Shuttleworth's Commitment to Kubuntu and KDE

An anonymous reader writes "The Ubuntu Below Zero conference is in full momentum this week and Kubuntu has been prominent throughout. In his opening remarks at the start of the conference Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth announced that he was now using Kubuntu on his desktop machine and said he wanted Kubuntu to move to a first class distribution within the Ubuntu community. Free CDs for Kubuntu through shipit should be available for the next release if the planned Live CD Installer removes the need for a separate install CD."

Comments

The only major KDE distro?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, with the earlier announcement that Novell/SUSE is giving up KDE in favour of Gnome, does this mean that Kubuntu is now the only major KDE-based Linux distribution? How far can they get on Shuttleworth's money, when all the big boys are throwing their money behind Gnome? I would bet that whatever the advantages of Kubuntu on technical and usability fronts are, they must be years away from profitability. Can Shuttleworth alone keep it afloat until they turn the business side around?

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[datadriven]

Slack still ships with KDE as main desktop, if you use X anyway.

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[poulbailey]

Slack is hardly what you'd call a major desktop.

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[c_fel]

There's still Mandriva, Knoppix and surely some more. And don't forget that a lot of distributions are not KDE- or GNOME-centric

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[Elektroschock]

Well, it goes like this

1. Adopt Gnome as default desktop for a Linux Desktop strategy.
2. ????
3. Abandon Linux Desktop strategy

"is now the only major KDE-based Linux distribution"

No.
a. SuSE is THE KDE distribution and when Novell kills KDE, Novell will not succeed with Gnome. Novell bought a KDe power house and now kills its best pratice. What Stupididy.
b. Mandriva, Linspire, Kubuntu, Knoppix, etc etc etc

"How far can they get on Shuttleworth's money, when all the big boys are throwing their money behind Gnome?"

KDE is all about great fun and it works. The infrastructure is good and consistent. KDE Desktop Linux is no promise. It is ready but it can and will do better.
Gnome means no fun, a boring looking desktop and money waste on premature technology, fixing unfinished solutions which only work 70%.
Who throws its money? I just see business announcements following the scheme above:

RedHAt, HP, SUN, and now Novell. Few days ago SUN abandoned its gnome based Java Desktop failure. RedHat does not target the desktop anymore. And Novell did a serious mistake not listening to customers.

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu isn't *even* a KDE distro. All the official paid work on Ubuntu is done on GNOME... KDE is community supported (with possibly the occasional helping hand from the paid guys). No different from Red Hat or Novell.

Shuttleworth is a publicity opportunist... there's nothing wrong with that of course, in the wake of the Novell announcement he's seen the chance to pick up a good few disgruntled SUSE KDE fanatics and taken it. However, don't kid yourself here. Ubuntu spent a lot of money and effort making a GNOME desktop distro (and evaluated the options before starting), if you think Shuttleworth just installed "KDE" and gone "wow! look what I missed", then you are a fool.

The only difference between Ubuntu and Novell (both have KDE, but it's community supported) is that KDE users feel the fresh sting of rejection from Novell... Shuttleworth is hoping they will run to his distro under the mistaken impression that anything is different there.

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[Anonymous Coward]

> when all the big boys are throwing their money behind Gnome?

Pardon, maybe you missed the news about Novell's layoff of GNOME/Evolution developers? None of the big boys sees at the moment how to earn today money with Linux on the desktop and rather concentrate on enterprise server products.

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[moranar]

What exactly is KDE-based about mandriva? Certainly not their tools, written in GTK. Nor their desktop: they mold both KDE and GNOME to their Galaxy theme. I like it, a lot, but I wouldn't call it "KDE centric".

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[Anonymous Coward]

Few days ago SUN abandoned its gnome based Java Desktop failure.

It did nothing of the sort! Sun Microsystems is putting *more* money and effort into GNOME now. The problem was that JDS was rapidly turning into a fork of GNOME. In an incredibly rare burst of cluefulness, Sun realised this, and understood the solution: it needed to get the thousands of patches it created to build JDS (including those to make it run on OpenSolaris) into GNOME CVS and bring it back to being just a branded GNOME... instead of maintaining an increasingly forked version. It was also apparent that Novell was pushing their vision of GNOME directly into the upstream CVS while Sun was busy trying to make the downstream JDS into their vision (and since CVS feeds JDS... well, you see the problem). Hence the major reshuffle, reorganisation and opening up of the JDS process, which you stupidly label as "abandonment".

Far from abandoning JDS, Sun demonstrated that, despite its manifest idiocy in most things, it really understood the problem and the action needed to fix it. A quite remarkable breakthrough for a firm renowned for its open source witlessness. Now, if only they'd shown half as much sense over the CDDL... but that's another subject.

P.S. Stop reading dot.kde.org -- those idiots are full of shit.

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[NicklessXed]

Oh, ffs, there you go again. Another bullshit comment from our beloved Elektroschock. At least this time you got the mod you deserved, seeing how you once again failed to back your claim that KDE is an absolute requirement for any desktop linux with actual facts (or at least any real arguments). All you have there is "I think KDE looks better".

You can't expect anyone to take your comments serious this way.

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[Elektroschock]

Sorry, this is not the way it works on the market.

Consumer choice is not based on arguments or facts.
It is not about arguments or facts, it is about preferences.
Sounds strange to you. Yes, it is.

"KDE is an absolute requirement for any desktop linux with actual facts"

Because we want it and we like it best.

Preferences must not be proven. Any proofs of that kind will be academic fraud anyway. When you chose your meal: Apple or pear. Do you count arguments? No. You take what you like best.

A Novell gnome based Dektop Linux will get no acceptance on the market.

---
Give me rational reasons or arguments why not celebrate Christmas on August 3rd...

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[Jason Earl]

Patrick is awesome, but he isn't actually doing KDE development. He is simply *packaging* KDE. The real issue is who is going to pay for the next generation of KDE development if SuSE isn't going to pay.

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[Silverlancer]

You're saying that preferences are all that matter. In which case, I prefer Gnome, and my opinion is that KDE completely blows and is one of the worst desktop environments ever created. Thus obviously any distro using KDE is doomed to failure!

/Just being Devil's Advocate here.

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[NicklessXed]

Congrats for missing the point. You aren't supposed to "prove preferences". You are supposed to prove that those preferences actually exist.

I especially like your last sentence, "A Novell GNOME based Desktop Linux will get no acceptance on the market". That's nice. How do you know? After all, you can't prove it. You apparently can't back your claim with facts. So this is pure speculation (you could at least have marked it as such). There is no indication that users prefer KDE over GNOME.
What do you know, Novell may just have done some research before switching to GNOME... I'm sure they know more about their users preferences than you do.

Another fan favorite is "Because we want it and we like it best". Who is "we"? You and your five zealot friends?
It doesn't work like this. In the end, all you said once again boils down to "Because I think it looks better". You think so. Not the average users. Not most users. Just you. So stop making those stupid claims.

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[Elektroschock]

Thanks for clarification.

You confirm JDS is a failure.
"Hence the major reshuffle, reorganisation and opening up of the JDS process, which you stupidly label as "abandonment"."
Outsourcing to open source. We had that before.

See:
http://www.gnome.org/~gman/blog/2005/Nov/01

I mean, everybody knew JDS was a failure once it was announced. Because it was not what users wanted. It was the idea of SUN people to let Gnome look like Win95 to step into the success of Win95 and bundle it with SUN fashion. 10 years too late.

When SUN ships Gnome with Solaris I am fine with it. But you cannot say solaris is a desktop Operating system. Chosing Gnome means that you do not want to target the desktop market because you will be incapable to fix the system to serve the desktop market needs. Others tried before.

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE is all about great fun and it works.

We know. Hence the happy-happy fun-fun tone in your post. From now on I will call you Mr Fun.

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[Elektroschock]

I respect that decision, I also like Gnome and I must further confess that I would prefer a GNUSTEP style desktop. So my market is GNUSTEP. But I do not want Novell to standadize on GNUStep. In fact that would be a serious mistake.

For instance RedHat has a real crappy KDE support. So it would be no wise decision for RedHat to standardize on KDE.

SuSe is a KDE powerhouse. So it is simply stupid to convert SuSe to Gnome. Like Mao Zedong encouraging small villages to produce steel.

When you want to sell Linux to the Desktops you have to take the best DE for that purpose. I do not believe Gnome Desktop will succeed because the gain Linux achieved on the Desktop market is mostly due to KDE. And the worm does not have to taste the fishermen.

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[Anonymous Coward]

I especially like your last sentence, "A Novell GNOME based Desktop Linux will get no acceptance on the market". That's nice. How do you know?
-----

Here's why:

Comparative study of various vendors' business decisions:

  Redhat:
  1. Adopt Gnome as the only Linux desktop
  2. Loose lots of money
  3. Become disillusioned in desktop on Linux
  4. ???
  5. Abondon Linux desktop strategy

  Sun:
  1. Adopt Gnome as the only Linux desktop
  2. Loose lots of money
  3. Become disillusioned in desktop on Linux
  4. ???
  5. Abondon Linux desktop strategy

  HP:
  1. Adopt Gnome as the only Unix desktop
  2. Loose lots of money
  3. Become disillusioned in desktop on Unix
  4. ???
  5. Abondon Unix desktop strategy

  Eazel:
  1. Adopt Gnome as the only Linux desktop
  2. Loose lots of money
  3. Become disillusioned in desktop on Linux
  4. ???
  5. Abondon Linux desktop strategy

  UserLinux:
  1. Adopt Gnome as the only Linux desktop
  2. Loose lots of money
  3. Become disillusioned in desktop on Linux
  4. ???
  5. Abondon Linux desktop strategy

Anyone else seeing a common pattern here?

Probably Mark Shuttleworth does. He's a smart guy. He embraced KDE. I'm sure this man already thinks hard how he can take advantage of the stupidity displayed by Novell management. Chopping KDE will alienate most of their customer base. Internal studies@SUSE show that 85% of openSUSE users are using KDE. 12% use Gnome. 3% use something else. Novell management are betting their careers on Gnome, But their heads will roll.

The Ubuntu suite of offerings is starting to become really sweet -- rock-solid servers based on Debian, Gnome/Ubuntu as well as KDE/Kubuntu offerings for desktops, workstations and thin clients -- and it is going to be ready to enter the enterprise market very soon too. (And in my definintion of "enterprise", it is not only the top 500, but most important the Small and Medium Businesses (SMB), where Linux stands the best chances to be adopted by the owners, as well as supported by small IT professional service providers.)

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[Elektroschock]

"There is no indication that users prefer KDE over GNOME." Okay. My impression was different. I would prefer GNUSTEP but there are no "indications that users prefer" GnuStep over ... Perhaps turn the question round and try to answer it: "There is no indication that users prefer GNOME over KDE."

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[christoph_s]

novell standardizes on gnome only for their novell server/desktop lineup.
the "classic" suse distro (now opensuse) will still carry both.

at least, that's the story at the moment.

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[NicklessXed]

I never claimed that there was any preference. You did. I think that most customers don't give a fuck.
Of course, certain zealots beg to differ.

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[Anonymous Coward]

You confirm JDS is a failure.

You're an idiot... and a zealot... and you can't fucking read either, not my post nor the link you posted yourself. The reshuffle was a in order to make the system work better because it was a victim of its own success. Sun ran with JDS and poured huge amounts of money into it before realising that it was growing away from the GNOME base... and this was causing major problems. Hence the reorganisation. Reorganisations happen *because* things grow and are successful *AS WELL AS* to sort out failures -- the Linux kernel development has been reorganised many times. Now piss off back to dot.kde.org... I'm assuming that's where you crawled from, you witless loon.

When SUN ships Gnome with Solaris I am fine with it. But you cannot say solaris is a desktop Operating system.

What? You blather on without the slighest idea what you are talking about.

Chosing Gnome means that you do not want to target the desktop market because you will be incapable to fix the system to serve the desktop market needs. Others tried before.

I'm fucked if I know what you are talking about here. It appears to be made up of English words, but taken together they make no sense at all.

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[Klivian]

The real issue is who is going to pay for the next generation of KDE development if SuSE isn't going to pay.

Not really, since KDE never has been dependant of corporate sponsorship and has always been more a comunity effort. Unlike others.

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[Arandir]

Troll. The "big boys" are Redhat, Sun and Novell. Since GNOME is essentially a Redhat project, there's no mystery there. Redhat has been anti-KDE since before GNOME got recast as a destkop. Sun isn't a Linux distribution, so let's stop talking like they are. Finally we have Novell. Er, I mean Ximian. Since Novell doesn't care about the desktop, it's really Ximian deciding this stuff.

When it comes to corporate politics, yes KDE is losing some ground. But if corporate circle jerks are your measure of success, then you might as wells stick with corporate approved Windows.

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[IntlHarvester]

Yeah, the common pattern is that there's no real demand for a Linux Desktop of any sort. It's not exactly like KDE-based distros were bumping Windows off desktops either.

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[thumperward]

It's a pity that these comments will probably be overlooked because you're an AC, but both this post and its grandparent are spot on. Thank god there's some sense in this thread.

  - Chris

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[JonJ]

So, with the earlier announcement that Novell/SUSE is giving up KDE in favour of Gnome
I was under the impression that Novell/SUSE was using Gnome only for SLES(Their server-operating system) and KDE for "regular" SUSE, can anyone confirm if I'm wrong or right?

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[jbolden]

Mandrake/Mandriva has always made money on its Linux business (it lost money on its education multimedia business). Corel/Xandros similarly.

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[IntlHarvester]

Comparing Mandriva and Xandros with the likes of Sun and Novell is a little obtuse, don't you think? I have my doubts about their financial stability, but I'm sure you will never see any sort of real compeititon for Microsoft out of those guys.

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[level_headed_midwest]

Xandros, Linspire, Mepis, Mandriva, Knoppix, Kanotix, Gentoo, Slackware all use KDE. SuSE (for now) is KDE. I think FC4 has no preference like RHEL does- it all pretty much looks the same in either DE. The tough thing for me was finding a good up-to-date Gnome distro. Sure, Debian uses Gnome, but it is 2.8 while current is 2.12. So I use Ubuntu.

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[Master of Transhuman]

The real question is how far can the big boys get when there is nearly a three-to-one user preference for KDE?

According to Tux, almost all their readers are backing KDE.

Sounds like self-destructive for Novell to switch to GNOME to me. I know they are including the libraries and all and you can still switch to KDE if you want, but defaulting to GNOME when most people like KDE is a bit odd.

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[Master of Transhuman]

Here's a fact (well, they call it a fact, anyway, how do I know?): the PDF magazine Tux says their readers prefer KDE three to one over GNOME.

Take it for what it's worth.

I personally find GNOME somewhat ugly, but then I'm used to KDE since every distro since Red Hat 7.0 I've ever used I've selected KDE as the desktop.

I don't mind having two desktops to choose from, but if this religious war bullshit doesn't stop, they either need to merge or one of them needs to go away or a third desktop needs to eclipse them because the arguments over implementation minutae are boring.

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[Master of Transhuman]

And how many SERVER administrators give a shit whether it's KDE or GNOME on their SERVERS?

Your post is irrelevant to the discussion. We're not talking about whether KDE or GNOME is better than the Windows desktop, we're talking about which is preferred by existing Linux users and therefore likely to preferred by NEW Linux users.

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[IntlHarvester]

Either fix your threshold or learn to read, flameboy.

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[timbo234]

I was under the impression that Novell/SUSE was using Gnome only for SLES(Their server-operating system) and KDE for "regular" SUSE, can anyone confirm if I'm wrong or right?

You are right.

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[timbo234]

These 'KDE is dying' trolls that keep getting modded up on slashdot are about as annoying as the infamous 'BSD is dying' trolls. KDE has a very large and active community of developers and doesn't need bucketloads of money poured into it to survive. Despite predictions of impending demise KDE has made progress in leaps and bounds over the last few years and is well ahead of GNOME in many areas - GNOME still lacks simple things like a menu editor (although I heard this may have changed in recent releases). Besides KDE isn't exactly out in the cold when it comes to funding - Trolltech is committed to funding it and major distros like Mandriva and (Open)Suse still use it by default and show no sign of changing.

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[jbolden]

In terms of size of their total business or in terms of sales of their Linux distributions? I'm not so sure that Mandriva doesn't outsell Sun when it comes to Linux desktops. In 1980 it would have been unthinkable that by 1993 Microsoft would be "real competition" for IBM so.... (not that I think that either Corel or Mandriva is nearly as well run as Microsoft, nor that Microsoft is nearly as poorly run as the IBM of the 80's and early 90's).

Re:The only major KDE distro?

[Master of Transhuman]

Why would I reduce my threshold to YOUR level, troll?

Re:KDE is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense!

Shuttleworth using it at home proves otherwise.

And don't even get me started on Qt4 vs GTK+. Any programmer worth his salt knows which one has more features, is more stable, and is simply better designed.

The user should not have to care

[David Gerard]

I'm using Ubuntu Breezy with the GNOME desktop and I've installed all the kubuntu-desktop stuff as well.

The major problem I can see is that the user should not even have to care whether a given app is GNOME, KDE or whatever. You set your fonts and colours in the GNOME control panel, then you start a KDE app and it looks like weird-arse shit. WTF?

No serious open-source desktop these days can be all-GNOME or all-KDE; you need to make the mixture not affect the end user at all. They desperately need a unified look-and-feel control panel that will set this stuff consistently without the user having to care.

Re:The user should not have to care

[Timbo]

If I had any mod points atm, I'd mod this up...

Re:The user should not have to care

[Rahga]

"The major problem I can see is that the user should not even have to care whether a given app is GNOME, KDE or whatever. You set your fonts and colours in the GNOME control panel, then you start a KDE app and it looks like weird-arse shit. WTF?"

And nobody should have to pay for health insurance, and refrigerators should grow on trees. It's called utopia... I've never understood the people and culture behind KDE, never liked the KDE desktop. I prefer to use and contribute to GNOME. A lot of other contributors are just like me... They really don't have the time nor care about the way a KDE app looks on GNOME or vice versa. It simply is not that important.

"No serious open-source desktop these days can be all-GNOME or all-KDE; you need to make the mixture not affect the end user at all. They desperately need a unified look-and-feel control panel that will set this stuff consistently without the user having to care."

Yes, they can be. There's not a single KDE app that I can think of that I would want to use. I hear occasional complaints about gimp and inkscape under KDE, but personally, I don't use them much (or inkscape) at all since my professional media work really forces me into Windows and Illustrator CS or other apps. I accept this. By analogy, if I need to carpool a ton of kids, I'll drive my van, otherwise I'll go where I need to in a car. I'm not going to dedicate my time to build a van that gets the city mpg of a car unless I really, really cared about it.

Windows + Illustrator, for me, is fine in certain situations, but for most of my work, GNOME accomodates me fine. And I'm happy... So, don't expect me to fret about the KDE users.

By the way, there's absolutely nothing preventing you from stepping up to the plate, getting the necessary skills, and fixing the issues you cite... That how change happens in these desktops.

Re:The user should not have to care

[laptop006]

Have you actually given a solid try to Inkscape? I admit I'm not a graphic designer, but I have to do enough that I always keep a copy of Illustrator to hand, but the current version of Inkscape does everything I need except for dealing with the Illustrator file format.

And more on topic, I went Gnome 1.4 -> KDE 2 -> KDE 3 (With a few months of IceWM due to being stuck on a P120 for a while) -> KDE 3.2 -> GNOME 2.6 (running 2.10 IIRC). I still have two KDE apps that I run, konsole (can't stand anything else), and K3b (I know there are gnome ones out there, just haven't tried them).

Re:The user should not have to care

[Bralkein]

And nobody should have to pay for health insurance, and refrigerators should grow on trees. It's called utopia... I've never understood the people and culture behind KDE, never liked the KDE desktop. I prefer to use and contribute to GNOME. A lot of other contributors are just like me... They really don't have the time nor care about the way a KDE app looks on GNOME or vice versa. It simply is not that important.

Well, now you're just being silly. Of course refrigerators growing on trees does not appear to be very far within the realms of possibility, but can you seriously not imagine a common colour-scheme configuration shared between the two desktops? It doesn't seem like madness to me, maybe you could just have a directory ~/.xtheme or something with files in there. I guess this wouldn't fit in with this registry-alike thing Gnome has (disclaimer: I know nothing about Gnome and may be wrong), but with a little discussion, I definitely think it would be possible to work something out...

Oh, and without wanting to start a patriotic flamewar, there are many countries where nobody needs to get health insurance... so maybe the things that seem impossible are not as crazy as you think!

Re:The user should not have to care

[pivo]

There's not a single KDE app that I can think of that I would want to use

KDE's Konsole is clearly superior to GNOME's terminal app, which is achingly slow. Fedora, a GNOME-centric distribution, has recognized that fact by making Konsole the terminal app on GNOME (desktop right-click->New Terminal). And GNOME has nothing to compare to Konqueror.

Re:The user should not have to care

[Rahga]

I've got plenty of experience with vector graphics released for gnome-games, and quite a bit of professional graphics work under my belt. I currently use Illustrator for most of my vector-based art, and it's a joy to the point that even with modern Inkscape, I just find so many features either lacking or missing... In relative terms, it even feels like a fight just drawing and manipulating simple paths. There's still no decent support for layers, right? A lot of the things I didn't like about Sodipodi that seem to still be around, like their SVG generation... Then again, I'm one of those fools who reads SVG files and tweaks them for maximum impact.

I've used konsole, and can't say if I remember it being faster than gnome-terminal, but I do think a lot of the complaints about the latter may be overblown. Sadly, CD burning is something I do a lot of with my professional work, and my software needs include a burning software that controls a robotic arm and 50-cd trays. :)

Re:The user should not have to care

[mickwd]

"You set your fonts and colours in the GNOME control panel, then you start a KDE app and it looks like weird-arse shit."

Carrying things to an extreme, if you want true consistency for users, you shouldn't be changing font and colour settings........

But I think your suggestion about a unified control panel is the best suggestion I've heard re. unifying the "Linux desktop". Personally, I'm glad there are several Linux desktop environments, all competing with each other and rapidly improving together as a result.

A single control panel which could control at least the common elements of the most popular desktops would be a wonderful idea. I hope someone reads your suggestion and makes a serious go at it - really, this would go a huge way towards achieving the "unified Linux desktop" in the eyes of the end user.

(Getting the environments to use the same font sizes (respecting the X11 DPI values) would be another).

Re:The user should not have to care

[Etyenne]

There's not a single KDE app that I can think of that I would want to use.

K3B and Klipper kept me on KDE for a looooong time.

Re:The user should not have to care

[Rahga]

The thing about color schemeing, and desktop themeing, is that a lot of this really isn't quite good nor necessarilly permanant in GNOME, and probably not KDE either. One thing we've dreamed about in the librsvg camp is utilizing CSS in SVG-equipped desktop themes, and generating that CSS in an app similar to Window's "Appearance" dialog. It would be enough of a nightmare trying to get this work in GNOME alone, and of course, it may indeed never ever happen. However, harder than getting this to work in GNOME would be the task of making some sort of standard for it and getting it supported in KDE as well.

Not saying it is impossible, but rather, that it is hard, and things are very likely change from one revision to another on each desktop regarding these issues. Keeping them in sync would also be a huge task.

Re:The user should not have to care

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a clue... *no-one* wants to support two lots of desktop libraries (and by that I mean triage/bugfix/develop/release/deal with security and all the problems that come from mixing code). This was obvious from day one of GNOME development. All the crap in the world about making them look the same will not change that.

Seriously, anyone who has been involved in software development will tell you the same thing -- in fact, I remember telling KDE supporters 5 years ago that one desktop will have to die before Linux can make any real headway for desktop applications, and im reply they spouted the same nonsense as you. I wasn't sure which desktop was for the chop then (but I strongly suspected it would be KDE unless some serious license changes occured)... but now it's painfully obvious. KDE supporters only have themselves to blame for this. They spent hundreds (thousands even) of man years building on top of a license disaster... they were warned repeatedly, but chose to ignore it and let their zeal for Trolltech override common sense.

The best thing to come out of the KDE project is a warning to future projects.

Re:The user should not have to care

[pivo]

This wasn't supposed to be a troll. In the past GNOME's terminal program was so slow it was slowing down my compiles (you can google 'gnome terminal slow' to see how many people had a problem with this.) This problem is what caused me to try out KDE in the first place. In any case, I just googled it myself and apparently the GNOME terminal has been fixed and is now quite fast. So I take back the that part of my post.

Re:The user should not have to care

[thumperward]

And nobody should have to pay for health insurance

It's interesting that you have this in the "impossible utopia" column. I don't have to pay for health insurance.

  - Chris

Re:The user should not have to care

[RAMMS EIN]

``No serious open-source desktop these days can be all-GNOME or all-KDE''

I don't agree with you there. GNOME (and also KDE, I guess) both have a full set of applications built for them. Ubuntu itself convinced me that you can build a complete desktop using only GNOME software. As long as GNOME and KDE don't get their themes compatible, I see distros that support one desktop or the other exclusively as the best solution for end users who want a nicely integrated desktop that just works. Ubuntu is a prime example of such a distro.

Re:The user should not have to care

[ameerirshad]

I know some KDE programs I prefer above their GNOME counterparts! AmaroK above any XMMS or Rhytmbox is on top of my list! Furthermore under GNOME the Skype interface looks like shit and I have read nowhere how to get it any decent, except on the Ubuntuforums where people advice to install the Qt libraries and KCentre to manage the looks of KDE programs, also if u used GNOME. So even though GNOME would be my prefered interface, I currently work a lot with KDE as well as I've installed both of them!

Re:The user should not have to care

[Anonymous Coward]

There is something that does something like that: http://www.metatheme.org/. I use it myself and it's quite good. It makes QT, GTK, and even Java apps have the same theme. It's not "look and feel" but at it's got the "look" part covered.

Re:The user should not have to care

[nine-times]

A single control panel which could control at least the common elements of the most popular desktops would be a wonderful idea. I hope someone reads your suggestion and makes a serious go at it - really, this would go a huge way towards achieving the "unified Linux desktop" in the eyes of the end user.

A control panel might possibly be good, but it also might be needlessly complicated. Wouldn't it be easier to standardize between KDE and Gnome where they store some font/color settings or something? Of course none of this addresses the fact that the programs will still look different.

Personally, I'm inclined to say we should get over it. If you want true consistency, keep to a single DE. If you want to try to tweak your Gnome/KDE settings to make them look the same, feel free to do so. Maybe it'd be nice if a given distro found ways to integrate Gnome and KDE better, but ultimately, the current situation isn't that bad.

Re:The user should not have to care

[Anonymous Coward]

If in your country, it is socialized health-care you have, its called taxes. If socialized health-care you don't have where you are, then you are either quite wealthy and pay your own bills or living life quite on the edge.

Re:The user should not have to care

[Burz]

"K3B and Klipper kept me on KDE for a looooong time."

Just having file dialogs kept me on KDE for some time! (*Shudders* when I think about picking files with older Gnome apps.)

But at least Gnome has that healthy mishmash of C, CORBA, Central Registry, and .NET/Mono technologies that make growing programmers choose OS X. :-)

Re:The user should not have to care

[swillden]

I don't have to pay for health insurance.

Yes, you do.

Even if it's called something else, you pay.

Re:The user should not have to care

[jamstar7]

There's not a single KDE app that I can think of that I would want to use. K3B and Klipper kept me on KDE for a looooong time.

I like Kaffiene as a media player.

Re:The user should not have to care

[IntlHarvester]

Seriously, anyone who has been involved in software development will tell you the same thing -- in fact, I remember telling KDE supporters 5 years ago that one desktop will have to die before Linux can make any real headway for desktop applications,

No, KDE and Gnome could have cooperated to create a single, great, open source desktop, with one project focusing on C++ frameworks, and the other focusing on C, with shared configuration settings and support software.

The fact is they both chose to set up this There Can Only Be One Winner situation, and therefore it was inevitable that there was going to be a lot of blood-letting eventually. What was unfortuante, in everyone's zeal to be the winner in this, they ended up in the worst possible situation for Desktop Linux. (Which ain't exactly catching the world on fire as it is.)

Re:The user should not have to care

[Arandir]

I don't pay for health insurance either... and I live in US of A! Not once in my life have I had to write a check or swipe a credit card or pay cash to get health insurance. My employer pays it for me.

Of course, it's still coming out of my pocket. I'm not stupid. But I wonder the same about you are when you think you aren't paying for yours as well.

Re:The user should not have to care

[James McGuigan]

I use ubuntu at home (gentoo requires too much time for maintainance), I find that KDE gives me more flexability and features (things like being able to move/rename/delete files within an open file dialogue, a terminal window within knoqueror) and so on. Though I freely use GTK apps within KDE.

However I have installed ubuntu with gnome on the office computer for a small charity staffed by non-techies, and I would remark that it is user friendly and "clean" (more so than KDE) and has gone down very well with the staff there. I wouldn't install KDE on that machine.

Different desktops have their advantages and weaknesses, I think having both (and many others) is actually a good idea, then we can pick the best one for the situation. This isn't the highlander, there can be more than one :-)

Re:The user should not have to care

[Dasher42]

You know, I find that the gtk-qt theme goes a long way to solving this. GTK applications start to look a lot more like KDE applications. It's not complete but it helps.

Re:The user should not have to care

[rexfelis]

No serious open-source desktop these days can be all-GNOME or all-KDE; I haven't used a KDE app in years. Maybe I'm missing something? I know there are some advantages (e.g. KIOSlaves, which --while excellent-- should die like the horrid GnomeVFS now that FUSE is in the kernel). Both desktops fall back on GTK apps to fill the gaps, it just looks more congruos when you start with GNOME. Gnome people often don't have any libkde or libqt anything on their systems. Everyone has gtk libraries.

Re:The user should not have to care

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he stated he didn't have to pay _health_ _insurance_ which may be quite true. State healthcare systems in civilised countries allow comprehensive treatment whether you are rich or poor and are _not_ "health insurance" systems such as implemented elsewhere. Health insurance systems like those in the U.S. treat everybody on their ability to pay - other countries abolished systems like this because it was morally disgusting ...

Re:The user should not have to care

[colmore]

Yeah, I don't have to pay for health insurance either.

I just hope I don't get sick.

Re:The user should not have to care

[Anonymous Coward]

No, KDE and Gnome could have cooperated to create a single, great, open source desktop, with one project focusing on C++ frameworks, and the other focusing on C, with shared configuration settings and support software.

Ah... utopia... a hopeless fantasy that has *never* existed, nor will it *ever* exist. You wave your hand over the problem of "shared support software" as if it can be solved with some common sense and some Jedi mind-tricks and three simple words tossed off on slashdot.

That doesn't even get into the license issue. GNOME was never going to adopt Qt as its base because the license was unacceptable, and the TrollTech developers working on KDE pushed Qt into every single aspect of the desktop. It was just never going to happen.

Having said that, the drying up of KDE developers funded by SUSE, means that the KDE boys are going to have to make a choice. They have already accepted that the a11y framework from GTK/GNOME will have to go into KDE/Qt because they neglected to make their own in this ultra-vital area... same goes for the media framework (GStreamer) because KDE couldn't make their own work properly. I forsee more and more GNOME technologies being used as the KDE project gets more starved for developers.

Eventually we may see KDE becoming a framework that sits on top of GNOME. A humbling experience for the KDE boys, no doubt, considering the overweening arrogance they've displayed over the years... but hey, needs must. And it would fulfill some of your requirements.

Re:The user should not have to care

[Russ Nelson]

... and I suppose you don't pay taxes either?
-russ

Re:The user should not have to care

[killjoe]

You pay taxes too and you pay health insurance. He only pays taxes. After you add your sales, state, local, federal, SSN, and property taxes the might even pay less taxes.

I think the broader point is this. He pays taxes and in return gets free health care. You pay taxes and in return get shiny bombers and the privledge of occupying iraq, oh and secret CIA prisons scattered around the planet.

Re:The user should not have to care

[Breakfast Pants]

While it would have been great if they had done that, it would be infeasible. Passing code around is essential in something like that--even if both sides are using different languages. Sometimes, telling how something should be handled is no substitute for giving demo code that the guys in the other project could take and convert into their code/framework. This simply isn't possible between KDE and GNOME for one reason: license incompatibilities.

Re:The user should not have to care

[IntlHarvester]

Bah, after QT went GPL, licence issues were just convienent divisive political flamebait rather than a reason. Licence issues didn't cause two VFS, two sound systems, and two settings databases. The issues that exist could have been solved with a good common IPC system, something that both projects fought for the longest time.

Re:The user should not have to care

[IntlHarvester]

I don't think it's particularly Utopian -- having a Desktop War wasn't a historical inevitability. It happened because both projects set out to make it happen, and they did this by intentionally building incompatible infrastructure and emphasizing differences to the end user that are simply unimportant to that audience.

Both projects set out to wipe the other one off the map, and it looks like Gnome is succeeding at that. Good for them, bad for the Linux desktop. Considering the no-growth in that market, Winner-Take-All seems like an awfully dumb strategy in retrospect.

(And I agree that Trolltech will probably eventually re-orient QT around Gnome infrastructure.)

Re:The user should not have to care

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah, after QT went GPL, licence issues were just convienent divisive political flamebait rather than a reason.

You couldn't be more wrong. The GPL license on Qt infects everything that touches it... it forces all KDE software (framework and apps) to bow to the license on Qt. No other library in your average Linux distro does that... the LGPL exists to prevent such side-effects, and that'd why GNOME/GTK use it. Can you imagine the uproar and fallout if they tried to GPL GLIBC, for example? Do you seriously think GNOME app developers wanted to force anyone using GNOME to be bound by TrollTech's licensing conditions? It was never going to happen... and wasn't just political flamebait. The very fact that neither Red Hat, Sun or Novell will touch KDE just proves it. The almost total lack of commercial involvement in KDE proves it too -- individual companies have made a choice to license Qt for specific projects (where they need Linux and Windows versions), but *no-one* will touch a desktop based on a library which forces expensive annual developer fees on commercial organisations just to write software for that desktop.

Lots of hopelessly ignorant KDE zealots think that GPLing Qt solved everything, and after that it was all just bickering... far from it.

Re:The user should not have to care

[IntlHarvester]

Most of KDElibs is LGPL. The projects didn't cooperate on backend infrastructure because they didn't want to, not because of legal reasons.

Re:The user should not have to care

[Anonymous Coward]

Good for them, bad for the Linux desktop.

No, good for the Linux desktop... one set of libraries and apps for external developers to target. You are simply wrong about the motivations for GNOME -- it set out to build a desktop free of the licensing problems of Qt, not to destroy anything. The reason the desktops were kept apart is 1) licensing (and no, that didn't disappear with the GPLing of Qt) 2) Language. KDE insisted on C++ with all its attendant problems -- ABI issues across platforms and between C++ compilers, mega-bloat, the huge difficulties with language bindings forcing app developers to use C++ or else rely on crappy unstable bindings that break when anyone farts in their general direction.

KDE supporters will never agree of course, but KDE was dead on its feet soon after the release of GNOME 2.4. GNOME 2.0 introduced a clean framework that replaced the chaotic mess of GNOME 1.0... it was polished up and by 2.4 it was a far better propositon for developers than KDE (generally speaking that is, some things in GNOME still piss me off). Since then, it's pulled further and further ahead with every release with far better accessibility, localisation and internationalisation and a much saner structure (dependencies and modularisation are simply unknown concepts in KDE) and roadmap. Whereas KDE has specialised in making big announcements about minor features (transparency for example) that mean little or nothing in the long term. Don't get me wrong here, there are many things to admire about the Qt Toolkit, but the KDE code built on top of it is a different matter.

Anyway... there were too many differences between the code/licenses/languages/approaches to ever see a unified GNOME/KDE desktop It wasn't petty or political... it just was. With KDE now relegated to the second division to sit alongside XCFE and the like, we can now hope that the Linux desktop will now be a clearer target for developers... and now we'll see some real growth.

Re:The user should not have to care

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't understand... to write KDE apps (or use KDE code) you *must* link with Qt. The KDE libraries and applications use QT throughout... not just as a graphical toolkit, but as utility functions, QStrings, slots and signals. KDE code is inseperable from Qt... hence unusable without dragging along Qt and its GPL license. It was deliberately designed to be inseperable by the KDE core developers (many of whom work for TrollTech). Until you understand this... you will still be stuck with this strange idea that it was nothing but politics and pettiness that kept the codebases apart.

The only reason KDE uses the LGPL for its libraries is that by paying money to TrollTech for the commercial Qt license, it means that a commercial developer can drop the GPL restrictions across the entire KDE codebase. The KDE core developers flatly refuse to allow any other GPLed library into KDE for this reason... it would mean that TrollTech would no longer be the gatekeeper for commercial apps. You don't have to believe me... check it out for yourself...

Re:The user should not have to care

[ashayh]

Why is this modded as troll ?

To this day I find the Gnome terminal to be terminally slow. And if I'm using Gnome, I make sure I'm using Konsole.

In general, QT apps seem to much zippier than GTK. But Gnome is the chosen Desktop for many distributions including Ubuntu and therefore and their KDE counterpart seems to be buggy and incomplete. Therefore the Gnome desktop seems to be the better choice if you're using a distro like Ubuntu.

However, Suse Knoppix and Mandirva have very a polished KDE setup.

As for the GP, Konqueror as a file manager is miles ahead of Gnome. If you're in the List view in Nautilus, how do you Drag-Select ? How do you paste ? You can't. Nautilus is again much slower than Konqueror. Watch how long each one takes to list filesizes in the same directories. If ever in Gnome, I prefer to use Konqueror as my filemanager. Konqueror has TABs.. even for file management.

GTK apps use too much White space in menus and other areas. It makes my 1600x1200 desktop look like the 1280x1024 one in KDE. No, reducing font size dosent really help and sometimes creates other problems. At the same resolution, Firefox shows a lot less bookmarks than Firefox in Windows. If theres any way to reduce this white space, I'd like to hear it.

Kcontrol is actually usefull. Especially the keyboard shortcuts, which lets you use the Win key. Gnome wouldnt. The help in Kcontrol is again actually usefull and opens much faster then Gnome.

Theres lots more.

Re:The user should not have to care

[Reziac]

I just got Ubuntu CDs in the mail last week so gave it a spin (tho I dislike Gnome and much prefer KDE, so was glad to be hereby reminded that Kubuntu exists). It seems generally mature, geared to ordinary users, and everything worked. But you touch on what was my one big complaint -- if I set something in one window, the setting vanished the moment I changed to another view. The file browser persistently reverting to icon view was about to drive me insane. (If there's a way to make it stick, I never found it.)

Is there a real reason why "what do you mean it didn't stick" or "why in hell isn't this setting global" are such common complaints, regardless of disty and desktop?

Re:The user should not have to care

[Reziac]

"Even if it's called something else, you pay."

Uh....... taxes???

Re:The user should not have to care

[True Grit]

It was deliberately designed to be inseperable by the KDE core developers (many of whom work for TrollTech). Until you understand this...

Speaking of understanding, none of the people who began the KDE project worked for TrollTech at that time. TT has hired some of them since then, but when the KDE project first begin, there wasn't a connection to TT.

Second, what exactly do you mean by "deliberately designed"? Any program that uses functions from a library is "deliberately designed" to use that library. GNOME is "deliberately designed" to use GTK. So?

Third, GNOME began because at the time QT was under a non-free license, never mind the GPL. It was only after QT became GPL that the "argument" switched to LGPL v. GPL. The point is there was nothing "deliberate" done at the time because the KDE people didn't know that TT would later release QT under the GPL specifically.

Re:The user should not have to care

[True Grit]

having a Desktop War wasn't a historical inevitability.

On an open system not controlled by a single authority and lacking a lot of standard infrastructure for advanced graphical applications, multiple desktop environments are inheriently inevitable.

It happened because both projects set out to make it happen,

It happened because you can't build commercial apps for KDE due to QT originally being non-free and later being released under the GPL instead of the LGPL, thus it should be obvious to everyone why commercial interests are gravitating to GNOME instead of KDE.

and emphasizing differences to the end user that are simply unimportant to that audience.

Who the hell do you think the KDE folks wrote KDE for? They wrote KDE for themselves not for whatever your definition is of a typical end user. Its the GNOME project that is now being deliberately written for the corporate desktop and the typical corporate end-user, since that is what the primary backers of GNOME today want GNOME to be. The KDE project began as a purely user-oriented community, and despite SUSE, it remains so. As for TT, their interest in KDE is only as a showcase for their QT library, TT isn't interested in controlling KDE's direction, and doesn't do so (and couldn't if they really wanted to - only a few of the KDE devs work for TT)

Both projects set out to wipe the other one off the map

How could KDE have started that way when GNOME didn't even exist then? How did KDE change course after GNOME was born in order to kill GNOME? Answer: They didn't change a thing. Destroying the other is not and never has been the goal of either project. Most of this "Desktop War" you refer to, is really the creation of slashdot flame warriors who needed something to fight about.

and it looks like Gnome is succeeding at that

Hogwash. This would only make sense if you believe the KDE project was aimed at the corporate desktop from the very beginning. It wasn't, and neither was GNOME when it first started for that matter.

And I agree that Trolltech will probably eventually re-orient QT around Gnome infrastructure.

LOL! What is the GNOME "infrastructure"? GTK+. What is GTK+? Answer: A replacement for QT written in C. What is QT? Answer: Its TTs commercial product that they make their entire revenue stream from thats written in C++. TrollTech isn't going to "reorient" a damn thing in QT to use GNOME "infrastructure" because QT and GNOME are written in different languages, never mind that TT isn't in the corporate desktop environment business, they're in the cross-platform GUI application building business which is inheriently and deliberately neutral when it comes to desktop environments! LOL!

Re:The user should not have to care

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of understanding, none of the people who began the KDE project worked for TrollTech at that time. TT has hired some of them since then, but when the KDE project first begin, there wasn't a connection to TT.

And where did I say there was?

Second, what exactly do you mean by "deliberately designed"? Any program that uses functions from a library is "deliberately designed" to use that library. GNOME is "deliberately designed" to use GTK. So?

There has never been any effort in KDE to separate the Qt reliant code from non-Qt reliant code and avoid unnecessary dependency... the TT developers within KDE deliberately made sure that Qt spread to everything and there was simply no way to use KDE code outside of the project without also dragging along Qt -- I say deliberately because they knew all too well what they were doing.

You mention GTK... Ok, let's take a look at that: proper modularization and dependencies and a great deal of code use outside of the project. No doubt you only know what you've read on some idiot advocacy site, but the GTK project (and GNOME on top of it) is not monolithic, it comes in parts: gtk, glib, pango, atk. KDE can use the glib C utility functions without dragging along the gtk widgets, i18n or accessiblity (Gstreamer for example, provides multimedia for KDE without the need for all of GTK). KDE has to rely on ATK to provide accessiblity under Linux... yet it does so without dragging along the widgets or pango (since Qt already provides those functions). What a shocking and concept eh? Modularization in the name of code reuse and good design. See how it works when your core coders aren't driven by ulterior motives. Are you aware of just how much work it took for Apple to remove the QT dependency in KHTML, for example? Probably not. Haven't you ever wondered why KDE code-reuse outside of the project/desktop is *incredibly* rate, whereas parts of the GNOME/GTK project are used all over the place.

Yes, understanding indeed. I suggest you take a good look at the motivations behind some of the KDE "design".

Third, GNOME began because at the time QT was under a non-free license, never mind the GPL. It was only after QT became GPL that the "argument" switched to LGPL v. GPL. The point is there was nothing "deliberate" done at the time because the KDE people didn't know that TT would later release QT under the GPL specifically.

What are you babbling about? Half of this is a truism, and the other half is ignorant and wrong. The argument over licensing was *always* about choice and freedom. The initial problem related to the fact that QT was closed-source... GTK was chosen for GNOME *because* it used the LGPL and not the GPL -- this choice was unrelated to Qt, and was made because GPLed libraries are a liability. When Qt switched to the GPL and trumpeted its new found freedom, it was perfectly apt to point out that the restrictions of the GPL were being (ab)used to force the purchase of commercial licenses and was a huge drawback (something that's been proved all too true). Learn a bit of history.

Re:The user should not have to care

[IntlHarvester]

> It was deliberately designed to be inseperable by the KDE core developers (many of whom work for TrollTech).

You and I are in agreement. The infrastructures were specifically designed in such a way to encourage the use of one toolkit over the other. There never was an an attempt to build a collaborative desktop enviornment where different toolkits could live side-by-side, using IPC when necessary.

Again, the lack of agreement on basic things like a shared settings file/database, or common mime-type handling, etc has absolutely 0 to do with licences and everything to do with politics.

(And I do agree with everything you are saying about KDE/Trolltech, just that I also believe that Gnome was doing the exact same things in their own ways.)

Re:The user should not have to care

[IntlHarvester]

On an open system not controlled by a single authority and lacking a lot of standard infrastructure for advanced graphical applications, multiple desktop environments are inheriently inevitable.

If you say so, but most other parts of the stack don't suffer from this sort of API war.

How could KDE have started that way when GNOME didn't even exist then?

OK, the Kommon Desktop Enviornment set out first to wipe CDE off the map, and then switched to Gnome. Regardless, it was always designed as it's own silo which was unrealistic given that "open system not controlled by a single authority" (as you put it) should have welcomed a more open approach to the desktop that didn't mandate the use of a single widget kit.

TrollTech isn't going to "reorient" a damn thing in QT to use GNOME "infrastructure" because QT and GNOME are written in different languages

Use your head. QT does theming and a lot of other integration bits on Windows and Mac, and could easily do the same to fit in better on a Gnome desktop.

Re:The user should not have to care

[Anonymous Coward]

You and I are in agreement.

No... you want to think it was an action of communities that wanted to destroy each other and couldn't cooperate. It wasn't. The problem was TrollTech employees ensuring that their code and royalties were inseperable from KDE by using their license, and languages (although I'm willing to bet that languages would have been a minor issue had the license been sorted out).

Again, the lack of agreement on basic things like a shared settings file/database, or common mime-type handling, etc has absolutely 0 to do with licences and everything to do with politics.

Not true. Freedesktop proved that... take a look at the mailing list. The work done on there was entirely independant of Qt and its licensing problems, and was quite enthusiatically adopted in GNOME. It was never a matter of politics or NIH (at least not from the GNOME side, who tend to be a tad more pragmatic than the somewhat irrational KDE supporters).

Re:The user should not have to care

[Anonymous Coward]

(And I do agree with everything you are saying about KDE/Trolltech, just that I also believe that Gnome was doing the exact same things in their own ways.)

I really can't see how you can say that. GNOME bent over backwards to split up its libraries into reusable parts that can be included elsewhere with as few dependecies as possible, and it's always been scrupulous about using pre-written code (that has no licensing problems) rather than redoing everything from scratch -- occasionally to its detriment (cough sawfish). You know all those complaints you get from KDE users that GNOME is hard to compile... well, this one source of the problem. Lots of small reusable libraries.

Re:The user should not have to care

[steeviant]

The major problem I can see is that the user should not even have to care whether a given app is GNOME, KDE or whatever. You set your fonts and colours in the GNOME control panel, then you start a KDE app and it looks like weird-arse shit. WTF?

I agree... I'm one of these weird people who has had to use both GNOME and KDE for many years, and along the way I've picked up preferences for applications that I like to use regardless of what desktop I'm using, but I'm sure we all run into the problem where our favorite application decides to pick up it's preferences from the wrong desktop from time-to-time. That's something that simply can't happen in Windows or OS X.

The most satisfactory solution I've found so far was to use the icons from redhat's bluecurve theme, and a modified version of the bluecurve qt/gtk2/gtk1 theme called QtCurve. Unfortunately it's very KControl-centric, but combined with the GtkQt plugin to copy font settings to gnome, I now have a unified look across all the major toolkits... see this screenshot to see what I'm talking about.

I wish there was a distribution that shipped out of the box with a combined KNOME or GayDE desktop instead of keeping them seperate. Just because they come from the developers a certain way, doesn't mean you can't fix it just like any other bug. I mean-- are linux distributors making their own OS, or are they just stapling and sellotaping together bits and pieces they downloaded off the internet like some saddo making his own porn mag out of printed usenet posts?

When Microsoft or Apple buy an app from another software company, they don't just replace Foocorp.gif with their own logo, they give the app a full makeover and adapt it to their OS. Linux distributors need to stop being such wimps and get their hands dirty, after all they don't even need to buy out the developers to get the source. :D

Anyway, everyone has probably had enough of my off-topic ranting, but I will say this... if any linux distributors are out there and listening; I for one am ready and willing to help you to improve consistency, but you have to be willing to embrace it.

Re:The user should not have to care

[IntlHarvester]

Me: If KDE and Gnome would have cooperated, neither would have had to get the axe, and everyone would be better off.

You: KDE didn't cooperate, so they deserved to get the axe, and once we recover, everyone will be better off.

The difference in what we are arguing is not big enough to persue, except for me to point out how many hundreds of man-years of code which is going to get flushed by this whole stupid thing.

Re:The user should not have to care

[Anonymous Coward]

> OK, the Kommon Desktop Enviornment ...

Excuse me, that is Kool Desktop Environment

Re:The user should not have to care

[True Grit]

If you say so, but most other parts of the stack don't suffer from this sort of API war.

The rest of the stack has little to do with the user's visual interface.

set out first to wipe CDE off the map, and then switched to Gnome.

"Mommy, mommy, that bad man scared me!" We weren't talking about CDE. "BOO!"

should have welcomed a more open approach to the desktop

How exactly does this same complaint not apply to GNOME as well? After all GNOME came late to the game and chose to build their own silo too. Sorry, but your one-sided diatribe against KDE so far hasn't impressed me at all.

QT does theming and a lot of other integration bits on Windows and Mac, and could easily do the same to fit in better on a Gnome desktop

Did you understand my last post? Most of GNOME is constituted using GTK/GLIB/PANGO/etc, which collectively DUPLICATES most of QT's functionality, but in C, not C++. QT can't "fit in", because there is, quite deliberately, no space for it. You're obviously not a programmer, at least not C/C++, otherwise you'd realize how silly your statement about reorienting QT really is.

Re:The user should not have to care

[IntlHarvester]

> How exactly does this same complaint not apply to GNOME as well?

It does. In fact that's my whole point in this thread. Glad you could catch up.

> Did you understand my last post?

Yes, you are trying to stick words in my mouth in order to make a strawman argument.

Re:KDE is dying

[Elektroschock]

KDE vs. Gnome is not QT vs. GTK+

It is a problem of GTK+ that it does not integrate proper in a KDe desktop.

KDe is not bound to Toolkits.

Intrestingly Gnome adopts all non-QT solutions as part of its own solutions portfolio. I do not mind using Evolution under KDE etc. And I am certainly not intrested in Toolkit wars. They do not matter under Windows, so why shall they matter on Linux machines.

what Ubuntu could do is...

[FudRucker]

make CD #1 mostly a base system with xorg and the basic x apps, similar to Slackware's #1 CD, and make a #2 CD with Gnome & KDE letting the user decide to install either Gnome and/or KDE, or users can just download the #1 CD install and get a basic OS booting, and download & install either gnome or kde via ftp after installing CD #1

Re:what Ubuntu could do is...

[Anonymous Coward]

An excellent idea. For a normal Linux distro, that is. For Ubuntu, with its user-friendly, cuddly-bear image, a system less complex is superior. I think the idea of allowing people to use a LiveCD to work out their favourite configuration, and then allowing them to install it, is an excellent concept.

Re:what Ubuntu could do is...

[laptop006]

Except that breaks having a single-cd installer, one of the fundamentals of Ubuntu, and it's something they'll hold on to for as long as possible.

Now what they might do is use free space on the live-cd as storage for any KDE packages they can't fit on the main installer CD.

Re:what Ubuntu could do is...

[leonmergen]

make CD #1 mostly a base system with xorg and the basic x apps, similar to Slackware's #1 CD, and make a #2 CD with Gnome & KDE letting the user decide to install either Gnome and/or KDE, or users can just download the #1 CD install and get a basic OS booting, and download & install either gnome or kde via ftp after installing CD #1

You do realise we're talking about Ubuntu here, which aims to provide a very user-friendly environment ?

Re:what Ubuntu could do is...

[jamstar7]

Except that breaks having a single-cd installer, one of the fundamentals of Ubuntu, and it's something they'll hold on to for as long as possible.

Now what they might do is use free space on the live-cd as storage for any KDE packages they can't fit on the main installer CD.

I like the 'base install from a single CD & update over the net' model that Ubuntu picked up off Debian. I installed Ubuntu from the CD I got with a copy of Linux Format, then updated it with apt-get, one of the BEST tools they ever came up with for Debian. Smoother than snot on teflon. I even got the Kubuntu packages as well. Course, I've been using apt ever since it came out for RedHat/RPM, but the upgrade to Breezy was a world of difference smoother than upgrading FC.

Re:what Ubuntu could do is...

[xouumalperxe]

No, that would be completely beside the point. Ubuntu and Kubuntu are essentially two distributions by the same people. Being installed as only once CD is part of its purpose. Not having to decide whether you want GNOME or KDE is its purpose. You just get the CD and pop it in. Supposedly, version 6.04 is aiming for a single-CD install/Live version. Making it a 2-CD deal that asks you to change CDs midway through the install is a step backwards.

Ubuntu/Kubuntu

[Stevyn]

I've installed both. The computer to my right is running Ubuntu 5.10. It's really a great distro. Very clean, simple, easy to maintain, and "snappy". I installed Kubuntu a few months ago, and I feel it wasn't as polished as Ubuntu is. I think both projects are really good for the community and I'd love to see Kubuntu surpass the commercial distros like Suse and Mandriva.

Re:Ubuntu/Kubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel it wasn't as polished as Ubuntu is

I agree and I get the feeling that that might be the reason that Shuttleworth will be throwing Ubuntu's weight behind Kubuntu to get everything up to Ubuntu's (high) standard. A friend installed Kubuntu 5.04 on his machine and there were issues with cursors (or lack of), amarok constantly crashing, just not the KDE he was used too (with all respect to Kubuntu they have a tough job). Also within the Ubuntu community KDE is probably more popular (the numbers on distro-watch are decieving you can have Ubuntu and then install KDE on top of it). I wonder if this will mean Ubuntu will follow KDE's release cycle?

Re:Ubuntu/Kubuntu

[j0217995]

Would be interested if your friend would try Kubuntu 5.10. It is a lot better then the 5.04 release.

Re:KDE is dying

[gilesjuk]

IMHO KDE is more useful for those who are considering migrating from Windows to Linux. So I don't see why the commercial vendors are flocking to Gnome?

Let's have a nice flamewar again.

[Anonymous Coward]

A companies preference is all about politics and has nothing to do with quality. For instance in de past there was a big effort in lobbying for Gnome. Does someone still remember the manipulation of Google in favour of Gnome by Miguel de Icaza and friends? At first Novell bought Miguel de Icaza (=Gnome). Later Novell bought Suse (=KDE). Inside Novell Miguel de Icaza spent all his time killing KDE. He behaves like a cuckoo. Getting KDE out of the nest...

Re:Let's have a nice flamewar again.

[diprovo]

Wow what a big insight in company politics...

Re:Let's have a nice flamewar again.

[Rahga]

Maybe it makes sense for Novell to support an ISV platform that doesn't force developers to either (a) release their apps under GPL or (b) pay a TrollTech tax? Perhaps, maybe, Miguel de Icaza was justified in fighing for the GNOME desktop, and it is perfectly fine for Novell to lessen their support of KDE?

Re:Let's have a nice flamewar again.

[Anonymous Coward]

That monkey desperately wants to rewrite Gnome in C# so that MS can destroy the project with patent litigation.

Miguel de Icaza: brilliant hacker and Microsoft fanboi, the mind truely boggles.

Re:Let's have a nice flamewar again.

[RAMMS EIN]

``He behaves like a cuckoo. Getting KDE out of the nest...'' ...and in doing so, he does exactly what many of the losers here on Slashdot and elsewhere say Linux "should" do: standardize on a single solution. Within a single company, I'd say that's even a Good Thing.

Of course, in the larger picture, there is no reason that standardization on a single solution for everything would be desirable. One of the great advantages Linux offers over most other systems is its great flexibility. Of course, flexibility alone doesn't mean so much, you also need alternatives. Right now, I have a choice between GNOME, KDE, a number of smaller desktop environments, or no desktop environment at all. I love it this way.

Re:Let's have a nice flamewar again.

[Klivian]

But all evidence points to this not being fact, since way more ISVs use Qt than GTK+ making that argument rather void. Commercial ISVs re used to, comfortable with and prefer paying for tools making their products better, cheaper to develop and having the safety commercial support.

Below Below Zero

[Doc Ruby]

What are they using at UBZ to generate/maintain those schedule pages? I don't see any SW like that in my Ubuntu menu.

European users can lend support.

[CyricZ]

KDE is most widely used in Europe and Asia, due to its excellent support for non-English i18n, l12n and l12y. Relative to KDE, GNOME's support is lacking in those areas.

Remember, the European and Asian markets are huge today, and they're growing stronger as we speak. For such a new project, Kubuntu has a large following of very devoted users.

Re:European users can lend support.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you kidding ? I have to keep Gnome around because its i18n is vastly superior. I even sometimes launch GTK apps just in order to type and cut-paste Asian text in a KDE app ! And don't let me talk about Pango..
Ubuuntu is one of the few Gnome distributions which doesn't allow you to type asian text out-of-the box

Re:European users can lend support.

[CyricZ]

I was recently talking to a Japanese colleague. He was describing how he ran into all sorts of problems using GNOME on FC4. I recommended that he ditch Fedora, and try Kubuntu 5.10. So he did, and he was quite surprised by how well it worked.

But when you consider how KDE was born in Europe, and now heavily developed in Europe and Asia, it's not surprising that it has such fantastic support for non-English languages.

Re:European users can lend support.

[thumperward]

Could whatever KDE fanboi modded this up hang their head in shame, please? GNOME is about as lacking in i18n support as I am lacking in toes.

  - Chris

Re:European users can lend support.

[Anonymous Coward]

But when you consider how KDE was born in Europe, and now heavily developed in Europe and Asia, it's not surprising that it has such fantastic support for non-English languages.

Hogwash. In case you didn't know. You don't need Unicode in Europe, since we use the Latin alphabet. Also, GNOME is developed mostly in Europe.

Re:European users can lend support.

[tricorn]

l12n? If you must use stupid "omitted letter" abbreviations (i18n was cute, but stupid), at least count the letters correctly! There's i18n (internationalization), l12y (localizability), g11n (globalization), and l10n (localization). Not l12n. Maybe l14n, that would be localizabilition, if you're George Bush.

Re:European users can lend support.

[petermgreen]

WESTERN EUROPE doesn't need anything beyond latin1 (with a few exceptions for loanwords) but its still likely to notice internationalisation problems more than the usa for a couple of reasons.

1: botched introduction of utf-8 is far more likely to be noticed as characters beyond 7 bit ascii are in use.

2: western europe broders onto the rest of europe which most certainly does need more than latin1 including one country that has its own alphabet.

ofc there are some scripts that haven't become type-ised and as such are far far harder to process correctly.

Re:European users can lend support.

[Anonymous Coward]

Really ? That would be great news. Can you tell me which distro and which inputsystem was he using under KDE ? The best i18n distro i know is Fedora, and even there, scim/iiimf/etc are far better handled on Gnome apps (for example,inputmethod work in a window-basis)

Re:KDE is dying

[grumbel]

No idea what the real reasons are, but I would guess one would be that Gnome is simply, less config options to tweak and to get wrong then KDE thus less support costs.

Re:KDE is dying

[MightyMartian]

I find that KDE, by and large, suffers from the same sort of clutter problems that Windows does. In short, they've emulated the GUI too damn well. Gnome is a lot cleaner, but providing I can run the apps I want, I'll leave it to others to bash the two.

ARRRG.

[Visceral Monkey]

Just as it seems we are making progress toward at least having ONE standard DE for most of the desktops used out there, Shuttleworth pulls this out of his ass. Seriously, Ubunutu is one of the reasons GNOME has made so much progress recently with users and now we are back to square one with splitting the userbase. Stupid move. I could care LESS which one they choose, just choose ONE.

Re:ARRRG.

[nurb432]

Except that a *single* desktop will *never* happen.

People have preferences. Some of us really dislike gnome. While others dislike kde. The same goes for anything else that comes along.

Should we have 100 to support? No of course not, but expecting a single unified desktop to be shoved down our throats isnt realistic either.

Re:ARRRG.

[Anonymous Coward]

expecting a single unified desktop to be shoved down our throats isnt realistic either.

Works for Microsoft.

Re:ARRRG.

[arkhan_jg]

The two desktops have different goals, different development platforms, and different markets. Both have their adherants. Some people prefer apple, some people prefer windows. Choice is good.

Re:ARRRG.

[idlake]

I agree that a diversity of desktops is good. I would love to see a desktop by the KDE developers that had a chance to succeed commercially. But as long as KDE is based on Qt (GPL and for-pay license), I think it's going to hurt rather than help Linux.

Re:ARRRG.

[Jason Earl]

Yes, and I like xfce, but that doesn't mean that I think that xfce is going to be the desktop that my grandmother uses when Linux takes over the desktop.

Re:ARRRG.

[iggymanz]

right, just one version with no confusion, XP Home Edition for the desktop. Oh, there's also Windows XP Professional. And Windows XP Embedded. And Windows XP Starter Edition.....

Re:ARRRG.

[iksrazal_br]

One mans angst is another mans joy. Timing is everything, and Shuttleworth is cleverly showing some skill. I'm a long time Suse user and kubunto is now going on the next machine I have a chance to do a fresh install.

All Shuttleworth needs to do now is convince troll tech to move Qt to LGPL and I'll help build a shrine for him.

My new sig - They'll take KDE away from me about the same time when they take away my guns - they tried that recently here in Brasil and failed too.

iksrazal

Re:ARRRG.

[rsheridan6]

Open Source is about freedom of choice. If you want ONE DE, try Windows XP. Some of us didn't switch to Linux to have GNOME shoved down our throats.

Re:ARRRG.

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of us didn't switch to Linux to have GNOME shoved down our throats.

Some of us don't want KDE shoved down our throats either. I've been a Slackware user for years, but since Pat decided to drop Gnome, I've decided to drop Slackware. I'm going for Debian.

If you don't like the distro's default, just install another one. If you don't want to do that, use another distro.

Re:ARRRG.

[Stimpack]

Ive tried Gnome, a few times, I really tried to like it, It just lacks so much its painfull. If you dont have political reasons Gnome is not in a usable position right now. Not many people will be happy if they standardize on one DE, the Gnome evangelicals, well we know how loud and mouthy they can be, the KDE peeps will lose alot of features and useability. Main priority and only thing I care about, sort some way to stop GTK apps looing shitty in KDE and vice versa.

Re:ARRRG.

[Mad_Rain]

Seriously, Ubunutu is one of the reasons GNOME has made so much progress recently with users and now we are back to square one with splitting the userbase. Stupid move. I could care LESS which one they choose, just choose ONE.

I guess your probably don't want to hear about Xubuntu then?

On a more serious note, stop. "Back to square one" and "splitting the userbase"? Give me a break. The underlying parts of K/X/Ubuntu remain the same - they all are using the same kernel, can use the same apps, and all of the programs install with the same "sudo apt-get install" syntax (or YOUR CHOICE of graphical installer). How is that splitting? As long as the "guts" of Ubuntu stay consistent and allow me to do what I want, I'm happy with my 5.10 Gnome desktop with k3b and Amarok installed, or switching to KDE and using Synaptic and Firefox.

Or look at it another way - what happens when things don't work "best" in GNOME? For example: this thread on the Ubuntu forums. In order to get some programs working, such as FreeNX, a remote desktop program, an alternate window manager (XFCE 4 in this case) had to be used. If GNOME was the only option, it wouldn't have worked as easily. Having choices about desktop environments allowed this particular project to work, and allowed other people to try it out, (hopefully) leading to further development of FreeNX (which kicks ass, btw). How is that a bad thing?

Re:ARRRG.

[m50d]

Just as it seems we are making progress toward at least having ONE standard DE for most of the desktops used out there,

Didn't look like that to me. The distros were moving to a standard DE, it's just not the one that users choose when they have the opportunity. Shttleworth is showing to me that he cares about what his users want. Forcing users to do one thing even when they would prefer to do something else so that everyone is the same is emphatically not the linux philosophy (though it is worryingly seeming to be the gnome philosophy these days)

Re:ARRRG.

[Narishma]

And how will Trolltech still make money if they LGPL Qt ?

Re:ARRRG.

[Arandir]

You do realize, don't you, that you are under no obligation to use Kubuntu. DON'T USE IT IF YOU WANT WANT TO! Is that so flipping hard you can't manage it? Are you so stupid you need someone else to tell you what to do?

This is called Free Software. That means the rest of us are free and not beholden to your whims and wishes. You've got a GNOME distro, but that isn't good enough for you because you just can't stand the fact that someone else is using KDE. Screw you! Get your ass out of this community and take your petty tyranny with you!

Re:ARRRG.

[kasparov]

yes, but the interfaces are remarkably similar between them all, wouldn't you agree?

Re:ARRRG.

[iksrazal_br]

"And how will Trolltech still make money if they LGPL Qt ?"

Services and support, although admitedly that doesn't always work. At this point its a question of how much money they will lose if KDE becomes less popular. Furthermore, there are companies they make money with the LGPL - JBoss comes to mind.

Its Trolltechs decision of course - and they have changed their mind a few times. Recently they went GPL on win32, and of course their decision to go GPL in the first place.

One big question would be if more people would use KDE if it were LGPL - often people say "if only" but wouldn't change their mind anyways. I've seen this numerous times with Linux itself as it has overcome hurdles over the years.

My new sig - they'll take KDE away from me about the same time when they take away my guns - they tried that recently here in Brasil and failed too.
iksrazal

Re:ARRRG.

[Anonymous Coward]

You people are nuts. KDE is great (and so is GNOME). It is excellent for the Free Softwarze community to have both desktops, and I also look forward to Enlightenment. More choice is better and I don't think either desktop is suffering neglect from having more competitors. On the contrary it is obviously spurring greater development.

Ubuntu is an awesome distribution, but Debian is just as important. Ubuntu leverages Debian Unstable to fantastic effect, and neither should go away as both benefit from each other!

The Free SOftware movement is so exciting these days.

Re:ARRRG.

[rsheridan6]

Nobody's trying to shove KDE down anybody's throat. Slackware's decision to drop GNOME is because one guy with health problems can't keep up with packaging it, when Dropline GNOME is available anyway. It's not some industry scheme to standardize on one desktop. It's fine with me if other people prefer GNOME. I just don't care for it myself and don't want to be pushed towards using it.

Re:ARRRG.

[Kjella]

And whichever of Mozilla and Konqueror is worse should just crawl up and die, so that there is only one. Or OpenOffice and KOffice or [insert Gnome program] and [insert KDE program]. If I wanted one kernel, one DE, one Office I'd go to One Microsoft Way.

I want standards. Interoperability. Not "design by comitee", but Gnome and KDE coming together and saying "Hey, our users set the same options in different places. Can we agree on a format for doing that and both use it?" Or are the developers afraid of making it too easy for users to change away from their DE while bringing all the applications with them? I don't want to feel bound to Gnome only because there's so many great Gnome apps. That's exactly the situation today on Windows.

Re:ARRRG.

[petermgreen]

lets see

windows server : the real thing

all other versions : crippleware with the level of cripling determinng the price point.

indeed even the server versions could be considered crippleware but you can uncripple them by buying more cals.

thats how companies can make the most money out of a product: make the real thing first and then cripple it so that some markets have to pay more than others (server users pay the most followed by office destop users followed by home users followed by users in countries where ms knows it would sell very few licenses at full price)

otoh on the linux side we are talking about totally different desktop environments often with totally different configuration/administration systems.

Re:ARRRG.

[spyfrog]

Are you also worried about this?

I have a feeling that many Gnome users are blind in there hatred and really wants to eliminate Kde of the face of earth.
However, I have never really seen the same hate from Kde users towards Gnome - more a dislike of the DE.

Of some reason, many posts here from Gnome users seams to take this personally, they really love that Novell dropped Kde. This even when most of them don't seam to use Suse!

What does it really matters for anyone who use Feodora what Suse defaults to? I don't care that Redhat choose to default to Gnome. I don't use RedHat so they might default to whatever they like.
Hovewer, now the Gnomes seams to cheer that Novell decides to default to Gnome instead of Kde - but I am quite sure that you still won't run the distro.

So why are so many gnome users so damn happy about this? If you are a Gnome user you probaly not use Suse since thier Gnome support have never been good. My only guess is that Gnome users are fanaticly wanting to destroy KDE, erase it from this planet.

Re:ARRRG.

[m50d]

I have a feeling that many Gnome users are blind in there hatred and really wants to eliminate Kde of the face of earth. However, I have never really seen the same hate from Kde users towards Gnome - more a dislike of the DE.

Yes, I've seen exactly this, and it seems to extend to distros as well - the gnome distros like redhat seem to be really rabidly anti-kde, wheras kde distros like suse was until a few days ago seemed to take a far more even-handed, "use whichever you like" approach. I think it's part of the gnome philosophy that there should be only one option for everything, and the gnome devs know best, wheras kde seems to say choice is good and you should do what you want.

So why are so many gnome users so damn happy about this? If you are a Gnome user you probaly not use Suse since thier Gnome support have never been good. My only guess is that Gnome users are fanaticly wanting to destroy KDE, erase it from this planet.

From the way gnome is still spreading fud about the qt licensing several years on, I think this is the situation. It might be because once Qt became free gnome had no real reason to exist, so they make the purpose of their existence to eliminate KDE.

Re:ARRRG.

[adrianhensler]

That's a shortsighted statement. If you have more users of (u)(ku)buntu; you increase your user community and knowledge base. Kubuntu has what; almost doubled the amount of people viewing, using, troubleshooting the (u)(ku)buntu base?

Re:ARRRG.

[10Ghz]

I( thought that I already gave you a good whip from the clue-by-four? Let's just say that you are quite mistaken on your "KDE is harming Linux!"-opinion. But hey, if you are only interested in sucking up to pushers of proprietary software, or you just want to rip off the work of others, without giving anything back, then Qt and KDE might not be ideal for you.

Re:ARRRG.

[iggymanz]

yes, they all suck

Sounds like your installation is botched.

[CyricZ]

Can you provide us with some screenshots showing the problems that you speak of? Perhaps you managed to botch your installation somehow.

If you're using Kubuntu 5.10, check the K -> System Settings -> Appearance configuration panel. Notice the "GTK styles and fonts" portion. It allows you to easily set your GTK style and fonts to those used by KDE. And it works fine for every GNOME/GTK+ app that I use.

Re:Sounds like your installation is botched.

[PatrickThomson]

Unfortunately the user is using gnome with a kde app and the minimal dependancies to make the kde app run, not the other way around.

Re:Sounds like your installation is botched.

[Steeltoe]

Try running Inkscape in KDE. You'll notice the menu and file-dialogs look very dated.

Try running Banshee, it won't even run under KDE for Breezy.

Not to say I'm unhappy with using Ubuntu and KDE with a mixture of Gnome-apps and KDE-apps, but the poster has a valid point. It doesn't always work so good.

I tend to like Gnome for administering and KDE as a default for everything else. KDE-apps are too busy for administering, and the admin-apps are not so intuitive (although Control Center rocks, unless your option is hidden under some Advanced-tab somewhere..) Gnome user-admin, gparted, and other admin-tools kicks KDE in terms of clearness, which is what you want when you admin a box, but the default widgets and theme for Gnome is too boring for anything else.

So both environments has its merits in my opinion. I think Ubuntu should support apps for both environments out of the box, because with imperfect implementations on both sides, it only makes sense to mix-and-match.

Re:Sounds like your installation is botched.

[David Gerard]

My installation is fine. But I have to set the appearance separately for KDE apps from GNOME apps. You and I understand why; but any user coming to Ubuntu and being faced with this is going to go "WHAT ON EARTH?!" And quite rightly - there is no reason the user should be punished for the KDE vs GNOME battles.

Mepis, Xandros

[nurb432]

Donno if you consider them major, but they are KDE 'based'.

CUPS size

[The Dirty Lemon]

This is PERFECT! Now, if only the CUPS people could get their thing to work without the step in the instructions that tells me to pull all my hair out....

Re:CUPS size

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't tell me which hair...

Re:CUPS size

[Anonymous Coward]

1. modprobe printer driver
2. Install cups and edit cupsd.conf
3. Pluck hair surrounding anus
4. ...
5. Profit

Re:Unfortunately, what hurts KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

QT is available under GPL!

Err...

[BrokenHalo]

make CD #1 mostly a base system with xorg and the basic x apps, similar to Slackware's #1 CD

Slackware's CD#1 in the current 10.2 version doesn't include KDE any more, just xfce, twm and some other more minor desktop environments. And Pat has given up distributing Gnome in anything like a current model: that is well served by Dropline, and there's no point in his reinventing the wheel.

Re:Err...

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh? Blackbox, flux, fvwm and windowmaker are in no way more minor than twm.

Slack base install does include the KDE and Gnome libs, and I think this is the way all distros should go. Gnome and KDE bloat is still availiable for users who haven't yet discovered that they don't need/want these desktops.

that's a mistake

[idlake]

I think technically, KDE is a good desktop, and it is popular in Europe. But no matter how good it is, KDE is simply is not going to happen as a mainstream commercial desktop as long as Qt is available only under the GPL and a commercial license. Gnome may be worse, but it isn't so much worse that it makes a difference to real-world users.

I think it's a bad mistake for Ubuntu to support KDE on equal footing with Gnome; for the Linux desktop, the best thing is if people standardize on Gnome for now.

The KDE developers should seriously think about developing the next generation Linux desktop, based on a an entirely new toolkit and new approach to doing things.

Re:that's a mistake

[dc2447]

I think it's a bad mistake for Ubuntu to support KDE on equal footing with Gnome; for the Linux desktop, the best thing is if people standardize on Gnome for now. I thought the point was to make Linux more poular rather than less popular. Restricting the choice of window mamager would certainly be a step backwards IMVHO and would limit the appeal of Linux for many. Personally I prefer KDE but I'm not going to force anyone to use it.

Re:that's a mistake

[ledow]

"... no matter how good it is, KDE is simply is not going to happen as a mainstream commercial desktop as long as Qt is available only under the GPL and a commercial license."

Maybe not. But where does your reasoning come from? Companies can buy into it just like the software they are used to (if they want to be that stupid). People (like me) can freebie their way into it because they know it's not going to get taken away if QT disappears. Exactly where is the problem for anybody? Were it GPL-only, you'd have an argument. Were it commercial licenses only, you'd have an argument. But it's both. That solves pretty much everything you could want in a product.

"Gnome may be worse, but it isn't so much worse that it makes a difference to real-world users."

Gnome may not be any better or worse, I've compared both and personally I prefer KDE (it seems more modern but not too artsy, easier, sleeker, not so clunky. Gnome still reminds me of old DOS GUI's in places, or those Borland-written dialogs and menus you used to have on Windows. Nothing *wrong* with them, they just feel completely out of place).

However, from a technical side, there are many considerations. Gnome is still a pain in the arse to manage for a distro. That's the primary reason that Slackware has dropped it from the distro.

Quotes from the changelog:
[[
gnome/*: Removed from -current, and turned over to community support and
    distribution. I'm not going to rehash all the reasons behind this, but it's
    been under consideration for more than four years.

    Please do not incorrectly interpret any of this as a slight against GNOME
    itself, which (although it does usually need to be fixed and polished beyond
    the way it ships from upstream more so than, say, KDE or XFce) is a decent
    desktop choice. So are a lot of others, but Slackware does not need to ship
    every choice. GNOME is and always has been a moving target (even the
    "stable" releases usually aren't quite ready yet) that really does demand a
    team to keep up on all the changes (many of which are not always well
    documented). I fully expect that this move will improve the quality of both
    Slackware itself, and the quality (and quantity) of the GNOME options
    available for it.

    Folks, this is how open source is supposed to work. Enjoy. :-)
]]

I have to agree with the last sentence.

"I think it's a bad mistake for Ubuntu to support KDE on equal footing with Gnome; for the Linux desktop, the best thing is if people standardize on Gnome for now."

Nope. Not in an open-source world. The point is to take EVERYTHING on an equal footing, get the best out of both and ditch the cruft. It's like software evolution. Whoever wins out of KDE and GNOME will, by definition, be the better system. However, to do this you have to start them both off on an equal footing. Welcome to open source. The fact that I can run GNOME binaries on my KDE desktop and vice versa means that there's no reason to choose any one of them yet and no need for standardisation. It's just another set of libraries for now.

"The KDE developers should seriously think about developing the next generation Linux desktop, based on a an entirely new toolkit and new approach to doing things."

Maybe. But what to start from? Where to get those ideas? Where to find those approaches? How to determine which of the new approaches works and which was better off the old way? By putting them all together, fighting it out (by a vote of user popularity) and, as if by magic, a victor will appear. They can take bits of each other, they can "steal" each other's ideas but they shouldn't be written off just because you don't like them. Many, many people do.

Re:that's a mistake

[ledow]

Oh, and on the linux desktop thing...

Do you know how many people get a new computer with Windows and spend an hour choosing their wallpaper, screensavers, IM avatars etc.? Loads. Look and feel and customisation is important even to the least tech-savvy person.

If Linux is to ever take off, it's got to out-choose Windows. This is where the big push is coming from... those people who choose not to run a crippled, expensive system but a cheaper more which might take a little more of a push. The people who choose to use an antivirus scanner that's free compared to one that's constantly bugging them to upgrade. The people who choose to run on an older PC than have to upgrade AGAIN.

Choosing between Gnome, KDE and every other window manager is a vital part of any linux desktop system. You like Gnome, I like KDE, the system I make to go on an old 486 might run much nicer with something else entirely. The fact that, at install time and later on, I can choose what I want to use based on what I like or what I want is a plus point. It HELPS newbies, not hinders them.

The only fly in the linux desktop ointment at the moment is the fact that there's very little to help a brand new user. Help files DO NOT GET READ. I work in six schools, I assist nigh-on 100 members of staff and hundreds of children and not once has anyone every clicked on, read, or bothered to consult a help file when something went wrong or they needed help. Stupid things in Windows like that little bouncing arrow that points to the startbar are HELPFUL to people, even if only for the first time the desktop is shown.

We need to get Gnome, KDE and all the others around to make silly tutorials, videos, help files, tooltips, and all the other gumph that users need to adjust. Remember the Windows 3.1 "how to use a mouse" tutorial? It showed click-and-drag and everything because it was NEW to the users. Linux is new to people. It's very similar to Windows in terms of usage (or can be very easily made to be) but it needs to show that that's the case. The simple fact that KDE loads up with five icons in the bottom left doesn't help a new user. They don't know that they have to press the K to find the programs. They could GUESS it but users don't like to guess. The newer the desktop, the more "fancy", the more modern, the more abstract, the harder it is for people to adjust.

How do they find their files? It has to be explained that the Home folder holds all their documents. How do they get on the web? It has to be explained that they can use lots of browsers but that IE isn't there.

When you have someone to demonstrate the fact, it takes two minutes to get them into a word processor and printing off their stuff. When they get to the stage where they are BUYING this stuff in PC World, they need to be able to have a go themselves with some confidence of what to expect. This doesn't mean make it like Windows, it doesn't mean that they should be stuck with "GnomeKDE" the new merged desktop, it means that every project that wants a piece of the desktop has to think of the users.

That's where linux desktop currently falls down. Yes, for me it's nice that I can configure my middle button to do any of twenty different things depending on context but that shouldn't get in the way of the user who's trying to work out why he can't reverse his mouse buttons for left-handed use. Once you have that in place, the Gnome/KDE/other issue becomes a user choosing his "theme".

Re:that's a mistake

[m50d]

I think technically, KDE is a good desktop, and it is popular in Europe. But no matter how good it is, KDE is simply is not going to happen as a mainstream commercial desktop as long as Qt is available only under the GPL and a commercial license.

If that were true, Linux itself would be failing spectacularly in favour of the BSDs.

Gnome may be worse, but it isn't so much worse that it makes a difference to real-world users.

It does make a difference. If gnome was the standard linux desktop I would be using windows.

I think it's a bad mistake for Ubuntu to support KDE on equal footing with Gnome; for the Linux desktop, the best thing is if people standardize on Gnome for now.

Why? Gnome introduced the whole desktop wars, if they wanted standardisation they would either not have started, or certainly would have disbanded when their original aim became irrelevant. As a desktop they are inferior. From a customer's standpoint there is no reason to standardise on gnome, ever.

The KDE developers should seriously think about developing the next generation Linux desktop, based on a an entirely new toolkit and new approach to doing things.

The Qt toolkit is still the best-looking toolkit on Linux, and the kde approach has given us the best desktop environment around. Full steam ahead for KDE.

Re:that's a mistake

[IntlHarvester]

Do you know how many people get a new computer with Windows and spend an hour choosing their wallpaper, screensavers, IM avatars etc.? Loads. Look and feel and customisation is important even to the least tech-savvy person.

Realistically, Linux has no opportunity to be sold to this kind of user. It's going to be a long time before Linux is any sort of serious retail consumer solution.

Linux desktops tend to be positioned towards managed IT solutions, dull functional and accessible, where disabling this sort of customization is more important than having it.

Re:that's a mistake

[Anonymous Coward]

Call me stupid, but I really don't get this. See, companies who develop commercial products on Windows right now have to buy for each developer:
- a copy of windows
- a copy of visual studio (or some other IDE)
- support for those tools

So, say for instance this company switches to KDE/Linux development. Now, they get for free:
- a Linux distro (ok, might have to pay for support)
- an IDE (KDevelop + Qt designer)
And they have to buy
- A Qt license, which is a nice lib and comes with support etc.

And if they don't want to do that, they can:
- release their code under GPL
- develop using another toolkit (Gtk integrates a whole lot better in KDE than Qt does in Gnome, thanks to gtk-qt for instance)

So the bottom line is: even with the Qt fee, commercial development on KDE/Linux costs equal or probably less than development on Windows. And if you release your program as free software (which is wat we all want to happen, isn't it?) it'll save you even more.

KDE vs. Gnome has nothing to do with the toolkit being used.

Re:that's a mistake

[victor_hch]

"I think technically, KDE is a good desktop, and it is popular in Europe. But no matter how good it is, KDE is simply is not going to happen as a mainstream commercial desktop as long as Qt is available only under the GPL and a commercial license" Certainly KDE has the lead in DEs, but lets not forget the behaviour of Trolltech and the licensing of the Qt library, they did it once, and I've not doubt in my mind that if it wasn't for GNOME they'll be charging everybody for the use of Qt. It's plain and simple they could change the licensing of Qt4 or Qt5. They are not trustable, unless they license the Qt library ONLY with the GPL and do it for the foreseable future, if this doesn't happen I'm glad to have GNOME. I believe GNOME is the counterweight that refrains Qt became totally proprietary software. Good news for us. One more point, the healthy competition of KDE and GNOME is in the spirit of free software, the best code will prevail, I like and use both, but as I've said before due to these small details, I use more GNOME, and I think it has improved a lot, I hope that it gets better.

Re:that's a mistake

[Anonymous Coward]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

IMHO, GTK2+/Gnome beats the pants off of KDE in both looks and usability. KDE looks like a cheap knockoff of Microsoft Windows and is just about as stable.

But then again, I've only been using Linux since 1995, and *nix since 1975. What do I know.

Re:that's a mistake

[m50d]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Very true, which is why it is better to give users a choice. But if you're going to restrict people to one desktop environment, KDE gives you a choice of looks at the start, wheras with gnome you get one look and you better like it. (Yes, you can get your own themes for either, but that's more effort than the typical user will go to).

IMHO, GTK2+/Gnome beats the pants off of KDE in both looks and usability. KDE looks like a cheap knockoff of Microsoft Windows and is just about as stable.

Now see, to me KDE looks like what windows is trying to do but done right. Gtk is in its default look just oppressively dull and grey, and looks more like an old version of windows in terms of the actual widgets - the scrollbars and dropdown menus are identical, the buttons look pretty similar and are too rectangular visually. It's at once dull and harsh. As far as usability's concerned, all I've seen of the gnome usability focus is confirmation dialogs switching the buttons around making me overwrite a file I didn't mean to, a filemanager spawning new windows all over the place and no way to stop it short of manually editing the registry, having to make an extra click before I can actually choose where I want to save a file, and some ridiculous button naming to learn. (What does "save" do in the context of a preferences dialog? Will it dismiss the box? Will it apply the changes? The answer seems to vary from application to application. I've even seen one with save/apply/cancel/ok. Ok/Apply/Cancel is a standard buttonset that I'm used to and know what it does, whatever happened to the principle of least surprise?) And I've never had any stability problems, that sounds like fud from here.

But then again, I've only been using Linux since 1995, and *nix since 1975. What do I know.

I suspect this makes you more minimalist as goes UIs than the average person. CDE would have driven me insane if I had to use it for extended periods, the grey would have got to me. Flashy widgets do make it easier to use the thing, not because they do anything different but because it's more pleasant to be looking at them.

Re:that's a mistake

[Kjella]

This doesn't mean make it like Windows, it doesn't mean that they should be stuck with "GnomeKDE" the new merged desktop, it means that every project that wants a piece of the desktop has to think of the users.

Most of the stuff in Linux distros were never made for first-time users. It was primarily made by developers, for developers. It also happens to be quite usable for other powerusers, but that's pretty much it. Most of the "userfriendly" software comes from distros who are trying to dress up a poweruser system in a newbie-friendly wrapping. Nothing wrong with that, but don't expect many apps to care. For example, I'd much rather the GIMP tried to catch Photoshop rather than make another of those overly friendly mini-photo apps that comes "free" with every digicam.

Does that mean the barrier to entry will be significant? Yes. Is it because I want to be elitist? No. But as it is today, you have to expect some things to be difficult because Linux is not an accepted platform, and there's a lot of proprietary and/or patented formats it won't read out of the box, and there's quite a few quirks regarding drivers and the like. You need to be something of a poweruser to work around that.

I think aiming for the newbie user is the wrong end to start at. You start with the powerusers and work your way down. There's a bit of an exception here for very simple systems where the users are just applications user of a system managed by others. My parents have two very simple Linux boxes, and they like it quite well. Particularly since the last Windows box was fubar'd (don't ask me, it had firewall, AV and windows updates enabled). But I'm the one handling any quirks. Granted, there aren't many but each and every one would be way out of my parents' depth.

Re:that's a mistake

[vdboor]

KDE is simply is not going to happen as a mainstream commercial desktop as long as Qt is available only under the GPL and a commercial license.

Have you seen the customer list of Trolltech? Commercial support can be a big plus for companies.. They have one company to contact for support questions, instead of developers somewhere on the net.

The whole community thing means free support, but also also scares companies away. Companies who feel commercial partners are more reliable.

Re:that's a mistake

[idlake]

If that were true, Linux itself would be failing spectacularly in favour of the BSDs.

Whether a license works for a piece of software depends on how the software is used. A GPL license on the Linux kernel and Linux command line utilities means something very different from a GPL license on a GUI toolkit.

The crucial difference here is that companies can ship commercial software on top of a Linux kernel without their software falling under the GPL and without paying anybody, while companies cannot ship commercial software on top of Qt without their software falling under the GPL or paying a lot of money to TT. And you can argue that that doesn't matter, but it obviously does.

Gnome introduced the whole desktop wars, if they wanted standardisation they would either not have started, or certainly would have disbanded when their original aim became irrelevant.

Gnome is as relevant as it has always been, and Novell's decision underlines that again: KDE can never become the standard desktop for Linux. It's just not going to happen. And the sooner the KDE project members realize that, the better off we all are.

Re:that's a mistake

[idlake]

I thought the point was to make Linux more poular rather than less popular. Restricting the choice of window mamager

Who is talking about "restricting"? I just think that the logical and sensible thing for Ubuntu and other commercial distros is to focus on Gnome support.

Personally I prefer KDE

Purely as an end user, so do I. As a programmer, I think KDE and Gnome suck about equally. But as the basis for a distribution, Gnome is the only viable choice IMO.

Re:that's a mistake

[idlake]

Nope. Not in an open-source world. The point is to take EVERYTHING on an equal footing, get the best out of both and ditch the cruft. It's like software evolution

I like the concept of software evolution and have repeatedly argued for it.

But at the level of individual distributions, distributions need to make a choice where to put their resources. That's particularly true for distributions that are trying to give their users a nice desktop experience.

Whoever wins out of KDE and GNOME will, by definition, be the better system.

I disagree. I think Gnome will win this one no matter which one is "the better system", simply because the Qt dual-licensing scheme is too much of a problem. And, in the unlikely event that KDE does win, the Linux desktop is in serious trouble, because it simply ain't going to happen that a large number of commercial Linux developers are going to send their money to Norway.

But what to start from? Where to get those ideas? Where to find those approaches? How to determine which of the new approaches works and which was better off the old way? By putting them all together, fighting it out (by a vote of user popularity) and, as if by magic, a victor will appear. They can take bits of each other, they can "steal" each other's ideas but they shouldn't be written off just because you don't like them. Many, many people do.

That kind of exchange between Gnome and KDE works for incremental tweaks. But, in the grand scheme of things, the two desktops are very similar and have very similar faults. I think right now is the opportunity to do something substantially different and better.

Re:that's a mistake

[idlake]

Have you seen the customer list of Trolltech? Commercial support can be a big plus for companies.. They have one company to contact for support questions, instead of developers somewhere on the net.

Yes, and that's a nice thing and I'm not saying that Troll Tech should disappear from the face of the earth. Indeed, all the companies I have worked at have had Qt licenses for some of their developers.

But there is a difference between being a vendor a cross-platform toolkit for custom application development, and being at the core of the desktop platform of one of the top three desktop operating systems in the world. The former doesn't make you a good choice for the latter.

The whole community thing means free support, but also also scares companies away. Companies who feel commercial partners are more reliable.

Some companies indeed do want commercial support, and they can get it for both Gtk+ and Qt.

Re:that's a mistake

[m50d]

The crucial difference here is that companies can ship commercial software on top of a Linux kernel without their software falling under the GPL and without paying anybody

No, but then they aren't allowed to use lots of the nice things in the kernel and may have to reimplement lots of functionality that they could just get immediately if they were GPL.

while companies cannot ship commercial software on top of Qt without their software falling under the GPL or paying a lot of money to TT. And you can argue that that doesn't matter, but it obviously does.

Doesn't seem so obvious to me. If it's that much trouble they can always use another toolkit - their program will still work in KDE.

Gnome is as relevant as it has always been,

The stated aim of the gnome project is to ensure there's a Free Software desktop that's as good as KDE. It is now irrelevant to that original intention.

and Novell's decision underlines that again: KDE can never become the standard desktop for Linux. It's just not going to happen.

I could say the exact same of gnome. In a sense you're right - KDE would never become "the standard", because KDE devs believe in choice and would always make sure you can use the important bits of KDE without having to run KDE. But in terms of being the desktop that everyone uses, KDE could certainly do it.

I'm sorry. You're wrong on this matter.

[CyricZ]

Nobody said that GNOME completely lacked i18n support, as you appear to be suggesting.

What was clearly stated was that relative to KDE, the support of GNOME is inferior. The GNOME translations do not have the same high quality of the KDE translations, for instance. But that's not surprising, considered that GNOME is mainly developed by American developers working for American companies, while KDE is a far more international effort (with a bulk of the work being done in Europe and Asia).

Please try to read the posts before you respond to them with factually incorrect information.

Re:I'm sorry. You're wrong on this matter.

[Anonymous Coward]

But that's not surprising, considered that GNOME is mainly developed by American developers working for American companies, while KDE is a far more international effort

Mod parent flamebait. Or "Dumb, uniformed crap".

I don't need to explain to anyone that GNOME's a11y tools are far more mature and advanced than KDE's (kudos to Sun), do I? But you could have found that out yourself.

Re:I'm sorry. You're wrong on this matter.

[Anonymous Coward]

>>i18n, l12n and l12y

> don't need to explain to anyone that GNOME's a11y tools ...

Perhaps you should read more carefully. The original poster was referring to benefits to people who are not of American (or English-speaking) origin. Your counter-point refers to benefits for people who are disabled in some way, and thus is not really relevant. As to the actual point I, personally, cannot really verify if KDE or GNOME is better at those things as I fall into neither of the above groups.

A common mistake

[Trestop]

Right, Qt is GPL/QPL so to develop against Qt you must license as GPL or buy a TrollTech license.

But! kdelibs are LGPL!
So if you are only using KDE interfaces, you may license as anything you want!

I don't know for sure, but I think this is intentional - if you want to develop cross platform apps, then you buy a Qt license from TrollTech (Although I would argue that neither Qt nor GTK+ is right for the job - instead choose FLTK or Wx). If you want to strengthen the Linux desktop (specifically the KDE part of it), then you can license it however you like w/o paying anyone anything.

Re:A common mistake

[listen]

This is utter shit.

If you link to Qt, you are creating a derivative work. This means you need a compatible licence with the copy of Qt you use. Every KDE app must link to Qt, and so must be GPL compatible or the developers must buy a commercial Qt licence.

Copyright law has absolutely no conception of "interfaces".

Re:A common mistake

[Trestop]

I'm going to pull out the crossover office argument again: for the sake of the argument, lets assume that someone comes and ports kdelibs to a different architecture - ahmm.. lets say to native Win32 (instead of the current kdelibs-win32 effort which depends on the qt-win32 port, because its easier). So now I can write a software that links against kdelibs, which might link against either a GPLed version of Qt, a commercial Qt or the Win32 API - and its done in run time so I can be sure. Stallman would say that my software would have to be GPLed, but he'll say that anyway, regardless of what I use - so lets disregard him. Most law abiding people (and lawyers- IANAL, but I consulted with one) would say that the only license you have to respect is kdelibs which is LGPL. I can't know for sure what kdelibs links to and I don't much care - its not my problem. When it uses Win32 or a commercial Qt (which BTW - I can't distinguish between that and a GPLed Qt), I don't have any additional license requirements other then kdelibs'. So saying that since its possible that my software (which I distribute only in binary form) will sometimes be linked with a GPLed software, then I must GPL it - is utter bullshit. Its like saying that Microsoft needs to GPL MS-Office because it might link with wine which is GPLed. I'm just taking it a bit further - I don't need to have a competing "non-encumbered" backend implementation for that to happen (though I already have it: the commercial Qt library) - as long as I can't tell for sure what I link against (even in the future), then I need only satisfy what licenses I can tell for sure are involved, which is just the LGPL in this case. P.S. Copyright law (which has nothing to do with any of this, BTW) IS all about interfaces and nothing at all about dynamic/static/whatever linking. We are not arguing here about copyright law, but about the GPL license which has nothing to do with copyright law. In effect, the GPL and copyright law are mutually exclusive - you can either be covered under the GPL, in which case you can obey the GPL and copy interfaces and code; or you can be covered under copyright law, in which case you are not allowed to copy anything.

that's just

[aLEczapKA]

kool!

QT == GPL == Free Software

[billybob2]

KDE is simply is not going to happen as a mainstream commercial desktop as long as Qt is available only under the GPL

QT is licensed GPL. The GPL is the best Free Software license because it contains strong copyleft provisions that require derivative works to also be Free and Open Source. This is in the interest of users (like me) so I have absolutely no problems with QT or anything else licensed under the GPL.

Why exactly do you care about proprietary, closed source, non-free software anyway? So you can lock users in your product, prevent them from making modifications, restrict their rights, control what they can and can't do with their computers? Proprietary software is immoral, and if that's what you're developing, then you SHOULD be penalized by having to pay licensing fees.

Re:QT == GPL == Free Software

[Jesselnz]

Sure, OSS is better for the user, free, etc, etc. But we have no right to tell authors how to release software that they spent months writing. If Joe Sevenpack wants to release his new software under a license that says you can only use it if you have six fingers, he has a right to.

Re:QT == GPL == Free Software

[trollable]

If Joe Sevenpack wants to release his new software under a license that says you can only use it if you have six fingers, he has a right to.
I agree. Every one is free to choose his license. And also to develop his own toolkit. Or become a licensee. After all, why do you expect to get something free when you're yourself selling something?

Re:QT == GPL == Free Software

[Kadin2048]

I agree absolutely. Which is why, if Joe Sevenpack wants to reuse my code which I spent months writing, he's going to either use whatever license I want, or rewrite the functionality which my code offers himself. That's his option, I'm not forcing him to use anything of mine, merely offering it up under certain conditions. If he's agreeable to those conditions he can use the code without even having to ask -- if he doesn't, his loss.

In my opinion the major difference between the GPL and BSD license philosophies is that one focuses on the right of the code originator to determine how their work can be reused, while the other focuses on the rights of the reuser to make any kind of derivative work that they want. While there might be certain situations where I could be convinced that it would be in an author's best interest to use a BSD-style license in order to reach a wider audience than a GPL one might, these seem to be more the exception than a rule.

Re:QT == GPL == Free Software

[theCAS]

If Joe Sevenpack wants to release his new software under a license that says you can only use it if you have six fingers, he has a right to.

I completely disagree: I love GPL/commercial dual licensing.

If you choose GPL your code becomes free (as in speech). It will help other people to learn, to improve, and these people will reward you with their contributions, their time, their money. With GPL code becomes property of humanity and it will stay so. If you like the project you contribute, if you don't like it you fork. And this is how democracy should be.

If you are selfish a**hole and you choose not help humanity but only yourself you can, but you have to pay a fine for that. And this is how capitalism should be.

Re:QT == GPL == Free Software

[kasparov]

If Bob Glassofwine writes a takes months to wrtite a toolkit and wants to license it under the GPL so that anyone who wants to use his toolkit in their product (including Joe Sevenpack) must do the same (or choose another toolkit, or pay him money), then he as every right to do that as well.

Re:QT == GPL == Free Software

[isilrion]

But we have no right to tell authors how to release software that they spent months writing.

...unless those authors are releasing our work, in wich case, we still have no right to tell them how to release what they wrote, but we certainly have the right to impose conditions on how *our* work will be released. What's so hard to grasp about it?

Re:QT == GPL == Free Software

[idlake]

Why exactly do you care about proprietary, closed source, non-free software anyway?

Because we need vendors of proprietary software to port to the Linux desktop for Linux to succeed. And they aren't going to do that if we make it difficult for their employees to choose porting to Linux.

And that argument is no different from what Troll Tech proponents make for Qt's commercial license: it's a marriage of convenience. By giving people the opportunity to develop commercial software, we are helping free software succeed. It's just that among marriages of convenience, the Gnome/Gtk+ one is better.

Proprietary software is immoral, and if that's what you're developing, then you SHOULD be penalized by having to pay licensing fees.

I think that's called "cutting off your nose to spite your face".

Seriously, you should think about how to make open source succeed, not about penalizing people. As a platform with very little desktop market share and and perception of being hard to use, we need all the help we can get.

Almost too bad

[RAMMS EIN]

It's almost too bad that Shuttleworth is throwing his weight behind another project, instead of doing one thing and doing it well. Too bad, because the same effort could be used to make Ubuntu and the software that constitutes it even better. Almost, because it seems nobody else can make a distribution like Ubuntu*, so this move may give the KDE-lovers the same gift a lot earlier than if it had been left up to the rest of the world.

* Certainly, nobody had managed to make a distribution that is as polished, hassle free, and freely available, before Ubuntu came. And it's not because of technical difficulties, Debian has had apt-get for ages, and other distros have had good installers for ages, and most of the software on Ubuntu has been around for quite some time, too.

Re:Almost too bad

[bcrowell]

Certainly, nobody had managed to make a distribution that is as polished, hassle free, and freely available, before Ubuntu came.
Actually, my experience is that vanilla debian-testing is more hassle-free than ubuntu. Ubuntu has some nicer bells and whistles (x.org, non-Latin fonts installed by default, gdm configured by default), but is actually far more buggy than debian-testing in my experience (with the two most recent ubuntu releases). Breezy seems to be a particularly poorly tested release.

a source of inspiration

[lotusleaf]

Great news, thanks Mark Shuttleworth, we need more people like you.

Knoppix, Linspire, Xandros, MEPIS

[Burz]

I look at them all as variations on Debian which are KDE-focused, though I tend to stick with Xandros.

Kubuntu Breezy should not be mailed out for free until it is fixed. Any Linux distro that always fails to save the LAN gateway address you type in isn't worth the CD its burned on. Plus the dialogs that cannot be fully viewed on an XGA screen (with plenty of empty space in the dialogs) plus a host of other problems I ran into within the first 90 min of use. (Yes, I filed those bugs. You're welcome.) So in short, they didn't test it.

Kubuntu is *very* nice looking though. That aspect is top-notch.

OTOH even as a KDE fan I'm glad Novel chose one desktop, Gnome. Every distro should chose one desktop. Its unnerving when you try out a distro as prestigious as SuSE 10 and you can't delete any files from Konqueror because "Protocol 'Trash' does not exist".

As a Corel-> Xandros Linux user going back to 1999, I can say that watching the lack of focus and sloppy execution on these other 'portentious' distros (you know who they are) has been absolutely comic.

I have to wonder if Ubuntu will suffer by elevating KDE to the level of Gnome.

Re:Knoppix, Linspire, Xandros, MEPIS

[Anonymous Coward]

Also Rxart is a KDE centric commercial distro in Argentina.
http://www.pixartargentina.com.ar/

Re:Knoppix, Linspire, Xandros, MEPIS

[angrykeyboarder]

Personally I like choice. Yes there pretty much has to be a default desktop but distros such as SuSE, Mandriva and RedHat/Fedora have always given you the option to install others during the initial setup/installation. I for one, like this, because I don't prefer KDE or GNOME. I prefer both.

Having run KDE on Mandrake, RedHat, SuSE, Fedora and (K)ubuntu over the years, I can honestly say that the Kubuntu Krew has managed to top them all on the first try. I get virtually every KDE app that's important to me with Kubuntu. The others never seem to be able to pull that off. And I really don't like SuSE's messing with the Menu structure. I guess they never heard of the Free Desktop standards , which I know for a fact that Kubuntu, Fedora/RedHat and Ubuntu are quite familliar with.

Now if Ubuntu would just change it's policy and offer important software updates between releases (like Fedora Core does) it would absolutely positively rule as a distro.

Currently I'm running Ubuntu/Kubuntu and Fedora Core. Both are at the top of my list of fave distros. And both also suck at many things that the other doesn't.

Mepis uses KDE as well...

[clayasaurus]

Mepis also ships with KDE, and I would consider it a major distribution, being on the top 5 in distrowatch and all.

Thank god

[WhiteWolf666]

Without KDE, I'm sure myself, my friends, and my company would be using Windows.

Gnome doesn't do enough for the end user. Too many settings required mucking around in either the registry-like editor, or just plain command line things.

I remember trying to use Gnome is SuSE 9.0, and not being able to figure out how to specify which app to use for which mime type. Someone politely informed me that this was the procedure to set default apps for various mime-types.

Yeah, that's noob friendly. Apparently, wasn't 'fixed' in 2.10, either. Is it fixed now?

Either way, lack of simple things like that, plus KDE's KIOslaves (which are beautiful, come on, who doesn't love fish:// or klik://), plus a far superior file browser (I've seen the gnome when I'm forced to load up a GTK app, which is rare).

How do I open from a network location in gnome? Can it be done? (In the file browser?)

Why don't I 'contribute' to the gnome project to make these things better? Simple: KDE already does them correctly for me.

Do I mind that other people are happy with gnome, or prefer gnome? No. But all you gnome-heads should stop stomping on other people's Desktop Environments. Seriously; Gnome doesn't work for some of us.

If the next OpenSuSE (which is my current distribution) has inferior KDE support, I'll be thrilled to move to a thriving Kubuntu.

There's nothing wrong with Gnome, for those who use it. But for some of us, gnome just doesn't cut it. Gnome may be different, Gnome may be more 'unix'. But some of us who actually use Linux as our sole operating system rely on KDE, and couldn't imagine switching to gnome.

Re:Thank god

[G-Licious!]

I usually try to stay away from KDE vs. GNOME discussions, but I always fail. :) A couple of answers and some opinions thrown together..

Without KDE, I'm sure myself, my friends, and my company would be using Windows.

Gnome doesn't do enough for the end user. Too many settings required mucking around in either the registry-like editor, or just plain command line things.

I have the same feeling with KDE. In KDE, the configuration feels, to me, like one giant registry. Everything is simply thrown into the configuration dialogs, which makes it just as much a mess to me as GConf. The couple of settings GNOME exposes in it's configuration are all I ever needed.

I remember trying to use Gnome is SuSE 9.0, and not being able to figure out how to specify which app to use for which mime type. Someone politely informed me that this was the procedure to set default apps for various mime-types.

Yeah, that's noob friendly. Apparently, wasn't 'fixed' in 2.10, either. Is it fixed now?

That's a valid point. This has started to annoy me aswell lately. It's funny how there used to be no menu editor either for a while, but I didn't care about that as much. I'm always opening files with the context menu now though, which is a bit of a hassle.

Either way, lack of simple things like that, plus KDE's KIOslaves (which are beautiful, come on, who doesn't love fish:// or klik://), plus a far superior file browser (I've seen the gnome when I'm forced to load up a GTK app, which is rare).

How do I open from a network location in gnome? Can it be done? (In the file browser?)

(Note that I don't know the exact wording in the English locale.)
In the places menu, you can open a virtual-folder network locations, sortof like windows does it. Except here, from the file menu, you can connect to several kinds of servers, including SSH, FTP, WebDAV, Windows shares, and a couple of others. (Anything GNOME-VFS supports)

Entries you add there will stay in the network locations virtual folder, and also appear in the places menu and file choosers from within applications that support GNOME-VFS.

You can also press Ctrl+L anywhere on the desktop or in the file browser, and type an address (ssh://blabla.com/etc..)

Why don't I 'contribute' to the gnome project to make these things better? Simple: KDE already does them correctly for me.

Do I mind that other people are happy with gnome, or prefer gnome? No. But all you gnome-heads should stop stomping on other people's Desktop Environments. Seriously; Gnome doesn't work for some of us.

KDE-heads stomp on GNOME just as much, that's kind of the problem. I try out KDE occasionally, mess about with it. I probably won't use it as my primary desktop anytime soon, I prefer GNOME. But they're both powerful environments, and to each his own.

I don't think either of us is really trying to fuel a flamewar here, and the majority of the sane Slashdot population (if such a thing exists) is probably staying out of this discussion on purpose. It's what I should've done aswell. :B

Re:Thank god

[a.d.trick]

How do I open from a network location in gnome? Can it be done? (In the file browser?)

Same way as you would expect: protocol://username@domain.name/path/name (there's also a thing in the file menu, but I don't use that. I currently have an ftp and a ssh location bookmarked.

And by the way, I've never had to use the Gnome registry. Personally I don't like the idea of having a registry as opposed to plain files, but I see the advatages and doesn't bother me too much.

The main reason I use Gnome apps over KDE ones (I rarely use Gnome itself, I prefer e17) is for usablity. I find the interfaces a lot simpler and intuitive, it allows me to get my work done.

If you prefer KDE that's great. Remember, choice is a Good Thing.

Re:Thank god

[WhiteWolf666]

I guess I started it out with some fuel for the flamefest, but at the risk of turning this into a lovefest, this:
KDE-heads stomp on GNOME just as much, that's kind of the problem. I try out KDE occasionally, mess about with it. I probably won't use it as my primary desktop anytime soon, I prefer GNOME. But they're both powerful environments, and to each his own.

is the sentiment that I think _really_ contributes to Linux. For people who prefer an elegant, well-designed (as in a great deal of architectural work) environment, GNOME seems to fit the bill.

For those of us who prefer to have a bit of everything and two kitchen sinks, even if there are some design flaws, and bits of UI ugliness, KDE fits the bill.

I don't think this is a weakness of Desktop linux. I think this is a _strength_. I find it very hard to agree with the "one windowmanager to rule them ALL" crowd. You and I, we both use Linux (unless your running a bsd or something). Our environments look totally different. Yet we can interoperate (for the most part) in terms of apps and utilities. I think that's great.

Oh, and thanks for the valuable information. I'll try and shoehorn the latest GNOME on to my system, so I can play with this neat sounding GNOME-VFS thing, and maybe learn a thing or two about the other side of the force.

And I agree- KDE-heads that stomp on GNOME should be shot. Well, perhaps not shot, but perhaps forced to use run Blackbox for a couple weeks. Though, you have to admit that all the competition between GNOME and KDE seems to drive them both forward.

Re:KDE is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you joking?

Re:KDE is dying

[Elektroschock]

No I am not joking.

It is a strange ideology on Linux to bundle DE to toolkits.

The only real question is whether the software written in a toolkit integrates into the chosen desktop environment, it could KDe, Gnome, Windows, Mac OS whatever.

On Windows applications are created by many different APIs and toolkits. And when you have a close at Windows applications look you will observe it. Nobody cares because they are more or less integrated and look at least similar.

Run Evolution with a QT style theme and Crystal Icons and it looks like a KDE app. Further patch the file dialog and standardize behaviour.

Indeed!

[Grendel Drago]

Perhaps this is one of the things that the good fellas at freedesktop.org could do, being a nonpartisan standards development group. If as much as possible could be made desktop-independent, that would surely be good; features could be used by applications from either side of the fence, and maybe some kind of consistency would be possible.

For instance, if one uses Tango icon themes (implementing a fd.o spec, the same icons can be found both by KDE and GNOME desktops and applications.

'Course, that's just icons, but maybe it's possible to do that with themes.

Must-have KDE apps

[billybob2]

The real issue is who is going to pay for the next generation of KDE development if SuSE isn't going to pay.

Mandrake, Kubuntu/Mark Shuttleworth, Trolltech seem realize the value of KDE's superior architecture, on which many must-have KDE apps have been built. These apps don't have any gnome equivalents that are nearly as useful and feature-rich:

AmaroK music player -- Steve Jobs' nightmare, the single greatest threat to Itunes on the Free Software platform.

K3b -- Best CD and DVD authoring program with intuitive wizards, on the fly transcoding between WAV, MP3, FLAC, and Ogg Vorbis, normalization of volume levels, CDDB, DVD Ripping and DivX/XviD encoding, Save/load projects, automatic hardware detection/calibration and much more.

DigiKam -- The most feature-rich application for digital photo management.

Wireless Assistant -- Most user-friendly app for connecting to wireless networks. Managed Networks Support, WEP Encryption Support, Per Network (AP) Configuration Profiles, Automatic (DHCP, both dhcpcd and dhclient) and manual configuration options, Connection status monitoring, etc

KDE Education -- Educational (Science, Literature, Geography, etc) programs for children. Could play a big role in whether school districts decide to use Free Software in their classrooms.

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)

KDE Control Center -- Centralized location for desktop control. Controls _all_ common aspects of the KDE applications: language, power settings, special effects, icon and window themes, shadows, shortcuts, printers, privacy, etc. This is what makes KDE so well integrated -- all KDE apps respect changes made here, so they all have the same feel. SUSE has even made YAST a module of the KDE control center so users can access distro-specific settings from here. Compare this to the dismembered approach Red Hat (and other gnome distros) have been forced to adopt in the absence of a centralized gnome control center. (ie. a bunch of individial programs named redhat-config-**** that nobody can ever remember)

Seamless, transparent network file access on SMB, FTP, SSH and WebDav networks from _any_ KDE application.

Kaffeine -- The most polished FOSS movie player.

MythTV -- The most advanced analog and digital TV viewer/recorder in the Free Software world (built using QT).

Baghira -- A native QT style that faithfully imitates OS X eyecandy, aimed at new users coming from the Mac world.

Klik -- Gives non-expert access to bleeding edge versions of apps without requiring any compilation or permanent installation.

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):

Kdevelop for syntax highlighting, application templates, and project organization.

QT designer for GUI development

Quanta -- Rich web development environment for PHP, CSS, DocBook, HTML, XML, etc with advanced con

Re:Must-have KDE apps

[thumperward]

These apps don't have any gnome equivalents that are nearly as useful and feature-rich:

Really. What features does Kaffeine have on top of Totem?

What's that Lassie? The boy is making things up?

  - Chris

Re:Must-have KDE apps

[molnarcs]

KDE Education -- Educational (Science, Literature, Geography, etc) programs for children. Could play a big role in whether school districts decide to use Free Software in their classrooms.

Indeed. Check out koffice kids part 1 and part 2. I don't think GNOME has something even similar!

Re:Must-have KDE apps

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you kidding me? amarok's only redeeming features is the global shortcuts and that it can reside in the taskbar. Hardly the only program that can do that! The interface is crap, and it crashes constantly (much more than once a day, sorry, but I gave up windows a long time ago).
  K3B is the best program I've used, I'd like more wizards (for windows-compatible CDs, for example), but definitely the best I've seen on any OS.
  [SNIP programs I don't use/don't know]
  Konqueror is slow, clunky, the configuration sucks. Is it a file browser or a web browser? where is the config for each part? Looks ugly as hell, windows is leaner. The integration of all kinds of crap isn't good, it's bad! That is the definition of bloat, Even firefox is a better filebrowser.
  The KDE Control Centre is nice, but very incomplete (same than Gnome's).
  Network functionality is not so seamless, in truth, and pretending a network system and a local system are the same can easily cause more problems than it solves (see SMB on windows, it's horrible).
  I'm downloading kaffeine now, I hadn't heard of it, I hope I'll like it. Mplayer plays anything, but the interface is so bad it can't even make it to the interface hall of shame.
  MythTv, can't use it.
  Baghira, bah, hardly fundamental, besides it's a mistake to think that superficially resembling another OS makes it easier, it's the configurations and below-the-surface stuff that causes trouble.
  Klik, hadn't heard of it, I think, but why would non-experts use bleeding edge (and hence unstable) apps? How hard is it to set up klik (which must include a bunch of libraries if it must run precompiled binaries).
  Qt designer is very nice, I've heard good stuff about Kdevelop (but I haven't used it in a couple of years or so). But Qt is not C++, and that is a big problem. Everyone I know notices that Qt apps crash a lot more than gtk apps, that's because debugging a Qt app is a pain.
  [SNIP things I don't use]
  Umh, Cervisia? CVS is for devs, if a dev can't use comand line CVS he shouldn't be coding, period.

  I know there were a few points where subjectivity was a major factor, but so was it relevant in your list!

Re:Must-have KDE apps

[rm69990]

The ability to open a media file without having a little screen pop-up asking you to inform the developers of a crash? I tried Totem numerous times, with the Win32 codecs and without, and the thing just doesn't work. I gave up and used Kaffeine running in Gnome. This was a few versions ago though.

Re:Must-have KDE apps

[SirTalon42]

"Klik, hadn't heard of it, I think, but why would non-experts use bleeding edge (and hence unstable) apps? How hard is it to set up klik (which must include a bunch of libraries if it must run precompiled binaries)."

Klik was originally made for knoppix, so you could use extra software on it without having to remaster the CD/DVD. All the dependencies are included inside the app-bundle (a cmg compressed file system, currently it only needs to update /etc/fstab to install, though FUSE will change that once it gets common). Just yesterday I was using a klik bundle of KDE 3.5 beta 1 (I have 3.4.3 installed). If you use Debian or SuSE it should work very well, Gentoo and Mandrake would be a bit less likely to work (though most of the stuff works on my computer running Gentoo).

Klik is perfect for:
A.) testing out the most bleeding edge version of an app, perfect for translators, and usibility people.
B.) trying out software on your system without having to make a commitment of any sort (no need to have someone with root install the package for you, and no need to track the dependencies in case you don't like it)

Re:Must-have KDE apps

[Arkaein]

I'm not a music aficionado, and I've never used iTunes so I can't make a direct comparison, but I think amarok blows away the basic music players I've seen (like XMMS):

1) Smart playlists. Playlists for artists, genre's, etc. automatically updated when new music is added.
2) Automatic download of lyrics. Some people won't care, but I love this feature.
3) Integration with Audioscrobbler (informs you of music you might like based on analysis of what you listen to).

I've never had the crash issues you've had, I'd be interested if you were using a bleeding edge version, poor package, etc. That kind of thing can have a big effect on perception of quality of particular apps.

As far as Konqueror, I've mainly used it for a file manager. I love the tabs and the ability to use fish:// to transfer files between any computer I can SSH into, as well as FTP between my home machine and website using a couple tabs.

As far as stability, I usually have to restart Firefox every few days but Konqueror stays up indefinitely (admittedly with far less use). I don't see Konqueror as bloated, but rather excellent use of modular design. I do agree it seems a bit sluggish at times.

Just my observations.

Re:Must-have KDE apps

[goofyheadedpunk]

It's interesting that you use the phrase superior architecture. Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn't. I don't know; I'm not a GUI coder. However, it sure as hell doesn't feel that way to the end user. Do most of the above applications have really great ideas? Yes! Do they work? Well, not all of the time. Amarok* continually loses its database and sometimes goes nuts and eats all of my cycles, K3B crashes like nobody's business, konqueror dumps core if I squint the wrong way at it, Kaffiene eats it when doing streaming video, and Kdevelop has a splendid habit of freezing when saving.

Are there some really great ideas wrapped up in KDE? Certainly. But of what use are they if the applications are flakey? Who cares about transparent SMB if Konqueror dies everytime you connect to some poor bastard that's got his music collection wide open? The architecture might be superior (I assume you're talking about as compared to Gnome) but it's certainly not more stable.

Note: All of the KDE applications mentioned above were used on the second most recent Kubuntu, with no real extra configuration. In addition, the applications were used on varied hardware.

*If Amarok is the biggest threat to iTunes around then Steve Jobs must sleep very well at night indeed. It's the integration with ITMS that makes iTunes useful as a player. Standing on its technical abilities it's only so so, but as a platform it's amazing. Assuming Amarok actually worked it's technical marvels still wouldn't interest most people. "How do I connect to the music store?" "Er..."

Re:Must-have KDE apps

[Anonymous Coward]

The most immediately obvious feature is DVB support. Kaffeine has it, Totem does not. And the fact that I'm able to use Kaffeine to play videos, while I've never managed to get Totem to play any videos without either crashing, or complaining that it can't work out what format the video is in. This is using the same back-end (Xine) as Kaffeine, by the way.

Re:Must-have KDE apps

[Anonymous Coward]

qt != kde

Re:Must-have KDE apps

[Lucractius]

On My Sparc box(~300Mhz UltraSparcIIi 1Mb l2 cache + framebuffer upgrade & 368MB of ram), trying to get a media player working just to see if that was one more thing i could use the thing for, neither player worked or told me the problem but Totem just failed all the time, where as Kaffeine didnt work but didnt crash, allowing me to realise that the issue was with their dependancies not being functional on the platform (damn codecs) or it had issues playing video on my particular framebuffer.

Both work, both are fine, I preffer Kaffeine. Looks nicer.

Re:Must-have KDE apps

[Lucractius]

Personaly i dont like the stand alone music players anymore, i still desire a standalone mediaplayer for videos and dont see that changing (yet) but for music i want more flexibility than just a player can give, so ive started looking at Client/Server audio tools.

But as for Konqueror... I both love it and hate it at once. Its a fantastic program, miles better than a lot of things ive used, been used by, and been made to use. My only gripe is that the IE-esq integration bothers me... I want some boundaries. I love integration. But i dont like it when i have no choise (either by force (i.e. IE & windows) OR by just lack of programs to do it) Cause as it stands, the default "Konqueror Does All... Konqueror IS ALL" /hulk|barbarian impression, realy bothers me. Its neat, But it does need some boundaries.

Re:Must-have KDE apps

[rm69990]

What formats are the media files you are trying to play?

Re:Must-have KDE apps

[PitaBred]

But Qt is not C++, and that is a big problem.

I think you have that backwards. Qt IS C++, whereas GTK is still C, which last time I checked, wasn't an object-oriented language. Didn't even pretend to be. Qt has GTK beat on that alone.

Re:Must-have KDE apps

[teprrr]

Does it matter? Applications aren't meant to crash if they can't open a file...

Re:Must-have KDE apps

[LordoftheWoods]

Yes, C is not an object oriented language. GTK, however, certainly is object oriented. I find the notion that Qt is better because its built on C++ which has language support for OOP to be absurd.

Re:Must-have KDE apps

[rm69990]

Well it could help lead to a solution. But since it doesn't matter, I'll just shut up now.

Re:Must-have KDE apps

[Lucractius]

well pretty much anything. mpeg/avi gave up rather soon so the test list wasnt extensive. but it did totaly fail to do anything when loading. ill tell you this, having the program open something then just do nothing is very annoying. Kaffeine and the inbuilt KDE one that has the other name cant remember it off the top of my head. Neither of em worked right with it.

Re:Must-have KDE apps

[rm69990]

Have you tried ogg or mp3?

I tried Kubuntu...

[sweetnjguy29]

...and didn't like it. Unfortunately, the Ubuntu version of KDE did not "just work" right out of the box. Certain programs were broken...some internet interactivity was lost...and it screwed up my gnome based ubuntu sessions!

That being said, I think the real reason I didn't like Kubuntu is that it wasn't "ubuntu"-like. It wasn't brown...and it didn't feel as homey, so to speak, as gnome does on Ubuntu. And it didn't feel as user friendly as gnome.

Why isn't there an Xfce version of Ubuntu? There are tons of lightweight shells out there that work perfectly well ontop of Ubuntu...without breaking it like KDE does.

All that being said...Gnome is like an older Mac interface...KDE is sorta like windows...and it seems to me that Shuttlesworth is trying to capture Windows users...so using a KDE interface seems like a good idea. But, honestly, KDE is too complicated for most windows users, IMHO.

Re:I tried Kubuntu...

[m50d]

Why isn't there an Xfce version of Ubuntu? There are tons of lightweight shells out there that work perfectly well ontop of Ubuntu...without breaking it like KDE does.

That's not KDE's fault, it's Ubuntu's. KDE works perfectly fine on many distributions without breaking them.

All that being said...Gnome is like an older Mac interface...KDE is sorta like windows...and it seems to me that Shuttlesworth is trying to capture Windows users...so using a KDE interface seems like a good idea. But, honestly, KDE is too complicated for most windows users, IMHO.

It may be too complicated for the typical windows user (though I would dispute even that. The KDE defaults are sensible, it doesn't diminish your usage experience any to have the preferences there for if you need them), but the target market is not the typical windows user but a windows user who is willing to try a new OS. Which is more likely to be a power user who wants things to fiddle with.

Re:I tried Kubuntu...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why isn't there an Xfce version of Ubuntu?"

There is.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xubuntu

Re:I tried Kubuntu...

[Muramasa]

There is a xubuntu-desktop metapackage in the universe (I think) repository. It installs xfce4, xfce4-goodies, rox, abiword, mousepad, xfmedia, firefox, synaptic and some other packages I can't really think of right now. It's a pretty good desktop, although they could really use a graphical archive manager, like file-roller, one that doesn't rely on Gnome libs though.

Re:I tried Kubuntu...

[Sri Ramkrishna]

>Why isn't there an Xfce version of Ubuntu? There are tons of lightweight shells out >there that work perfectly well ontop of Ubuntu...without breaking it like KDE does.

Apparently, there is, it's called Xubuntu. Google for it. It's supposed to be new. Someone mentioned it in the last thread.

sri

He is fishing for SuSE's KDE users

[Burz]

It will be interesting to see what happens.

Re:He is fishing for SuSE's KDE users

[Reziac]

"He is fishing for SuSE's KDE users"

Well, if I were a SuSE user, he'd have got me, hook line and sinker... I was very disappointed to read that Novell was making SuSE Gnome-only. I can see the corp viewpoint of only having to support one desktop, but still seems to me that KDE has too large a following to snub like that.

Re:He is fishing for SuSE's KDE users

[WhiteWolf666]

As a SuSE KDE user, I can say he has definitely peaked my interest.

I'll probably be installing Kubuntu on my test bed, to see how it compares with the latest OpenSuSE.

I've been a _very_ long time SuSE user. I've got the 5.0 CD's laying around, and every release since then.

Re:He is fishing for SuSE's KDE users

[Reziac]

I've only tried Novell's SuSE 9.1, which I didn't particularly like. How does it compare to OpenSuSE? (I can't readily download 'em myself; no broadband.)

KDE has grown

[zecg]

I've been using KDE since 3.3.0 and it's grown incredibly in the last few releases. It's not just about a window manager and widgets, there are apps of consistently high quality for practically every purpose there, a well-thought out control panel, an unprecedented level of integration between applications, a great file browser, u.s.w.

KDE is, thus far, closest to achieving the ideal of a feature-rich, user-friendly and stable Linux desktop. It is, in my most humble opinion, miles ahead of Gnome.

Re:KDE is dying

[m50d]

Gnome winning the desktop wars would almost certainly mean more stuff for linux being pay-for rather than free software. If users are used to paying for their software, they might be more willing to pay for upgrades from their commercial linux vendors. Just a guess.

Suse is still KDE (and gnome)

[Blu-Ray]

What Novell said is that they will focus on gnome on NLD and SLES.
That means its still there on (open)suse desktop ..

News Update

[Anonymous Coward]

Y A W N .

Trivial

[Urusai]

You just need separate GTK->Qt and Qt->GTK shim libraries, so your KDE apps look like Gnome and your Gnome apps look like KDE. Just don't use them both at once or you will let the magic smoke escape from your box.

Damn, everyone comments on Gnome vs KDE...

[BrookHarty]

I'm not undertstanding the whole Kubuntu vs Ubuntu concerns about Gnome and KDE, Ubuntu just uses gnome as its basic install, but you can select KDE installed and use it over Gnome and it works perfectly. Kubuntu is just making the integration smoother between config files, theme and toolkits. I havnt had any issue with KDE on ubuntu.

As far as polish goes, I'd say KDE looks smoother, SuSE shows KDE's strengths. Though I'd like more GTK1/2 theme tweak's native other than a checkmark box under KDE"s preferences. (I said native not 3rd party application.)

Hell, mostly I perfer icewm, give me anti-aliased fonts, theme compatability and a taskbar+quicklaunch and thats desktop for me. I find KDE/Gnome areas of Icon and file management the biggest improvements, which for file browser and dialog boxes really need to become a standard. But is that really a WM issue?

Its Ok Gnome Fans

[poofyhairguy82]

Disclaimer: I am a moderator on the Official English Ubuntu Forums

Gnome people, this is not the time to freak out. Just because Mark is using KDE as his desktop and he wants to put more resources into KDE doesn't mean that the Gnome side of Ubuntu is going to suffer. There could be many reasons for his new found interest in Kubuntu.

1.From the beginning it seems that Mark felt a little guilty that he had to pick one desktop to really do well. I know a lot of people think "just do one thing and do it well" is an admirable philosophy, but in the GNU world that is the path to weakness. The Linux Desktop is chaos and unless you want to spend enough to harness that chaos you HAVE to make some big decisions like that. When he first started with Ubuntu, he had no idea how successful it was going to be. He had not idea if the whole thing would be a waste of money, or that no one would care. But now that Ubuntu is making a huge splash in the Linux world and is making noise across the globe Mark has decided that he is willing to commit more of his resources to the entire Ubuntu project. He set up the Ubuntu foundation and gave it $10 million to begin with. So a new commitment to KDE and Kubuntu DOES NOT MEAN THAT UBUNTU WILL HAVE LESS, just that probably he will be willing to give more overall to help the KDE side as well.

2.Despite its relative popularity, the Kubuntu side of the project has not had nearly the resources the other side has gotten so far. The Kubuntu maintainer- Jonathan Riddell - did a lot of the work in its free time. At first he was only given a smallish contract at the end of releases to help get them in better shape. I bet that if Mark is serious about Kubuntu it will finally have a full time developer (if that is not already the case).

3.A big goal of the entire Ubuntu project for Mark is his Edubuntu side project. Well in all honesty Kubuntu might be a better fit for that project than Ubuntu for a few reasons: the The KDE Edutainment Project is the single best educational software on the GNU desktop and is far more developed than anything on the Gnome side. Plus KDE uses less RAM (this is my own opinion) so it might be a better fit for the older computers that many schools might have today. Gnome hates to have less than 256mb, and you can't build a user friendly desktop around XFCE (and it would probably take less resources to make Kubuntu better than to fix all of Gnome's RAM problems single handily). So a better KDE is better for the Kubuntu project.

4.The entire Ubuntu community has been trying better to make the KDE side seem like an equal ever since it was announced. On the Official Forums we have separated KDE and Gnome areas for the Breezy release, and beyond that a forum independent forum was made by a third party for Kubuntu. So in some ways Mark is just catching up to the rest of the community.

The last thing any Gnome fan and Ubuntu user needs to think is that "the sky is falling." This is a GOOD thing for you Gnome fans. Why? A better Kubuntu will bring more people to the distro and that could help build the overall community. A better Kubuntu will help establish the entire project as THE Desktop Linux which would help with gaining support of third party application makers that won't release for anything not called Red Hat. A better Kubuntu shows that Mark is becoming even more devoted to the project, and considering the man makes more off of investments than the entire Linux service industry more of his support means that the entire project is is better shape. Finally, a better Kubuntu means that there is more choice in the community and that the entire project is maturing. Its a good time to be a Desktop Linux user.

Re:Its Ok Gnome Fans

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you stop talking outta your ass if you don't know what you're speaking about? mmmmmmK?

Re:Its Ok Gnome Fans

[poofyhairguy82]

Can you stop talking outta your ass if you don't know what you're speaking about? mmmmmmK?

Yeah, because not talking out your ass is what Slashdot is founded on.

And plus, I phrased everything in speculative terms.

Of course If you want to contribute with something more than speculation, jump in and pick my post apart. I don't care. I would like the extra information and to bring about a more open discussion. But just telling me to shut up is a sure fire way to get me to copy and paste my little rant on every forum on the net that is carrying this news today- I don't take orders from Anonymous Cowards.

Re:Its Ok Gnome Fans

[iksrazal_br]

Comments like this show one more reason why Ubunto has risen so quicky. I for one welcome our new KDE overloads. All of your code are belonging to us!

iksrazal

Re:Its Ok Gnome Fans

[timbo234]

Personally I've never understood why there was a need to have just one desktop. Most of the other major desktop-oriented distros (eg. Suse and Mandriva) have both GNOME and KDE on fairly equal standing and the default application set is a mixture of GTK and QT -based apps. Eg. having GIMP for photo editing and K3b for cd burning. That means you can have the best application for each job (K3b is the best app for cd/dvd burning by far on Linux and none of the KDE image editors are even close to The GIMP's functionality).

I'd never want to use a distro that tries to force me into using one desktop and that makes decisions on which apps to include and install by default based on what GUI toolkit its built with.

Re:Its Ok Gnome Fans

[angrykeyboarder]

Well there's less development involved with just one desktop for starters.

I prefer having both KDE and GNOME installed, regardless of distro.

One of Shuttleworth's goals from day one was to have everything you need to get started fit on a single CD. That woudln't be possible if both KDE and GNOME were included.

Personally I think Ubuntu should switch to DVDs as thier primary disk image distribution method and include both KDE and GNOME on the DVD.

Right now thier DVDs just offer a mix of (K)ubuntu installation and live versions. Yet they only take up a few gigabytes, which still leaves room for both KDE and GNOME on your standard 4.7GB DVD.

Re:Its Ok Gnome Fans

[Anonymous Coward]

Ô imbecil, a distribuição se chama Ubuntu , não Ubunto . Além disso, é overlords, não overloads.

Re:Its Ok Gnome Fans

[Reziac]

My current linux test box has 768mb RAM. I don't know what's typical usage, but a default install of SuSE 9.1, running whatever it does by default, informed me that it was using ~650mb RAM (WTF?!!) and 40mb swap. I just stuck Ubuntu 5.current on the same box, also doing whatever it does by default, and it tells me that it is using ~125mb RAM and no swap. (Hell if I recall where I saw this. I'm not an everyday linux user.)

I vastly prefer KDE and dislike Gnome, but even so I absolutely agree with your points about how strong support for both is a GOOD thing.

AmaroK = Threat to iTunes? Whatever!

[SeaFox]

AmaroK music player [kde.org] -- Steve Jobs' nightmare, the single greatest threat to Itunes on the Free Software platform.

Not to troll here, but how exactly is an OSS Linux music player a threat to iTunes?

Does Amarok run on Windows or MacOSX? (no)
Does iTunes run on Linux? (no)
How much does AmaroK cost? (FREE)
How much does iTunes cost? (FREE)
Does Amarok allow easy updating/syncing of an iPod? (no)
How many people will abandon their cache of Fairplay DRMed music for a new application?
(kind of a trick question, given neither player will run on the other's platform)

Saying Amarok is a threat to iTunes is like saying an independant movie theater in Russia is a threat to a U.S. movie theater conglomerate. It's also like that often repeated phrase "iPod Killer": a claim often made, never delivered.

Re:AmaroK = Threat to iTunes? Whatever!

[russint]

Amarok does run on MacOSX, it also has great iPod support (will be even better in 1.4)

Re:AmaroK = Threat to iTunes? Whatever!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I do belive amaroK offers easy synching to ipods.

There is a project for this

[Anonymous Coward]

You are right. A lot of common configuration options could easily be standardized. The Freedesktop folks are working on it. They could probably use help.

Since (Ku|U)buntu cares about both, it might behoove Shuttleworth to give these guys a lift.

I disagree, Gnome is better for Windows Converts

[poofyhairguy82]

IMHO KDE is more useful for those who are considering migrating from Windows to Linux. So I don't see why the commercial vendors are flocking to Gnome?

I disagree. I personally believe that Gnome is far better for new users than KDE. Why? Because its REALLY different. It gives the Linux desktop a distinct look that is different from Windows or OSX. The chameleon KDE can be made to look like them both or neither but this is bad for a new user because it does not give Linux Desktop a distinct look.

You might say "but that's better because then you can make KDE look like the Windows in which they are most familiar with." This is a BAD thing because if you make Linux look like Windows than people will expect other parts to be like Windows.

When you put a new users on a default KDE and they have the menu in the lower right corner and they have a control panel and whatever else that is like Windows XP they user thinks "hey this is just like what I'm used to." But then they get confused when this new OS- which seems to be almost exactly line Windows to them- can't install their old Window programs or is missing a option in the Control Panel that they were used to seeing.

But when you put a user on a default Gnome desktop it is so different that it forces the user to think differently (to steal a little from Apple). Just the fact that the menu is in a different place forces them to say to themselves "whoa, this is different" which then sets the attitude that applies to the rest of their experience. The differences in the entire Linux operating system seems annoying to a new KDE convert ("it looks just like XP, why can't it act like XP") but is more readily accepted by a Gnome convert ("it looks way different, so I can understand how it acts differently").

It might be nice theoretically that KDE can be made to look like Windows to help users get over the initial shock but until Linux can be a full Windows replacement (aka install Window programs WITH EASE) that just makes Desktop Linux seem like a crappier version of Windows that can't do as much. Gnome on the other hand is so different by default that it forces users to think differently and be able to accept the differences- like with OSX. With Gnome instead of Desktop Linux being a Windows XP copy that can't do as much as Windows XP, its a whole new OS with new challenges and a very distinct look.

That is the reason why Gnome is better for new users.

unsophisticated moderators

[Russ Nelson]

Sheesh! You silly moderators! It's obvious that the AC submittor was making a play against the "BSD is dying" joke. It's not a troll in any way, although of course originally the "BSD is dying" folks were seriously trolling. Now, "X is dying" on slashdot isn't meant to be taken seriously. Basically, they were trolling, yes, but not for people to reply, but instead for humorless moderators to mod them down.
-russ

Re:unsophisticated moderators

[slazzy]

BSD is not dying in my house, I've got twice as many servers running it now - and a new firewall!

Stampede for the KDE coral

[FishandChips]

Well golly, good for him, but why should I care? Last year he was all for Gnome and perhaps next year he'll be all for Xfce. Fine. Great. But are Ubuntu's users going to make some nice, rational choices of their own or is that the sound of stampeding hooves I hear as the herd swerves off after new horizons?

There's an opportunistic streak to Ubuntu and, imho, they've yet to show they've got what it takes for the long haul. To some extent they've taken advantage of disarray within Debian and now it looks as if they are taking advantage of disarray in the desktop environment sphere as the more established, kitchen-sink distros realign a little. However, announcing that you are up for something just after a putative rival has canned it doesn't really amount to much. I use Ubuntu on my laptop. Excellent distro, though I confess it still isn't a rival to the full Debian I use on my desktop. Maybe in a couple of years it will be, but not now.

Kuntduku???

[Beatlebum]

Wasn't he the well-endowed lord of the dark-side?

Re:I disagree, Gnome is better for Windows Convert

[gflores]

"it looks just like XP, why can't it act like XP"

They could also say, "hey this looks like XP, but it does this differently... hmm.. I kinda like this better. Sweet!"

For Gnome, you say a user might say, "it looks way different, so I can understand how it acts differently." However, many new users to OS X still make comparisons and are annoyed with its differences to XP. You just don't know how a new user might react. Period.

You're looking for Mepis

[Anonymous Coward]

Mmmmm, Mepis! :-)

Kevin

Ubuntu with a K

[ewe2]

That's the only serious difference between standard Ubuntu and Kubuntu, except the installation is the worst POS since two Debian distros ago. Unless you have one drive of one type, I guarantee you Grub will not boot properly. I have to use a FreeBSD boot manager FFS just to get to the Grub screen because it won't load off the SATA MBR properly. Another warning: if you don't expect to RAID your disks, make sure the install realizes that, because it never asks you, it just sets up md whether you like it or not. Fortunately no permanent damage was done. But despite all that, when it gets going, it's the most stable KDE environment I've ever had, and that's saying something after three years of it under Debian. Just don't expect any documentation when you run into trouble. Or want to understand why they set the system up that way.

Re:Ubuntu with a K

[angrykeyboarder]

If I'm reading this corectly, you're saying that Kubuntu's installer isn't as good as the Ubuntu installer.

They seem identical to me.

Re:Ubuntu with a K

[ewe2]

They should be, but it seems they didn't test enough. There are a lot of complaints on the kubuntu.org forums. It may well be just a matter of working around the BIOS, which seems to be the real culprit.

XFCE

[cachimaster]

Nobody has tried XFCE in (K)Ubuntu? IMHO it looks beatiful, and the default theme is better than the gnome or KDE one.

Thesis/Antithesis/Synthesis & "The Happy Hooke

[Anomalyst]

Isn't FOSS all about choice? Isn't there supposed to be strength from diversity? Haven't the dangers of a monoculture been pointed out repeatedly? Many years ago, Xaveria Hollander recounted in "The Happy Hooker" (THAT got your attention didn't it?) how, when she was growing up, one day a week up her family spoke nothing but a foreign language. I always thought this was an excellent idea. Occaisonal immersion in alternative viewpoints. Different viewpoints is what gives us the ability to detect depth of field, discriminating near objects from more distant ones from difference in parallax. Surely this is more preferable to Gatesian railroading philosophy?

Integration != Bloat

[CarpetShark]

The integration of all kinds of crap isn't good, it's bad! That is the definition of bloat,

Actually, integration, at least as implemented in KDE, is almost the antithesis of bloat. By having a standard, well-defined interface to different apps, they can all load in as modules when required, and display within konqueror if you choose it. If you'd rather they open separate apps, then you can choose that too. Either way, the same underlying API is used, because it's standard, and flexible. That's not bloat. Bloat would be throwing everything into one huge app, like OpenOffice does, because the individual parts aren't well separated or couldn't be integrated without obvious API boundaries.

Re:Integration != Bloat

[Lucractius]

you make this sound so wonderful. Now point me to the place where i can find all these interfaces options together, so i can tell Konqueror everything i want it to open, or not open at the same time. Or is this all left lose?

Re:Integration != Bloat

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're actually interested, those options are under file associations, where I, for one, normally tell KDE what program opens what...

Re:Integration != Bloat

[CarpetShark]

It's right in the file associations tab of konqueror, or the same (integrated) tab in the KDE control panel.

Re:I disagree, Gnome is better for Windows Convert

[Reziac]

And this Windows user found it was just the opposite:

KDE is enough like Windows that it was immediately usable, with a relatively painless learning curve. Most stuff was where I expected it to be, and behaved pretty much how I expected it to behave. What was different was only a little different, not shockingly so. Hence the differences were only transient annoyances, not show-stoppers.

Conversely Gnome reminds me of MacOS (more so now than in the past!), and I find it nearly as baffling. I spend too much time looking for stuff and sometimes never do find it. Get that enough times, and it becomes a show-stopper.

Now, the relatively novice Windows user might not notice, because Windows itself isn't truly all that familiar to him, and all he really wants is for the office suite and the internet stuff to all "just work". And Ubuntu's incarnation of Gnome seems perfectly good for that. IOW, for the user to whom ALL desktops are foreign and scary, identity of the desktop or OS doesn't matter so long as it's simple to use.

But to myself, an advanced Windows user who is used to making Windows jump thru hoops, Gnome's unfamiliarity seems ... well, limiting and discouraging. Whereas KDE's very "familiarity" encourages me to work past its sticking points.

[Even so, I firmly believe both have their place, and that both should be available.]

Re:KDE is dying

[XnR'rn]

YMMV, but when it comes to lack of clutter, nothing can beat an Xfce desktop. :D

sucking up

[idlake]

I( thought that I already gave you a good whip from the clue-by-four?

Indeed, you have already given us your thinly disguised marketing spiel for Troll Tech.

Re:sucking up

[10Ghz]

And what you have given us is nothing but FUD. Pure, ignorant FUD. I mean, you are the one who claims that GPL'ed software is "bad for Linux"...