the server AND desktop. They see the reason as MS having any success on the server side is because companies wanted to use the same thing on server and desktop. Linux is definatly taking over the server side and if companies have a good linux desktop I think the opposite can happen (use linux on desktop because they can integrate it with their servers). It's funny this comes up because I just read an article stating Windows isn't an enterprise OS and the only reason it got on the server is because it had desktop dominence. Which makes sense because when compared with almost any other OS on the planet Win2k3 comes up short in almost every category.

Re:Server Desktop integration

[T-Ranger]

There is definitely an advantage to using the same OS on both the desktop and the server. But there are at least as many reasons not to.. The most important one being genetic diversity. Do you really want a given worm to be able to take down both your servers and your desktops? ?

The distinction between versions of Windows is a few registry settings, and you are forced to run a insane amount of stuff not strictly necessary for a given role. The GUI being the prime example: You are forced to run it no matter what. If it only consumed resources that would be bad enough, but it also has lots of extra things running that are opportunity for security holes. Integrating a web browser into the GUI which is integrated with the OS means a exploit for one can get everything. Besides, how often do you log into the console of your server? You should be able to administer it remotely.

With Linux (and UNIX in general), I think you have the best of both worlds. Given the UNIX philosophy of small, isolated, tools, a desktop and a server (or even different servers doing different things) can have radically different things running. There is enough the same that experience, training, skills are useful for both roles.

Irony?

[jcuervo]

Funny, how the next story down is people (jokingly) saying KDE just hacked Gnome's site. :-)

Re:Irony?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that really Irony?

Coincidence would seem to be a better description.

Which idea is that?

[fm6]

Why do you suppose KDE and GNOME exist? It isn't as if there were no Linux or Unix desktops before these projects appeared, and most of them have a much higher hackability factor. Problem is, we want non-hackers (which is most computer users, believe it or not) to use Linux too, and that means standardizing the user experience. It might be uncool and anti-creative, but it's what it takes to appeal to people for whom software is something they use to get their work done, not a way of making a personal statement.

Every Slashdot user should say to himself at least once a day, "I am not a typical computer user."

Re:Which idea is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Every Slashdot user should say to himself at least once a day, "I am not a typical computer user."

What if Bill Gates happens to visit Slashdot?

Re:Which idea is that?

[chegosaurus]

> Problem is, we want non-hackers (which is most
> computer users, believe it or not) to use Linux
> too

Do we? Serious question: why do we want this? I've always wondered. I use the OS I like (Solaris) and I don't care *at all* what anyone else uses. I just don't get this advocacy thing.

Despite the flag waving and fanaticism I think most people round here would probably hate it if Linux went mainstream, because they'd lose their superior, leeter-than-thou bragging rights. I imagine they'd all move to AtheOS or Plan9 or somesuch, then scoff at l4me linux lusers.

This is a KDE/GNOME thread: the "friendly" faces of Unix. That means dozens of "your all ghey I use blackbox/FVWM/fluxbox/E/screen/ratpoison" posts from weenies trying to impress the stupid trend-following GNOME/KDE herd.

Sorry. I'm sure I had a point to make when I started writing this...

Re:Which idea is that?

[Cro Magnon]

Why do we want to bring non-geeks to Linux? For one thing, it would be a lot harder for Micro$**T to con politicians to pass linux-hostile laws if Linux had 20% of the desktop. And it would help us to get support for our favorite kewl hardware. BTW, if Linux went mainstream, I could STILL maintain my "leet" bragging rights. I'd just replace Knome with TWM. :-P

Re:Which idea is that?

[r_j_howell]

I think your question is a good one, but your answer is incomplete.

Yes, there is the eletist factor in Linux. I don't have a tremendous amount of sympathy for that situation, myself, I've seen too many cutting edges come and go, and I have a hard enough time keeping up with everything I want to in the tech field to presume I'm more "1337" than someone else. Save that for the teenagers, I say.

But the difference between open source and proprietary software is open source may have USERS but the for-sale stuff has CUSTOMERS. Customers pay for the development process. And so they are the most important people to consider. Users (of open source software, at least) are by-in-large non-contributers.

Yeah, I've read "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" I understand the network value thing. But the people who really put down the necessary resources to make F/OSS as cool as it is are the developers/testers/documenters. NOT the average users. Sure, they may contribute a little by the mere presence of more boxes, ands even more importantly, we might as well welcome them since we seem to have the free rider problem licked. But dumbing down the system for the "average user" at the expense of the contributer demographic is not being foar to the people who really make this whole thing work.

By the way, this include me. I haven't really contributed anything to F/OSS, even though I use it. But I also know that means that I don't get to DEMAND anything. I don't think that "fsck you! Write it youself!" is the most positive way to phrase it. But it is still somewhat true.

Re:Which idea is that?

[plj]

Well, even if we wouldn't want to use se same systems as majority does, we do want to interact with them - and that would be hell a lot of easier, if majority would run a system based on open standards instead of some propriertary crap from Redmond.

You could still run Openstep/GNU/Hurd, if you would think that "GnoKDE/Linux is crap as everybody's using it", and it would probably still make your life easier that it is nowadays.

Re:Which idea is that?

[plj]

And I naturally mean GNUstep, not Openstep... damn all these different steps!

Re:Which idea is that?

[fm6]

I just don't get this advocacy thing.

So hackers should just use whatever works for them, and not worry about what non-hackers use? That's fine, as long as you don't design, program, document, support, or sell software used by non-hackers.

Another good move from Novell

[Lakedemon]

Why settle for Gnome xor KDE when you can have the best of both worlds ?
Novell just cut through the Gordian Knot that has been annoying me each time I installed Linux :
What desktop should I choose ?

Opening Yast/pieces of Netware and now aiming for the best desktop...It looks like Novell wants the leadership/to set the standards in Linux very badly....
Well, there is a lot of money at stake...in a world opening to open source....

Re:Another good move from Novell

[bigsteve@dstc]

Novell just cut through the Gordian Knot that has been annoying me each time I installed Linux :

I think you meant "Gnordian Kdot" - HTH :-)

rtfa?

[anthonyclark]

The article said, at least the way I read it, that Novell was going to write yet another desktop combining the 'best' features of both KDE and Gnome. Not combine the two but create a third version. Whether such a third way will take off among anyone other than Novell's corporate customers, will be interesting to watch.

BIAS: I prefer Gnome to KDE and am using it right now; I hope that Ximian's involvement in all this will steer the new hybrid offspring desktop in a more Gnome-ish direction.

(And here's hoping that the improvements they create will filter back down to us poor Gnome|KDE users).

Or maybe they should just license MacOSX' desktop UI :-)

Re:rtfa?

[sjvn]

> create a third version

Correct. The code differences are too vast between the two to actually try to merge one into the other.

Steven

Re:Who am I, freakin' Nostradamus?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm willing to bed whoever just modded that troll was one of the people who ridiculed me...

Mod parent up

[jhoger]

I think this is in fact the most likely interpretation.

KDE and Gnome?

[Mr. Piddle]

Nuts and gum are a much better combination! KDE and Gnome suck!

Reminds me of Ghostbusters

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

"This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportion. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!"

Possible name?

[Progman3K]

Can anyone think of a name ou could form by mixing the letters

KDE GNOME

Geode?
Genomed?

Re:Possible name?

[RedPhoenix]

> Can anyone think of a name ou could form by mixing the letters

egrep "^[kdegnom]+$" /usr/share/dict/words ..
Some interesting ones:

doomed

ego

omen

However, on a more positive note:

mono (hmm!)

needed

mend

edge

good

keen

Red.

Re:Possible name?

[Neo-Rio-101]

GnuDE ?

Re:Possible name?

[Anonymous Coward]

SEXY! That will attract the Real Men (tm).

Re:Possible name?

[chefren]

Naming a KDE and Gnome merging project "doomed" sounds very fitting to me.

KNODE

[Neo-Rio-101]

Gnome + KDE = KnoDE

Re:KNODE

[Trejkaz]

And then KNode will tell them to cease and desist.

Re:KNODE

[Neo-Rio-101]

Dammit.... well it was a nice try. How about 'GnuDE' then?

Re:KNODE

[Chainsaw]

Apart from setting off every stupid spam filter in the world (GNude)... :-)

hmm

[minus_273]

not clear what exactly they want to do. Is this going to be another RH bluecurve stly deal, or is this more of a gtk->qt bindings or somthing like that (or vice versa). I mean the big problem with kde vs gnome is not so much the fact that they behave different( though it is part of the problem) it it more that the libraries that are loaded usually do the same things. Why would you have a kde window box with konqueror and galeon running at the same time? similarly, why run an app that uses khtml and gecko or gtkhtml at the same time? it is great to have such redundancy when you need to pick software, but there is no need to have both running at the same time.

Re:hmm

[be-fan]

Having redundant libraries is kind of a sad fact of life. No currently popular OS has been able to avoid it. At any given time, the average Windows machine is running several different toolkits (.NET, XP common controls, MS Office toolkit, etc). There is even redundency between Carbon and Cocoa in OS X.

Re:hmm

[droleary]

There is even redundency between Carbon and Cocoa in OS X.

I believe the word you were looking for there is "reuse". Carbon and Cocoa share a lot of Core code, and/or have structures that are toll-free bridged between environments. There are overlaps in functionality between the two APIs, but for the most part the code underneath is not duplicated any more than necessary. If that's the type of integration that is going to happen with the Gnome+KDE mix I'd be happy to see it. However, my money is on them not forming a nice abstraction API which they layer the KDE and Gnome APIs on top of, instead letting ego get in the way trying to make one way or the other the "winner".

Re:hmm

[be-fan]

Its not quite so rosy as you think. Before Apple fixed it up, people noticed significant rendering differences between Carbon and Cocoa applications. Eg: font rendering was subtly different. This indicates that there is not as much core integration as you'd believe. This makes sense, given that both OpenStep and the MacOS Toolbox already had that core code. This is in keeping with the design approach of the rest of OS X, where Apple didn't go out of their way to reconcile all the different components that they brought together (BSD and Mach, for example).

Novell's next plan

[Zalgon 26 McGee]

"We'll merge Vi and Emacs! That way, everyone will be happy!"

Re:Novell's next plan

[Tumbleweed]

"And after that, we shall merge the commandline and the GUI!"

Re:Novell's next plan

[zerOnIne]

M-x vi-mode

perhaps?

Re:Novell's next plan

[Quattro Vezina]

That would really be vile.

Re:Novell's next plan

[thryllkill]

"We'll merge Vi and Emacs! That way, everyone will be happy!"

I won't be happy until I can have linux with BSD inits... DOH!

Re:Novell's next plan

[Sri Lumpa]

No, Vi and Emacs are totally different takes on the same thing (modal vs non-modal text editing) whereas Gnome and KDE are similar takes on the same thing.

While they have many common points they diverge both from the interface POV and from an "under the hood" POV but the interface part is much easier to integrate (like Bluecurve) than the under the hood part (integrating QT/GTK, although there is some progress with the event loops, or KParts/Bonobo).

It would would be more akin to merging Emacs and XEmacs.

Of course, now that I have written that somebody will write why I am wrong and cite viper-mode and vimacs... oh well, everybody has got teir opinion I guess.

A very good move

[X-Nc]

I have long felt that the differences between GNOME and KDE were miniscule at best. I'm talking about from a usability perspective. Yes, under the hood, they are vastly different, but when you look at the UI and see how they both follow the same basic way there's really little difference between them. It's good having more choices but GNOME and KDE are so much alike that they are nearily identical. Finding a way to merge them into one UI (from an interface level, not a code level) would be ideal.

Difference between Gnome and KDE developers

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome developers do not shower on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or Saturday. KDE developers don't shower the other 7 days of the week.

-RMS

I already run them both....

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Gnome as my window manager but I use KDE apps within it. Specifically, Kdevelop -- cool app by the way.

I look at it like this. Any given VB application doesn't mesh well with windows. I usually can tell a VB app a mile away. This has always been the case with different window tool kits such as OWL, TK, VB, MFC, Mozilla, etc.

I'm not so shallow as not to run an app I need because of the off look a different underlying toolkit brings. I run any given app because it's a tool the helps me complete a task.

There may be other problems with apps interacting with each other but I still manage just fine.

So, whats the problem anyway?

I like them both, and others besides

[timothy]

I use gnome sometimes, and sometimes I use KDE. More often than either, I use fluxbox, especially when on my oldest laptop, which has "only" 96MB of RAM. (I wish I didn't know how much of my college money went toward 4 extra MB of RAM for my Mac in 1992.)

Gnome and KDE have different feels -- and tastes certainly vary -- but they're both "good." I like Gnome's clean, simple feeling (in contrast, KDE's defaults seem sort of clinical and harsh edged to me ... if not to you, then more power etc.), and KDE's integration of parts. Nautilus is actually prettier, but the ability to split views in Konqueror usually wins if I'm moving files from dir to dir.

Still, they're both well past "good enough" for my use at least (maybe yours, maybe not, in which case take it up with them, not me :)), to the point that it's like arguing cuisine. Is Thai better than Mexican? It all depends on the context -- mood, individual preferences, specifics of what you'll order, etc.

timothy

Flames

[diaphanous]

The GNOME vs. KDE flameware are lame, and have been lame for ages. I don't think I've seen any of the GNOME or KDE hackers flame each other (recently at least, maybe back before the KDE licensing changes, but that's ancient history now). The flamers all seem to be trolls or fanboys too useless to actually contribute to development of either desktop so they just get off on flaming the other group. See the full quote from the article:

Schlager added that he thinks the conflict between KDE and Gnome developers has been overstated. "The developers really don't fight; it's their supporters who fight, he said.

Personally, I've switched back and forth between KDE and GNOME in the past. Right now I'm running KDE 3.2 on Debian Unstable as my desktop, but I have also GNOME 2.4 installed, and use several GTK+/GNOME programs daily.

~Phillip

Linux takes over

[SphericalCrusher]

With the combiniation of both of these, I think Linux will top Windows.

Even the schools around here at adapting Linux... it's just that most of them complain about desktop interfaces and such. Not everyone knows how to use Linux. As the Cisco teacher at my school stated: "With the addition of KDE, I believe Linux will become more mainstream." and that is 100 % true.

Because of a merger of these two UIs, I believe we'll see a unity amongst a lot of other things also. No longer will my friends have to ask me which is better, haha. Once the world can use Linux as easy as they can Windows, I believe we'll see a takeover. Besides, you have to be pretty stupid if you can't use Mandrake or Lycoris. =P

Re:Linux takes over

[Brandybuck]

Even the schools around here at adapting Linux...

I'm taking a university extension course in Linux device drivers. I brought my laptop and was running KDE. The guy behind me kept looking over, and finally asked, "it isn't Windows, what is it?" This was in a *Linux* class. I didn't have the heart to tell him it was FreeBSD :-)

Finally, we're getting somewhere on the desktop

[tentimestwenty]

As long as I never have to hear the names of 2 desktop environments when talking about Linux, I'm happy. Choice is great but having two pretty good environments instead of one great environment is not going to win any market share. Only in open source could the two top competitors work together. For this we should be thankful. I don't think there's much to stop Linux from taking down Windows if this is even remotely successful.

Re:Finally, we're getting somewhere on the desktop

[jrockway]

Linux is not about "market-share". It's about developers writing the code that they want. Sometimes they take outside ideas because they WANT to help people; that's why we have things like accessability in the mainstream GNOME (and KDE?). Anyway, if you want the one great desktop, write it. Nobody's stopping you.

(FWIW I prefer XFCE4, nice and clean but still featureful)

Re:Finally, we're getting somewhere on the desktop

[jdray]

While I understand what you're saying, I have to disagree with you in one respect:

There is a huge movement afoot to create marketshare for Linux, and unification of the two leading desktops would help that movement along immeasurably. Now, don't confuse "marketshare" with "profits." The intent is to gain as much penetration into the OS market as possible for Linux. For every Windows desktop or Solaris server or WinCE handheld that is displaced by a Linux instance, Linux as a whole gets stronger. For every user that says, "Yeah, I use Linux now," Linux gets stronger. And the stronger it gets, the more useful it gets, not only to average end users but to those of us who like it for all the reasons we've adopted it early.

Re:Finally, we're getting somewhere on the desktop

[tentimestwenty]

That's a little isolationist. Obviously it takes a community to write something like a great desktop and it's somewhat irresponsible as a community which is providing software for a larger community not to think about the impact of their work. As much as Linux started as the hobbyist's OS, it's very quickly reaching the momentum where not only will individuals not be able to affect the whole character of the OS, it will be required that many people work together to move the OS in a planned direction. I think it's obvious that the closest goal of Linux is to be an alternative for the masses. From there, who knows...

Re:Finally, we're getting somewhere on the desktop

[jefe7777]

>>There is a huge movement afoot to create marketshare for Linux

A conscience movement to increase marketshare? Perhaps in the minds of executives at Redhat, Novell and other commercial entities.

Ok, sure, all of us geeks would like to see linux more widely used. (well some of us anyway, I keep forgetting that slashdot has a lot of windows users, who may or may not care less)

But I don't think that market share as a goal, is a "movement" like you describe.

The marketshare is a side effect of passion. Passion is what countless thousands of developers, sysadmins and techies have for linux and opensource.

Microsoft on the other hand, had a single goal: to capture marketshare. If anyone's had a "movement to capture marketshare" it was definitely Microsoft. It worked quite well in hindsight.

No. I'd have to disagree with you and say that "marketshare" is not the movement. The movement is "doing it better", which if results in more marketshare...fantastic.

j

Re:Finally, we're getting somewhere on the desktop

[petecarlson]

Linux is not about "market-share". It's about developers writing the code that they want.

I hate to be the one to to say this on ./ but for Novel, Linux is all about marketshare. They want to sell something and are going to use Linux as the tool with which to do it. Of course in there attempt to gain marketshare, they will write lots of nice code with which you can do whatever you want. Linux is different things to different people, to me it's an OS that works as a desktop, a mailserver, and a development platform for my whatever I feel like trying out. I like it because it works to do what I want it to do. Perhaps you have been writing GPLd code for years and resent the atempted comercialization of your baby, but you gave that code to the world and now the world can do whatever it wants with that code... but they have to give back anything they add. They want one great desktop and they are going to write one, of course the're not going to start from scratch, there going to base there one great desktop on two other great desktops. If the developers of the first two desktops want to keep there desktops the same, there's nothing stopping them because, as you said, it's about developers writing the code that they want. In the end, we all get more code which we can use however we want. No matter the motivation, more good code is more good code. /rant

Re:Finally, we're getting somewhere on the desktop

[falonaj]

that's why we have things like accessability in the mainstream GNOME (and KDE?)

Accessibility is exactly one of the areas where integration makes a lot of sense. This is why the KDE anhd GNOME accessibilty teams work very closely together, sharing the same library (Sun's ATK). A first snapshot of the work Trolltech is doing to fully integrate Qt/KDE applications with Sun's accessibility framework is already available.

Olaf Jan Schmidt, KDE Accessibility Project

Re:Finally, we're getting somewhere on the desktop

[ros0709]

Great. Right now I like Linux, and I can use it knowing that because it is a relatively small player all those virii out there are going after someone else; no-one is going to stop me installing my media player because it's anti-competitive. If Linux is too successful, things will get worse.

Re:Finally, we're getting somewhere on the desktop

[pebs]

Gnome and KDE aren't all that different. I don't see what the big deal is which one you use. There are just a few things that need to be done to let the two work together. Things like drag and drop; and KDE apps need to work with the Gnome notification area (Gnome apps work with KDE's notification area already). Other than that, it makes no difference, run kdeinit while running Gnome and you can run all the KDE apps in Gnome like you normally would in KDE. Or run gnome-settings-daemon while running KDE and you got Gnome/GTK+ apps working just like they normally would in Gnome.

The day when I can drag and drop files from Konqueror into any GTK+ app (and vice versa) will be a good day. For now, Rox file manager does the trick.

Re:Finally, we're getting somewhere on the desktop

[Directrix1]

Unless, you actually know what you are doing. If linux gains marketshare, then new devices might actually be supported.

Re:Finally, we're getting somewhere on the desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

Please first read the rest of hist post again before you answer. He has a point you know.

Re:Finally, we're getting somewhere on the desktop

[roie_m]

Well, what you're forgetting is that many different people want different things. While "the movement" in general may be about "doing it better", some people, call it a "sub-movement" or whatever, have marketshare as a goal. Unfortunately (and I'm not attacking your parent specifically, but in general), some of those people tend to think that all of "the movement" must be about that and get pissed off when people do things that are counterproductive to that end. But that's a whole different rant.

Re:Finally, we're getting somewhere on the desktop

[cbreaker]

I'm not a corporation. I am not running a business. And I want a unified Desktop. I don't care; KDE or Gnome. I want market share for Linux.

I want to use Linux full time, have it be 100% supported by hardware and software vendors. I want to be TOTALLY free of Microsoft.

Some of you can be free now, but for all the things I use my computer for I cannot be. Market share will allow it to happen, and I feel as though Linux can gain more ground faster on the Desktop front if there were a single big popular DE.

Of course, it's all good either way. Linux will gain dominance, I think it's inevitable. It probably won't matter what DE you use in the end.

Re:Finally, we're getting somewhere on the desktop

[boisepunk]

crap post
Looks like Gateway is throwing in the towel and closing all of its remaining retail stores, according to a Reuters/Yahoo! report." The story notes: "Gateway's stores, which will be closed on April 9, have long been criticized by analysts and investors as an expensive drag on cash flow because of lease costs and the difficulty of managing inventories", and goes on to suggest: "...with [the acquisition of] eMachines, Gateway doesn't necessarily need the added distribution channel the stores gave the company. In addition to selling Gateway's wares over the phone and via the Internet, eMachines PCs are sold at major retailers such as Best Buy.

desktop integration

[Anonymous Coward]

IMHO a high quality linux desktop will have to combine the best elements of many projects.

1. combine the best software from kde and gnome into a seamless experience by loading both libraries on machines with sufficient ram.

2. then make it fast, light, rock solid and pretty with XFCE4 as the default desktop.

3. decide between mandrake, debian or suse conf tools and installer (progeny?) and make one a standard.

4. build on debian base.

Voila! a user friendly & powerful system

Re:Didn't RH do this?

[Coryoth]

You just contradicted your sig.

Jedidiah.

Lets hope they get it right.

[BCW2]

The last attempt at something similar gave us bluecurve, in which the sum is less than the parts. I use KDE for everyday(localuser) and Gnome for root, I can't explain why except that the feel of each is right for those purposes, to me. If it doesn't work, I'll just continue to use both.

After all I thought Linux was about choice!

Re:Lets hope they get it right.

[Brandybuck]

I can't explain why except that the feel of each is right for those purposes, to me.

If I may expand on this without offending people...

KDE has done a better job than Gnome of integrating its applications into the desktop, while Gnome has done a better job of creating a minimal out-of-your-way interface. Thus KDE is better suitable to a user's desktop when multiple applications are interacting with each other, and Gnome is better for root's desktop which typically does just one thing at a time sequentially and can't be bothered with distractions.

Re:Lets hope they get it right.

[zalm]

Seems to me what Novell is trying to do is take the best attributes of Gnome and KDE and integrate them into the Ximian desktop. Novell knows that the Linux/OpenSource community wil never agree on a single standard for a desktop. I think Novell wants to do with Linux what Apple did with BSD; create a standard platform for developers. The desktop that Novell develops will bring a certain ligitimacy to potential software developers.

Re:Lets hope they get it right.

[BCW2]

That is a real good explanation and pretty much describes what I said in the original post. The two desktops are suited for different tasks, and each is very good at it's strength. If the combined desktop can add to Gnome without subtracting too much from KDE, we might have a winner.

Re:Gnome and KDE? New Name Perhaps? :)

[Anonymous Coward]

GNODE

Great new operating desktop environment ;)

Integration, Man.

[Anonymous Coward]

I imagine this isn't about so much look and feel but more about desktop integration. Imagine using Evolution to open an attachment using the default app settings confiured in KControl. Or saving the image you just edited in the GIMP directly to a remote server using the FTP KIO slave in the KDE file dialog. Or scripting office procedures using the desktop agnostic D-BUS (KDE's admitted DCOP successor).

There's so much more that just theming. Look at freedesktop.org to get a feel of the potential.

We are the wor...

[Anonymous Coward]

We are the Norg, prepare to be assimilated!

*bows*
thank you.. thank you.. I'll be here all week!

Needed Unification

[GeekDork]

There are some things that need unification, KDE and Gnome as projects are not among those. What really needs to be done is to establish some common traits to make the whole platform stronger (now you expect me to use the words "paradigm" and "shift" next to each other, right?).

Let me clarify. During the last weeks, I have been on the look for a stable (not Sylpheed), graphical (not Mutt or Pine) mail client that supports proper GPG/PGP encryption and signing out of the box/package (farewell, KMail) and can handle a 30,000+ message mailbox (so much for Thunderbird) that didn't require the installation of 75% percent of Gnome (so much for Evolution). Turns out there doesn't seem to be one, but that's not the point here.

The point is that it is impossible to use the same addressbook from at least two of those programs! Of course, you can do some fancy import/export stuff, but that's time-consuming and error-prone. Evolution tried to import an LDIF file created by KAddressbook, segfaulted and couldn't be started again without purging the configuration; Firebird created one empty entry for every entry in that file, then mangled the entries and built some complete rubbish from them; Sylpheed that becomes really weird after connecting to an LDAP server (which is what I'm getting to next) imported it flawlessly. And even if the import would be working, it'd have been one hell of a time to keep up sync between my non-KMail MUA and KOrganizer which I use and (to some extent) like. Next I tried setting up an LDAP server for that task which promptly broke an bugzilla installation that wanted to have its user DB in LDAP all of a sudden after the libraries had been installed.

Do I need to mention that I was almost crying at that point? It's just an addressbook for crying out loud. If the developers want to be farkwits, that's up to them. But I suppose they're all intelligent people that should have that spark of common sense that their babbling about "having the choice" is pretty much worthless if The Choice better be final or you're in for a world of pain when reconsidering.

Re:Needed Unification

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, why do you need more than one addressbook anyway?

Re:Needed Unification

[GeekDork]

I don't, that's the friggin' point.

Re:Needed Unification

[Anonymous Coward]

During the last weeks, I have been on the look for a stable (not Sylpheed), graphical (not Mutt or Pine) mail client that supports proper GPG/PGP encryption and signing out of the box/package (farewell, KMail) and can handle a 30,000+ message mailbox (so much for Thunderbird) that didn't require the installation of 75% percent of Gnome (so much for Evolution). Turns out there doesn't seem to be one, but that's not the point here.

So, youve got yourself two "rare" requirments and refuse the solutoin because it requires an install that is too big? Geekdork doth protest too much, methinks.

Mm-mmm

[davandhol]

Linux User #1: Hey! You got KDE in my GNOME!

Linux User #2: Hey! You got GNOME in my KDE!

They both try it out

Both Users: Wow!

Two great desktops that go great together!

Unify them both--into GNUstep

[metamatic]

Let me repeat myself...

If there was any sanity in the open source desktop developer community, we'd see more effort going into GNUstep.

Works with everything we have today? Check, there's compatibility with KDE and GNOME applications as well as Motif, with window style hints too.

High level language support? Check, Objective-C provides Smalltalk-like object orientation, and automatic memory management is available. There are also bindings to Ruby and Java. You can even build Java applications with native quality look and feel.

Compatible with what programmers know today? Yup, Objective-C is a slight superset of C, so almost any programmer can get to grips with it in a weekend. (Speaking as someone who did.)

Good class libraries? Yes, modeled on NeXT's excellent work, the same foundation used to build OS X. I've written Cocoa code, it's the most painless class library I've encountered. (Yes, I write Java too and have written C++.)

Cross platform? Yes again, programs are portable between GNUstep and Cocoa without too much work--see GNUmail for an example. Non-GUI programs even port to Windows without major effort, allegedly.

Good developer tools? Again, yes. Excellent developer tools on OS X. Doubtless the free tools on Linux could use some work, but that shouldn't be too hard. We can even build them using the OS X tools if necessary.

Pretty UI? Well, I think it looks OK. Not as nice as Aqua, but it's functional.

Mature? Well, the Objective-C compiler is GCC, Apple use it for their developer tools and push back improvements, the class library design has been refined over the course of 10+ years.

Think about it, people. We could unify the Linux and Apple developer communities. All work towards one common goal. Get 10%+ desktop market share for OpenStep/OS X/GNUstep in no time.

Hell, get GNUstep up to scratch and you'd probably see developers porting their commercial applications from OS X to Linux. Wouldn't you like to see products from Adobe, Macromedia, maybe even Apple available to run on your Linux desktop?

Think about all the problems that have been solved by NeXT and Apple. Application packaging, for example? Solved, applications are bundles of files that you can just drag-drop wherever you want to keep them, and they work.

Re:Unify them both--into GNUstep

[HenchmenResources]

Recently Macromedia said that they will be working on a Linux port of Flash (the creator program not just the viewer)and my companies Adobe rep. has hinted that Adobe is working on porting all of their apps to Linux (how soon this will happen is unknown). Now I'm no programer but if Novells work or an effort into the use of GNUstep would help speed this up than I'm all for it and hopefuly one day when I get back to school and learn some programing I'll be able to help out the effort.

Re:Unify them both--into GNUstep

[Anonymous Coward]

When's the last time you saw an open-source project improve a well-designed, existing system, instead of wandering off, re-inventing everything, getting it 90% right but 400% as complicated?

Re:Unify them both--into GNUstep

[Anonymous Coward]

Most Adobe and Macromedia applications are written against the Carbon toolkit. You will be hard pressed to find a serious developer other than Apple coding against Cocoa. Apple is a hardware company; they only develop apps to sell more Macs or iPods, what makes you think they would code for Linux? As far as automatic memory management in GNUStep, they use reference counting, and you must manually increment/decrement the references. What is automatic about that? GNUStep sucks move on.

Re:Unify them both--into GNUstep

[Anonymous Coward]

Objective-C is a slight superset of C, so almost any programmer can get to grips with it in a weekend

You probably could, but at the moment setting up GNUstep and getting the GNUMakefile running properly so that you can do anything even remotely useful is too painful.

Everything is an object in Objective-C, so everything has to be derived from a root object, either NSObject, or one you define yourself. Getting gcc to find NSObject and finding out which package you need to install, which shell script you need to run etc. is way too hard.

You may pick up Objective-C in a weekend, but it takes a week to get HelloWorld.m running properly, whereas the equivalent Gtk or Qt (or even Win32 or .net) takes minutes.

I don't disagree with you on the potential that GNUStep has, but when other toolkits have more user share and are easier to pick up, its no surprise that there are so few projects using GNUStep.

AC

Re:Unify them both--into GNUstep

[metamatic]

The existing Adobe and Macromedia applications are written against Carbon because that was all that existed on the Mac when they were written. There are plenty of commercial applications based on Cocoa.

I didn't say GNUstep had automatic memory management, I said that it was available. There are automatic memory management systems for Objective-C.

Reference counting doesn't seem to be a big deal to people, anyway--look at the number of Python zealots.

Re:Unify them both--into GNUstep

[Anonymous Coward]

Python reference counting didn't work manually the way Obj-C does...and now Python is garbage collected.

Didn't know that was GC for Obj-C...google bring it right up though. Thanks.

Re:Unify them both--into GNUstep

[Eneff]

If there was any sanity in the open source desktop developer community, we'd see more effort going into GNUstep.

+1 funny... oh sorry, mod points used up.

I know I don't use it because I hate the space it takes up for those large icons. I like the central corner menu/"start button". I don't like all those boxes on the side taking away screen real estate. Perhaps when I have three monitors and can control them via keyboard.

The vertical, non-integrative menu makes accessing the menu options via keyboard a bit of a chore. Again, I think Windows (and gnome, fvwm, and kde) made the right choice in a horizontal menu at the top of the application. Perhaps I didn't spend enough time with it, but I couldn't find reasons to learn to love it, no matter what everyone else said.

Re:Unify them both--into GNUstep

[metamatic]

UI issues with the window manager aren't a good reason to reject the entire architecture. Look at OS X--lots of people decided they hated the dock, so there are numerous replacements.

You mean GK Player ....

[Anonymous Coward]

of course.

Sounds like a regular reader to me

[rjamestaylor]

• Chris Schlager, vice president of research and development for SUSE, thinks the differences between KDE and Gnome developers have been overstated. Apparently he's not a regular /. reader.

He did say those differences were overstated, i.e., stated over and over and over -- so he sounds like a /. regular to me.

That, or he is a reader like CmdrTaco loves: reads every story but ignores the comments.

Not a troll

[retro128]

Seriously, what IS the difference between Gnome and KDE? I have run both and find them equally functional. Granted, I have never configured them from scratch, and I'm sure there are some differences there...

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand one of the differences is that one uses TK and the other uses QT toolkits. Even as such, I can run programs written under either on my desktop. So is Gnome vs. KDE just a holy war or do the differences run deeper than that?

Re:Not a troll

[be-fan]

Originally, it was a license holy war. GNOME was started because Qt wasn't GPL-compatible. By the time Qt was GPL'ed, GNOME had evolved to have a life of its own.

Today, the differences are very noticable:

- GNOME focuses on polish, ease of use, and adhering to classical HIG principles.

- KDE focuses on power and configurability. In general, the KDE framework is more high-tech and advanced then GNOME's, but that also causes the UI to sometimes feel mechanical.

Your KParts

[Compenguin]

Your brown little KParts aren't going to school with my Bonobo and thats the bottom line!

Whatever...

[Anonymous Coward]

> eWeek is reporting about Novell's plan to
> combine elements of both into a unified
> desktop.

Egads, from bad to worse. Does no one ever
learn? Remember the KISS principle?

Nat Friedman's Comments

[Kur]

I was in a session at Brainshare on the "Novell Linux Desktop", lead by Nat Friedman. Someone asked him about Gnome vs. KDE and his reply was that the only people who bring up this topic seem to be Slashdot posters.

Seriously, he called attention to the fact that Novell is committed to both KDE and GNOME. According to his slide, Novell is now the #1 contributer to both KDE and GNOME. From what I've seen, though, Novell will certainly leverage its purchase of Ximian in every way it can. All of the desktops and kiosks run SUSE with Ximian. All of the demos and new applications have been written on SUSE and Ximian. Finally, projects like iFolder are being built with Mono. Nat also talked a little about freedesktop.org and the worry that KDE and GNOME will become incompatible, something Novell does not want to see occur.

Wrong approach

[Brandybuck]

Combining the two into a single desktop is the wrong approach. Their internals are just too different. For instance, how do you use combine KWin with Metacity when their written in different languages and paradigms. Or do you hack KWin to use Metacity themes, or vice versa? Ditto for Kicker verus Panel.

A much better approach is to help in the interoperability effort. Make the two desktops work better together. Create some unified themes. Work on QtGTK+ or GTKQt. Then pick ONE desktop to be the default, while still providing the other as an alternative.

Unfortunately, I see this as an uninformed pronouncement by Novell management. Consider the two following incompatible quotes from the article:

"Technically, you can't combine them, but we are working toward having the best features of both in a single interface. We'll implement all the best features in one technology."

and

"...you'll see the first major results of this effort in the next versions of SUSE Linux, which will be released toward the end of the year."

I wonder what this major result is going to be? KPanel? Metaciwin? Konqilus?

Re:Wrong approach

[Coryoth]

I wonder what this major result is going to be? KPanel? Metaciwin? Konqilus?

How about throwing some weight behind the development of this project? It wouldn't take too much effort to have this remarkably robust and efficient (it already works very well for all basic Qt themes, but struggles a bit with more complicated ones - Mosfet's liquid themes etc.), and having that done you could quite easily claim a unified look for all apps without any hassle - plus a single point at which to change themes - change the KDE style and it automatically effects all GTK apps.

There are plenty of good easy goals to aim for here.

Jedidiah.

Best of KDE and Gnome?

[potmos]

What? So how is this news? They are just getting rid of KDE and making the new desktop 100% Gnome? :)

KDE and Gnome are like:

[DarkHelmet]

Nuts and Gum
(Together at last)

Thank you Simpsons.

Re:Gnome and KDE? New Name Perhaps? :)

[Rick the Red]

That's GNU/KDE, you insensitive clod!

And the unifier will be...

[Anonymous Coward]

MONO

sound like what RedHat is already doing!

[pmpro]

I can't wait to see both gnome & kde fans complaining about how novell crippled there favorite desktop.

Will it be called Knomell?

[efti]

I for one welcome our new Knomell overlords.

Oh Crap!

[Brandybuck]

Oh Crap! I just realized what this means!

Consider the clues: Novell buys Ximian; Nat and Miguel are huge C#/.NET fans. Qt just got C# bindings.. Novell wants to differentiate itself from Sun, which is making a Java desktop. Oh No! It's going to be a frigging Mono desktop!

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Re:Oh Crap!

[codemachine]

I think you're bang on. Novell is going to push C# and Mono as the next developer platform, hoping that compatibility with .NET helps them in the long run.

Meanwhile Sun is pushing Java as a programming platform for Linux with the Java Desktop System. Unfortunately for Sun, Java is not yet integrated into most distros besides their own, hence why IBM's wish to see it open sourced could really help Sun and Java.

A third option that doesn't get discussed much with Linux is Objective-C. The OS X Cocoa and GNUStep frameworks, if they had a big backer like MS/Sun/IBM/Novell on the Linux side, just might be able to contend with the above two choices.

Of course KDE (with a lot of help from QT) is doing a pretty good job at creating a nice C++ framework for developers. They do pretty good considering the language they are using is not as new or "pretty" as the other three.

KDE with GNOME apps integrated

[Karma Sucks]

Look at SUSE 9.1 Personal, it *only* includes KDE as a desktop. It does have GTK apps such as the GIMP and non-KDE apps OOo integrated into KDE.

I think this is what they mean. They will integrate GTK into KDE.

Re:KDE with GNOME apps integrated

[chefren]

..or QT into Ximian Gnome. Which I find more likely since they own Ximian.

What about the Qt licensing stuff

[Sandb]

What about the Qt licensing stuff? I don't read anything about that in the article...

Would the "new unified desktop" environment be based on stuff from Trolltech? Would it have the restrictions of KDE for commercial applications? Would commercial applications need to have a paid-for license to run on this new desktop?

I'm all for a unified desktop. But i think it should allow the user to run commercial apps without restriction to be successfull...

desktop does not matter

[zenray]

As long as I can deliver the applications my end users need I don't see that the exact desktop matters that much. Wich library can support my required applications is more important. Rather, can I get my applications to run on any desktop, as long I have the library support. Support anything to get more applications useing GNU/Linux in any desktop.

Why not free and beef up Ximian?

[beforewisdom]

Novel also bought Ximian. Why not beef it up and free it? Let someone other then Redhat & Mandrake use it. Let the distros distribute it. Its supposed to be nice.

Does Gnome win by virtue of GCC support

[beforewisdom]

I always read from the nix cognescenti that Gnome has a slight speed advantage since it is in C, since the GNU compiler is "not optimized for C++ ( what the KDE is written in ). Is this true? What does it mean? If true why don't the GCC people "optimize for c++" as well?

Godwin's Law

[kegger64]

Will someone please mention Nazis and put an end to this?

On the one hand

[beforewisdom]

Competition fosters innovation and improvement.

Some OSS projects can be pretty stubborn about giving the users what they want until they see their users dropping their application for something more spiffy.

Vis a vis the improvements in GNU Emacs inspired by the exitence of XEmacs.

On the other hand having more then one major desktop slows down progress for GNU/Linux. It wastes resources....you have two sets of developers sucking up two sets of resources spending time duplicating what the other group made.

Maybe both these hands could be combined by working out a plan to combine the GNOME and KDE people into one project?

Then they could focus on catching up with MS...and dare I say the MAC? They would competeing with them instead of each other.

Steve

Thoughts from an Icewm diehard

[beforewisdom]

I started using Linux a few years ago when I got fed up with how long it took explorer to crank up on my PII 333mhz 191mb ram, Win98 box.

I liked the KDE and even Gnome( though their interface at the time was atrocious ). However, they both performed horribly on that box, slightly worse then windows.

I started using Icewm and using CLI apps wherever it made sense.

I'm still stuck in those habits eventhough I am now running a box with P4 2.5 gigahertz chip, 500 mhz bus, 500 mg ram.

I did recently try the latest greatest KDE and GNOME.

The speed was tolerable.....the frequent lock ups and crashes in both were not.

This may have been something peculair to my distro or the way my system was set up ( is this a fact of life with these desktops? ).

Having learned to enjoy icewm with a variety of CLI and low footprint Xapps I couldn't see that Gnome or KDE did much for me.

The only thing I don't really have in icewm is a nice GUI cdburner that doesn't require knowing what I am doing ( K3B rocks ).

Steve

Re:Thoughts from an Icewm diehard

[kundor]

No reason you can't K3b in icewm, as long as you have qt and kdelibs installed.

And x-cd-roast is nearly as intuitive, and probably uses gtk.

Re:Thoughts from an Icewm diehard

[AsciiNaut]

Totally agree. Is KDE worth the bloat? I think not.

My RH 7.2 machine, (KDE 2.2, 124K, 10Gb, 1000MHz Celeron) came with KDE installed by default, so I used it for a couple of years. On a whim, I recently installed icewm. The difference was staggering: a much faster, cleaner interface; a large choice of one-key window operations; a vastly more comprehensible configuration. Apart from the following bizarre anomaly under icewm:

$ time kstart /usr/bin/OpenOffice.org1.1.0/program/soffice -p file.doc

real 2m1.883s
user 0m0.220s
sys 0m0.040s

$ time /usr/bin/OpenOffice.org1.1.0/program/soffice -p file.doc

real 35m23.703s
user 0m0.860s
sys 0m0.200s

(it turned out that somehow kstart was protecting me from the (scandalously underpublicised) pspfontcache bug, easily fixed) I lost NOTHING except eye chewing gum (kandy?), and gained a faster machine. AND I can still run all the KDE and gnome applications.

Yes, I know the latest KDE is better than all its predecessors, but I want faster, smaller and less buggy, not more features. (I only briefly dabbled with gnome and it seemed to be little different.) There is a place for KDE et al, however, largely for those converting from Windows and out-and-out CLIphobes. Good luck to them, but let's celebrate the range of choices we have.

Re:Thoughts from an Icewm diehard

[beforewisdom]

One thing I hated about windows was having redundant apps and resources( you MUST have IE eventhough you have another browser etc ). I don't like having to have an entire desktop that I will not use installed on my system to use one app. If I had time to be more of a hack Im sure I could use k3b without the entire KDE, but I just don't have that time. XCDRoast is NOT intuitive. I actually found it easier to takes notes off of a cheatsheet for cdrecord and just parrot those commands when making a data cd. XCDRoast is little more then wrapping a CLI in a gui as far as I am concerned. You need to know what you are doing with cdburning...or in light of your comment maybe you need to learn xcdroast. This is a fault of the XCDRoast design. With K3B, Nero, and some of the gnome burners I tried you basically just choose your files and there is a "burn" menu option somewhere. As far as I am concerned the point of XCDRoast would be avoid learning how to use it, if I have to do that I might as well just use cdrecord commands in an xterm. Steve

Re:Thoughts from an Icewm diehard

[beforewisdom]

Some of the conveniences KDE has brought to linux are worthwhile, so I disagree about not wanting more features. Perhaps the KDE/GNOME people should establish a well defined list of "must have" features.....the 20% of conveniences/cool stuff that will attract 80% of the users.....implement them and then move on to augmenting the operational quality of the software.

Re:Thoughts from an Icewm diehard

[kundor]

To each his own, I suppose.

I never had any problems with xcdroast...and I have no idea where to even start with cdrecord, i've always been to timid to investigate that. (Well, ok, I have an idea where to start: man cdrecord. but you know what i mean.)

In fact, xcdroast is the first burner program i'd ever used, 3 years ago or so...someone lent me cds to switch to linux from windows, and i was investigating this new land, and i had a new burner. A new version of Mandrake came out, so I decided to attempt burning it, and xcdroast made it easy.

in comparison, i find k3b harder to deal with, especially for burning isos. It's largely what you're used to.

Gnome / KDE specific things that shouldn't be

[Nailer]

Yes, Gnome has IOSlaves. They're called Gnome VFS modules, and, just like KIOSlaves, they're limited to programs written for their desktop environment with no good reason why this is the case.

LUFS works with any program - KDE, Gnome, the shell, or whatever else, and allows you to mount shares via SSH, HTTP, or whatever else.

If I were a Linux distributor I'd actually cut out the desktop-specific IOSlave / VFS crap and use this instead, thereby providing a consistent experience for my users.

Re:Gnome / KDE specific things that shouldn't be

[be-fan]

Except that very few programs use GNOME-VFS. The same thing for Bonobo controls. GNOME has them, but the implementations aren't very good, and very few apps use them. Hell, the file selector doesn't even use them!

Re:Gnome / KDE specific things that shouldn't be

[codemachine]

KDE recently released some code that allows you to use the IOSlaves from any application. You can use the IOSlaves to mount to the file system, similar to how LUFS can use gnome-vfs to do the same (although they also have their own non-gnome-vfs implementations as well).

Re:Gnome / KDE specific things that shouldn't be

[juhaz]

Actually, the new GTK 2.4 file-selector does use gnome-vfs.

Please, not again...

[mehaiku]

Why does every other distro coming down the street feel it necessary to 'tweak' the standard desktop environments? I am not naming any distro names here as I don't wish to incite a flame war. But when I decide to use KDE, I want the full KDE experience, not some hacked up, modified, & allegedly tweaked monster that I no longer can recognize. I want my preferences on the taskbar where the KDE developers placed them for my convenience. And if I switch to GNOME tomorrow, I want the same thing - the unmodified GNOME desktop as the GNOME developers saw fit to release it.

More and more, the Linux distributors, and I am not just referring to Novell here (you know who you are), consistently believe it necessary to hack and morph the KDE & GNOME desktops to the point where you can no longer find what you need, or what you need is no longer conveniently placed. And when these distros do this, it is almost impossible to set these desktops back correctly without rebuilding them from scratch, wholly outside of said distros' package managers.

Kudos to the KDE & GNOME developers for providing two of the most useable and productive desktops around. I hope they remember there will always be those of us who wish to experience these desktops completely, rather than the hackjobs some distros are placing on them. We can only hope there will always be distros who don't do this, or LFS at the very least, will always exist.

Smart Move

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we sure this is a smart move for the developers at KDE? After all the article right before this delt with the gnome website being compromised.... just a thought.

sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

It'd be nice to reliably cut-and-paste between applications and to have the menus and dialog boxes look the same.

However, will Redhat, Sun, Lindows, Xandros, etc. use this desktop, or will there be three desktops?

Re:Gnome and KDE? - Nope...7Kg Linux ;-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Just what you need to clean out that old box:
http://www.roesch-swiss.ch/L-neu!LinuxVollwa schmit tel.htm

(remove the annoying /space)

whew!

[CheeseTroll]

At least they're not tossing ConsoleOne into the mix!

My opinion on the matter...

[PoprocksCk]

As a desktop, and only a desktop, I find that KDE beats GNOME quite brutally in most domains. The thing I love so much about KDE, is that it forces things to be kept consistent. All you GNOME fans out there will probably flame me for that, talking about GNOME's written standards, etc. When I'm running a KDE app, I know it's a KDE app for several reasons. For one thing, right clicking almost _always_ gives a "Configure XYZ" option, so if a newbie or even an advanced user would like to configure their desktop, they would be delighted to find that it's always done in almost exactly the same way. KDEprint is also much more developed and much more mature than anything GNOME has to offer in that domain. I come back to consistency; KDE offers a common print dialog, kprinter, for all of its applications. This makes it extremely handy, especially when dealing with multiple printers. It also has a print-preview function built in, eliminating the need for KDE app developers to include one in their actual program. GNOME, on the other hand, certainly is not catering to end-users in that respect. To print, for example, in epiphany, one must manually enter a print command. That may be a great feature for advanced users, but Aunt Tillie does not appreciate such things! I have found myself (a) making a symbolic link from '/usr/bin/lpr' to '/usr/bin/kprinter' simply to eliminate printing frustration for GNOME apps. Another option would be to manually change the print command to kprinter. Either way. So, I think that Novell should do the same with their desktop -- use KDE's unified printing system and apply it to any and all GNOME apps that are used in the desktop. Making the symbolic link as I have described would work, but it would be nice if it were a little smoother than that, so that the end-user does not have to wade through 2 dialogs (again, confusion for Aunt Tillie) just to print something out. Mozilla, Mozilla, Mozilla... Don't get me wrong, it's a great web browser, but it just doesn't blend in with the desktop very well. Konqueror, Konqueror, Konqueror... it blends in with the desktop (well, KDE) very well, but it doesn't display web sites quite as well as Gecko. Still, I think that SuSE should continue to ship Konqueror as the default web browser, and allow the user to install Epiphany/Galeon/Mozilla/Firefox later if wanted. I know I'm sounding like a KDE fanatic here, but there are some GNOME applications that I think should be unified with Novell's KDE desktop. As for the E-mail client... DEFINITELY Evolution. End of story. Finance? GNUcash, but OpenOffice.org for the rest of the office stuff.

Scheisse!

[pair-a-noyd]

I was getting ready to order Suse 9.1 next month (ASAFP) so I could get the blessings of Suse on KDE 3.2 and kernel 2.6

I sure as hell don't want a monkeyed with KDE.
I don't care if they do that, but give us the option of selecting one of the three in the virgin form.

I like KDE and I don't like gnome. I don't want gnome l&f or gnome components mixed into my KDE..

Leave it alone or give us the choice but don't FORCE it on us...

If they do I will dump Suse. I like Suse and would like to stay with it but not if they start jacking with things...

just my 2cents..

Re:Scheisse!

[HenchmenResources]

I don't think you have to worry abou this with 9.1. the article says that we will first start these changes in a release that should be out at the end of the year. I think the only change you might see is the inclusion of Ximian in the professional version, but as usual if you don't like it, don't install it. This is just what Iv gathered reading different press releases and news articles over the last week.

I'm with you though I hope that whatever Novell does they leave us with the option of installing just the basics.

Re:Scheisse!

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely, if they switch their default desktop to GNOME or to a messed up version of KDE then I'll dump SuSE after about 6 years of buying every release of SuSE Linux. GNOME not only looks ugly, the whole programming framework is a mess. C might be the right choice for the Kernel but it surely shouldn't be used for desktop applications programming. Regarding Mono I havn't switched to Linux in order to again depend on Microsoft technology. I really hope that the KDE guys find an alternative distribution channel. I'd happily switch to a KDE only distro to replace SuSE if someone would offer me that choice. I'm also willing to pay for it.

Thin-clients?

[Tarantolato]

KDE/Gnome? Seriously, dude - yawn.

What I found really interesting, though, is Novell's idea that they're going to make most of their money off thin clients. This means one of two things. Either they're deluding themselves, and their thin-client effort is going to end up in the same anemic state as everyone else's; or else Novell's push might be what makes thin-client computing finally break out.

I'm not confident the second thing will happen, but I'd say this effort has a better chance than previous ones, since it's Linux-based. Windows wasn't built for timesharing. The Sun Ray system is gorgeous and sexy, but you can only run it on Solaris/SPARC. Sun's service division also hasn't had the reach to do the handholding though broadbased installations. LTSP has no marketing behind it.

I dunno if Novell can do it, but they're in a better position to do it than anyone else right now.

At least they're thinking of the big picture

[tentimestwenty]

Hey, I agree with you completely. The Linux UI is absolutely horrible. You're also right that merging two desktop environments is going to be a horrific job. But, overall, this is the first big decision the community has made that falls into some kind of "smart business" and I'm applauding that. Not to say this is a business, but just that there is a way certain things have to be done to be successful, and this decision is part of that. I think from here on out the big companies are going to have a large part in stewarding the Linux ship. Once they're all working on the same desktop, they can at least talk the same language about what it's going to do. Inevitably there will be some leaders (because companies are set up to bring leaders to the fore) and directly or indirectly they're going to make some big decisions that the disparate Linux crowd won't be able to make because they lack unified consensus.

Merging KDE and GNOME?

[No. 24601]

Been there... done that. It's called fvwm and it's the only way to fly!

tough situation

[Mao]

I used Gnome religiously for a long time. Recently, however, I found out there is only one GNU/linux latex editor in the whole wide world that suits my need, and thats Kile.

So I figure, if everytime I run Kile all that kdeinit shit has to startup, why don't I just run the KDE desktop to begin with.

Among the first things that I notice with KDE is that Konquerer (3.2) is way better than Nautilus 2.4 (I heard Nautilus 2.6 is a great improvement, we'll see), unless there is something royally fuct with my gnome setup. Konquerer opens new window faster than Nautilus, automatically updates file list, and I find it more convenient to toggle viewing hidden files under Konquerer.

But. I like gnome-terminal better than konsole. I find it more complicated to define new sessions in Konsole. It seems Konsole allow you to do more detailed acrobatics with them schemas and all, but in the end it just confuses me. I also use firefox, which uses GTK, and thus the look blends in better with the gnome desktop (that of course, really should be of secondary importance, but I'll throw it in nonetheless).

Another annoying thing is that if my gnome-panel is full and I set it to not have hide buttons, I find it very difficult to add new stuff to the panel (this is actually not contradictory, keep in mind that the tasklist can stretch to fill the panel), whoever wrote the kde-panel seemed to have given more thought to this scenario.

Right now, I use gnome, run kile under it, and then killall kde related processes after quiting kile.

Another curious thing is that under Gnome fonts in KDE apps seem one size bigger, configuring font dpi under gnome to be 80 instead of 96 seems to make things better.

I will see how good Nautilus 2.6 is. If it is at least as good as konquerer, I will stick with a Gnome desktop.

Crack, meet pipe

[freeweed]

Who the hell modded this Insightful???

The grand-parent said that desktop alternatives drive INNOVATION.

Your rebuttal is that Windows, without desktop alternatives, is SUCCESSFUL.

What the sweet flying jesus do these have to do with each other? Did you even read the post? Nowhere was it claimed that Gnome/KDE being separate made them more successful. Nowhere was it claimed that Windows was unsuccessful because of the single, unified desktop.

Hell, I can't even figure out just what you're replying TO, let alone what the mods were thinking.

why unity is so compelling

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a psychological question.
why is unification so popular?

examples ...

one god
one religion
one race
one operating sytem
grand "unified" theory
one "truth"

why is one so compelling?
whats wrong with peoples brains?

merge vi with emacs?

[Anonymous Coward]

will that spawn imacs?

Oh this is great news

[rixstep]

Oh this is great news. As soon as word of the merger came out, with whispers of yet another unified desktop along with it, die-hard SuSE subscribers started fleeing in droves to Debian.

Novell have been pretty lucky up to now, all things considered. It's time they showed some initiative of their own and really botched things up.

Why I chose KDE.

[ezHiker]

It's funny how it's the little things which will make someone choose on thing over another.
I used Gnome until 2.0 came out. The dumbing down of the interface was primarily what drove me to KDE -- specifically the removal of the "always on top" feature for windows.
I have several apps (such as television viewers... tvtime, xawtv, etc) which I like to keep on top. They removed this feature from Gnome 2 when they switched to Metacity as the default WM. I've seen several newsgroup posts where people have pleaded for this feature, but the Gnome developers are of the opinion that it should be the individual apps' responsibility to provide an "on top" feature.
While sort of I agree with them in principle, it is simply not practical to go to each developer of various different apps and expect them to include this feature when the functionality can easily be provided by the window manager.
I had become so accustomed this seemingly minor feature that it became a major show stopper for me when they removed it from Gnome.

What has /. readers to do with it?

[joeykiller]

Chris Schlager, vice president of research and development for SUSE, thinks the differences between KDE and Gnome developers have been overstated. Apparently he's not a regular /. reader.

I don't understand what reading Slashdot could teach you about differences between KDE and Gnome developers. The flame wars are usually between the users, not the developers.

Sovjet russia

[Mariux]

In sovjet russia the desktop environments unify you

WindowMaker

[JoeBaldwin]

You can pry WindowMaker from my cold dead hands, thank you very much.

Clean, simple, and faster than a greased pig being shoved down a water main. Its a shame it doesn't have wider acceptance: I'd consider it very newbie-friendly.

Exactly!

[Arker]

I agree completely. Well, the one thing I disagree on is the UI, frankly I find GNUSteps preferable to Aqua (and I'm writing this on a Mac.) I've never understood why folks wasted all that time reinventing everything for GNOME and KDE when they could have done everything they wanted, easier, with GNUStep.

Re:Exactly!

[Archibald Buttle]

Why did people reinvent everything that had been around for years in GNUstep for Gnome and KDE? Simple. GNUstep simply got rejected because it's language is Objective-C, rather than C++.

Personally I found C++ to be the most difficult language I've ever learnt - mastering it is very difficult, and I can therefore understand why a C++ programmer may be reluctant to try to learn another C-based language. However the simple reality of Objective-C is that it's a really easy language to learn, especially if you already know C++.

Naturally a big part of the "it's not C++" argument also comes down to use of existing C++ source code. Historically this was a problem, but Objective-C++ solves this.

I have never used GNUstep, but I program on Mac OS X in Objective-C and Cocoa (the latest version of the API GNUstep was based on). It's a complete delight and is by far the most advanced desktop API I have ever encountered. With Apple's tools and the Cocoa API you can make a web browser without writing any code at all - you just need to draw out the user interface. A rich text editor which supports graphics, fonts, search/replace, and spell checking, takes only four lines of code; two for loading, two for saving.

It's a shame GNUstep fell by the wayside - things could have been so much better.

Steve

Re:Exactly!

[Arker]

Well you show the absurdity of rejecting GNUStep on language grounds, even as you make the claim that's what happened. I can't believe it is. C++ is indeed monstrous, hideous, and anyone that can handle it can't have any trouble with ObjC. Besides which, GNOME isn't based on C++ either, but plain old C.

I think it's an exageration to say that "GNUstep fell by the wayside" - it's hardly over yet. It is disappointing how little attention it gets, but it's hardly a dead project, if it picked up a few more active developers that would be very nice though.

LSD?

[UglyMike]

Difficult proposition.... but what's in a name.
What exactly does Novell mean? The creation of a new Linux Single Desktop (LSD) to replace both Gnome AND KDE?
Can't see that happen...

Now, there is a lot of small stuff that is/can be pushed in the Linux Standard Base: extend LSB to include thumbnails, bookmarks, Menu entries, mail repositories and all the small things that are so annoying when dealing with multiple apps with same functionality on 2 desktops.
The switch to OOo formats in Gnome Office and KOffice will also make things a lot easier.

Next to that, there are major changes afoot in both environments that would already 'unify' them to a greater extend: DBUS adoption, single MultiMedia layer (GStreamer or NMM, as long as there is only one).

Where there will NEVER be convergence is toolkits. No way you can bring together the LGPLed GTK et al and the GPL/Proprietary Qt toolkits. So maybe we will end up with two visually different UIs using the same 'stuff' underneath.

But then again, what do I know...

How do you mean, together?

[RAMMS EIN]

``But the move is not an attempt to merge the two interfaces, said Chris Schlager, vice president of research and development for SUSE.

"Technically, you can't combine them, but we are working toward having the best features of both in a single interface. We'll implement all the best features in one technology."''

So, if I understand this correctly, he's saying that it's NOT about combining GNOME and KDE (much less about making them compatible with one another), but about making a NEW DE that has some of the features found in GNOME and KDE. This doesn't seem like a Good Thing to me.

Anyway, I don't have KDE nor GNOME. I just don't need all those features, so I'll put my disk space and memory to better use, thank you.

Re:How do you mean, together?

[3247]

No, it means they re-program KDE features for GNOME.

And (hopefully) that KDE apps will run seamlessly under GNOME.

Re:How do you mean, together?

[RAMMS EIN]

``No, it means they re-program KDE features for GNOME.

And (hopefully) that KDE apps will run seamlessly under GNOME.''

If you run KDE alongside GNOME, both GNOME and KDE apps should work flawlessly. With some more effort of conformance to common standards, integration could be as seamless as desired. Is this what they are doing? I didn't get that from the article.

Already Done?

[Jexx Dragon]

Didn't Read Hat already do this with bluecurve?

GnuDE

[Anonymous Coward]

In Dutch that sounds like "knudde" which means "lousy". Might be a suitable name for this project. ;)

Windows95 is de facto desktop standard. WAs: Not..

[zimon]

> Re: Not a good idea

The lack of desktop alternatives is one of the main reasons Windows has been so successfull and is de facto standard desktop in the Earth. It is no suprise RedHat tried to mimic Win95-look in their GNOME and KDE default desktop settings.

Normal typical users (not nerds or slashdotters) do not want customability and alternatives. They want their user experience be the same in their homes, with computers on their friends, in their work office. Also they want their devices to work out of the shelf (drivers) and their Windows_for_Dummies have exact matching instructions how to do things.

Not even the Screen of Blue death matters, it is irrelevant as long as the desktop works as it worked yesterday and as it worked in the library or in the office.

For authors of computer books for beginners, device manufacturers, software manual writers, for common users standardized desktop look is efficient and all they want.

Besides, Qt and KDE has license issues. It is not suitable as a de facto desktop/GUI standard for Linux. GNOME is.

Bill Gates visiting /.

['gourne]

The outcome would be MS-KNOME.

No !

[checkup21]

If you used KDE you would wonder how much "standard" code is handled by the framework you don't have to care of. Just focus on your work.

I use IceWM!

[Walkiry]

You insensitive clod!

Not a regular?

[slipgun]

Apparently he's not a regular /. reader

Which means he will be vastly more well-informed than most of the people here ;-)

Two? Now it will be three...

[hummassa]

the article uses the three expressions: "new desktop environment", "combining elements of GNOME and KDE", and "all implemented with the same tecnology". He. He. He. Novell Desktop is coming.

FLOSS the Cat

[0x0d0a]

Novell:

The Open Source world consists of a massive herd of cats. They live by themselves, they do their own bizarre cat things, and they're awfully independent. They're talented but touchy. Some of them are awfully stubborn. Sometimes, one will get interested in something or gets an idea into its cat-brain, and start heading the direction of whatever's interested it. Sometimes other cats come along, and you get a whole pack swarming along. Occasionally a lot of cats get really interested in something (like a kernel), and then the sight is truly magestic, with a herd of cats pouring over everything that obstructs them from their goal. They're really quite unstoppable then.

The problem, Novell, is that right now a good-sized pack of cats have it firmly in their heads that they definitely and without question want to go *west*. There is another good-sized pack of cats that are absolutely certain that they want to go *east*. The combination has produced cats going in opposite directions colliding with each other and hissing and scratching at each other.

However, Novell, before you step smack dab into the middle of this writhing, temperamental herd and try to direct them to go *north*, I suggest that you keep in mind -- you are herding cats.

Re:FLOSS the Cat

[EvilNight]

All Novell has to do here is load up a big truck with tuna and catnip and drive North. The cats will follow eventually.

Re:Windows95 is de facto desktop standard. WAs: No

[quintesse]

Besides, Qt and KDE has license issues. It is not suitable as a de facto desktop/GUI standard for Linux.

Cut the FUD crap buddy, those issues have been resolved a loooong time ago.

In related news...

[Joey7F]

...Einstein and Newton are pounding out an agreement.

--Joey

a new holy war begin...

[silma]

kde developer : I think all the problems are solved.

gnome developer : yeah, it's really time to working together.

kde developer : KDE is obviously much superior, so I propose all applications should begin with K.

gnome developer : I had a similar idea, but with the letter G...

Re:a new holy war begin...

[MeerCat]

kde developer : KDE is obviously much superior, so I propose all applications should begin with K.

gnome developer : I had a similar idea, but with the letter G...

Yeah, maybe they should meet half way and start everything with.... oh... "i"... bugger... ;^)

What a deal!

[21chrisp]

Programs done with a combination of QT, GTK, KDE libs, GNOME libs, C++, and Objective C. Now our Linux desktops can perform almost as poorly our Windows desktops! Happy Day!!!

Re:Windows95 is de facto desktop standard. WAs: No

[zimon]

No they are not.

Think, if KDE/Qt would become de facto GUI-frameworks and desktop environment in Linux.
Then, whatever commerical company would want to write commercial software for Linux, which would have GUI, it would have to pay license fees to Trolltech.

Trolltech would be the factual _owner_ of Linux OS then, and practically the only owner who always get money.

GUI-libraries is so essential software libraries in Dekstop OS nowadays, it has to be LGPLed to be Linux style. Think if also glibc, ld-lib, openssl-libs and so on would be double licensed; GPL+QPL and not LGPL. It would be a real mess and would be sure there wouldn't be any commercial software for Linux ever.

erm....

[Karem Lore]

didn't red hat do this?

The Doctor attempts to help . . .

[Amiasian]

Emacs: I am the psychotherapist. Please, describe your problems. Each time
you are finished talking, type RET twice.
Me: I hate Emacs.
Emacs: Why do you hate emacs?
Me: I cannot remember any of the keystrokes for it.
Emacs: Why do you say that?
Me: The designers of EMACS made them confusing.
Emacs: Emacs? Hah! I would appreciate it if you would continue.
Me: Well, I'd assume that it had to do with designing the program on
machines before standardized meta keys were invented . . .
Emacs: Is it because it had to do with designing the program on machines
before standardized meta keys were invented that you came to me?
Me: In a manner of speaking, yes.
Emacs: Earlier you said you hate emacs?
Me: That I do.
Emacs: Can you elaborate on that?
Me: It's not beautiful, like the one true editor - Pico.
Emacs: Maybe your plans have something to do with this.
Me: My plans are to code simple HTML pages, though I fail to see the
relevance.
Emacs: I don't understand.
Me: Nor do I.
Emacs: You mentioned that it had to do with designing the program on machines
before standardized meta keys were invented?
Me: No, we're past that now.
Emacs: Perhaps you could continue.
Me: For instance, take yourself; you're a subcomponent of emacs and you
aren't very good at diagnosing my wrath.
Emacs: Are you sure?
Me: Quite; you just beat around the bush.
Emacs: Is it because of your life that you are going through all this?
Me: No. Now piss off.
Emacs: What makes you believe now piss off?
Me: I'm calling my lawyer. You've just made my sanity go down three levels.
Emacs: Are you sure that you hate emacs?
Me: VERY SURE. AAAAAAGAHAHAHAGAAHAH!

KGB RoX0rs..

[Anonymous Coward]

Killer Green Buds?!!?!?!?!
or
Kickin Gibson Bastion?

Re:and what about Trolltech's alliance with Canopy

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm, very simple. Canopy and SCO were Trolltech's FIRST investors. Yes, this was back when SCO was Caldera, when Random Love was the CEO of Caldera, and when Caldera was a Linux company that used KDE (and therefore had a huge investment in Qt).

Don't blame Trolltech for SCO/Canopy turning evil, it is a overwhelmingly employee-controled/owned company, and they have a lot of people vested in open source software (e.g, Matthias Ettrich, the primary coder of LyX and the founder of kde, Brad Hughes, the primary force behind Blackbox, Lars Knoll, one of the primary authors of khtml, and a lot of other kde developers)

revised

[Feztaa]

In Soviet Beowulf, all your welcomed overlords are belong to base, you insensitive grits!

Will Natalie Portman use her powers for good, or for awesome?

Re:revised

[ShavenYak]

1. In Soviet Beowulf, all your welcomed overlords are belong to base, you insensitive grits!
   
   Will Natalie Portman use her powers for good, or for awesome?
2. ???
3. Profit!

Re: IDRTFA

[roie_m]

Just wondering, is the D in there for Did or for Didn't? :-)

Re:Gnome and KDE? NOT!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

What it really is is Ximian monkeying with my
email. I like my KDE mail just like it is! I
do NOT want it to be like 2 #$@%&*windows$$$!!!
I want to be able to turn OFF the HTML. This is
because I do NOT like @#@!$&*window$$$ viruses
and web bots and direct X and all the other malware
associated with the unrestricted access to computers
that those 'proprietary' systems give. I know that
the only real reason to unify the two is to not
give the poor sucker....us....a fair shake. Leave
us no alternative but to take into our linux systems another windows clone. Ximian does not
allow the turning off of HTML. It does not
allow the turning off of Java. It does not allow the turning off of javascript. It does not allow
the users the right NOT to automatically open
ALL mail under the cursor. It has a preview window that cannot be closed. This means all
attachments automatically open in line as well.
I am a long time SuSE customer. Force Ximian on
me and I will go to Debian....then to Slackware.. ...etc. If Novell buys them up then I will go
to others. I will NEVER use a unified window
manager or have Ximian forced down my throat.

Re: IDRTFA

[kernelfoobar]

It's Didn't. Not many slashdotters would admit it tho.