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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?
Granted, I'm on OS X user who uses Linux servers, and I really don't give a rats ass about Gnome versus KDE - I just look at whatever I'm using and launch the app I need.
For Novell to work on one interface isn't saying "Oh, Gnome is the Hawt and KDE is not!" - it's just a cost saving move, and I can agree with that. The question is: will this help lead to a "one Linux Desktop" future where the de-facto standard is Gnome. When that happens, will more apps be Gnome based, or will we continue to see the dual-track desktop development?
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
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.
RedHat, Sun and Novell all now standardize on Gnome, correct? Do any major distros standardize on KDE anymore?
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
...as far as style and eye candy, take a look on gnome-look.org!
I've customized my Ubuntu 5.10 with the metacity theme "Blended 1.5", the "NuoveXT" icon theme and the grass wallpaper from one of the leaked longhorn/vista betas. Try it!
May be somethink like this, you can see some names from Novel
http://tango-project.org/
SuSe is a KDE distribution and SuSE customers want KDE. Desktop-Linux means KDE in Europe. So what do some managers of Novell do? Listen to Ximian which is a developer's booth without a market.
Unbelievable. They ruin a distribution.
A real company would listen to customers first, then allocate the ressources to development. Suse was very good on that in the past.
A bad company is driven by engineering. The role of marketing is to sell what the developers invented or want to create.
The second approach is doomed to fail.
This is not good news. SuSE was one of the big beasts that helped develop and improve kde in a distro, and is one of the main reasons I used it in the past. I did get sick of RPMs in the end though.
Why is that so many people prefer kde over gnome, yet redhat, debian-based distros like ubuntu and now SuSE use gnome as their primary? What main distros will be left that uses kde in preference? I can only think of mandriva now.
I'm not criticising gnome, it's a fine project and a good desktop environment, but I really like the unified desktop, reusable kparts and configurability you get with kde. I'm far from alone, as the vibrancy of kde-look.org shows. How come gnome, which is not *that* much superior to kde (some would argue that it's inferior at the moment) is making all the headway?
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
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.
Personally I use Kubuntu, it has been working very well and they do have latest and greatest versions.
However I do support Novell on this, the linux distributions need to standardize on some desktop, and it was not helping having different distros from novell and suse using different window/desktop/ui managers.
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.
When Novell Linux Desktop was released, we as Novell Partners started using it, and used it's default desktop (Gnome 2.6) as our desktop. Having used Gnome in the past year or so is my biggest computing life's error. Everything have been problems for us. Nothing works as expected, session management is a mess, gconf crashes a lot, esd is still there and nautilus is inflexible. Gnome is being guided towards being a Desktop for dummies, but it's weird behaviour only make users unconfortable with that Desktop. Now I'm going back to KDE, and I am currently remembering what was to have fun in the desktop.
Also, we support some clients with NLD9, and everything are problems, from mime types to gconf. Our support team has started to hate Gnome a lot. Our roadmap for our clients is to switch them to KDE, but with this decision, it will not be a Novell "official" product, it will be probably OpenSuSE.
With Novell having bought Ximian, it's logical that Novell standarizes on Gnome, but with this decision, SuSE only losses, and so does Novell. Will have to think twice before suggesting a partner renewal... They still have cool products, but they are taking the grown decisions (again and again)
------- The last Sig. got fired.
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.
Posters here on Slashdot and all over always wonder why Linux hasn't made more of an impact in the desktop world. Well, this is the biggest reason (or representative of it, at least). In the Windows world or even the MacOS world, no regular users give a hoot what window manager they run. They don't care which packaging system they use, either. All they know is that they buy the OS and it works, and that programs written for the platform just work. And if they go out and buy an off-the-shelf program for their computer, it just installs. The underlying technology is irrelevant. Windows users don't really care about the difference between InstallShield and .MSI files - they just know that they double-click on SETUP.EXE or INSTALL.EXE and it installs the darned program. Mac users know they either double-click to run an installer or just drag a program into their Applications folder. And yes, I know there's ways to run X11 apps on both Mac and Windows, but basically the user doesn't have to know the difference between, for instance, Carbon apps and Cocoa apps. They don't choose between competing windowing systems. They just use the computer.
Linux systems are more or less founded on choice. Which is a great thing, but has no relationship with user-friendliness or consistency. Remember part of the original motivation behind GNOME - it was because a crew of folks was unhappy with the QT licensing. So they reinvented the wheel to deal with it. That's what's great about both Open Source and Free software, but it's also why a wide-open platform is not going to gain mainstream use anytime in the foreseeable future. Even if either KDE or GNOME shut down all their development efforts tomorrow, someone would pick up the dropped torch and keep it going. And then competing vendors would still have to pick one or the other.
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.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
I distinctly remember submitting this as "standardising"... only to have it edited and Americanized (both in the title and most irritatingly in the text itself). What a thoughtful action from a website with editors that wouldn't know the correct spelling of a word if a dictionary was violently shoved up their arses.
We all know that crap is king
Give us dirty laundry!
"In Europe, you cannot konquer the Desktop market with Gnome."
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.
Novell is making a huge mistake by attempting to shove a Desktop down the throats of consumers and businesses. Some like KDE and others like Gnome it is the purchaser that should have the choice.
Funny, I've always felt the other way around. To each his own...
As it happens I just installed SUSE 10 and I quite like it. I'm using KDE right now but even the integration efforts of SUSE can't paper over the cracks. Just seeing 6 menu items in a row in Konq that say "Configure" just makes me shudder. If I had a choice I would use GNOME, but the GNOME integration in SUSE is terrible (where is the input from Ximian?). Therefore it's a surprise to hear they're now going to favour GNOME. I guess they've decided its better to go with Ximian than with SUSE.
People should choose their desktop environment based on personal preference, not to participate in software zealotry.
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SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
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.
I'd pick KDE. KDE is more consitent than Gnome and does a better job at ridding the crappyness of the x86 Linux Desktop anachonisims, such as XFrees ancient non-existant Font management or the lack of XFree clipboard usage. Since 3.0 KDE just says "GIMME THAT! I'll take care" and gone are two major anoyances of the pure OSS Desktop. Be it that it weighs heavier than Gnome but if todays systems can take such behemoths as XP, Mac OS X, then they shure can handle KDE.
I actually find Gnome prettier and less clutsy in apperance and I dislike the fact that default KDE apes the crappiness of Windows Keybindings, but on the other hand I love KDEs easy configurability. The utility libs are, afaict, more sophisticated (example: editor widget) and KWin has evolved from a joke of a WM it was to a solid foundation for KDE. Unlike Gnome the KDE people don't change their core WM every odd month - in the end it paid off.
This is the general impression I've had about KDE/Gnome the last two years. I've actually wondered why Ubuntu uses Gnome as default. From what I can tell, the core Gnome team members are probably better at advocacy than the KDE people. That could be the reason.
One last indicator makes the last solid point:
The reality is that I miss an awfull lot in a pure Gnome enviroment, but I nearly miss nothing in a pure KDE setup.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
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
woosh!
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
I think a lot of Suse customers will not be so pleased.
Of course SUSE customers won't be pleased. There are many must-have desktop apps built on the KDE framework that don't have any good gtk equivalents:
AmaroK music player -- Steve Jobs' nightmare, the single greatest threat to Itunes on the Free Software platform.
DigiKam -- The most feature-rich application for digital photo management.
Konqueror File Manager" -- Embeded image/PDF/music/video viewing (via KMPlayer) and a tree-view arrangement of the filesystem familiar to Windows users (Nautilus doesn't come anywhere close)
Seamless, transparent network file access on SMB, FTP, SSH and WebDav networks from _any_ KDE application.
Kaffeine -- The most polished FOSS movie player.
Baghira -- A native QT style that faithfully imitates OS X eyecandy, aimed at new users coming from the Mac world.
KDE and QT also make up a technically superior platform for developers, drastically lowering the learning curve for programmers new to FOSS development. KDE apps can be built from the ground up using the best development tools in the Free Software world (which also happen to be built on QT/KDE):
QT designer for GUI development
Kdevelop for syntax highliting, application templates, and project organization.
BKSys environmentfor a complete replacement of the autotool chain (libtool+automake+autoconf+make) that will make dependency a whole lot more simpler and efficient.
Gnome is way behind KDE with regards to these features. The only reason Redhat's doing so well with Gnome is because they're targeting geeky sysadmins who don't care about having a good-looking desktop. The other 99% of the world does care, and gnome just doesn't fit the bill.
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.
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
GNOME: A desktop system whose libraries will never be finished, and whose ABIs change several times a week.
KDE: A desktop system whose applications have no documentation, print a lot of debugging information on stderr, and store their data in subdirectories 17 layers deep within ~/.kde.
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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.
This is yet another classic example of an American Corporate being totally out of touch with the customer base out here in the Rest-of-the-World. Message to Novell:- "Enjoy the continuing death experience". Message to shareholders:- "Cash up quick before they stuff up completely and blow all your dough".
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!