eWeek Reviews Gnome 2.8 And KDE 3.3

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."

Comments

Re:Gnome == Insanity Box

[wasabii]

How are these any worse than a .kde or a .qt directory? Seriously.

Complaints about gconf

[mrroach]

The complaints about gconf seemed pretty useless to me. What gconf is really about is providing a nice library to encapsulate preferences storage/updates. the Gconf editor is not meant to be something that you use on anything resembling a regular basis.

Declaring it difficult to use, compared to the alternative (your text editor of choice) seems a strong enough claim that it should have been backed up by more description.

-Mark

Re:Complaints about gconf

[Brandybuck]

the Gconf editor is not meant to be something that you use on anything resembling a regular basis

Yet whenever someone complains about an option being removed from the main config dialogs, the standard response is, "use GConf." So what is it? Are we supposed to use GConf or not?

Re:Complaints about gconf

[FooBarWidget]

GConf-editor is supposed to be only used by advanced users. The kind of people who don't fear editing text files. Average users don't even care about the option that was removed. Really, which average users care about the "Use FVWM window manager hints" checkbox (or whatever it was called) from the GNOME 1.x days? Or the "Display icons on desktop" checkbox (average user: click, disable, "Oh my god, my desktop is gone! How do I get it back?!?! HEEEELP!!!!!").

Relative performance?

[Colin Smith]

I've found that KDE is quite a bit more responsive than Gnome, especially running applications remotely, it's difficult to tell when KDE apps are remote but performance wasn't mentioned. Has this changed for the latest versions?

Re:KMail

[pdiaz]

A little offtopic, but HTML email is a bad idea.

I have HTML rendering disabled on kmail.

Re:Screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a reason why people use Gnome?

Yes, KDE is very cluttered. They have menu entries for just about every imaginable option. While many power-users love this, others don't. I prefer to have only the most common options available, even if this means I have to perform a few extra clicks for advanced options.

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

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.

That is why I call KDE either:
The "Kluttered Desktop Environment" or
The "Kitchen-sink Desktop Environment".

Running Gnome, KDE, XFCE, and WinXP

[ChaoticCoyote]

I'll never understand the religious wars about these issues. It's technology, folks -- use whatever works for you.

Freedom is predicated on the availability of diverse choice; we need different philosophies and approaches.

For day-to-day work, I use KDE, though I prefer Thunderbird to KMail (or Evolution, which is overkill for my purposes). I've run Gnome quite a bit, too; my Opteron system has both Gnome and KDE installed, and I spend about 90% of my time in the latter. I can live with either one, though I prefer the customization available in KDE.

Gnome and KDE both have high overhead (disk space and processor use) as compared to XFCE, which is the GUI for my dusl 600MHz Pentium 3 and 300MHz Sun Ultra 10.

My Pentium 4 box dual-boots between Gentoo/KDE and Windows XP. I find XP limited in many (many) respects, but some things (games) just work better under Windows.

Competition is a good thing.

Isn't this the sort of thing..

[msimm]

We've been hearing from the Gnome camp for a while? What is technically good and what is good for the user is not always the same thing. In fact, sometimes their quite different.

And I belive ALL feedback is important, even if you have to work to translate it into something useful.

99% of all users wont care about libraries or how they are supposed to use something. They've got babies, family, car payments and jobs to worry about.

Re:Isn't this the sort of thing..

[mrroach]

> One camp proclaims why their system is good, while the other listens to how it could be better.

You're really not paying any attention here are you? How can anyone listen to what isn't being said? Saying "product X was disappointing" is not the same as "doing Y will make it better." Read my post again. I say that actually telling what that Y is would be helpful. There is no intelligent way to argue that specificity is not helpful, I think you have demonstrated that.

-Mark

Re:KMail

[Brandybuck]

No, only the brainless secretaries at work like HTML mail, because it let's them send email with floral backgrounds and blinking text.

Most people just don't care enough to turn it off. Going through my email trash, about 95% of HTML email doesn't use any formatting at all, so the use of HTML is wasted.

irony

[poptones]

I actually like gnome because it's simple and looks neater than kde in spite of the fact I really missed some of the features of kde when I made that switch full time. But I can't stand looking at kde all day and I think of it like this: it's easier to add the stuff I want to gnome than it is to make kde look good. The 2.6 version, now that it's starting to move toward the "open" methods of handling things like mimetypes, is nearing the point I miss none of those kde features.

What I find odd is how many people talk about all the apps written for kde. Konqueror is the absolute worse web browser I've ever used (yes, even worse than NS3 on 1996 vintage hardware - hit a webpage with a 2000 line form field and see how many days it takes to render), the download manager for kde is a dog that hasn't been touched in years (important if you're on a dialup or need to move tasks between machines), there's no irfan-like porn (er, image) viewer, the newsreader absolutely sucks for binaries - about the only things that have any real refinement besides kate and the slick eye candy shell are the dialer and the file browser. Between d4x, pan, Evolution (yes, I prefer Evolution, thanks) and Galeon, gnome has a dynamite "web" interface. Throw in gedit and gqview and you got a pretty nice desktop (so long as you don't need an office app). About the only thing I find lacking in gnome is that damned file browser. Gnome with a file browser like konq would rock.

Oh yeah... the irony. I find gnome running koffice apps is still faster and easier to use than gnome using the OOo apps that the gnome folks are trying to "integrate." I swear I don't get why OOo gets so much press... god that thing sucks.

Re:Only Kmail has folder purging

[RAMMS EIN]

``I tried evolution, thunderbird, balsa and a few others - none of them have this function. Why doesn't this lack of ability to clear unwanted mailing list messages worry anyone else?''

Because this is UNIX? I use scripts for tasks like this one. Works no matter which mail client you use (as long as it uses some standard format for storage). Do one thing, and do it well. KISS.