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Novell to Standardize on GNOME
Motor writes "In what must be one of the least unexpected announcements of recent times, Novell says that they are standardizing on one desktop rather than supporting two different codebases. From the article: 'Novell is making one large strategic change. The GNOME interface is going to become the default interface on both the SLES (SuSE Linux Enterprise Server) and Novell Linux Desktop line. KDE libraries will be supplied on both, but the bulk of Novell's interface moving forward will be on GNOME.'"
dang, KDE was a reason to like SuSE too, so what's the best KDE-centric desktop distro now?
If you really want to, you can still use KDE, right? This seems like a change that would mainly affect newbies, from a company with a network OS that a newbie can easily use. I welcome our Novell overlords that make things simple, if lacking in choice.
This is huge...
I have always been a fan of the Gnome Desktop, as I've been a RedHat user since the early days.
KDE Has always felt klunky and thrown together compared to the new(er) versions of Gnome are currently.
I'm glad someone is also finally throwing down the line and choosing a single desktop.
-H
--- #@$DF@#2%@^%3^&*$%FRHG%%[NO CARRIER]
I use KDE and Gnome on the same distro. Generally I use KDE, but I can use either just as well, so if most major software companies go the Gnome way, I'll be right there with them. At least somebody is trying to make some useful decisions, rather than splitting things up. If only more companies would do this...
Steve
This is another in a chain of announcements this year that show how much in the world of Linux. Today's is a final good riddance to the days when *the* choice was Red Hat vs SUSE, America vs Europe, GNOME vs KDE. I guess this is a move to make SUSE more comfortable for Ubuntu users, the product which I bet (open)Suse and Red hat (Fedora) see as their biggest threats right now. Windows users are difficult to pull. But to make users switch distros is easy (I'm in Fedora, but very much attracted to Ubuntu right now). I think we'll be seeing more user-pulling moves from distros soon. shipit is only a start.
To an extent, one could see this coming. SUSE 10 was the first edition of SUSE to treat both desktops equally. Rather than having YaST default to KDE, it now prompts users to select either GNOME or KDE with no indication of prejudice. They've also been adding GNOME-centric things like Beagle. Novell's own NLD chose GNOME over SUSE's KDE for NLD 9. SUSE 10 was one of the first distributions to support GNOME 2.12 (beating Ubuntu while Mandriva which came out significantly later still uses GNOME 2.10).
While I'm still a bit surprised to see Novell give such a slight to KDE this soon, there were signs that they were becoming a GNOME operation.
In a shocking turn of events, Novell goes with the desktop founded by one if their key employees. I really thought that Ximian purchase was just a ploy to take the top Gnome developers out of the game so that KDE could flourish. I guess it was because they actually like Gnome. Go figure.
It isn't GNOME thats interesting it's Mono. Novell needs to standardize on one platform in order to create a single homogenized environment. My guess is that they plan to sell their commercialized applications using Mono. Since Mono uses GTK for it's toolkit it's going to look odd to have one desktop using one toolkit and their tools using another toolkit. It creates a disharmony.
As for customers, they won't care what the desktop is as long as it does what they want it to do. Corporate customers are not addled and opinionated like us FOSS types. They don't have a favourite distro. It's whatever it takes to get the job done. If they do have opinions by in large it's going to be a miniority. As you say, as long as Novell listens to it's customers they can put resources into extending GNOME to do what customers need. The desktops are not that different, perhaps one provides more customization than the other but there is nothing that can't be added since it's all open source.
sri
Well, be serious. What real interoperability problems are left? Today you can configure Gtk apps to look like KDE ones. Intrestingly most "gnome" apps are just non-qt ones thus assimilated by the gnome desktop which lacks integration. It was a problem from Gnome that it is unable to interoperate properly with KDE. Is it visual appearence? Give us a few month and there will be no discussion on that anymore. Crosstheming is very close.
Here's the deal. First, read the fine article. It does say that it's both the desktop and SLES. You'll also see that the SUSE Desktop--the community version you can grab at
http://www.opensuse.org/
will continue to support both KDE and GNOME.
SLES, the server version, and Novell Linux Desktop, the commercial distributions. though, will be built to use GNOME as its primary interface.
Now, if one is at all clever, you can certainly run put KDE on SLES or NLD. After all, besides the fact that it's not that much trouble to add *any* of the Linux GUIs to any distribution, in the case of SLES and NLD, the integration work will still largely have been done in the community SUSE desktop.
The real difference is that Novell isn't going to be spending any of its own dollars trying to support two interfaces.
Steven
Wait, what?
the day Linux desktops start spreading is the day all the big projects decide they need to focus less on eye candy and more on making the system as simple, consistent, and reliable as possible. Kind of like OS X.
Do you seriously think that Mac isn't BUILT on eye-candy? OSX has the most glitzy window manager out there.... fortunatly for Macintosh it also works.
Trying to say that Linux will be sucessful if they don't focus on the "cool" factor is simply uninformed - the truth is they need to do both, focusing on only eye-candy or stability is myopic.
People should choose their desktop environment based on personal preference, not to participate in software zealotry.
Yes, you can run Mono under KDE. Yes, Novell could get strong KDE bindings into Mono. But Novell develops apps for Mono, and Mono plays better under Gnome on Linux.
The announcement does not mean that Novell is stopping the support of KDE on the desktop, it means that Gnome is the default on the desktop. One could speculate that it is also (implicit) permission for the Novell application developers to stop caring about KDE, but I dont think they ever did.
In one of his typical prima-donna rants earlier this year, Jamie Zawinski (one of the "popular kids" here at Slashdot High) spoke of Netscape's acquisition of Collabra, and how the Collabra people ended up forcing their culture onto Netscape from the bottom up -- eventually destabilizing and destroying the company by sending them in all the wrong directions.
It's clear now that the exact same thing is happening to Novell. The acquisition of Ximian was a BIG mistake. It added absolutely no value to Novell (I think it happened because "someone knew someone" in Massachussetts and they did it to keep Ximian's investors from losing all their money) and what happened next? Slowly but surely, the Ximian people are taking control of Novell. This latest move proves it -- SuSE was well known as a KDE powerhouse. They did more for KDE than any other single company out there (except maybe Troll Tech). Now, the Ximian people have dismantled SuSE's KDE leadership, and are probably well on their way to dismantling any other strategic advantage any other part of Novell may have had.
So long Novell, it was a grand run, but you're letting the wrong people take charge and even though you may not realize it yet, you're in a downward spiral.
And since I know Miguel and Nat are reading this -- listen up, guys, stop being a couple of pushy blowhards and do the right thing for your company. Let the grownups run the show please.
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Remember, though: officially supporting two (rather large) different desktop projects, which are created and designed with different fundamental idealogies, is *much* more costly to Novell, in terms of time, energy, paying hackers, etc.
Considering that Novell recently laid off a lot of people, perhaps reducing their overall cost by only officially supporting one desktop project will likely increase the quality of their distribution too.
Actually i think usability is a 'small' part of the corperate move towards gnome .. Its accesability!
Gnome has had a lot of contributions from Sun to improve accesability, high contrast/large font options, screen reader support, screen magnifiers, style guides and a lot of things refering to US and international accesability specifications that software needs to live up to before its acceptable to some goverment- / organisations. (great internationalization & font support thru pango, flexible text directions, etc must play a factor too)
I think a lot of the big projects choose gnome/gtk for this reason too, and its definatly why redhat picked gnome, so they can sell to those markets, and its probably why Novell decided to pick gnome as well
Big organisations and goverments have different demands, and gnome seems to fit them well; Home users might have different demands (though some do require the accesability!), but with all the $ flowing to gnome, the area's where its not up to spec yet, it will be soon i guess
when a person downloads or installs free software, and finds tools to develop software in the distro, they often don't realize that using the toolset (and i'm talking about Qt tools here) obligates them for thousands of dollars in licensing fees to Trolltech.
as far as i know, this is the only code on free downloadable linux distros that does this, although i think mySQL may have some similar issues.
Qt and Trolltech keep talking about how they are "just as free as anything else" but i don't see how that can be, given the costs for the toolkit alone, plus yearly renewals, is far greater than the cost of microsoft tools...and no other distro based linux toolkits have such obligations.
a small business user downloading linux for a server, and writing a single app, could be liable for massive penalties without even knowing it.
trolltech and qt zealots often say "well, a business can afford the licenses" but a lot of small businesses barely eek by, or close entirely within a couple of years, and they want thousands of dollars a year in licensing?
It doesn't particularly matter which way you spell the word or where you are. See http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutsp elling/ize
From what I have seen - unscientifically - KDE has been steadily gaining more market share then Gnome. I subscribe to the linux journals monthly desktop orientated pdf and they seem to agree. I have nothing against Gnome - I just happen to like KDE. Back in '99 I thought it was better for me and I have really liked KDE's progress ever since.
Where to go from here? First, I hope this is all wrong - I'm an enthusiastic Suse user. Kubuntu I suppose, but its a tough sell for my clients. Kooler heads prevail and I hope Novell is smarter than this, but somehow I doubt it. History shows Intel let the engineers create Itanium, and Novell has in the past bought Unix for top dollar and sell it to SCO for a huge loss, along with Corel etc.
Say it aint so, novell.
iksrazal
Imagine the sales pitch when they tell the customer that they have to retrain all their staff for the next upgrade. Microsoft, RedHat and every other competitor probably opened a bottle of LouisXIV 1714 in celebration =)
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Yes, KDE will still probably be on the CD. However, Novell is not going to be paying for KDE development to the same extent that they have in the past. Since Novell was basically the last big KDE development sponsor this is going to make it harder for KDE to compete in the long term with Gnome.
The problem is that QT is GPLed while GTK is LGPLed. That might not seem like a big difference but it is a huge difference to the commercial software developer. I can create commercial closed source software using Mono+GTK. Mix in QT and I either have to purchase a commercial QT license or I have to create GPLed applications.
Novell is finally realizing that it doesn't make sense to develop and maintain two completely separate desktop environments (that don't interoperate particularly well) when it can simply choose *one* environment (the same one that the rest of the commercial Linux world has chosen) and save a pile of money while giving its sales folks a simple message to sell.
culture of elitism and is a desktop that spends less time listening to its users then most of the others. KDE has been a leader in both usability, flexibility and responsiveness. Unless the core Gnome development group starts making some serious cultural changes I think this is a lose-lose for both Novell and its users.
Standardization *needs* to happen. But why choose the desktop that most frequently alienates it's own user base?
I'm sure there are a lot of people who would argue against everything I've just said, but look at the trends. I'm not saying Gnome is a bad project or the developers aren't good/respectful/worthy as those in any other project. But KDE has managed to pull itself up as a desktop for the people, and I respect that (even if I use Blackbox still most of the time).
I'll be sticking with RHEL for the time being anyway. Supports both and runs solidly.
Quack, quack.
YMMV, etc.
XML causes global warming.
What we need is drop in shared library replacements for kde/qt and gnome/gtk.
For example, I like kde, I think its open file dialog is much more robust, I think all of it works more the way I want it to. There are some great programs that use gnome/gtk though. I should be able to do a drop in shared library wrapper replacement with the gnome/gtk libraries which actually call the kde/qt function calls. So then the actual gnome/gtk program which uses shared libraries thinks it is calling a gnome function call, in reality that function call is calling the kde/qt function.
While we are at it we could do the same thing the other way around for people that like the gnome/gtk stuff.
basically the user doesn't have to know the difference between, for instance, Carbon apps and Cocoa apps.
Just to check, I started up a Gnome app while running KDE. No problem. The other way works fine too. The only things developers and users are forced to choose are what toolkits or what user interfaces they prefer.
It always seems to be pundits like you who complain in the users' names about choice - users either don't know there is a choice (because they're using whatever was default on their distribution) or don't care there is a choice (because the existance of one compatible choice usually doesn't make the other any worse). Do you know any real users who don't like having choices? Tell them I ordered them to use Gnome. There, no choice anymore, it's all better.
Different packaging systems are a much better example of problems caused by choice, because there you can have some incompatibility - I can't double-click-install every SuSE package or Mandrake package on my Fedora system, and I can't install *any* Debian package without digging into "Alien" howtos. That means more work or less compatibility for software developers, and that's a bad choice... but, of course, it's the same bad choice that developers are forced to make when they choose to write OS X applications or Windows applications. It's not even that bad, since Linux developers can statically link all libraries and make a self-installing install.sh script to be compatible with every distribution (or can distribute source code to be compatible with a dozen other Unices), but OS X or Windows developers who want to be compatible with OSes from multiple companies need to use crossplatform API wrappers from day one.
The general tendency of corporate providers of Linux to favor Gnome because of the licensing terms. If you are a writer of commercial software, or any software that isn't GPL compatible, you cannot use the Qt/KDE stack for your app. You can use the LGPL GTK/Gnome stack. Because a big part of the selling point of commerical Linux distros is the fact that other commercial software is certified to run on them, they MUST provide good support for GTK/Gnome. Now you get some bean counter coming through wondering why we are supporting two desktop environments. Well, you can't cut the GTK/Gnome stack, because of the commercial support, because of the licensing. So they cut (or under resource) KDE.
/commercial plugin ecosystem around Eclipse, and so it will never happen. As a result I'm trapped with the Gnome moronicly 'usable' file dialog, which constantly makes my life hard...
Please note, I'm a GPL proponent for the most part. I understand fully *why* trolltech does what it does with QT, and approve of their business model, but it's the use of the GPL for infrastructure libraries in Qt/KDE that is driving the commercial side towards Gnome/GTK.
As for me... I'd kill for Qt bindings for Eclipse... but the Eclipse Public License is not GPL compatible, and the GPL is intrinsically incompatible with the mixed open source
Let's all say this together: RTFA
The GNOME interface is going to become the default interface on both the SLES (SuSE Linux Enterprise Server) and Novell Linux Desktop line.
In the eWeek article, the following statement is made:
"The entire KDE graphical interface and product family will continue to be supported and delivered on OpenSuSE," said Mancusi-Ungaro.
No need for a fork, just a bit more careful reading of all available information before jumping to the conclusion that the sky is falling.
Insanity is a gradual process; don't rush it.
QT designer, I'm not going anywhere near that. I'd like to have the option to dual license my work some time in the future...
Huh? QT designer doesn't force you to use any particular license.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
First, I wrote very large comment, how GNOME is better, etc. etc.
(Disclaimer: I am GNOME user for four years, and love progress and iniciatives of Ximian and Novell)
But, then I thought all about this and went to try to understand - why such outrage? One point is clear - SuSE was very big sponsor of KDE and now there is going to be less money for that. That I understand - If they have been fired all Ximian team (and I don't agree that Ximian was just empty dose, Evolution, Mono, lot of integration stuff - it makes sence, they are NOT stupid, and they can create income for Novell - in many ways), I would certainly feel the same.
But do I judge Novell? No, because they should do that. It was clearly painful choice - and they weren't ignorant about that. I even think that it wasn't easy choice in the eyes of Ximian team too - because in my opinion, they don't just be in war with KDE community. Actually, what I have seen that GNOME guys seems to want work more on common ground - desktop standards, D-BUS, HAL, etc. such things. However, KDE team looks for doing things their *own* way - and it is ok for that, but is is somehow childish. For example, KDE officially won't support gstreamer - there are some excelent KDE apps who does and will, but KDE just went to doing it in their own turf again. Why? Reading Gstreamer, everything is done to assure desktop envorement independence - gstreamer is NOT depend on ANY GNOME/GTK+ lib.
As from my point of view, I see that KDE guys was in the first place. They were best, they had most brainshare, they were "Unix desktop #1" - because most Linux desktop users where power users and hackers. However, times has changed and now Linux user base are consists more of common users, which, _in my opinion_, more preffer simplicity of GNOME. So, problem is there - is KDE are ready to change and finally accept GNOME (and drop the stupid and childish trolls, modded insightful or interesting, claiming that GNOME is error, stupid, Novell will die, etc.) as viable brother _or_ they will continue claim that they are wholy one?
In resume, I would like to say - I would like to see both desktops to stay and improve AND provide choice for many of new Linux users which will sure come. Let's not claim death of Novell, let's say - there should new coorporate desktop of KDE arise. Kubuntu could be good start for some company to create Kumbuntu Enterprise Desktop.
Let's go with peace, brothers - and improve things in our backyards.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Oh, please. Come on - F-Spot isn't coming close to Digikam.
One example - Digikam comes with Canon Raw format built-in in Suse.
Can F-spot even be made to display RAW files?
I haven't managed to make it do that - hence it is worthless to me.