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Torvalds Says 'Use KDE'
An anonymous reader writes "Without tip-toeing around the matter, Linus Torvalds made his preference in the GNOME vs. KDE matter quite clear on the GNOME-usability list: "I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE. This 'users are idiots, and are confused by functionality' mentality of Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it. I don't use Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long since reached the point where it simply doesn't do what I need it to do. Please, just tell people to use KDE." Also, "Gnome seems to be developed by interface nazis, where consistently the excuse for not doing something is not 'it's too complicated to do', but 'it would confuse users'.""
Get E!
Gnome developer Havoc Pennington's response points out that "reducing complexity" was not, in fact, the reason the particular dialog in question doesn't have all the options Linux wanted:
"Just for the record, since I made this decision I can tell you that 'might confuse people' was not the reason. More evidence for my point that 'might confuse people' is the reason made up by others, not the reason given by the decision makers."
Which is not to say that Linus is wrong (in the e-mail he writes that "If this was a one-off, I'd buy it. But I've heard it too damn many times. And only ever from Gnome.") -- I'm not a big fan of Gnome's lack of features (at least as compared to KDE), but it's not like anyone on Slashdot really conforms to the "average computer user" concept. And Linus surely doesn't either. Maybe Gnome is better for Mom and Grandpa. I'll stick with KDE, myself.
In 1998, I was a very active participant on the Gnome UI mailing list. In fact, the very first Gnome User Interface Guideline was in part based on my proposed one (google for "Rogue GNOME style guide" if you care about the details).
Two things shocked me back then, and from Linus comments it appears that neither of them have changed.
One is that Gnome has a ton of great contributors - and just as many who are not as great. Unfortunately, in areas where the matter is more discussion and consensus based and you can't prove your point by just coding it, the vocal trolls crowd out the valuable contributors.
Two is that within those who contributed the the UI discussion there was a surprising lack not only of experience in the HCI field (ok, I had just started out there myself) but also a strong resistance to pick up the vast literature available or trust in actual end-user studies.
The last was what caused me to quit. How can you design a user interface without talking to the users? You can't. Anyone working in HCI knows that. Assumptions == Disaster
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Typically a user of the SuSE distribution, I have had the opportunity to use very good implementations of both KDE and Gnome. I have no qualms with saying that KDE has some nice applications (AmaroK stands out). In fact, at one point, I was using KDE because Nautilus could not interface with a specific BSD SFTP server, while Konqueror could; but when I figured out how to do it, I switched back to Gnome. I like Gnome because it feels _designed_, whereas KDE simply feels like a hacked~together copy of Windows. Granted, there are obvious differences, and even improvements, but, while individual applications in Gnome may be behind the similar applications in KDE, I see in Gnome to be something far greater than what KDE will be. I use Gnome because of the future I see for it: I want to be a part of what gets it there.
In case anyone is wondering, the parents post was brought to you by oooGalaxyooo, a well know Anti-Gnome troll who spends his days copy and pasting the exact same message into every discussion on the net that might be in any way related to Gnome.
Btw, he's the guy who brought you the wonderful successful GoneME fork of gnome, which is indeed gone now.
For more information, feel free to visit his hompage:
http://www.akcaagac.com/index.html
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2005-Dece mber/msg00027.html
Just a sample:
We're not aiming for "powerfully extensible". We're aiming for "Just Works". Some people will
hate that. Some will love it. Personally, I'd rather have passionate users, lovers and haters, than be than average and ignored, and I think you'll find most GNOME developers feel the same way.
Personally, I think Linus ought to know better by now than put out a self-centered post like that. There are more users in the world than just geeks. Most aren't geeks, in fact. For Linux on the Desktop to survive beyond the lifespan of its proponents, it needs to acknowledge that, not fall trap of intestinal power struggles.
It's a very slick example of what Gnome needs to do more of. Gnome has focused its efforts on simplifing the interface for the masses. They've made good progress but the masses seem unimpressed.
It's time to think about finding elegant ways to put that power back in while keeping it transparent to the masses.
Ah, but see, what you're seeing on the Mac is actually elegant simplicity. There's power lurking there.
Sure the playlist selector in iTunes only has one button to add a new playlist, but hold down the Shift key while your mouse is in the playlist area and the button turns into an add new Smart playlist button. Or in the Browse area, click on the column header to Genre, Artist or Album and you zoom back to the top of the list.
These sort of rewards await those who explore. But for the faint of heart, the simple interface still functions.
http://betterdesktop.org/ - an ongoing and very recent usibility study.
Gnome isn't perfect neither is KDE. I personally find that I don't like the default settings for either desktop. The thing that turns me off of KDE as a whole is that even knowing already what I'm going to want to change it takes me forever to step through the mess that is kcontrol and to remove the mess that is every application under the sun from kicker. As a desktop I prefer Gnome, it does everything I need it to do without causing me much pain to get it to the point that I like. However, I still install KDE simply for konsole and kate the two apps I could not live without.
Fear trumps hope and ignorance trumps both
>KDE installs all this useless crap that I don't want on my machine.
Most of these apps, (keyes,kteatime,amor etc) are in the package kdetoys, which you can safely remove from your installation.
Washington bullets will simply be known as the "Bulle
Using "FUCKING IDIOT" in caps on a mailing list is fairly childish behaviour, I think. There is a reasoned debate to be had there with the devs (not to be confused with the GNOME fanboy users) - how to add the complex options given limited developer time and a desire to make things usable without significant mental energy. Just shouting and insulting the developers is not the right approach and somebody needs to tell Linus that.
I'm just condoning his actions.
Condoning his actions implies you agree with, and to some extent support him. Your post speaks differently.
Perhaps you mean condemning?
Oh well, I'm still mystified as to why this is either a) removing your freedom of choice, or b) zealotry. A man gives his opinion. You're free to do whatever you choose.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Mark Shuttleworth and now Linus Torvalds seem realize the value of KDE's superior architecture, on which which many must-have KDE apps. These apps don't have any gnome equivalents that are nearly as useful and feature-rich:
AmaroK music player -- The most feature-rich and polished music player 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 [kde.org]) 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 highliting, application templates, and project organization.
QT designer for GUI development
Quanta -- Rich web development environment for PHP, CSS, DocBook, HTML, XML, etc with advanced context sensitive autocompletion, internal preview and more.
You are assuming he hasn't already tried that route. From the email you linked to:
I don't think this is a case of him simply deciding to be a flaming idiot, I think this is a case of having a legitimate complaint, trying to resolve it with the developers, being ignored, noticing everybody else was being ignored too, switching to an alternative desktop, and then getting fed up with people saying that "it's easier" the GNOME way. He's frustrated, not childish.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
You forgot the most important one for us programmers: Kate It's the best text editor I've ever used.