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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."
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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'
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.
I wish I could browse and only see the -1, +4 and +5 posts. That would be a good feature.
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.
Every Slashdot user should say to himself at least once a day, "I am not a typical computer user."
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....
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
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?
RH just used themes to make them look similar. The integration was no more than skin deep.
"Madness is something rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, peoples, ages it is the rule." -- Nietzsche
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.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
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?
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.
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.
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.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
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.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
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.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
In soviet russia, dead horses beat you to death.
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!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
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.