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eWeek Reviews Gnome 2.8 And KDE 3.3

Posted by timothy on from the cross-*nix dept.

prostoalex writes "eWeek Labs reviewed the latest editions of GNOME and KDE desktop environments, and for all the criteria that eWeek uses for evaluating the software products ranked 'good,' while usability, capability and reliability for both products ranked 'excellent.' The online version is missing the screenshots and ranking tables that the printed version has, but eWeek likes Evolution (for mail), Konqueror (for file management), Samba and Kopete. They dislike GConf (still complex and a hassle to use) on GNOME and KMail on KDE."

11 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. Screenshots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here are some GNOME and KDE screenshots.

    1. Re:Screenshots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      It isn't a complaint about the coding. It is a philosophical difference between KDE and Gnome. KDE says "chuck in all the features", and many people love that. Gnome says "keep it simple", and others love that instead.

      I was not complaining about the qualiity of KDE, I was simply saying that I disagree with its direction and think that they need to work on simplifying the UI. Others disagree. This is why I use Gnome and contribute to it on the rare occasions when I have enough spare time to do so.

      The orignal poster was asking why use Gnome, KDE looks better, and I provided a reason why I prefer Gnome. Perhaps I showed my disillusionment with KDE a little too much, but what do I know? KDE must be more popular for a reason.

    2. Re:Screenshots by twener · · Score: 3, Informative

      > Gnome also has excellent HIG guidelines, which mean that most applications perform in a similar manner.

      There is no such automatism. Also there exists a KDE HIG with other stuff like margins being hard-coded into Qt/kdelibs. Can you give examples how KDE applications (of the KDE release, third party applications maintainers sometimes have 'funny' ideas), do not behave similar?

      > I used KDE until version 2. That is when it started getting a bit cluttered. When you have more than 15 options in the right-click menu for a file, you know there is a bit of a problem. I think it is time for a spring clean.

      You should revisit a current version. I have my KDE 3.3 configured to never show more than 10 items, and depending on the selected file type and what's installed there can be even less entries (no Actions/, Preview In/, Open With/).

  2. So essentially you are looking for XFCE. by reality-bytes · · Score: 4, Informative

    You'd be looking for XFCE then.

    XFCE is a powerful but lightweight UI for both older systems and 'power-user' implementations.

    Both Gnome and KDE lead the way for moder UI implementations on *nixes and as such require modern hardware to go with them (in general).

    Having said that, I've just installed KDE on a second user 1.7GHz Celeron M laptop with a piddling (by modern standards) 128MB ram and it positively flies! - No complaints here.

    --
    Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
  3. Re:what's wrong with Kmail? by voisine · · Score: 3, Informative

    Okay, upon RTFAing, the poster is mischaracterizing the article. What they actually don't care for is Kontact, which I haven't used, so I can't comment on it, but their concerns seem to be minor ui niggles which seem really more a personal preference.

  4. Re:no for both by Coryoth · · Score: 4, Informative

    what linux needs is a desktop environment that uses a fast toolkit, and does what is needed without the extra bells and whistles.

    For light desktops that aren't just pure IceWM or *box window management your best options are XFCE (which uses GTK+, but is still surprsingly light and fast), and E17 (if and when it eventually arrives) which uses pretty much all its own technology (of which there is a lot, and its all quite impressive).

    Realistically E17 is stacking up to the "other" desktop given how much functionality the E Foundation Libraries offer. I'm not trying to dis IceWM or Fluxbox here, but realistically those are mostly Window Managers, while the new E is looking to have more of the "core libraries" approach of GNOME and KDE, providing its own widget toolkit and what have you. We're still to see whether people will actually pick it up and develop with it...

    Finally you've got WindowMaker, which is a very nice window manager and integrates in with GNUStep to provide your widget toolkits and other core libraries. The downside here is that while Window Maker is great, the amount of developer uptake for GNUStep has been fairly limited, so you won't exactly see a lot of GNUStep apps.

    There are some good options though, so don't go complaining too much.

    Jedidiah.

    --
    Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
  5. Re:Gnome == Insanity Box by Tyball · · Score: 3, Informative

    Check your /tmp directory--gconf and ORBit will create temporary directories named like that in ~ if /tmp is unwritable.

  6. Re:I like both by dmaxwell · · Score: 4, Informative

    KDE moved away from CORBA quite some time ago. Apparently, it proved to be a hairball that made things more complicated than they needed to be. KDE uses "KParts" for object embedding.

  7. Re:what's wrong with Kmail? by Flower · · Score: 4, Informative

    The spam filtering issue they discuss isn't a minor UI "niggle."

    --
    I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
  8. Re:I like both by nathanh · · Score: 4, Informative
    I'll agree that there are probably more layers than you'd ideally want for a desktop (eg: KDE -> Corba -> Underlying KDE stuff -> QT -> Xlib -> X11 client -> X11 protocol -> X server) but it's not horrible and most of the problem is caused by X11's design, which is very much a concept of layers on layers.

    Yes, well it would be bloated when you insert mythical layers. KDE doesn't use Corba and Xlib doesn't layer on top of an X11 client; the KDE application *is* the X11 client. And calling the X11 protocol a "layer" is a bit of a stretch.

    Amended diagram: KDE -> Kparts/Klibs -> Qt -> Xlib -> Xserver.

  9. KMail and HTML by anduril1 · · Score: 5, Informative
    Quoth the review:
    Another thing that annoyed us about KDE's mail handling was the way it dealt with HTML messages. By default, every HTML message appears in source view, with a security warning and a link to render the HTML for viewing. We could opt instead to have all HTML messages render by default, but we'd prefer that Kontact provide the option of rendering the message in a "sanitized" form-one that doesn't fetch remote images or objects. Evolution and Thunderbird work this way by default.

    KMail (and therefore Kontact) does provide "sanitized" HTML mail support. The KMail docs claim that sanitized is the default, but it is an easy change regardless. The check box is located in: Configure KMail -> Security -> "Allow messages to load external references from the Internet". It seems they didn't look too hard for the option that is default anyway.

    As far as the warnings before rendering HTML messages, this is just a question of how paranoid you'd like to be (or, how important the integrity of you system is). HTML parsers/renderers are very complex software, and therefore they may have bugs. Look to the recent JPEG exploits for bad bugs in seemingly innocent software. If there were a bug found in the HTML renderer used by your mailreader, reading email messages might present a threat to the security and integrity of your computer.

    Like the documentation in KMail says "Displaying the HTML part makes the message look better, but at the same time increases the risk of security holes being exploited"