Attempting To Reframe "KDE Vs. GNOME"

jammag writes "Setting aside the now tired debate about whether KDE or GNOME is the 'better' Linux desktop, Bruce Byfield compares their disparate development approaches and asks, not which desktop is subjectively better, but which developmental approach is likely to be most successful in the next few years. 'In the short term, GNOME's gradualism seems sensible. But, in the long-term, it could very well mean continuing to be dragged down by support for legacy sub-systems. It means being reduced to an imitator rather than innovator.' In contrast, 'you could say that KDE has done what's necessary and ripped the bandage off the scab. In the short term, the result has been a lot of screaming, but, in the long term, it has done what was necessary to thrive.'"

Comments

2nd Paragraph.

[tpgp]

In the second paragraph, the blogger says:

The claim sounds like one of those overly dramatic statements that some journalists make in the hopes of creating controversy and increasing page hits.

s/journalists/bloggers/ and you've got this story.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[the_womble]

It is not an either/or choice - you can use any desktop environment with any apps (which means you have components of other environments runnins).

I use XFCE, with Gnome several applets in the panels as well as XFCE ones. I use some Gnome apps (Gedit, Epiphany), some plain Gtk ones (Firefox, Deluge, various configuration GUIs, Thunar) and some KDE ones (Akregator, Amarok, Konqueror, Kwrite, Kmail).

I am thinking of switching from Kmail to Claws, and I am not altogether happy with any file manager and would like a clipboard panel applet for XFCE that is anything like as good as Klipper. Other than that it all works very well for me. YMMV.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[the_womble]

Yes, I know the article is on development methods, but it still suffers from this. There is no reason why both are not fitted to survive: both approaches have produced good software so far.

Incidentally, the fact that Windows is the most widely used OS, suggests that backward compatibility matters.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[someone1234]

>Incidentally, the fact that Windows is the most widely used OS, suggests that backward compatibility matters.

No, lock-in, monopoly and inertia what matters.
If you have those, you can force anything on your customers.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[Haeleth]

And what exactly do you think "lock-in" is, if not a dependency on backwards-compatibility?

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[GreenTech11]

SO that is why communism is so "sucessful", the sheer inertia. If enough people aren't happy then someone of something is going to pay. Microsoft is sucessful because it is the most pratical o.s for most people. Slashdot users who actually want to use thier computers to their full extent can use other os and stop whinging that the world doesn;t conform to their views. That's life guys, sometimes the world doesn't conform.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[aliquis]

Incidentally, the fact that Windows is the most widely used OS, suggests that backward compatibility matters.

Which could also be said for the lame attempts to save Amiga.

Workbench 3.0 came 1991 or 1992, Commodore filed for bankruptcy 1994.

And here we are and people still try to release systems with the same old or make a compatible environment instead of something fresh and modern but with the same "feel."

Though, there are so much good software on the Amiga which one would want to run.

I guess the same could be said about Haiku, but I have no idea how much may be new and fresh in it, and BeOS was more modern than AmigaOS to begin with.

Though, even superior yet compatible don't have to win, see OS/2.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[aliquis]

For most people it was the best OS for the most widespread platform, and now I'd say it's even more so ...

Lock in? Just if you need your old apps, but when I don't feel much locked in with AmigaOS even though I used that ..

Monopoly? There are plenty of OSes around, they may not work as good in general as Windows does, but that don't make monopoly the reason stick with Windows. The reason is it's the best for their purpose.

Inertia? Yes, if it's not broken why fix it? Also what would be the better alternative for most people? You seriously suggest most people would feel more happy with say Ubuntu than Windows? I think some of them have even tried, and thought not ...

Sure, DOS sucked, Windows pre 98 sucked, but so did MacOS, and what alternatives was there except OS/2 for most people?

Applications and what you can do with your computer matters much more than having a superior solution. Without applications it's useless.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[noundi]

What? That makes absolutely no sense. Lock-in means that you bundle two normally separated products to exclusively function with eachother. It can be the .doc format and MS Office Word, or Apple Itunes and the iPod, or even Half Life and Steam. The dependency can be a past, current or future product and whichever it is is irrelevant.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[ookaze]

Monopoly? There are plenty of OSes around, they may not work as good in general as Windows does, but that don't make monopoly the reason stick with Windows. The reason is it's the best for their purpose.

Is that so?
Is it the reason why we have to put some companies through lawsuits for them to give us back the money for the forced Windows OS on every PC, even though I don't need it?
So everyone that don't want the OS forced on the PC they buy at retail actually goes through this effort?
News to me.

Inertia? Yes, if it's not broken why fix it? Also what would be the better alternative for most people? You seriously suggest most people would feel more happy with say Ubuntu than Windows? I think some of them have even tried, and thought not ...

I must have dreamed all these days lost helping people with their Windows. I also dreamed when I told them all I was not fixing their Windows anymore, but I can put Linux on their PC for them.
Those that switched I think I put them through Mandrake, then Ubuntu. Those that didn't switch, ended up either not using their PC anymore, or buying another one (which still don't work right).
All of this was a dream.

Applications and what you can do with your computer matters much more than having a superior solution. Without applications it's useless.

Which is exactly why some people like me switched years ago to Linux.
A long time since I answered to this kind of troll though, but I was in the modd, good times...

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[socrplayr813]

Don't underestimate backwards compatibility. In a business environment, it's going to be one of the top things on the list. A business (especially a large one) can't simply switch because something else comes along. The cost to change and the (temporary) loss of productivity are too great.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[Anonymous Coward]

for the forced Windows OS on every PC, even though I don't need it?

Vendors who entered into exclusivity agreement with Microsoft did so of their own accord, they were not forced by anything other than market conditions.

I must have dreamed all these days lost helping people with their Windows.

I've helped people use all sorts of electronic devices. Many many people do not have any aptitude at all for such things regardless of how simple they are.

I also dreamed when I told them all I was not fixing their Windows anymore, but I can put Linux on their PC for them.

This is the biggest lie Linux supporters tell. If Linux needs no fixing, why does the USB controller on my T61 just stop working randomly with Ubuntu, but it never does with XP? How about my screen failing to light up about 10% of the time when it wakes from sleep? Or the wireless adapter failing to accept an IP from my router on another 10% of the wakes?

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[Zero__Kelvin]

"Incidentally, the fact that Windows is the most widely used OS, suggests that backward compatibility matters."

I have to agree. Whenever I ask people why they use Windows instead of Linux, they always cite backwards compatibility with obsolete applications. I keep thinking they are going to say:

1. Linux? That's like Java right?
2. If Linux is so good, why is everyone I know using Windows
3. If Linux really is better, than they need to work on their marketing
4. Oh. It's free! I'm not going to pay you to install it, then, since I have a brother-in-law who knows everything about computers. I'll have him install it!

... but, no ! They come back at me every time and say they'd switch but they really love their Wordperfect 5.1

I don't know about you, but I was very surprised to discover that the average Windows user is so hip and informed about technology!

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[psbrogna]

It's not a lie. For the average IT guy doing tech support for friends and family, Ubuntu has a lower TCO. Some of the friends and family that switch over may have trouble getting used to a new OS, but the increased responsiveness of their hardware and reduced frequency of security problems sells them in the long run. This is not FUD- this is my personal experience the last two years.

That's too bad you had OS troubles on your T61. Maybe now you understand a little how some people felt when they upgraded to Vista and hardware support wasn't exactly 100%.

Crunch Bang (a Ubuntu derivative) was a lot easier to install on my Lenovo W500 than Vista, that's for sure.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[kpainter]

Whenever I ask people why they use Windows instead of Linux, they always cite backwards compatibility with obsolete applications.

What makes an application "obsolete"? The answer usually is the publisher turned the crank to force everyone to buy their new stuff. A lot of times, the new stuff is crap. I still use Quicken 2005 because the new versions are not any better.

Incidentally, one of the apps that just does not have a Linux equivalent is Quicken. Last time I looked, this app doesn't run in Wine.

If I could run all of my critical apps in Linux, I would permanently switch. For now, I either run Linux in a virtual machine or swap hard drives.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[LWATCDR]

Hummm. No not really.
You may want to use the term inertia but it really is backward compatibility that gave Windows it's advantage.
When Windows 3.11 started making big gains it was because you could run your dos applications in it. And you could run more than one. There was almost zero windows software that really mattered. Probably the first Windows only program that a large number of people was probably office and Netscape+Trumpet Winsock.

What is the major complaint with Vista really? It is that a lot of older software isn't running well on it. It lacks the easy backward compatibility that XP offers. That combined with the lack of any features that really improve the average users life is why people hate it. Pain with little gain.
Just like the X86 ISA the biggest strength is now and always has been backward compatibility. Backward compatibility==large software base.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[Zero__Kelvin]

"If I could run all of my critical apps in Linux, I would permanently switch. For now, I either run Linux in a virtual machine or swap hard drives."

That is phenomenally bass-ackwards. Run Linux as the core, and run Windows in a VM for they very few apps that you need that don't run on Linux. Of course, I'm assuming you aren't into the extremesports version of computing. Maybe you like the constant danger of a system wide crash that doing it your way provides ;-)

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[not already in use]

If you have those, you can force anything on your customers.

Lock-in, huh? Examples? Can't say IE, because Firefox is available elsewhere. Can't say Microsoft Office, simply because there is nothing better out there. Microsoft is the most widely used OS because "DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS." Steve Ballmer is a crazy chair throwing fuck, but at least he gets that. Linux doesn't care about developers -- In fact using hard-to-learn and outdated technology is a badge of honor in their world. There is also the fact developing for Linux is a pain in the ass since there is no standard development stack. Or distribution. Or... anything. Sure, freedom is great. It also sucks ass. And yes, backwards compatibility matters, a lot. An ISV makes a program, they don't want it breaking with every cleverly named alliteration release of your operating system.

And, in Apples case, you're made to learn a crappy language that has absolutely no use outside Mac OS and Iphone development. BTW - Thats Lock-in.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[youngdev]

which distro are you using that makes it so easy to run this abomination?

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[Anonymous Coward]

The average friends and family does not have an average IT guy to do their tech support. Luckily, for them, there are OS choices that do not require an IT guy for tech suport: Windows and OSX.

Reduced security problems versus Windows I will give you, but not versus OSX. Test after test has not shown Linux to be any faster than Windows on the same hardware and I believe them over your anecdotal evangelism.

And my experience with my T61 is with Linux 'supported' hardware that worked perfectly well with Vista. I don't feel badly for a person who upgraded and XP install to Vista without first checking to see if their hardware was supported, that is the users' fault, not Microsoft's. New PCs sold with Vista pre-installed were fully supported and not in the Linux fully suported way, the hardware actually worked the way it was supposed to every time.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[chriso11]

No, the major complaints with Vista are not about legacy SW. The main complaints are interface and HW support.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Try picking up an old game or whatever and run in a new windows version. For me, it usually doesn't work. No made Severance: Blade of Darkness for me :(

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

What? That makes absolutely no sense. Lock-in means that you bundle two normally separated products to exclusively function with eachother.

Actually lock-in is any method which prevents users from moving to competitors by making such a move difficult or painful. It doesn't have to involve "separated products". I think you're getting lock-in confused with antitrust abuse.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[kpainter]

That is phenomenally bass-ackwards. Run Linux as the core, and run Windows in a VM for they very few apps that you need that don't run on Linux.

Very few!? Try MOST. None of my professional software runs natively on Linux. I won't even go into games.

I would love to permanently dump M$ but Linux isn't quite there yet to be my primary operating system. Still, I will keep playing with Linux.

Maybe you like the constant danger of a system wide crash that doing it your way provides

I have had Linux crash where a reboot was required the same as windows. It is a rarity but definitely possible. Windows doesn't crash on me all that often.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, people are returning systems without even trying to install legacy software.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[s73v3r]

Do you really expect all those people who are constantly asking their IT/Computer Guy friend to fix their broken Windows to be able to check if their hardware meets Vista's requirements?

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[Zero__Kelvin]

"I have had Linux crash where a reboot was required the same as windows."

If you are referring to such an event occurring with a 2.6.x kernel, then you have a hardware flaw. Seriously.

"None of my professional software runs natively on Linux."

So you only use Photoshop, and nothing else then? Or you are trying to run Outlook, IE, and Word on Linux rather than using Evolution, Firefox, and Open Office (and actually IE can work under Wine.)

I'll bite. Let's see this vast list of professional software that only runs on Windows and has no equivalent FOSS solution (and that only you know about apparently.)

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[Anonymous Coward]

I an using OpenSUSE and love it (and to get to the topic of the original article, I prefer KDE).

I have tried to convert family to Linux, and there have been two sticking points that have really made them go back to Windows:

1. Games; and

2. Downloading programs online. A lot of them like to download a bunch of little apps here and there that they just think are cool, and often they are either Windows only or the have to be download for Linux outside of a package manager and its too much trouble. These people are not very computer literate.

I think it is starting to change, however. Except with respect to the games. The only reason I even run Windows on my desktop (dual boot) is for games. Everything else, from graphics editing, writing, word processing, browsing, to playing music or watching movies I use SUSE.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[manifoldronin]

I also dreamed when I told them all I was not fixing their Windows anymore, but I can put Linux on their PC for them.

This is the biggest lie Linux supporters tell. If Linux needs no fixing, ...

Where in GP did you pick that up?

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[jonbryce]

I think it suggests that using the same OS that everyone else uses matters.

Apple is popular in its niche markets, and it certainly isn't so strong on backwards compatibility.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[cinderblock]

the fact that Windows is the most widely used OS, suggests that backward compatibility matters.

Because M$ has never had issues with compatibility...

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[Risen888]

IMHO nothing's as good as Klipper, but I like Parcellite when I'm using Fluxbox.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[LWATCDR]

Not from where I sit. HW support isn't that big of an issue anymore. It is that their old apps don't work as well as under XP

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[immcintosh]

No, I'd say it makes perfect sense. Word, for example, depends on being backwards compatible in order to maintain it's lock-in. In fact, that's about the ONLY thing keeping it these days--you can count on the next version of Word reading your old Word documents better than anything else. If not, why would you HAVE to buy the next version of Word? What else would be keeping you locked in? Or what if the next version of iTunes no longer processed the old DRM standard? You lock them in by creating a proprietary format, and then making sure you are the one vendor continues to support it (backwards compatibility).

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[w000t]

Linux doesn't care about developers -- In fact using hard-to-learn and outdated technology is a badge of honor in their world. There is also the fact developing for Linux is a pain in the ass since there is no standard development stack.

You really don't know what your talking about... Having experience programming applications for both Windows and Linux I call bullshit on most things you said. So there's no "standard development stack"... I don't see a problem with that. You just pick the one you want to use (C++/Qt, C/Gtk, Java, Mono, Python, Ruby, PHP, etc.) based on your requirements and your good to go. It's not like you have to support the others. Oh, you wanted a one size fits all silver bullet solution endorsed by big daddy... Sorry kid, the world is generally more complicated than that. But don't worry, development stacks on Linux are generally on pair or better than on Windows. For server programming both Java and .NET provide great stacks. C# even has some nice features over the Java language (though I really miss anonymous classes), but Java has (real) portability as a plus and most Java projects are also more mature than the .NET counterparts. For desktop programming I've used .NET, SWT, Qt and GTK, and I would take Qt (first) and Gtk (second) any day over Windows Forms. For instance, WinForms lacks a decent layout solution nor has any concept of actions (or commands). Internationalization support also sucks compared to what's natively available for "Linux" developing (though not as much as it does in Java). Luckily Visual Studio, while not as good an IDE as Eclipse, has probably the best designer around, so with a lot of work (anchoring, and docking my ass) programmers can too come up with Windows apps that don't suck at rare tasks like resizing windows...

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[Anonymous Coward]

Laugh if you want, bur IE does qualify as professional software that does not run under wine. Yes, you can run IE6 perhaps, but not IE7 or 8. And since so much ERP/CRM software runs within the browser these days, if they say that it requires IE, then you run IE and if WINE will not run your required flavor of IE, you run Windows. I still do not understand what the hell you people do to Windows machines. I do video editing/encoding, graphics editing, audio editing/encoding, etc on my Windows box. I play a few games here and there (mainly sims, flight sims, etc.) I run SuperAntispyware and Avast antiVirus. The only time I even notice is when I occasionally hear Avast tell me that its "virus database has been updated". On the occasion that I DL something from the net that I want to try out, right click to scan with avast, right click to scan with super. Been doing this for a long while. Windows used to crash, back in the 98 days it crashed a lot. When XP came out, the crashes were cut to less than half. Each SP since has further reduced the number of crashes. Once per month or so I download all the updates, apply and reboot if needed. These monthly reboots are the only reboots on my 2 windows boxes. My laptop goes to sleep at the end of each workday and I carry it home, usually when I leave on Friday I leave the laptop at work and I'll turn it off for the weekend, but not always. I can't remember the last blue screen. My parents have a computer, so does my sister, my brother, my grandmother, my wife's parents have 2. All use the same setup as me. When I first helped them get setup (install, OO, Firefox, avast, super, etc) I used to ask them "So how's that computer doing" pretty early on in each conversation. But after months of "no problems at all, works like a charm" I stopped asking. I occasionally get a call from one of them asking me if I have ever heard of some piece of software or another and if I think its safe, but I have not had to fix a computer in at least 2 years. I don't think this is that unusual.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[Random Destruction]

I have a t61. Type 7658-CTO to be specific. It works flawlessly under ubuntu. It suspends every time, it comes back every time. Wireless works, usb works, sound works, brightness keys work, etc, etc , etc.

Check out thinkwiki if you havent already. They'll tell you the little tweaks that are needed now and then to make things perfect.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[Darfeld]

And, in Apples case, you're made to learn a crappy language that has absolutely no use outside Mac OS and Iphone development. BTW - Thats Lock-in.

It looks more like lock-out to me...

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[icebraining]

"I don't feel badly for a person who upgraded and XP install to Vista without first checking to see if their hardware was supported, that is the users' fault, not Microsoft's."

s/Vista/Linux/. Why do you expected Linux to work out-of-the-box in your T6, if you say people shouldn't expect perfect behavior with non-OEM operating systems? Have you tried a computer with Ubuntu pre-installed?

"Reduced security problems versus Windows I will give you, but not versus OSX."

On the other hand, PWN 2 OWN over: MacBook Air gets seized in 2 minutes flat

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[rantingkitten]

If Linux needs no fixing

No one ever claimed that it was perfect. Don't set up straw men.

why does the USB controller on my T61 just stop working randomly with Ubuntu, but it never does with XP?

Good question. I don't know. It does keep logs though, unlike Windows, so you could probably find out if you wanted to. Or we could keep playing this game: Why doesn't Vista or XP ever load decent video drivers? Why do they both fail to load generic ethernet drivers most of the time? I can't even get online to get the rest of my drivers! Why can I never get sound working on Vista without trying several different drivers until I happen to hit the right one? What's the deal with Windows' lack of useful error logs? Why can't Vista handle a RAM upgrade without going Pompeii on me?

Why are my parents and sister always calling me to get rid of spyware, or because Outlook stopped working, or because Windows is complaining about registry problems but won't say what? Why are they always telling me that their 2.4ghz dual core computer is "slow"? Why do their computers take five minutes to boot, and another two for the desktop to be usable? Why does Vista bluescreen on my father's computer if it's left on for more than a day? Why does XP *boot* to bluescreen three out of four attempts on my mother's computer? Why do all Windows versions insist on randomly changing to different wireless access points in the middle of what I'm doing, and without asking? Why do we have to reinstall Windows every so often even if there's nothing particularly wrong with it right then? Why does Vista keep trying to install drivers every single day for the same webcam I've had for eight months? Why, why, why?

Why do you think Windows is usable by the masses? All they ever do is complain about how slow things are, how stuff randomly freezes, crashes, or otherwise breaks, and call their "computer guy" relative/friend to fix it. Some of the problems are their own fault, and some are the fault of the OS, but either way, it's not ready for the average user's desktop when the average user has all these absurd issues...

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[ushering05401]

99Bottles... nails it. The sheer number of one off legacy apps that exist in the Windows ecosystem is staggering.

I have created a number of them myself over the years, shoehorning into whatever technology the customer was already using.

The biggest problem to migration usually occurs not with getting the one-off solution I programmed to run under Wine, but with getting all the third party MS ecosystem stuff that my one-off interacts with (different for each customer) to also run under emulation.

This is the worst type of lock-in IMHO.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[aztracker1]

I can't buy a car, and force them to not give me the engine with it...

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[Thinboy00]

Actually, your old version of Word etc. will open your old Word documents just fine -- but your old version of Word won't open OOXML files created in newer versions of Word (that's the lock-in). Also, Apple is ending DRM on iTunes -- but who knows if libgpod (the open source answer to the iPod's "iTunes only" behavior) will be able to open your iPod tomorrow? iTunes will definitely be able to open your iPod, and again, that's lock-in.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[lordtoran]

Microsoft is sucessful because it is the most pratical o.s for most people.

Hardly. Windows seems "most practical" to you because I suppose it is the only OS you are really used to. Aside of that, it's not the end users that keep Microsoft in the market. Microsoft doesn't even care about them. To a very large extent, it is exclusive long term contracts with businesses and hardware vendors that keep them afloat.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[spitzak]

You have it somewhat backwards. Lock-in causes backwards compatibility, not the other way around.

The weird thing is that Microsoft is as much trapped by it's own monopoly as anybody else. They cannot be incompatible, people will just continue using the stuff they already bought, or perhaps they would lose to some competitor using Wine or something and thus being more compatible. The very thing that traps everybody else into being unable to compete with Microsoft also traps themselves into being unable to compete with themselves.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[bonch]

You know, I hear contradictory views on this all the time. First, I hear that Linux is easy to install and that anyone can jump into it at will. Then I hear from guys like you that people DON'T have a choice and that they aren't jumping to Linux because of the evil monopoly. Which is it?

If you're offering a completely free operating system and people STILL aren't biting, it's not the commercial monopoly's fault.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Vendors who entered into exclusivity agreement with Microsoft did so of their own accord, they were not forced by anything other than market conditions.

Market conditions which Microsoft loves to support, of course, through means legal and otherwise.

The fact that it was caused by market conditions does not make it alright. Even if you make a good case that it's not Microsoft's fault, that does not make it alright.

Many many people do not have any aptitude at all for such things regardless of how simple they are.

That's mostly because they get hand-held all the time -- because we continue to support that some people are incapable of grasping computers, or at the very least, that they shouldn't have to, and that everyone should have their own personal IT department.

Obligatory car analogy: I don't know how to rebuild an engine, but I do at least know that I need to change my oil periodically, and I can find out how to do it myself if I really care.

This is the biggest lie Linux supporters tell. If Linux needs no fixing,

I don't think the point is that Linux needs no fixing. I think the point is that for those of us who are much more familiar with Linux, it is easier to fix a Linux problem than a Windows problem. I would argue that this is generally true, but I don't know enough about Windows to make that statement.

I do know that I am not willing to service Windows computers for free.

However, if we're playing anecdotes, here's mine:

I bought a Dell with Ubuntu on it. I tried to install XP.

Now, as I'm sure yo know, the usual way to install Windows drivers is to go to a vendor's website, download the driver, and install. This can take an hour or so under the best of conditions, due to the sheer amount of hardware that isn't supported out of the box by XP. Often, I find myself booting a Linux CD, so I can run lspci, which will at least tell me the brand of the hardware that I have -- the Windows device manager won't do that -- so I can then boot Windows, visit those manufacturers' websites, and download drivers.

However, for some reason, Dell laptops are worse. They've entered into a deal with nVidia that Dell is the only one who gets to distribute the nVidia drivers for this particular laptop. On Linux, I just install the normal nvidia drivers. On Windows, I have to get them from Dell.

Only problem is, XP isn't supported on this laptop. Vista is.

So I had to contact Dell tech support, which gave me all the links to drivers known to work with XP on this laptop. Most of them were from other laptops in the same series, a few were for other OSes, and it generally had a hacked-together feel, but it worked.

Let's compare to Linux. I did wipe the factory-installed Ubuntu with a 64-bit version. I vaguely remember having exactly one problem, with the touchpad, which a few minutes on Google corrected. Other than that, It Just Worked.

So yes, Linux needed fixing. So did Windows. And Linux needed a lot less fixing than Windows.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[SanityInAnarchy]

First, I hear that Linux is easy to install and that anyone can jump into it at will.

Linux is by far the easiest to install OS. However, installing an OS is not an easy task.

Then I hear from guys like you that people DON'T have a choice and that they aren't jumping to Linux because of the evil monopoly.

The preinstallation is only part of that. The other part is the tangled web of proprietary technologies that Linux would have to duplicate, perfectly, including the Windows API.

Let me put it this way: How is it Linux' fault that Quickbooks only exists for Windows and OS X?

Now, anyone can still jump in and try it out. For most people, Linux is 90% of the way there. The problem is, the last 10% is different for everyone. If it's something like Quickbooks, and it doesn't work flawlessly under Wine, then you need Windows, at least in a virtual machine. If it's something like Outlook, there's always the chance you could get people to switch to Kmail or Thunderbird.

For me, that last 10% is gaming -- I need Windows, because I'll never be able to count on Wine to give me as good an experience as XP. But I only need to boot Windows when playing a game that won't run on Linux, so that's good enough.

If you're offering a completely free operating system and people STILL aren't biting,

That's the other problem: It's seen as exactly as free as Windows. Highly technical people might tend to pirate Windows. Less technical people will buy a computer with Windows preloaded -- chances are, they didn't see an option to remove Windows and save themselves $100 or so -- so it's a hidden cost.

Which brings us back to that "contradictory" view -- Linux will only be seen as "free" when you have a company selling the same laptop with Linux and with Windows, and the Linux version is cheaper. And even when Dell does that, it's not the same laptop -- I'm talking about putting Linux as an option on the configuration screen. That is, buy this laptop with Vista Home Premium, Vista Ultimate, Ubuntu, or FreeDOS.

And all that does is really demonstrate to people that it's free. It still has to be shown as much better -- being "just as good" isn't enough.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Can't say IE, because Firefox is available elsewhere.

IE is shipped out of the box, and some websites are IE-only. That is finally shifting, recently.

Can't say Microsoft Office, simply because there is nothing better out there.

You might argue that OpenOffice isn't better, but right now, it simply doesn't have a chance, when so much development time is spent reverse engineering old Windows formats.

Linux doesn't care about developers

I would think a developer would care about being able to completely customize their environment, in pretty much any way they want.

There is also the fact developing for Linux is a pain in the ass since there is no standard development stack.

Why does there have to be? Your basic components are there -- if your app links against glibc and runs on X, it'll work.

Oh, you want to talk about GNOME/KDE? Why does that matter? KDE apps run on GNOME, and vice versa. That's not a pain in the ass, that's choice, and you have the same kind of choice with Windows -- you're not forced to use MFC.

Or distribution.

Ubuntu.

An ISV makes a program, they don't want it breaking with every cleverly named alliteration release of your operating system.

And yet, somehow, most of the commercial programs which have been released haven't broken because of that.

In fact, in one breath, you whine that developers are forced to use "hard-to-learn and outdated technology", and in the other, you whine that backwards compatibility is broken. Which is it? I'll bet not a line of the code for the 'cp' command has changed in decades, so why should an ISV be worried?

On the other hand, most OS X programs at least require Tiger, if not Leopard. New OS X releases frequently break tons of apps.

Even Microsoft's own programs can break from one version of Windows to another. Example: Remember HD-DVD? Vista was already out when I started working on it, but HDiSim, Microsoft's HD-DVD software simulator, only ran on XP. Not 2k, not Vista, had to be XP. Oh, and it only worked on a specific version of Windows Media Player -- I believe it was 10. Not 9, not 11.

And this was pretty big, by the way -- HD-DVD was arguably a flagship product. If even Microsoft can't maintain backwards compatibility on Windows, yet all my old Linux apps still work, I don't know WTF you're whining about.

And, in Apples case, you're made to learn a crappy language that has absolutely no use outside Mac OS and Iphone development.

With how coherent the rest of your comment is, I don't know if I'd call it "crappy" or not, but it certainly works on Windows. If this particular whine is about Cocoa not being portable, well, neither is Win32, unless you're counting Wine -- yet, surprisingly, it's possible to write portable apps in C, even C++.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Incidentally, one of the apps that just does not have a Linux equivalent is Quicken.

There's Gnucash and KMyMoney, but you're right. It's just not there yet.

Last time I looked, this app doesn't run in Wine.

When was that? Last I looked, it worked flawlessly in Wine.

But then, Quicken isn't the kind of thing you need to run all the time. I could live with booting Windows once a week, and living in Linux the rest of the time.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Laugh if you want, bur IE does qualify as professional software that does not run under wine.

Ok, I'll laugh.

Yes, you can run IE6 perhaps, but not IE7 or 8.

Actually, you can.

The rest of your comment is kind of rambling and kind of irrelevant. My windows is pretty solid, though not because of antivirus. But you'd have to pay me a lot to force me to use it as a primary OS.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, lock-in, monopoly and inertia what matters.
If you have those, you can force anything on your customers.

Right, because it's only rape if they sue.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[kpainter]

I'll bite. Let's see this vast list of professional software that only runs on Windows and has no equivalent FOSS solution (and that only you know about apparently.)

I'll name just a few and note that I said natively:
-Microwave Office (I only have access to Windows version)
-Altium Designer Summer 08
-Mathcad
The list really does go on and on even if you don't want to admit it. Microwave Office alone cost about $30K and we don't have the bucks to upgrade to the latest version right now. And re-purchasing all this software just so we could run Linux is not acceptable. This is what I meant about "Obsolete".

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[noundi]

Of course you're right, however I think it was relatively obvious that I was considering a certain line of business. By the way isn't antitrust only applicable when risking monopoly? That's the only situation I've seen or heard about it, but perhaps I'm wrong.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[Ant P.]

If Linux needs no fixing, why does the USB controller on my T61 just stop working randomly with Ubuntu, but it never does with XP? How about my screen failing to light up about 10% of the time when it wakes from sleep? Or the wireless adapter failing to accept an IP from my router on another 10% of the wakes?

Most of these problems are caused by the Microsoft ACPI compiler which is designed to produce corrupt output that only works correctly with Microsoft software. You can tell if you're running a crippled BIOS by looking for the string "MSFT" near the top of the kernel log.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[QuietObserver]

Hell, with Quicken, couldn't a VM handle that perfectly well? I use a Windows VM for the only program I have that requires Windows and won't work in Wine (WordPerfect), and I can't imagine why Quicken would require so much more processing power that it wouldn't perform in a VM.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[not already in use]

IE is shipped out of the box, and some websites are IE-only. That is finally shifting, recently.

With the exception of company intranets, this has been a non-issue for years. Stop clinging to outdated arguments.

You might argue that OpenOffice isn't better, but right now, it simply doesn't have a chance, when so much development time is spent reverse engineering old Windows formats.

Do you think that simply because you make the assertion that "so much development time is spent reverse engineering old Windows formats" everyone will accept that as truth? Are you blowing smoke, or can you actually produce evidence that proves this statement? OOO has been able to read Word files for YEARS. They just can't render them consistently. Even if this were a non-issue, Word and the Office suite still blows OOO away.

I would think a developer would care about being able to completely customize their environment, in pretty much any way they want.

This isn't about the developers environment. It's about the target environment, which with Linux, you never know exactly what the target is. This is not so much a problem with OSS, but we're talking ISV's developing CSS. Now if you think that Desktop Linux can ever achieve real success without CSS, then you're sorely mistaken.

And yet, somehow, most of the commercial programs which have been released haven't broken because of that.

Then why does Opera have to release a new installation package for each Ubuntu release?

In fact, in one breath, you whine that developers are forced to use "hard-to-learn and outdated technology", and in the other, you whine that backwards compatibility is broken. Which is it?

This makes no sense to me whatsoever. Are you implying that these are mutually exclusive??

On the other hand, most OS X programs at least require Tiger, if not Leopard. New OS X releases frequently break tons of apps.

Yeah, and OS X will remain a niche consumer OS for this reason.

With how coherent the rest of your comment is, I don't know if I'd call it "crappy" or not, but it certainly works on Windows [tinyurl.com]. If this particular whine is about Cocoa not being portable, well, neither is Win32, unless you're counting Wine -- yet, surprisingly, it's possible to write portable apps in C, even C++.

Ok, we'll play by your rules. Yes, you can technically use objective-c on Windows and Linux. My point is that Objective-C only makes you marketable in the OS X/iPhone world, whereas Java, C, C++, Python, ruby are entirely agnostic. Even .NET has more value in the Linux world than objective-c does anywhere else.

Was that coherent enough for you?

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[SanityInAnarchy]

With the exception of company intranets, this has been a non-issue for years. Stop clinging to outdated arguments.

So an argument which only applies to corporate America -- that is, to a huge portion of the computers that exist in the US -- is an outdated argument?

OOO has been able to read Word files for YEARS. They just can't render them consistently.

Yes, because being able to read a format is all that's required for an open standard.

Yeah, remember the whole OOXML debacle? The fact that the format can be read, and that we know it's supposed to be "SpacedLikeWordPerfect3.5.1" or whatever, is not the end of the story. It means we still have to pick up a copy of that specific version of Word, or WordPerfect, or Works, or whatever, and reverse engineer that.

Even if this were a non-issue, Word and the Office suite still blows OOO away.

Granted. But the fact is, OOo is a non-starter until this is resolved. I wonder how much development time is spent on this problem of compatibility, instead of actually building a better office suite?

It's about the target environment, which with Linux, you never know exactly what the target is.

Again: This is a solved problem.

How do I know? Because Adobe solved it. Id Software solved it. Epic Games solved it. 2DBoy solved it. Autodesk solved it.

Worst case, you piss off the tiny amount of Linux users who aren't using an x86 architecture. Even there, if you end up caring, it's likely just a recompile.

Do I really need to go on? Stop using outdated arguments.

Then why does Opera have to release a new installation package for each Ubuntu release?

I just installed the latest version in their repository, last modified June 2008, on Intrepid, which was released October of 2008, and which I've been updating since then. It was even the shared version, not the statically linked version, meaning it was using shared libraries that have likely updated since then.

It works pretty flawlessly.

Why don't you ask them why they do release a new version every Ubuntu? They certainly don't have to.

This makes no sense to me whatsoever. Are you implying that these are mutually exclusive??

Pretty much, in a given context. If it's completely outdated technology, like the 1980s-era tools I've pointed to, clearly there is some pretty powerful backwards compatibility happening. In fact, many of us still use tar (designed to work with tapes) to backup.

If, as you imply, backwards compatibility is completely broken, these old tools would stop working.

Otherwise, you're probably talking about some specific place where compatibility is broken. If so, please be explicit -- your one example already fell apart pretty spectacularly.

My point is that Objective-C only makes you marketable in the OS X/iPhone world, whereas Java, C, C++, Python, ruby are entirely agnostic.

That makes sense. It's also a different argument -- "no use" is quite different than "no marketability". Lisp is pretty hard to market, but those who use it seem to find quite a lot of utility.

But that is in no way "lock-in". The fact that others aren't using a clearly open technology in no way makes it "lock-in". The lock-in would be the IP they actually own, like Cocoa, or the little magnetic plug on the Macbook, or the gestures on the iPhone, or the fact that the iPhone must be cracked in order to run apps not blessed by Apple.

Certainly, apple has plenty of lock-in, and tends to be more proprietary than Microsoft. But you picked about the worst example of that -- especially when it compiles just fine on Linux, which is what this discussion was actually about.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[not already in use]

So an argument which only applies to corporate America -- that is, to a huge portion of the computers that exist in the US -- is an outdated argument?

Where I faulted IE in the past was when they were dictating de facto web standards. I don't care what they do in a corporate environment. In fact, I understand the need for the integration that IE offers in a corporate environment because I've developed and deployed in such environments.

Yeah, remember the whole OOXML debacle? The fact that the format can be read, and that we know it's supposed to be "SpacedLikeWordPerfect3.5.1" or whatever, is not the end of the story. It means we still have to pick up a copy of that specific version of Word, or WordPerfect, or Works, or whatever, and reverse engineer that.

So what do you propose MS do? Open their document format up? Who even knows how possible this is, given possible outside licensing issues and such. The fact remains, however, that word supports open formats. It's not as if they can force people to use them.

Again: This is a solved problem. How do I know? Because Adobe solved it. Id Software solved it. Epic Games solved it. 2DBoy solved it. Autodesk solved it.

Just because they solved it does not by any means make it ideal. Look at the success of Xbox 360 vs PS3. I believe it to be a good analogue. PS3: technically superior, more open, better media capability. Xbox 360: easier to develop for. The latter trumps all. Plenty of game devs have "solved" developing for PS3. That doesn't mean they don't despise it. And the PS3 suffers because of it.

That makes sense. It's also a different argument -- "no use" is quite different than "no marketability". Lisp is pretty hard to market, but those who use it seem to find quite a lot of utility.

Granted.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Where I faulted IE in the past was when they were dictating de facto web standards. I don't care what they do in a corporate environment.

They still are dictating defacto standards, and it's largely because of that corporate environment. The more people who use IE -- whatever they use it for -- the less chance I have of saying "fuck IE" and just going with standards.

As long as I can't do that -- as long as I need to spend a good 20% of my time on any given project porting it back from Firefox to IE -- it continues to be a bane of my existence.

Even if I wanted to, it's not a win going IE-only -- Firefox has Firebug.

In fact, I understand the need for the integration that IE offers in a corporate environment because I've developed and deployed in such environments.

What does it offer that others don't, for that environment? What does "integration" mean in that context, anyway?

So what do you propose MS do? Open their document format up?

Uh... yes?

Who even knows how possible this is, given possible outside licensing issues and such.

Well, they did provide some amount of documentation for the older formats. The problem remains that they're willing to provide a "WorksLikeFoo" tag, but documenting how it actually works is "beyond the scope of that document". Oh, and there's the fact that their specs are several thousand pages long, as opposed to several hundred.

What might be easier is for them to start using the real standard -- OpenDocument -- and if it really can't provide the features they're whining about, work to improve that one, instead of ditching it entirely for their own "let's serialize the memory structures of Office as XML" format.

The fact remains, however, that word supports open formats.

Like what?

OOXML? We just covered that.

RDF? Word actually manages to screw that up quite a lot. I don't think there's a reasonable expectation, these days, of being able to take an RDF out of Word and opening it in TextEdit on OS X, or in OpenOffice.

Just because they solved it does not by any means make it ideal.

No, but it does mean it's not the end-of-the-world scenario that many like to suggest. Nor is it even necessarily worse than Windows -- I've already shown it's no worse than OS X. How much stuff did Vista break again?

Then there's the nice ability to actually maintain an older version. If you build a full stack -- say you've got some custom embedded system -- you can actually stick to a 2.4, even a 2.2 kernel, so long as you're willing to patch it yourself. I suspect that this is what Microsoft's "shared source" project is about.

PS3: technically superior, more open, better media capability.

Arguable.

"More open"? I don't think being able to run Linux in a hypervisor really counts for much. "Better media capability"? Only because Blu-Ray won.

Xbox 360: easier to develop for.

And let's not forget: Cheaper, and on the market sooner. At one point, you could almost get a 360 and a Wii for the same price as a PS3.

The PS3 would have to be pretty damned compelling to make up for that -- but that technical superiority would have to manifest itself in actual games, this being a console. And there really weren't any exclusives that anyone cared about.

The latter trumps all.

Then how do you explain the success of the Wii?

I would explain it much more simply: Price. The Wii is much cheaper, and provides something compelling and new. The 360 is more expensive, and provides a good HD experience -- plus it ties into Netflix now, I think. The PS3 is even more expensive, and has... well... it can run Linux in a VM, and it can play Blu-Ray discs.

Is the ability to play Blu-Ray discs worth an extra $200? For most people,

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[badkarmadayaccount]

Repeat after me:

WINE is not an emulator

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[badkarmadayaccount]

There is a welder in there somewhere...
*ducks*

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[badkarmadayaccount]

New business method: for a one-time fee do all-inclusive migrations to FLOSS solutions of the clients choice, along with open WINE patches for their indispensable windows apps. Something like a Stallmanized Crossover Office with a much more personal approach.

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[badkarmadayaccount]

How much does M$ pay you per post?

Re:2nd Paragraph.

[psbrogna]

I feel sorry for them. But likewise, the average non-IT person is apparently unable to support a Windows box because I sure do a lot of it.

Both will stay relevant

[walshy007]

Gnome and kde are designed for different types of people, in gnome everything is typically simple and straight forward, but lacks the ability to be configured the exact way you like and is less powerfl.

KDE on the other hand, gives a lot more flexibility and power over the way you have things, but the trade off is complexity.

Both will continue to be relevant to their different markets for the foreseeable future. Even if development halted right now.(not that it would)

Re:Both will stay relevant

[X0563511]

Insightful, but completely unrelated to the topic.

The story is about development methods used. The summary itself says so!

Re:Both will stay relevant

[Hurricane78]

Hey, I heard Slashdot is a write-only forum. So I thought I write something completely unrelated to the article, summary, title and comments I'm replying to.

I even tried to not relate it to the site and reality on/in which I am, but it's kinda hard.

Am I doing well in blending in?

Re:Both will stay relevant

[foobat]

both projects feed off each other

everyone will continue to bitch and moan about which one is better

world will keep turning.

Re:Both will stay relevant

[Tubal-Cain]

This isn't your typical Simple Gnome vs Flexible KDE debate.

For lack of a better analogy, this is like comparing Apple's transition to OSX with Windows' NT-2K-XP-Vista transitions.
Windows has been mostly successful at maintaining backwards compatibility, but it is starting to resemble a millstone hung from the neck. It's holding them back and getting in the way.
Meanwhile, Apple broke backwards compatibility and now are not encumbered by obsolete paradigms.

Re:Both will stay relevant

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the russian reference joke (as in: in soviet slashdot, post forum you) but it's kinda okey

Re:Both will stay relevant

[donaldm]

I think you have summed this up quite nicely.

From my personal experience I have always preferred KDE over Gnome but with my own laptop I have always allowed a choice for my wife and kids. For many years KDE was preferred although my youngest son liked Gnome.

When I installed Fedora 10 it came with KDE 4.0 and that was a shock. For my wife the change was too radical and I quickly switched her to Gnome. I knew KDE would improve over time however what forced me to change to Gnome was the fact that switching users was impossible at the time. For a while Gnome worked quite well but I wasn't that happy with it since it always felt "old school" but usuable, however KDE at the time was painful to use.

When KDE 4.2 came out to it was much more stable and had the features I was happy with so I quickly switched back and have been happy with it since. To me the new KDE 4,2 while different to KDE 3.5 is IMHO much more interesting and fun to work with than Gnome, however my wife is yet to make the switch back since she is much more conservative. My youngest son is still quite happy with Gnome.

From the article the following quote is very relevent.

You can see the differences in the current states of the two desktops from the reviews. Reviews about KDE are not always positive, but they are about large issues and shifts in the desktop paradigm. Reading them, you cannot help but come away with the impression that KDE developers are headed in a definite direction, even if you disagree with some or all of the details.

At least we have the choice.

Re:Both will stay relevant

[Tubal-Cain]

both projects feed off each other

Care to elaborate?

Re:Both will stay relevant

[jeremyp]

Considering your completely off topic post is now at +3, it's hard to deny that your premise seems to be correct and you are in fact doing well.

Re:Both will stay relevant

[MichaelSmith]

both projects feed off each other

Care to elaborate?

More likely they bounce off each other. A gnome developer who wants animated icons everywhere and per-component customisation of transparency can be told to piss off to KDE. Likewise a KDE developer who wants to enforce on one good way to do everything can be sent packing to gnome.

Re:Both will stay relevant

[Azaril]

I realise that this is /., and you're discouraged from RTFA, but I think failing to read the first line of the summary is impressive even for here:

"Setting aside the now tired debate about whether KDE or GNOME is the 'better' Linux desktop, Bruce Byfield compares their disparate development approaches and asks, not which desktop is subjectively better, but which developmental approach is likely to be most successful in the next few years."

The point of the article is to discuss whether the design approach of gnome (gradually building and polishing its legacy code) or KDE (a complete rewrite) is more effective in the longterm.

Re:Both will stay relevant

[Anonymous Coward]

Not configurable in the GUI by n00bs you mean.

It can usually be configured - sometimes just not in the "Windows way".

Re:Both will stay relevant

[Haeleth]

No; there is much in Gnome that simply cannot be configured, even by experts. Unless you count ripping out complete subsystems and replacing them with non-Gnome components as "configuration", I guess.

And there is a lot more that technically can be configured, but only by editing undocumented gconf settings -- and since they're undocumented, they are subject to change at any time. So you might upgrade to a point release and suddenly your configuration is broken.

Sorry, but while Gnome has many virtues, configurability is not one of them. Those desiring a configurable desktop should look to Kde, or (if they want a Gtk+-based desktop) to Xfce. Or they can roll their own desktop environment by taking a standalone window manager and choosing the utilities they like best.

Re:Both will stay relevant

[walshy007]

my bad for pre-empting the inevitable topic that would arise later in the discussion of this article. essentially I knew it would devolve into 'x is better than y' (as has happened later on in this discussion already) and funnily enough all the later posts are informative or insightful while essentially saying the same thing.

Slashdot posters and viewpoints are easy to predict most of the time, the groupthink is strong here, but lesson learned do not post something to resolve an argument before someone has posted to start it, lol

Re:Both will stay relevant

[SenseiLeNoir]

You could try what my wife does. She does like "new and shiney" but does not nessasarily trust it on day to day work, so she has two user accounts, one for "normal" and the other "Experimental". And she trials out the new stuff, then asks me to help switch the "normal" one if she likes the new stuff.

She found she preferred KDE even though the change was quite drastic.

Re:Both will stay relevant

[taucross]

If anything is representative of the development method, it's the final product.

Re:Both will stay relevant

[aliquis]

On the other side if the latest Windows would be totally incompatible with your 2.5 year old machine people would complain a lot.

Macusers tend to accept that to some extent, or well, atleast in general, not the actual affected users.

(So your GPU suck and you don't have support for Core Image? You don't have an 833+ MHz G4 and can't install Leopard? You can't run EAs games thanks to lame GPU? No Snow Leopard on PPC machines (so what if your superexpensive mac pro can't run it?))

Re:Both will stay relevant

[Anonymous Coward]

I read the article and didn't find it focused on development models... or not what I mean by those words anyway.

Re:Both will stay relevant

[PopeRatzo]

Apple broke backwards compatibility and now are not encumbered by obsolete paradigms.

Except for their pricing model.

Re:Both will stay relevant

[PopeRatzo]

I have always allowed a choice for my wife

You're a hell of a guy. Next you'll be letting her go outside without a burqa.

Re:Both will stay relevant

[dirvine]

I wonder though with the recent announcement of qt4.5 being dual licensed gpl/lpgl will the gnome developers be more inclined to use the same toolkit and create better 'cross platform' modules. Then we could have a gnome / kde environment on many devices and not only linux either.

It's great to have differing systems but perhaps the gtk vs qt debate is getting like linux / hurd type arguments.

I would kinda like to see some more projects getting together properly and having mainstream desktops like kernels, but at the same time leaving the ability for less formal environments and build systems to happily exist for those who want them (like real time kernel, se kernel etc.).

Re:Both will stay relevant

[WaywardGeek]

The choice of Gnome vs KDE for our house is more about support from the distro than differences in the desktops. Kbuntu is simply less stable and polished than Ubuntu.

I think the article should have talked about the recent open-sourcing of QT, which I think is critical in the KDE vs Gnome debate. Last time around, I steered application development towards GTK, rather than QT, and I had all the developers work in Gnome. This time around, because of the decision to LGPL QT, I'm steering the app to QT 4, and developers will be encouraged to use KDE.

I believe the debate about desktops comes down to which apps win: Gnome or QT? Now that licensing issues for QT are fixed, and with QT's clear advantage in porting, I'd say QT apps will gain back lost ground.

Re:Both will stay relevant

[morgan_greywolf]

Right. But Microsoft did an Apple a while back, sort of. The Windows NT-line (Windows NT/2K/XP/Vista) broke backward compatibility with the Windows 3.x/9x/ME line, but only to a degree. Some hardware and software work, but others do not.

GNOME did a similar break with the GNOME 1.x and GNOME 2.x lines, again sort of. The difference here, though, is that all you need to run a GNOME (1.x or 2.x) application is to have the appropraite GNOME libraries installed. The OS and X server are agnostic as far as the desktop environment is concerned.

On Windows, this separation doesn't exist (*) for the most part. The kernel is aware of the "GUI" (GDI, KERNEL and USER), which is aware of the "desktop" (SHELL, Explorer, etc.)

(*) Technically, Windows NT 3.x was designed to have this separation, and starting with Windows NT 4.x, Microsoft gradually began re-integrating everything, but since Server 2K3/2K7 has begun separating them back out again, but more in the server space than in the client space.

Re:Both will stay relevant

[mapnjd]

Can you elucidate on what is "Less Powerful" about GNOME? It may be less-configurable, but less powerful? No.

Having spent years piddling around, tweaking TWM, FVWM 1, WindowMaker, GNOME 1.x, I'm glad I have a desktop that "Just works". It's not fugly, has a consistent L&F (GNOME has a HIG) and does what it should out of the box.

Incremental improvements have worked in GNOME's case. OK, so the GNOME 3.0 project (check famous wiki page) has gone nowhere, because it basically is "Start Again" (again), but we're the better for not doing it. We have stability and usability.

Try Ubuntu 8.10, Fedora 10 or OpenSUSE 11.x live discs for a reality check. (And live Alpha disks with GNOME 2.26 are even better).

nic

Re:Both will stay relevant

[mederjo]

Apple didn't really break compatibility with the transition to OS X. They provided two means of compatibility between OS 9 and OS X. One was the Classic environment with was basically an OS 9 VM and the other was the Carbon API. Classic was for apps which weren't ported to Carbon.

Even with the transition to Intel machines Apple didn't completely break compatibility. They provided Rosetta to run PPC apps. I don't think any of the Intel machines support Classic so you can't run your non-Carbon apps anymore, but you could still run a Carbon PPC app on an Intel Mac and OS 9.

Really, the only break with OS 9 that has now come is with OS X 10.5 and its lack of support for 64 bit Carbon. The app I develop is currently based on Carbon. It needs 64 bit support so I'm going to be porting it to Cocoa in the near future. However if I didn't need 64 bit support I could still be using Carbon, although with the expectation that it isn't going to get any new APIs etc. I'm already mixing some Cocoa code in with Carbon code to provide functionality not available through Carbon.

Apple has been pretty good at providing compatibility. I have an app which is 10 years old now and which can still run on both OS 9 and an Intel Mac running OS X 10.5. Apple do obsolete stuff more quickly than Microsoft perhaps. My main work machine is still a dual G5 PowerMac, but OS X 10.6 won't run on it because it's dropping support for PPC. It's 4 year old machine, but still going strong and will continue in commercial use ( illustration rather than development ) when I have to replace it with an Intel one for OS X 10.6.

Regards,

Jo

Re:Both will stay relevant

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

two words: virtual machine.

leopard doesn't have compatibility with "classic" mac OS anymore, neither did tiger for intel boxes, but previous versions on powerPC did. basicaly it would load an entire copy of macOS 9 on a virtual machine and run classic apps there.

microsoft bought virtual PC probably out of envy for the success of VMWare. i say this because nobody there seems to have the vision neccessary to put it to good use. just develop something new, fast, secure and _INCOMPATIBLE_. port virtual PC for it and release as a bundle: new windows, virtual PC and a complete copy of XP to run as "classic windows". give people option to also use VMWare or virtual box as virtualisation environment (to keep people from crying foul) and get done with it.

Re:Both will stay relevant

[socrplayr813]

Apple broke their compatibility and are arguably better off for it, BUT they have complete control over their hardware and a big chunk of their software. While it's a lot of work for them, they can realistically handle it in-house and have it nice and shiny by the time it leaves the building.

I think it's much harder for other companies/projects to make such a clean break. Don't get me wrong... I think it's necessary to do it once in a while to keep the code under control, but the install base (both users and hardware) and the uncontrolled nature of software for Windows and Linux makes it much, much more difficult.

The partial break Microsoft made with Vista was bad enough. If they had completely broken all the old software, it would have been disastrous for them. Gnome and KDE users are generally more knowledgeable and possibly a bit more tolerant to change than your typical Windows user, but there's still going to be a breaking point. I know that a lot of people gave up on KDE with 4.0 and many haven't gone back.

I guess what I'm saying in my ramblings is that both sides have merit. Personally, if there were some middle ground between Gnome and KDE, that's where I'd plant myself. I like that KDE is pushing the envelope, but I've never really liked using it.

Re:Both will stay relevant

[Anonymous Coward]

OSX is as incompatible with OS9 as Linux is to Windows. You could get the same results by doing a seamless integration of virtual box (Classic mode), and an (improved) installation of Wine (Carbon). Not arguing it would work as well, merely that your arguments doesn't work out. OSX is incompatible, period.

Re:Both will stay relevant

[rhsanborn]

I'm not terribly familiar with the Mac OSX transition, but Microsoft did a small step in that direction and it's come back to bite them. They have incredible inertia and customers who aren't nearly as forgiving (it's hard to criticize something when you've been so zealous about it). We can argue about how well it was implemented (poorly) but Microsoft tried to take a step in breaking down some of the issues with old code and broke or made inconvenient many packages that were written with poor privilege escalation. Customers were furious.

Re:Both will stay relevant

[onion834]

You're a hell of a guy. Next you'll be letting her go outside without a burqa.

hey!!

Re:Both will stay relevant

[Bwian_of_Nazareth]

No, it is not the final product - you have to factor in how much money/effort was needed. How the product changes thru time. You cannot equate the product and the development method. Yes, the development method influences how the product will be successful. But it is not the only influence.

Re:Both will stay relevant

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

OSX is as incompatible with OS9 as Linux is to Windows. You could get the same results by doing a seamless integration of virtual box...

IApple's OS X seamlessly ran OS 9 applications such that some novice users didn't know or care whether an application they were running was written for OS X or OS 9. Linux could implement similar technology to run Windows and try to get it working as well as Apple's classic mode did... but no Linux distro I ever used did this.

OS X ran OS 9 software. The mechanism by which it did this is irrelevant to users. It was compatible in every way that mattered to users.

Re:Both will stay relevant

[dubbreak]

You're a hell of a guy. Next you'll be letting her go outside without a burqa.

It'd be pretty ignorant to not understand that some days a burqa is suitable attire and other days it's more of a slacks, sweat shirt and balaclava type of day.

Re:Both will stay relevant

[R.Mo_Robert]

Great idea, although I think you might be giving Microsoft too much credit with regards to being able to even make a new operating system that's better than Windows. But if they did, that would definitely be a great way to do it--and perhaps the .NET Framework can be something like Carbon that, if used without native Win32 (or 64) API calls, will run on either without the need for a VM (well, other than .NET :)).

Re:Both will stay relevant

[rwa2]

I'd say both should stay relevant, if only so that applications that use them can apply proper IPC abstraction and interoperate with both (or even other desktop environments).

I like what I've seen from KDE, esp. in the KNOPPIX liveCDs. But I use pitifully little software from the environment... I run a minimal gnome-panel as a launcher and notification area, gnome-terminal since it's more minimalist than the KDE terminals, and sometimes Nautilus when I want a graphical filemanager. But that's pretty much it. Gnome leaves less of a mess in my process tree.

Re:Both will stay relevant

[WindBourne]

Why? You do not not allows your wife out without her's?

Of course, the real question should be, have you quit beating your wife?

Re:Both will stay relevant

[PrescriptionWarning]

the differences between OS9 and OSX were mostly under the hood as far as most people were concerned, so from that standpoint it was more similar for users as transitioning from Win 95/98 to XP to Vista. KDE 4 on the other hand made quite a few more radical changes from 3.5 from a user's standpoint. They could have done like Apple and attempt to keep the user's experience similar enough rather than trying to completely change their perception of what KDE is.

Re:Both will stay relevant

[slapout]

Ok, couple things:

1) You have a wife (and you're on slashdot)?

2) She knows how to use a computer?

2b) She knows how to use Linux?

Incredible!

Re:Both will stay relevant

[shutdown -p now]

Am I doing well in blending in?

Not really. Your post had not a single mention of any of the following topics that are key in any Slashdot discussion:

• evil Microsoft
• good Google
• Apple reality distortion field
• Ron Paul
• Soviet Russia
• Beowulf cluster
• our overlords
• Slashdot moderators
• Slashdot editors

Your premise that you can "write something completely unrelated to the article, summary, title and comments" only holds when you stick to one of the topics in the list above.

Re:Both will stay relevant

[21mhz]

And there is a lot more that technically can be configured, but only by editing undocumented gconf settings -- and since they're undocumented, they are subject to change at any time.

What exactly do you mean by undocumented? GConf schemas always provided a way to document values, and most applications use it. The user can read these documentation snippets in gconf-editor. The format even has proper l10n (at a certain cost to installed file size).

If you mean nobody commits to the settings staying there under names unchanged between releases, I'd like to hear how KDE documents its configuration values for .ini files or what have they.

Re:Both will stay relevant

[PopeRatzo]

Yes, the beatings have stopped.

I've also learned never to use phrases such as "I have always allowed a choice for my wife".

Language has meaning.

Re:Both will stay relevant

[imess]

Running old programs in a virtual machine doesn't necessarily create a good user experience

Re:Both will stay relevant

[Trogre]

KDE on the other hand, gives a lot more flexibility and power over the way you have things, but the trade off is complexity.

You should be using past tense there, friend.

KDE 4.2 is not the KDE we've grown to know and appreciate. Not by a long shot. I'm still using KDE 4.2 at home on my Athlon 2400+ and it is like wading through treacle. Nonconfigurable treacle. But I persevere in the hope that a 4.3 update will improve things.

At work, well I've moved to XFCE.

Re:Both will stay relevant

[nxtw]

But Microsoft did an Apple a while back, sort of. The Windows NT-line (Windows NT/2K/XP/Vista) broke backward compatibility with the Windows 3.x/9x/ME line, but only to a degree. Some hardware and software work, but others do not.

Well, not really. Microsoft developed sufficient code to run DOS and 16-bit Windows API applications on 32-bit Windows in a small VM; this has been a part of every 32-bit version of Windows.

The driver models & kernel implementations definitely changed. WDM drivers can be targeted to run on 98se, Me, and NT5 and later.

Win32 has been supported since the early nineties and has yet to be deprecated as a whole. New API calls have been added and old ones are deprecated as necessary. The 64-bit version of the Win32 API doesn't really introduce anything new; it's the same API, but for 64-bit applications.

If an application making only Win32 calls fails to work on the latest version of NT, there is a good chance it was not written correctly in the first place. Most applications in Windows should not make a Native API call in any situation - even if functions (like GDI) are implemented in the kernel, they should be called using the standard Win32 API.

Compare to Apple, who had to rework the Toolbox API into Carbon and run pre-Carbon apps in a VM running the full Classic Mac OS. Toolbox apps had to be "Carbonized".

Re:Both will stay relevant

[Hurricane78]

Don't you realize it? Then it would relate to Slashdot! Now we wouldn't want that, would we? ^^

So you must be new here, to not realize, that your list, is the definition of what Slashdot really is. ;)

Re:Both will stay relevant

[Risen888]

On the other side if the latest Windows would be totally incompatible with your 2.5 year old machine people would complain a lot.

Funny you should mention that. The latest version of Windows is incompatible with people's 2.5 year old machines. People have in fact been complaining.

Re:Both will stay relevant

[MarsianMan]

Yeah, that's what a $15 in the billion in the bank means....terrible business models.

Re:Both will stay relevant

[aliquis]

According to PC World, the requirements are:

1GHz processor (32- or 64-bit)
1GB of main memory
16GB of available disk space
Support for DX9 graphics with 128MB of memory (for the Aero interface)
A DVD-R/W drive

??

if you have less than that you must really suck. I guess RAM is the most likely upgrade candidate and that will cost what? 10$?

Compare that to the price of a new mac pro (vs a quad G5 one.)

Re:Both will stay relevant

[Risen888]

That's nice. PC World is full of horseshit. Have you seen Vista on a machine with 1GB of memory and a 1Ghz processor? Really?

Re:Both will stay relevant

[aliquis]

No, I haven't used Vista at all, I ran OS X hack when it was released and have a MBP now.

Re:Both will stay relevant

[badkarmadayaccount]

That's nice and all, but is there a technical reason they can't agree on the damned toolkit?

Gnome alienating users

[HvitRavn]

Instead of planning for a 3.0 release, GNOME is opting for a gradual, piece by piece updating that will culminate in a 2.30 release. The change in version numbers is significant: It indicates that, unlike with the KDE 4 series, there will be no major break with past releases. This philosophy was obvious long before it became official last summer, and has the obvious advantage of not alienating users.

In my opinion, despite Gnome's incremental approach, they are still highly successive in alienating their users.

Re:Gnome alienating users

[BrokenHalo]

In my opinion, despite Gnome's incremental approach, they are still highly successive in alienating their users.

That, sadly, is true. I've been a big fan of Gnome since ~version 1.0, but have lost count of instances where the developers have arbitrarily decided that the way I like to get something done is no longer cool or trendy, so they break it.

Having said that, I do try occasionally to give KDE a fair go. But I have never managed to last more than a couple of weeks. I just find the interface unnecessarily cluttered, and it makes me cranky. Or crankier than normal, anyway.

At least neither of them are bad enough to drive me into the arms of Microsoft...

Re:Gnome alienating users

[coaxial]

GNOME has been stupid from a UX approach from day 1. In the beginning it used to be a billion options each with "clever" names. And when Sun did their user study they found out (GASP!) those options were confusing. So they removed them all in a quest to taylor it for the mythical user that has never used a computer in his/her entire life.

For years GNOME was taking the worst ideas of windows and implementing them in an amateur way. Now they're adding the worst ideas from MacOSX as well. (GTk FileChooser I'm looking at you!)

I have no faith that anyone in the user interface group has any idea what they're doing.

Re:Gnome alienating users

[zbharucha]

I used Gnome for 3 years or so after which all the constant changing got the better of me. I switched to KDE but found it to be close to unuseable (OK - I started using KDE just when that horrible 4.0 version came out). Then I found what I was looking for - XFCE. It has everything I need, does not hog resources with all the unnecessary bells and whistles and just works. I don't think I'll switch to anything else in the near future unless I decide to go xmonad.

Re:Gnome alienating users

[Anonymous Coward]

I still use KDE 3.5 or whatever. I also often use iceWM and it what I am using now. Its even lighter than XFCE.

Re:Gnome alienating users

[Anonymous Coward]

Just today I was using that Nautilus thing to browse files over a SSH connection. That's nice functionality, and I know KDE has it.

Does KDE have the feature that means that switching from Icon view to List view requires the entire directory listing to be re-fetched from the remote site. In this case a few thousand files ...

Re:Gnome alienating users

[David Gerard]

Nope! fish:// caches. It does fetch the directory every now and then, though hitting F5 will do it explicitly.

You can of course test this - if you have it installed, you can run Konqueror from inside GNOME perfectly well. Looks weird but the functionality is there.

Re:Gnome alienating users

[cp.tar]

After Gnome 1.4, i.e. ever since the 2.0 switch, they've done the most they could to piss me off.
Nowadays I flutter from Gnome to KDE to Enlightenment, depending on the machine, and each has its good and bad sides. But Gnome I like the least.

Anyway, back on topic... it's the evolution vs. revolution debate, for the most part, and even though I am a big fan of the evolutionary approach, it is sometimes too slow to be of much use. I prefer KDE's approach in this matter: there are new technologies, new needs, new competition; therefore there is a need to redesign, even if it means starting from scratch. Good lessons do not become unlearned; in fact, they can be implemented even better, not as a fix, but as a design philosophy. Gnome's evolutionary approach often means sticking to a bad decision and then forcing it on new stuff, which is why I dislike it.

IANA Interface Designer. YMMV. IMO & the usual disclaimers.

Re:Gnome alienating users

[ion.simon.c]

...if you have it installed, you can run Konqueror from inside GNOME perfectly well.

This is why most of the "KDE vs. GNOME" arguments are fuckin' pointless. You can run KDE apps under a Gnome environment and vice versa. There's no lock-in here. (I guess that you'll have some ~200MB of libs sitting around that you don't use all that often, so this functionality doesn't come without a price. OTOH, disks are cheap ATM.)

Re:Gnome alienating users

[ion.simon.c]

(OK - I started using KDE just when that horrible 4.0 version came out).

4.0 should never have been packaged. 4.2 is nice. _If_ you ever get a hankering to try out KDE again, know that 4.0 was *never* supposed to hit an end-user's computer. It was a tech preview for developers. :)

Re:Gnome alienating users

[ion.simon.c]

I just find the interface unnecessarily cluttered, and it makes me cranky.

What do you think of this interface?
http://simoncion.wargameweaver.com/pix/kde4_svn_desktop.jpeg (Warning. Huge JPEG alert! [Screenshot taken from a dual 1600x1200px screen setup.])
The black rectangle below the urxvt icon is the system tray. The icons in it recently stopped display correctly. I have yet to diagnose the problem or file a bug. (/me loves living on the bleeding edge!) Also, that "Folders" windows that the cursor is on vanishes when Dolphin doesn't have focus. It can also be docked in the Dolphin window.

Re:Gnome alienating users

[zbharucha]

I realized that pretty soon. So I reluctantly switched back to Gnome. Then, when 4.2 was released, I thought I'd try it out again. Sure enough, my opinion did not change. I'm from India and I live in Edinburgh. I thought it would be nice to have clocks displaying the two different time zones on KDE's "desktop". When I went through the list of time zones, I was utterly shocked to find that there wasn't even one for any city in India. On the contrary there were some really stupid time zones in there which I'm quite sure 99% of users will never use. Of course, I could have filed a bug report or looked deeper into the matter. But, my laziness coupled with this very bad experience of basic functionality just drove me to give up on KDE once and for all. That's when I switched to XFCE and I haven't looked back since. How did I solve my clock problem? I just added a little widget on my google.com/ig page which displays the two time zones that I need without any hassle.

Re:Gnome alienating users

[David Gerard]

There's also memory. But most of that's swapped out.

Re:Gnome alienating users

[jw3]

Well, in my case, the reverse is true. I started as a KDE fan (back in 1997 or 8), and the more and more I have seen and --- later -- experienced with GNOME, the more I liked GNOME. Every GNOME release seems -- for me -- to bring me closer to my personal optimum. As it is now, it is for me already fantastically simple and friendly, and the moments when I need to focus at all on the Desktop environment are really rare.

Instead of annyoing me with whatever they change from release to release, the GNOME developers actually succeed to make my user experience better. So then again: the way the desktop system evolves (revolution vs evolution) is also a matter of taste.

Moreover -- since this opinion seems to be missing from the debate -- I want to stress that I actually prefer someone else doing usability decisions. Beyond a few very basic things, I have little or no interest in configuring the desktop look and behaviour. And default GNOME settings seem to be more and more suited to my taste (in contrast to KDE and Windows, and similar to MacOS).

All that I'm saying is: hello, I belong to the target group of GNOME developers, and I kinda like the way it evolves.

j.

Re:Gnome alienating users

[h4rm0ny]

I really feel for the poor KDE developers with the slating that 4.0 got. It came out with the statement that it wasn't ready for end user use, but was for developers to get an early start on. When you downloaded it, the page said it wasn't stable and to use 3.5. The Kubunutu distribution (and others) stayed with KDE3.5. If you wanted to get the KDE4 version of Kubunutu you had to go to a separate page where it said this build was less stable and more intended for developers and people who wanted to experiment.

What happened? People downloaded it in droves and started complaining en masse online about how it wasn't ready. Poor, poor KDE developers. ;9

I think it will pay off well though in the long run. KDE4.2 is already a good system and it clearly has the basis for much more in the near future. For developers, from the little playing around I've done, it's absolutely great and QT promises easier portability. I've alternated between Gnome and KDE over the few years, but I think I'll be sticking with KDE for a while this time.

Re:Gnome alienating users

[perryizgr8]

How did I solve my clock problem? I just added a little widget on my google.com/ig page which displays the two time zones that I need without any hassle.

so you're basically saying that you could just as easily have solved your problem on kde? according to you xfce doesn't have the features kde has but you still left kde due to "lack of basic functionality". so you moved to a window manager with even less functionality, right?
why?

Re:Gnome alienating users

[zbharucha]

Because even though it lacks all the "functionality" and the shiny handles and levers, it does not frustrate me. Furthermore, I did not _need_ the clocks to reside on the desktop. I decided to try to use them because they were there. I check iGoogle every time I focus the Firefox window anyway. So having the clocks there instead of on the desktop makes them more useable.

Re:Gnome alienating users

[Xtravar]

Exactly. The whole reason I use Linux is because the system is configured from the get-go the way I like. Gnome follows through with that on the UI end. Also, the developer end.

IMO if it takes more than a half hour to configure your OS settings, then you're using the wrong OS or doing it wrong. It used to take me a whole damn day to get Windows set up the way I wanted.

Re:Gnome alienating users

[Quantumstate]

I do use Gnome and like it but some of the development decisions do seem to be slightly off. Recently there was a mess with the session restore functionality which they are trying to switch to a new system but they removed the old one before they had finished the new so the 2.24 release just has a piece of UI which does not do anything. It may be good changing the system but putting a broken new one into a release isn't the way to do it.

Re:Gnome alienating users

[SanityInAnarchy]

I don't care much about which is used -- arguably, a revolution was needed. I have only two observations here:

First, KDE4 changed quite a lot, but things could still segfault. There are languages which don't segfault, and I'd really prefer a rock solid GUI in something like Ruby or Python than a lightning-fast, unstable GUI in C++.

And second, KDE4 managed to completely fuck up the accepted convention of stable/unstable version numbers, and generally fuck up the transition period. Users were confused about which version they should use -- KDE3 was hopelessly out of date, but KDE4 wasn't nearly ready, and the same could be said for just about every KDE app, especially Amarok.

Seriously, the Linux 2.4 to 2.6 kernel upgrade was less painful. Why? Because the features people really needed from 2.6 were backported to 2.4, so no one felt "forced" to upgrade. And because they waited until 2.6 was done before releasing it -- they kept it as the clear development version (2.5) until then.

Re:Gnome alienating users

[SanityInAnarchy]

So, was there anything frustrating you other than this one feature, which xfce lacks anyway?

Re:Gnome alienating users

[SanityInAnarchy]

Well, firstly, they called it 4.0. A dot-oh release generally means stable. Why couldn't they call it 3.9, or 4.0 alpha?

And second, 4.1 sucked quite a lot as well -- yet that is what Kubuntu Intrepid shipped with. And that's not "for developers" -- there was no KDE3 version of Kubuntu to download.

Re:Gnome alienating users

[zbharucha]

Tons of them. Another thing I noticed was that whenever I clicked something in that horrible Dolphin manager, Amarok would start up and start playing music for no good reason. I never got used to not being able to have icons on the desktop and in general, it was just very slow. But anyway, I'm not trying to bring KDE down here. I'm sure it's very good. All I'm saying is that it's not for me. I have been using Linux for a few years now and I'm sure that each of those issues could have had easy fixes. I'm just lazy, I suppose. And I'm not one for eye candy. Thus, the switch to XFCE was, for me, the smart thing to do.

Re:Gnome alienating users

[SanityInAnarchy]

Another thing I noticed was that whenever I clicked something in that horrible Dolphin manager, Amarok would start up and start playing music for no good reason.

KDE defaults to a single click to open things. So if you were clicking a music file, that makes sense. If you wanted to do something other than open it, right-click.

I never got used to not being able to have icons on the desktop

There was always the ability to put a file manager widget on the desktop, and it does default to showing you the same Desktop folder GNOME does. It is now possible to use that as the background, though I'm not sure if you can put widgets on top of it.

in general, it was just very slow.

On older hardware, turn off compositing. On newer hardware, I haven't seen an issue.

But then, this one is hard to argue. If it's slow for you, it's slow.

Re:Gnome alienating users

[ion.simon.c]

*blink*

The PP mentioned that the KDE interface was cluttered.
I showed him a picture of how I've configured my KDE interface, and asked him what he thought of it.
How is that offtopic?

*boggles*

Re:Gnome alienating users

[Homer1946]

I just want to add that KDE communication regarding 4.0 was horrible. They might have communicated its beta (or even alpha) status in one way, but naming conventions are also a type of communication and in their choice of 4.0 they communicated a different message. Therefore the KDE developers are clearly to blame for the misunderstanding. It would have been soooo easy to simply call it 4.0 beta.

Re:Gnome alienating users

[h4rm0ny]

4.0 was a huge break from the 3.x series. That's what moving to a different version number means. If it's incremental, you add to the number after the decimal point. You know that 4.0 was not incremental but was a substantial re-write, so it had to move to a new number. Unless you accidentally blundered into the Subversion repositories (who does that?) you couldn't download it without seeing a statement saying that it wasn't suitable for end user usage yet. If you ignore what the people who write the software tell you, it's your fault, not theirs.

Re:Gnome alienating users

[BrokenHalo]

How is that offtopic?

It's not.

Sorry, I thought I had replied, but obviously I got distracted by something shiny. :-)

Your screenshot is indeed not cluttered, but the environment does not consist of the desktop alone. Your screenshot does not show what most users would instantly recognise as a typical KDE environment.The native aplications (with their concomitant bells and whistles) also contribute to the clutter. Or klutter. ;-P

However, I have to agree that KDE4 is not as "in your face" as previous versions, and my antipathy is largely a matter of perception. Obviously, I also realise it is perfectly possible for Gnome or KDE to mimic each other (or even that strange thing from Redmond) at the desktop level.

Almost as an aside, I have observed that in the not-too-distant past, native KDE apps have been more feature-complete and less crash-prone than some of the gnomeish offerings, but unfortunately it seems the ball might have been dropped a few times with the transition to KDE4. I guess this is no worse than Gnome's fuckups with the transition to GTK2/Gnome2*, except that being so much later in the game, people are less inclined to forgive this immaturity.

Re:Gnome alienating users

[SanityInAnarchy]

If you ignore what the people who write the software tell you, it's your fault, not theirs.

And whose fault is it that it wasn't called 4.0 beta? Serously, how fucking hard is it to put a "beta" tag on it? Not that it was even beta quality, at that point...

Never mind that by 4.1, it's supposed to be end-user ready, and was shipped with Kubuntu, yet is still missing large chunks of functionality. 4.0 was just the most blatant form of that.

Re:Gnome alienating users

[badkarmadayaccount]

At least M$ got one thing right - it's called a "Advanced" button. Wonder when the KDE team will catch up...

Well, I think

[$RANDOMLUSER]

"Ripping the bandage off of the scab" is a pretty accurate description of KDE 4.

Re:Well, I think

[BadAnalogyGuy]

You could say it is an Open Sores project. So to speak...

Re:Well, I think

[Swizec]

I rather enjoyed that move. Never cared much for backwards compatibility when it comes to a DE as long as everything I need works and guess what, it does. So despite not having lost anything I, the user, have gained a lot of OOO SHINY SPARKLY AWESOME effect. And I like that. As a user that's exactly what I want my desktop to do.

Just, you know, don't ever use KDE's built-in effects library or whatever, Compiz all the way. KDE is great for them desktop widgets, which are far far better than having icons all over the place intermittently sprinkled with the dinosaur that is karamba.

Re:Well, I think

[EdgeyEdgey]

You could say it is an Open Sores project. So to speak...

Clap clap
Bravo!

gnome better than kde

[phatsphere]

spoiler, i'm a gnome fan, but not only because it is simple and i don't have to think about how to use it (after about 10 years of linux experience i want to focus on other things than silly desktop effects). I recently got kde 4.1 here at my office and the first thing which was really annoying is, that the "Dolphin" file manager eats about 200mb of ram almost instantly. That's simply not acceptable and is only the tip of the iceberg. At gnome, things are reduced to fit their purposes, repsond faster, eat less resources. Therefore i think, kde has a really long way to go and I don't think that gnome's gradual way has any problems for the next years... Netbooks and web-applications will demand new features and gnome is well prepared.

Re:gnome better than kde

[Lord Lode]

Reason I don't like Gnome, is because GTK simply isn't good. I mean, it can't even show a window inside a window to get MDI or floating toolbars. There are almost no complex programs with a good GUI in Linux (programs like photoshop, paint shop pro, 3ds max, ms office 2007, ...), because GTK doesn't support doing floating and dockable toolbars or multiple open files in a good way. Blender is one of the few programs with a complex well done interface in Linux, but they did the entire GUI in OpenGL I think, not using a library like GTK.

I don't know why, but this is related to the philosophy of Gnome and GTK and since I don't like that philosophy, I don't like Gnome either.

Re:gnome better than kde

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly some people decided that users are too stupid for MDI, don't be surprised if a future version of GNOME replaces those confusing moveable resizeable windows on your desktop with TABS.

And it looks like Qt agrees, as half the functions in the QMdiArea class are for using it in "tabs mode".

Re:gnome better than kde

[claytonjr]

Blender is one of the few programs with a complex well done interface in Linux...

I think that is debatable.

Re:gnome better than kde

[_merlin]

Have you considered that it could be a conscious decision, because MDIs and dockable toolbars are ugly and annoying? OSX doesn't use either of those UI paradigms, and developers don't cry out for them. As a user, I find OSX's floating, contextual inspector palettes to be much nicer than the mess of toolbars and dockable crap in visual studio. I'm getting a Linux box this week, and if Gnome doesn't have MDIs, I think that's one more thing to push me in that direction. (I think I'm going to choose Fedora as my distro.)

Re:gnome better than kde

[Lord Lode]

Yes, indeed I have considered that it is that decision. That is exactly the philosophy I don't like that I mentioned. That is the problem: the lacking features of GTK aren't due to lack of developers and time, but due to these decisions.

I'm not convinced of the advantage of these decisions. Also you say OSX doesn't use it, but OSX is conceptually a totally different type of dektop. In Linux, how something like Gimp looks, sucks.

Also, whether or not MDI is useful might differ from person to person, but I'm sure a lot of people, including me, like it, and there's no reason to leave it out from a proper GUI and desktop.

Re:gnome better than kde

[ion.simon.c]

In Linux, how something like Gimp looks, sucks.

Why? Be specific.

(I ask 'cause I'm a programmer who has been shoehorned into a UI designer role. Also, I like how The Gimp's UI functions, so understanding the opposing viewpoint helps me to become a better UI designer. [maybe])

Re:gnome better than kde

[ion.simon.c]

The first thing which was really annoying is, that the "Dolphin" file manager eats about 200mb of ram almost instantly.

Hi. Many things have changed since KDE 4.1. Over here (running KDE 4.2.1), Dolphin has a virtual size of ~71MB and a resident working set of ~20MB. You might want to look into upgrading.

$ ps -eo vsize,rss,comm | grep dolphin | grep -v grep
71652 20868 dolphin
$ dolphin --version
Qt: 4.5.0
KDE: 4.2.1 (KDE 4.2.1)
Dolphin: 1.2.1

Ah. Something that I just thought of... is your version of KDE an optimized build? (I'm not sure that this would make *very* much difference at all, but...) Over in my full debug version of KDE SVN trunk, Dolphin has a virtual size of ~128MB and a resident size of ~28MB.

$ ps -eo vsize,rss,comm | grep dolphin | grep -v grep
128268 28532 dolphin
$ dolphin --version
Qt: 4.5.0
KDE: 4.2.68 (KDE 4.2.68 (KDE 4.3 >= 20090327))
Dolphin: 1.2.80

Re:gnome better than kde

[Anonymous Coward]

>Blender is one of the few programs with a complex
>well done interface in Linux

Are you joking ?

http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/features/

Re:gnome better than kde

[ion.simon.c]

Blender is one of the few programs with a complex well done interface in Linux...

I think that is debatable.

It is debatable. IMO, Blender's UI is good in the same way that VIM's UI is good. Complex, hard to learn, but powerful and correct. :)

Re:gnome better than kde

[Lord Lode]

If I have Gimp open, then there are different windows. Each toolbar is a window, each open painting is a window.

Say I'm working in Gimp, then check some post on slashdot. Then I want to continue working in Gimp. I open the browser window to open the slashdot post. The browser window goes in front of all Gimp's windows, which is normal. Then I want to paint again. I click on the painting. Only that painting goes in front of the browser, not the toolbars, none of them. So I need to click multiple times to have all gimp windows back.

I want to have the whole thing back if I want to continue painting.

Second disadvantage is the clutter in the taskbar if every single toolbar of gimp makes its own button there.

I want ONE button in my taskbar of the gimp window and if I click it I want EVERYTHING to pop up.

Now, the Gimp designers claim this is fixed by using desktop hints. But my desktop, KDE 3.5, doesn't listen to those hints. They consider that to be a bug of my desktop, but I think that is a stubborn reasoning of them. They have to create their program so that it works on a desktop, it doesn't work the opposite way.

Do the makers of photoshop make their program behave stupid and claim it's Windows' fault that it behaves stupid? No, they make sure their program WORKS in the desktop that people use.

The makers of Gimp should also make it work properly.

Re:gnome better than kde

[MemoryDragon]

The floating toolbars in osx have a load of problems, including constantly being hidden in the background somewhere when you need them because they do not stay on top. The reason osx never has used mdi simply was it is not really possible in osx in its metaphor of having the toolbar on top, every osx application sort of is mdi but the mdi is the desktop. I am not sure if this is the correct approach, my guess is either approach has its fair share of problems!

Re:gnome better than kde

[ion.simon.c]

Are you talking about the "Utility Window" hinting that you can use for various windows in the Gimp? I've only seen that work correctly under Windows. (Ironic, no?)
OTOH, the KDE taskbar makes a new entry for the Firefox Preferences window. :) I'm not sure that there's anything that can be done to hide from the taskbar.
*does some research* Ah! Under KDE 4 it seems that the "torn off menu" hinting is what they really need to hide the a window from the KDE taskbar. (Not that you care... I'mma bookmark this on my LJ for my notes later.)

So I need to click multiple times to have all gimp windows back.

Or minimize the browser window, or use multiple desktops. :) But yeah... On the one hand, there should be a "link all Gimp windows' Z-order" option that you could enable. OTOH, that sort of thing is supposed to be determined by the window manager.

Your complaints are *very* valid. I hope that you don't get the impression that I'm blowing you off. To summarize: You're not complaining about the "million windows" interface of The Gimp, you're complaining about how most window managers don't make it easy to work with applications that use such an interface? If you had your one button that popped EVERYTHING up, would that resolve your beef with the Gimp UI? Or is there more than just that?

I wonder how icky the WM code is inside the Gimp...

Re:gnome better than kde

[Anonymous Coward]

i use gimp 2.6 in gnome. each image you open gets one taskbar entry. when you click one, it brings up all the dialogs too.

Re:gnome better than kde

[windsurfer619]

it can't even show a window inside a window to get MDI or floating toolbars

And I thank the foss gods every day for that.

Re:gnome better than kde

[robmv]

Same here, Fedora 10, GNOME with Metacity WM

Re:gnome better than kde

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if you have taken the time to learn Blender. If not you are arguing out of your ass.

Re:gnome better than kde

[houghi]

I like neither and am happily using Windowmaker despite the fact that people say it isn't a windowsmanager/deskmananager/whatever. It nicely shows what I need in the place that I need it.

Almost all the things that people see as an advantage in GNOME or KDE are things that I do not want. Luckily there is a choice. I use KDE programs and GNOME programs and others as well. My distro lets me select if I want one, the other, XFCE or with a bit more clicking all or none or something else altogether.

So to me it is easy. Windowmaker to put the programs where they need to be and then any GUI program

Re:gnome better than kde

[Anonymous Coward]

You are wrong. And the more applications you load upp, the more wrong you will be. But I guess there's no point in telling you that. Enjoy your delusions.

Re:gnome better than kde

[Anonymous Coward]

the window-in-windows paradigm of photoshop is one of the worst i've *ever* seen. You already have a windowing system, why invent a new one or make it recursive?

but 'dockability' would be nice for both windows and toolbars.

Re:gnome better than kde

[LWATCDR]

I actually like MDI for some tasks. Even Apple uses an MDI of sorts in Safari. What do you think a Tabbed browser really is?
Okay so KDE 3.5 doesn't listen to the hints? And that is Gimps fault? What about KDE 4? What about Gnome? Does it work there?
"Do the makers of photoshop make their program behave stupid and claim it's Windows' fault that it behaves stupid? No, they make sure their program WORKS in the desktop that people use."
Which people? Gimp runs on Linux, OS/X, Windows, BSD, and Solaris... Probably a few more.
If you ran Photoshop under Wine and it work wonky would you call up Adobe and pitch a fit?
Try Gimp under Gnome and see if it has the same issues. Then try it under KDE 4.x.

Also Gnome and KDE both offers a multi desktop interface. You could open your browser on one and keep one dedicated to Gimp. Actually a nice option for a lot of people. Just like Spaces on the Mac.

I do think that having an MDI as an option is a good thing. I think that tool bars can even be useful even though I think they tend to be abused to death. And tabs are a nice UI option as well for some applications.
I am all about choice but some of your complaints seems miss directed.

Re:gnome better than kde

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh! Not MDI! That was one of the worst things MS every thought of.

Re:gnome better than kde

[not already in use]

GTK simply isn't good

Exactly. Gnome is fundamentally broken because GTK is antiquated. I for one applaud KDE for having the balls to break everything for the sake of advancement. If a few other key components of the Linux desktop would do the same (x.org comes to mind, do away with the client/server paradigm,among many other things...), Desktop Linux might actually be somewhere in 3-4 years.

Re:gnome better than kde

[Hatta]

Reason I don't like Gnome, is because GTK simply isn't good. I mean, it can't even show a window inside a window to get MDI

Sup dawg, I heard you liked windows so I... nevermind.

Re:gnome better than kde

[pizzach]

You haven't tried 2.6 then. It has floating windows much like Photoshop Mac does and drops menubars for the non main window. On my computer, the two palette title bars are smaller and the do not disappear behind your image click it. These are huge changes. Since gtk stands for the gimp toolkit, these things should be coming to your standard gtk.

The window manager is also going to support application based window management much like Mac OS X. (If you don't believe me, look at the metacity gconf settings.) For this to happen, better windows management has to happen. Or that my be wishful thinking. :-p

Re:gnome better than kde

[Hatta]

x.org comes to mind, do away with the client/server paradigm,among many other things...

Because taking away one of X's greatest features is going to make it better how?

This misconception comes up all the time. Applications need to communicate somehow, you might as well use Unix Domain Sockets. Once you have a protocol that runs over unix sockets, you can just as easily send it over TCP sockets. Network transparency comes essentially for free as a side effect of designing the local IPC efficiently.

Do you have a situation where you can demonstrate that the network transparency of X is a bottleneck? People have been harping on this issue for years, and no one has ever demonstrated such a bottleneck. There's no reason to believe it is a bottleneck at all.

Re:gnome better than kde

[yuna49]

200 MB for Dolphin? Not here. From 'ps aux' I get

27242 3.2 2.0 68056 21308 ? S 11:27 0:01 /usr/bin/dolphin

I see 60+ MB virtual and 20+ MB physical.

Kubuntu 9.04a6 with KDE 4.2

Firefox, on the other hand, has numbers more like 500 MB and 220 MB.

Re:gnome better than kde

[Anonymous Coward]

Tool palettes in OS X are almost always floating windows -- they can't be hidden behind anything except another floating window.

Re:gnome better than kde

[ADRA]

Maybe if you actually bothered to learn how X actually works, you wouldn't be so quick to burn it.

Unless you make 'X' a kernel mode process (ala MAC/Windows) saving you a single context switch per operation, there is very little to be done that hinders modern X systems from being performance positive.

Re:gnome better than kde

[not already in use]

Do you have a situation where you can demonstrate that the network transparency of X is a bottleneck?

I'm trying to dig up a PDF I read on the subject a while back. Part of the problem is that since it was meant to run over a network the protocol is asynchronous by nature. This introduces all sorts of possible weirdness that is completely unnecessary. There are clearly issues with the driver model since Nvidia is the only vendor that managed to release a driver with full acceleration by bypassing x.org's own facilities.

If Linux is not Unix, why does it still carry around all this cruft? Desktop Linux starts with a new display manager.

Re:gnome better than kde

[bjourne]

No one gives a shit about network transparency. It is a totally meaningless buzzword engineers like to tout but doesn't mean anything in the real world. X is mostly network transparent, X clients aren't. You have to be very careful to avoid unnecessary round-trips which introduces latency and makes your application dog slow. The Windows shell is decidedly not network transparent, but RemoteDesktop and VNC still works with it.

To understand why people are complaining about X, try resizing a window quickly. Do the same operation on windows. It doesn't matter what computer you are using, on X you get flicker. Try opening a bunch of apps on one workspace, then move away and to that workspace. Notice how each window is redrawn one by one, first the frame and then the window contents. That is also an effect of X's client-server architecture. If you use some other OS than Linux so you have something to compare with, it is easy to understand why people complain on X.

Re:gnome better than kde

[TheBig1]

can't even show a window inside a window to get MDI

That's a feature, not a bug. MDI should have died a long time ago.

Cheers

Re:gnome better than kde

[cinderblock]

MDIs and dockable toolbars are ugly and annoying

Those little floating toolbars are the most annoying things in the world. Every time I try to do something they're in the way. And I find docked to be much more elegant than something that you can't figure out where to put so you just leave it floating.

I was sooo happy when Photoshop (CS3?) moved to dockable toolbars. They even did a really nice job of it. And they left the choice open to the user. Why restrict someone that might have a different working style?

This is also one of the big things keeping me from using OSX as my main OS. That and the common ribbon menu at the top... Apps should be in their single main window, with the occasional popup.

But I do love the contextual inspector palettes like in M$ Office and SolidWorks.

Re:gnome better than kde

[Anonymous Coward]

X11's network transparency isn't great, because all drawing happens clientside anyway, and then needs to be pushed serverside.

I'd welcome a next generation network transparent display server that provided a vector drawing API with enough expressiveness to render high quality SVG, possibly in retained mode so the client could perform animation / DOM manipulation without a lot of bandwidth.

Re:gnome better than kde

[s73v3r]

The OS X desktop metaphor is that the Window is the Document, not the app. Hence why the app menubar is always at the top, and why closing one window does not close the entire program. Compare this to the desktop metaphor in Windows, where the window is the application, and you can see how the two contrast. I do not know exactly what metaphor GNOME or KDE use, or if there is a consistent one throughout. Most apps follow the Windows one, where the window is the app. But then you get apps like GiMP, where they seem to follow the OS X document metaphor.

Re:gnome better than kde

[ChaosDiscord]

To understand why people are complaining about X, try resizing a window quickly.

Right. Let's open up Slashdot in another window and resize it. That was kinda dull. Maybe I need to go faster. No, still dull. Let's keep resizing it. Nope. Still dull. Why am I doing this?

It doesn't matter what computer you are using, on X you get flicker.

This big black and grey box to my right appears to be a computer of some sort. And when I logged in the big logo assured me that this was Red Hat Enterprise 5. Yet I'm seeing no flicker. Firefox is merrily re-rendering the contents just about as fast as I can see. Looks about the same as Vista to me.

I was going to say that occasionally resizing is slow because the poor application is doing a lot of work, usually a web browser reflowing a complex page, but that I saw this on both Windows and Linux. But I can't remember the last time that happened on either platform.

Try opening a bunch of apps on one workspace, then move away and to that workspace.

Right. Back and forth I go. This is still dull. Why am I doing this?

Notice how each window is redrawn one by one, first the frame and then the window contents.

Erm, no? They redraw nice and zippy.

Now, I have seen the behavior you describe. Of course, I only see it when the application or applications on a particular workspace haven't been used for a long time. On the order of hours. Then it takes a while to draw. But that's not a matter of X, that's a matter of the program having been swapped out to disk, and needing to wait for it to get back into RAM.

At home I run Vista on a quad core machine with 4Gb of RAM. It's pretty zippy. I run Ubuntu on a much lower end laptop. It's also pretty zippy. I occasionally use my wife's Mac. It's also pretty zippy. As I switch back and forth between these platforms, I never get frustrated that any of the GUIs feels slow. They all feel like fast, responsive modern GUIs. X11 on Linux has felt this way, well, not forever, but for long enough that I can't remember when it was slower than Windows. Maybe 5 or so years? Maybe longer?

Clearly the crippling limitations of X's architecture are less severe than you suggest.

Re:gnome better than kde

[kostmo]

...because GTK doesn't support doing floating and dockable toolbars or multiple open files in a good way

I use gtk.HandleBox for detachable toolbars and gtk.Notebook for detachable tabs. It's a good way.

Re:gnome better than kde

[Anonymous Coward]

a filesystem, using my precious rams?! how dare it!

Re:gnome better than kde

[nikwax]

> $ ps -eo vsize,rss,comm | grep dolphin | grep -v grep

Eek: try $ ps -eo vsize,rss,comm | grep [d]olphin

Much easier ...

Re:gnome better than kde

[spitzak]

You have valid complaints but you are lacking with solutions. The basic problem is a bug copied from Windows, and your "solutions" are the same workarounds everybody has been forced to use on Windows, and forced to do for so long that nobody seems to even realize that there was another way at one time.

Here is how to fix it for real, but the Gnome and freedesktop and even Windows users refuse to hear me:

Step ONE: STOP RAISING THE WINDOWS WHEN THE USER CLICKS ON THEM!!!!!!

Step TWO: Gimp could then raise it's own windows, including the toolbars, when the painting is clicked on.

Wow, that was hard! But I have been trying to fight this for probably 15 years. It is hopeless, and this crap can be laid right on Microsoft for making their system do this, and a lot of clueless people who just cannot see the easy solution, and so they suggest MDI and "dockable toolbars" and all kinds of other crap in order to work around Microsoft's stupid bugs and Gnome/KDE/everybody's slavish copying of them.

Re:gnome better than kde

[spitzak]

PS: Gimp does not work even in Gnome for me in Ubuntu 8.04, however it does work in 8.10, even if you have multiple images open. Clicking either image raises it and the toolbars, but not the other image. And you only get an entry for each image in the taskbar.

However I think my complaint still stands. I'm sure Gimp and Metacity do this with a whole raft of complex window properties, while my solution is absurdly trivial.

Of course they may have done it "right" with a single window property, which was "don't raise this window when the user clicks on it" but I am quite willing to bet they did not figure this out and have instead made the 100x more complicated solution.

PS: I'm sure somebody will argue with me about this. Please before arguing, get the following fact through your skull: A program can raise it's own window. Any argument that ignores this fact is invalid.

Re:gnome better than kde

[spitzak]

True but for complex programs (of which ours is one example) we cannot use the OSX floating windows. The problem is that they disappear if you go to another application. This is great if they have trivial information in them, but if you put any kind of complicated information in that somebody wants to refer to when using another program, they are useless.

Both Windows and Linux keep child windows on screen when the program is not active (well I suppose some Linux WM could hide them but never saw one do that).

On OSX we instead use some other hints so the windows stay on top but they are not the floating windows that the system wants us to use.

Ignore this line it is here to try to get Slashdot to allow me to submit.

Re:gnome better than kde

[spitzak]

You are incorrect.

The problem with X window resizing is because two different asynchronous programs are drawing parts of the window: the window manager draws the border and the program draws the interior. On Windows, in effect, the system draws the border and then calls a function from the program to draw the interior, so they are always in sync, ie they always draw in the same order and one after another.

This certainly is a problem and X should be fixed (by (HORRORS!) letting programs draw their own window borders). However it is not due to communication speed or latency and thus your argument against it is invalid.

Re:gnome better than kde

[Anonymous Coward]

The hell we don't. I've use network transparent X every day for the last ~5 years to run cpu-intensive apps on large unix systems and get the display on my desk.

Re:gnome better than kde

[Anonymous Coward]

Client side windows resolve a lot of the issue around flickering. I don't know what the status of this is in Qt, but there's work being done on it in Gtk.

Re:gnome better than kde

[Anonymous Coward]

How about when you minimize the image window but the tool windows stay visible and have no minimize buttons of their own (GIMP 2.6.3 and GNOME 2.24.1 in Ubuntu 8.10)? This definitely seems like a bug on someone's part.

I'm also annoyed when I close my only open image, but GIMP stays open with its placeholder image. If you're not going to have separate close buttons for the document and the app, à la Photoshop, it seems like closing the program would be the best default behavior when there's only one document open. The user should definitely be able to end the program with one click.

Don't get me wrong, I love GIMP and appreciate all the work that goes into it. It's just that these piddly little problems can be incredibly frustrating, especially when they seem like they'd be so easy to resolve (I'm not a programmer, so hopefully we can skip the whole "submit a patch" thing).

Re:gnome better than kde

[Ant P.]

Erm, no? They redraw nice and zippy.

Actually I _can_ see it on mine... it takes almost 2 tenths of a second to redraw 4 windows and the panel thing when I change desktops.

Obviously I could never have this problem on Vista - it won't run on my 2002 PC at all, nor does it have multiple desktops.

Re:gnome better than kde

[badkarmadayaccount]

True, though I still get a feeling that requiring twice as many context switches for a graphical operation in comparison with Windows is eating up useful performance. Unless Unix sockets are user mode based, in which case you can ignore this post.

Re:gnome better than kde

[MemoryDragon]

Yes and the funny thing is, people constantly cry why the gimp has no mdi while photoshop has it.
The gimp probably is closer to photoshop mac than photoshop Windows itself...

Since I work mostly on OSX nowadays, I must say, that probably the GIMP is the perfect photshop replacement UI wise, but only if you use the mac version (which most graphics professionals use)

But as I said I am not too fond of this metaphor and osx is moving away from it as well trying to dock all the floating windows into sidebars, which works for less complex applications but it does not work out for more complex ones

Neither, thanks.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather use neither, thanks, because they both suck sucktasticfully.

Re:being reduced to an imitator rather than innova

[Tubal-Cain]

Yes, because we all know you have to throw out the baby with the bathwater every 5 years to "innovate". Uh huh.

Not every five years, just whenever it becomes easier to redesign and rebuild rather than tack on.

Re:being reduced to an imitator rather than innova

[Chainsaw]

Strange. I seem to recall the GNOME project being started because of KDE using the Qt toolkit, and then trying to catch up with KIOSlaves, DCOP, KParts and other superior technologies in the KDE camp.

Both have evolved too in leaps and bounds

[G3ckoG33k]

From the article you get the impression that KDE use radical changes whereas Gnome strive in little steps...

How in accurate. Both evolve in little steps and both occasionally make radical changes.

Gnome had a major remake for 2.0 which reduced the older clotted layout.

KDE had a major remake for 4.0 which vectorized most of the gui.

Otherwise, changes are small. For both.

.

Re:Both have evolved too in leaps and bounds

[v(*_*)vvvv]

I tend to agree. Feels like the author is just writing to meet his quota. Whether KDE or GNOME comes out ahead in the coming years, I doubt it would have anything to do with what is said in this article.

Re:Both have evolved too in leaps and bounds

[sarathmenon]

KDE has already done it with KDE 2.0 (which IIRC was before GNOME 2.0) which was a complete overhaul from what KDE 1.x was. Doing this in the 20th century was easy, but with the current user base and dependencies, it takes a lot of guts to shelf away backwards compatibility. I was first frustrated with what they did, but the more I look at it, this seems the better choice for them in the long run.

Re:Both have evolved too in leaps and bounds

[shutdown -p now]

Wasn't KDE 2->3 also a major change (particularly moving from Qt2 to Qt3)? I recall it used to look a bit different then, too.

Gnome = windows, while KDE = OSX?

[Part`A]

So Gnome is like windows in that it tries to keep old bit of code comptatible no matter how painful it is, while KDE is happy to break things to get them right?

Re:Gnome = windows, while KDE = OSX?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you need to compare with Windows/OSX? Why can't KDE/GNOME have their own taste?

Re:Gnome = windows, while KDE = OSX?

[uchian]

It is a very good point to be made, and an article by Joel On Software from back in 2004 made it well (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html) - Microsoft keeps a lot of it's market share by remaining backwards compatible.

One of the reasons vista was a disaster was due to the amount of old software that it broke. However, most of this software was third party, closed source with no upgrade route.

On linux, most (all?) of the software that users use comes packaged with the distro of their choice, and so has a some guarantee that at some point it will be upgraded to run on the new version.

Indeed, my bigger lament is that you can forget about gnome or kde breaking compatibility because it doesn't matter; fundamental changes to a linux system come into play and break compatibility much earlier. New versions of gcc and glibc cause much more immediate headaches if you are trying to support a linux application over multiple distributions.

Re:Gnome = windows, while KDE = OSX?

[Hognoxious]

XP also had problems with some older software, but most of the ones I tried would run in one of the compatibility modes.

I don't think this uses a full blown emulator/virtual machine, but these technologies have advanced a lot since XP came out. So you could clean up the new version while running olders software under a VM if needed. Wouldn't that approach give the best of both worlds?

Re:Gnome = windows, while KDE = OSX?

[MrHanky]

Yes. And like KDE4, OS X only became usable with the second revision, 10.2. Hopefully, KDE 4.3 will be what Panther was to OS X.

The question is wrong

[VincenzoRomano]

It'd be: which team leaves the less behind? The KDE team seems very interested in new things and leaves a lot of old feature behind. The GNOME is more conservative but slower in advances. Try XFCE in the doubltd.

Re:The question is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Try this point of view: if you spent 2/3 years *remaking* most of the desktop shell would you just reimplement every single feature that previously took you ~5 years to reach or do you do the basics first and some neat stuff to show how flexible the new code is in order to attract new blood that might help you out to reach those old features in less time... and while adding new and exciting stuff?

Re:The question is wrong

[VincenzoRomano]

OK.
You design a brand new fantastic super eco-friendly car, but you leave behind the steering wheel, the door locks and one of the windows.
The new thing is actually exciting, but can also be useless.
The new re-design is to be released when it can replace the old one.

I want to use programs from both....

[Clarious]

... without having to install a bunch of dependencies, what about modularity? Both of them have their own advantages, and it is wiser to choose the best from them, not to choose one seperately. So I think they should better focusing on interoperability, that is the best for the user.

For now, if I want to use Kopete on my xfce desktop, I will have to spend 200+ MiBs of HDD, something that I don't want to do at all just for an IM programs.

Re:I want to use programs from both....

[CarpetShark]

You can do this just fine on Debian/Ubuntu. Choose a decent distro if you want decent installation options.

Re:I want to use programs from both....

[Kjella]

For now, if I want to use Kopete on my xfce desktop, I will have to spend 200+ MiBs of HDD, something that I don't want to do at all just for an IM programs.

The 1990s called and want their arguments back. Even the smallest Vertex SSD is 30GB. Detailed dependencies are hell, for example I'm pretty sure a great share of those 200MiB is icons. This applications uses new/open/edit/delete, that applications uses new user/edit user/remove user/search and so on. And for most people it won't make any differnce at all because they got plenty KDE apps using most any icon. It's a lot of work, and for what? Not much at all.

Re:Hail KDE 3.5

[Rik Sweeney]

I know that has been modded as funny (at time of writing), but the AC has a point. I used KDE 4.2 for about 4 hours before I gave up on it and went back to KDE 3.5. There weren't any major bugs, but there were simply loads of tiny bugs which all accumulated into massive annoyances:

* The desktop icons wouldn't remember their positions
* Konqueror wouldn't remember its settings
* Loads of minor graphical glitches (but this more the fault of the nVidia driver)

The biggest issue I came across was after I installed it, the Show Desktop widget corrupted after the first reboot. It did this on another machine too.

In fact, my laptop was so disappointed that the motherboard died...

Kubuntu Januty comes out in a few weeks but I'm going to stick to Hardy. Maybe I'll revisit KDE when 4.3 comes out.

XFCE 4 and GNUStep

[Colin Smith]

XFCE if you just need GTK libraries and a relatively fast and lightweight desktop.

GNUStep if you want to port back and forth between Mac/linux/*bsd.

Frankly, GNUStep would seem like the most sane option for most commercial vendors who want to support both Mac and Linux.

 

Re:XFCE 4 and GNUStep

[jdowland]

We must have been using a different GNUStep.

Re:XFCE 4 and GNUStep

[richlv]

what's wrong with qt on mac ?

Re:XFCE 4 and GNUStep

[pembo13]

I get the feeling he meant Qt or something.

KDE 4.2

[ardor]

Since 4.2, KDE4 has become quite usable. I already prefer it over KDE 3.5.

The real edge of KDE over Gnome has always been the tech, though. kioslaves vs. gnomevfs is one example, KParts another. Add Qt 4.5 to this, and it becomes obvious that KDE is vastly superior under the hood. But, this is not what users are interested in. I do think that KDE4 learned a lesson or two from Gnome about this. I just hope they don't start removing all options because they think the "user may be confused" (just like with the infamous printing dialog Linus Torvalds was so frustrated about).

Re:KDE 4.2

[Aladrin]

I have to say, 4.1 wasn't -that- bad. 4.0 was horrid, though.

4.2 is indeed more stable and prettier, though. And finally firefox looks right again... A lot of the radio buttons and checkboxes wouldn't show up right on 4.1.

At 4.0, I seriously considered a switch to Gnome. I even installed it to try it for a while. But 4.2 has totally relieved that feeling.

Re:KDE 4.2

[destroyer661]

I was terribly bothered (and still am) by the amount of people who were all about to jump ship from KDE to Gnome when 4.0 was released, and even pre-4.0. If anyone would have stopped and listened to the developers, or read any of the mailing list stuff, hung out in their IRC, they would have discovered the disclaimer that came with 4.0. The dev's themselves said 'yeah, it's going to be buggy, it's going to probably suck for a little while because we're revamping everything. It's a new approach for us, and for the entire desktop environment.'

They were also waiting on some things from QT4 developers as well. This can't entirely be 'blamed' on the KDE team IMO. They went off the deep end(in a great way) on KDE4, and what I saw in the beta/alpha/concept versions made me want them to keep going. Yet I saw so many ignorant people just slander KDE and jump ship. Now they'll come crying back and say zomg look >4.2 is amazing! It's the classic scenario of an individual or group being innovative, yet only a few catch on to what's happening and are supportive all the way through. The rest who've abandoned or ridiculed the aforementioned innovators will then come crawling back in love and adoration. Patience and understanding will sometimes lead to great things.

Re:KDE 4.2

[Anonymous Coward]

If anyone would have stopped and listened to the developers, or read any of the mailing list stuff, hung out in their IRC, they would have discovered the disclaimer that came with 4.0.

Oh wow, I hope you're shitting me. Users should "hang out on IRC" now?

The dev's themselves said 'yeah, it's going to be buggy, it's going to probably suck for a little while because we're revamping everything. It's a new approach for us, and for the entire desktop environment.'

'but fuck it, we're going to release it and call it 4.0 anyway, instead of 4.0alpha, because we're retards'

Re:KDE 4.2

[Threni]

I'm new to Linux, using only Ubuntu. I like it, but am a little puzzled by the whole KDE/Gnome thing. I sort of assumed I had to pick one and only use apps developed for it, but it seems I can install KDE apps and they work fine. Does everyone do this? If I ran KDE instead of Ghone I can still run Gnome apps. Or is the choice of whether you run Gnome apps under Gnome or KDE really quite important after all? If it's not the apps, or the file system, or the OS...what is it? When does it matter?

Re:KDE 4.2

[Aladrin]

Yes, I've heard that a thousand times already. And I actually read it before I installed KDE 4.0. But nothing could prepare me for how buggy and absolutely un-ready it was. Naming conventions exist for a reason, and if you're going to violate them, expect a huge backlash... Pretty much exactly what happened.

Calling it an pre-alpha, since that's what it was, would have been a very, very good idea. In fact, until it's feature-complete, calling it even a beta is stupid. To name it a full version number with nothing else was absolutely the stupidest thing they've ever done.

Luckily, it didn't take that long to get to 4.2 and things will smooth out again soon. I really thought it would be another year until they got to this point, so I'm pretty happy with them.

Re:KDE 4.2

[jw3]

When does it matter?

Whenever you feel like going on a flamewar.
j.

Re:KDE 4.2

[h4rm0ny]

You're fine to install apps from either in the other. I try to avoid it because I'm obsessively purist about minimising memory and hard drive usage, but I can't argue the case on rational grounds. The way it works is this: Both KDE and Gnome have a whole slew of libraries that apps written for them depend on. If you have Gnome installed then you already have all the Gnome libraries and if you already have KDE then you have all the KDE libraries installed (slight simplification but never mind). Now if you install a KDE app on Gnome of vice versa, then your package manager (you may think of this as the front end such as Synaptic or Adept, although they are actually the same system underneath), will bring down all the extra libraries that the app needs. So your nice clean KDE install suddenly inherits a lot of libgnome files or whatever. ;) Now the libraries don't interfere with each other, they are just... well, libraries. There's not even an issue with having to load multiple libraries that a human is likely to notice. So unless you are an obsessive purist like me who enjoys running df frequently to see how much space a newly installed library has left you, or unless you object aesthetically to seeing a mix of styles of apps on your desktop, then there's no real reason not to mix and match. I think.

Re:KDE 4.2

[hedwards]

The problem is that gradualism does work, it's just a matter of deciding when to make larger changes and how to do it.

The biggest thing is not screwing with the configuration or menu layout without a good reason for doing so, and keeping an eye on it regularly. Minor changes that make logical sense aren't a bad thing, but making huge changes like the folks at MS do, is just going to alienate users.

Anything that the user doesn't see or notice can be tweaked an incredibly amount without trouble as long as it's done carefully and integrates right afterwards.

It's really that last bit that tends to cause the most trouble in many projects. It's why FreeBSD has included the Compat4x and such for so long, it helps with integration of older programs.

Re:KDE 4.2

[Anonymous Coward]

You can use KDE apps in Gnome without real problems. The only thing is that it will have to load many of the KDE libraries and if you don't have a lot of RAM and disk to spare this could be a problem. I'm using Gnome, but I still prefer quite a few KDE apps and with enough RAM it works just fine.

Re:KDE 4.2

[yuna49]

If you're willing to play with the command line a bit, here's a way to see what's happening behind the scenes.

Install Kubuntu 8.10. Now open a Terminal window and at the $ prompt type "sudo apt-get install nautilus" and enter your password when prompted. Nautilus is the GNOME file browser, the equivalent application to KDE's Dolphin. You'll see the installer download dozens of additional files besides nautilus itself. That's the "infrastructure" (libraries) needed to run GNOME applications.

You can see the same process in reverse by running "sudo apt-get install dolphin" on a plain Ubuntu (8.10+) installation.

Once the libraries are available, you can run either set of applications on either desktop.

Re:KDE 4.2

[ardor]

Qt 3 vs. Qt 4 is a HUGE jump. Why did you port your app in the first place?

Re:KDE 4.2

[Anonymous Coward]

USers are interested in Kioslaves... they're the whole reason I have a Linux box hanging around. I ssh (+X) into it to do all my web development so I can xfer the files with Konqueror.

Re:KDE 4.2

[Tweenk]

The real edge of KDE over Gnome has always been the tech, though. kioslaves vs. gnomevfs is one example

GnomeVFS is deprecated since about half a year. It was a big pile of crap, so it's good it's dead. The current technology is GIO, which is much more pleasant to use and quite powerful.

KParts another

I think Gnome uses DBus for the things KDE uses KParts for. Bonobo is occasionally used but it's being actively removed.

Re:being reduced to an imitator rather than innova

[Kjella]

Yes, because we all know you have to throw out the baby with the bathwater every 5 years to "innovate". Uh huh.

Say what you want, but five years ago it wasn't reasonable to design the modern composite desktop. Five years is still a long time in computing and it shows. Think of it a little bit like construction work - you can remodel an existing building but if you really have to change the fundamentals you build new. That means you get all the fun of working out the kinks in the plumbing and wiring and whatnot all over again, and for a while that sucks. Then you realize it's actually quite great to live in a modern building.

Kinda seems like KDE is the imitator.. kinda seems like KDE has always been the imitator.

KDE is by default imitating a lot more, then has the configurability to decide where you want to be innovative. Desktops are very much "works for me" kind of stuff, when you like the "new way" that's great but Gnome has pulled a few on me where I just go "why couldn't you just leave this the #""#& alone and don't mess with it?!" and the way to revert it is usually in some obscure gconf option or no longer available because it's not "supposed to" function like that.

I've worked with Qt4 quite a bit and it's become a very complete and consistant toolkit. The changes were large, painful and it took quite a while to get everything working as well as in Qt3. I think the same will be true of KDE 4, once the dust settles it'll have the potential to rise much higher than KDE 3.5.10 and Gnome. As well it should, it's OS X setting the standard these days...

What?

[DraconPern]

ripped the bandage off the scab

Eh.. that is usually a bad thing to do.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rip a bandage off of a scab? If you have a scab you don't need a bandage. You need a bandage *after* you pick at your scab, ripping it off.

Re:What?

[Locklin]

I prefer open sores.

Losing interest

[a09bdb811a]

I just tried out the Ubuntu and Kubuntu 9.04 betas earlier today, and I think my interest in both GNOME and KDE is just about worn out.

Both are really quite bloated. I've been on Debian and KDE 3 for years, but I think I'll be switching to a stand-alone window manager like fluxbox, or maybe Xfce, the next time I have to upgrade.

GNOME on Ubuntu felt as sluggish and amateurish as ever. No amount of new themes and rehashed icons can improve GNOME. As a KDE user I was looking forward to KDE 4.2 but christ, it's so damn cluttered. I think they've actually added more clutter since 3.5, not taken it away. Every damn UI element flickers and flashes with a mouseover effect as you move around; some kind of indexing service is hitting the disk in the background; there's a plethora of desktop views or applets or whatever they're called, none of which I'm interested in; there's a new K menu that looks like it was a reject from Windows XP, and which takes several clicks to hunt around for what you're looking for; the default widget theme has super thick borders, even the pull down menus have thick borders around the menu items. The whole thing is just over-cooked. I couldn't make sense of it, frankly.

Sure, I could turn off or tweak most of that junk. But I think what I saw today is what happens when you try to copy Windows and Mac too closely. You end up copying the bad as well as the good. You inherit the same limitations and the same performance standards. It's a poor form of competition, and I despair at how much programmer effort must have gone into creating all this bloated mimicry.

Having said that, I only just scratched the surface. I know how good Qt 4 is, and I'm sure developing apps with the KDE4 framework is much nicer than KDE3. It's just that the result on the desktop (both of them) is a bit of a let down.

Re:Losing interest

[Anonymous Coward]

For KDE, why won't you then customize it to your heart's desire?

He mentioned that he probably could. But why bother? It's easier to start with something that's close to what you want and tweak it a little, rather than starting with something that's a million miles from what you want and tweaking it a lot.

Heck, KDE can even be made to have only those features that XFCE or GNOME have.

Really? How do I set up KDE so that minimised programs become desktop icons, like in Xfce (and also Fvwm, CDE, etc)? So far as I can tell, for all its much-vaunted flexibility, KDE simply does not have this feature. It follows that KDE cannot actually be set up to behave like Xfce.

Re:Losing interest

[Anonymous Coward]

I had no idea that the MacOS I use was 'blingy'. Those radical grays and blues. I'm going to have to re-evaluate my taste in desktops.

The cluttered desktop with my System drive icon

The distracting icon Dock, sitting there, staring at me. The Horror!

I think I'll switch to Kubuntu and KDE 4. My Mac HAS been performing horribly ;)

Re:Losing interest

[hduff]

I have used KDE since the pre-1.x days and KDE 4.0 turned me off completely. I've never liked the feel of GNOME, but find it very useable.

I realized that I need the DE to do very little and have been happy with IceWM ever since. About an hour reading the docs and tweaking the UI and I've been very happy ever since. LXFE is about as nice, and both are pretty lean.

Re:Losing interest

[noldrin]

I have very similar feelings. When I use XFCE, it's a breath of fresh air.

Re:Losing interest

[Patch86]

Therein lies the beauty of open source.

For your average user with a modern computer, they want a feature-rich, resource-hungry GUI that can rival what MS and Apple are producing. Other people prefer their GUI minimal and unobtrusive.

Even individual distros cater to both groups by offering choice. Ubuntu offers GNOME & KDE for the former, XFCE for the latter. Debian offers the full spread of GUIs. And almost any of the distros can easily witch it's GUI with little effort, after installation.

No one individual GUI has to "win". As long as each one has it's own group of adherents, each project can live happily side by side.

Re:Losing interest

[Roberto]

It does have this "feature", and you don't even need any addons.

Add the "task manager" plasmoid to your desktop.
Then in its settings select "show only minimized windows". Tweak for multirows if that floats your boat.

OTOH, this is an incredibly useless feature (yeah, I want my minimized windows on the desktop so I have to minimize the other windows to unminimize them! Really, not that smart)

Re:Losing interest

[ion.simon.c]

(yeah, I want my minimized windows on the desktop so I have to minimize the other windows to unminimize them! Really, not that smart)

Are we forgetting about the "Show Widget Dashboard" keybinding? (Ctrl+F12 by default)

Re:Losing interest

[Roberto]

Then "I want my minimized windows on the dektop, so I have to click a two-handed shortcut and THEN click to unminimize them" ?

Re:Losing interest

[ion.simon.c]

so I have to click a two-handed shortcut

Only if:
1) You don't have two ctrl keys on your keyboard (or have REALLY tiny hands)
2) Your windows are maximized allthetime.

Regardless, how you you usually keep track of minimized windows? (Full disclosure: I never minimize windows on my Linux systems. I add more virtual desktops if I run out of screen space.)

Re:Losing interest

[Roberto]

1) Indeed I have only one ctrl key in my netbook.

Taskbar.

legacy sub-systems

[YEPHENAS]

But, in the long-term, it could very well mean continuing to be dragged down by support for legacy sub-systems.

GNOME replaces legacy sub-systems, too. For example Bonobo with D-Bus, GnomeVFS with GIO, libglade with GtkBuilder, etc. The GIO port is almost done: http://live.gnome.org/GioPort I don't see why supporting a subsystem until it is fully replaced by another drags down development.

Re:legacy sub-systems

[Jesus_666]

I don't see why supporting a subsystem until it is fully replaced by another drags down development.

The problem is that GNOME can end up supporting the current system, its predecessor and the predecessor's predecessor. I remember trying to install GnuCash under Portage/OS X: The dependencies included three or four different documentation systems, one of which in turn depended on teTeX, making the unwanted documentation stuff well over one gigabyte in size. Granted, I could restart portage with USE="-doc", but I still ended up installing packages that I knew superseded each other.

Evolutionary development is all nice but occasionally it's a good idea to set a milestone at which all components are to have migrated away from legacy technology. Otherwise you'll end up carrying around old cruft until the heat death of the universe.

Re:legacy sub-systems

[Roberto]

That way you end up with 4 half-assed HTML libraries in use (gtkhtml, gtkhtml2, webkit and mozembed).

Unmentioned benefit of KDE 4 - Xorg+drivers

[sskang]

One of the major effects KDE 4 has had on the free desktop has been to light a fire under the metaphorical asses of Xorg and driver development. There has been tons of work going on in Xorg since the split, but until KDE 4 came along and proved that stuff like Composite could have a real effect on user experience (Compiz came first, yes, but that was more or less just bling until apps started using composite), there was not as much pressure and expectation from free desktop users.

Turn on desktop effects on any system using KDE 4 and if you have Xorg with good drivers, the difference in experience is startling.

The rate at which Xorg and some of the drivers are getting better is exciting, as is Qt and KDE itself, and this is in part due to the expectations that KDE 4 has set in the minds of free desktop users. Kudos to the Xorg and FOSS driver devs for stepping up. The next couple of years are going to be fun.

Re:Unmentioned benefit of KDE 4 - Xorg+drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

Turn on desktop effects on any system using KDE 4 and if you have Xorg with good drivers, the difference in experience is startling.

Yeah, I especially was startled by the part where my textures randomly get corrupted. Really innovative.

Re:Unmentioned benefit of KDE 4 - Xorg+drivers

[MostAwesomeDude]

Indeed. I really liked the part where the KDE devs seem to exclusively use nVidia cards with closed-source drivers. :3

Re:Unmentioned benefit of KDE 4 - Xorg+drivers

[Narishma]

You must have missed the "good drivers" part from that sentence you quoted.

Re:Unmentioned benefit of KDE 4 - Xorg+drivers

[dkleinsc]

Yeah, I especially was startled by the part where my textures randomly get corrupted. Really innovative.

That is innovative. Would you have thought to randomly corrupt the users' textures for them?

Re:Unmentioned benefit of KDE 4 - Xorg+drivers

[lbbros]

In all fairness, considering some stances of high-profile developers, as soon as Noveau will become viable, a certain number will certainly jump ship. And there's a percentage of developers using Intel chipsets too.

Re:Unmentioned benefit of KDE 4 - Xorg+drivers

[moonbender]

Hm? Is there anything special KDE4 is doing with composite? I use Gnome+Compiz all the time, and it's far, far more than pretty effects -- the window management is just much better than before. (E.g.: You can efficiently manage windows on two large widescreen displays using just the keyboard.) When I'm at work where we use KDE3, that is what I miss, not the graphics.

Re:Unmentioned benefit of KDE 4 - Xorg+drivers

[rec9140]

At least they are releasing drivers, versus some companies like Kodak and the ESP printers.

They have macrud OSX support and have developed basic drivers for Linux but refuse to release them

http://johnmanard.pluggedin.kodak.com/default.asp?item=2191668 - Driver and shows and example of output.

http://susantousi.pluggedin.kodak.com/default.asp?item=473852

Free means - no cost, period.

I can DL nvidia, ATI, VMWare etc all for free and its all closed source. Fine with me.

I can't DL any of the stuff for Kodak as they won't release an API, interface specs, or the driver they have developed.

Linux desktop users do NOT care open or closed source, they want free software to DL and install. They want free drivers to DL and install and use the device(s) they purchased at Newegg or other place with out a hassle.

Re:Unmentioned benefit of KDE 4 - Xorg+drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh lordy... articles like this always end up the same. The KDE project has always attracted the worst aspects of Linux/FOSS - the zealotry. You can guarantee that they always fill up with idiots saying "KDE r00ls, GNOME dr00ls" - or occasionally in slightly more friendly terms, pretend to be former GNOME users who realised the error of their ways, or often burbling something about KDE "having better technology" followed by a list of abbreviations/acronyms for KDE sub-projects that, for the most part, where either copied from Windows or just painfully incompetent.

The KDE project is most notable for its almost complete lack of contributions to other FOSS projects... mainly because it was built around an island of license-swamp and C++ horror-show known as Qt. KDE developers rarely, if ever, ventured down into X for example - they always piled everything into Qt because Trolltech would insist on it being cross-platform. The upshot of this was that KDE development was, and is, an island of Doctor Moreau. GNOME hackers on the other hand have ranged from AIGLX, compiz, GTK, Mesa, OpenOffice (the work to make OpenOffice use native toolkits was done by GNOME hackers - ironically, allowing an easy Qt/KDE port), CD/DVD burning libraries (now used by KDE), hal, dbus, media libraries (now used by KDE)... all with licenses ranging from X/MIT/BSD and GPL - and all of it not in any way tied to GTK, and properly designed and modularised to benefit ALL Linux users from embedded, to desktops and servers.. and yes... KDE users.

As for the premise of this article - how anyone can praise or defend the KDE 4 debacle is beyond me. It was an unmitigated disaster and an embarrassment to Free software. Anyone with an ounce of sense who relied on KDE before has been given ample demonstration of just how catastrophically unreliable that project can be. The sad thing is - it's probably driven them back to Windows or the Mac rather than a more sensible, practical FOSS projects.

Re:Unmentioned benefit of KDE 4 - Xorg+drivers

[Brandybuck]

The key is good drivers. I've found ancient Radeon 9000s that ran rings around new expensive nVidia cards. Stick with the Open Source drivers if you can. The commercial drivers are targeted at games, not the desktop. Here's how I see it with my experience plus reports online:

Older Radeons (r100-r500 chipsets): Use open source ati/radeon driver, avoid the commercial catalyst/fglrx driver if you can. It sucks.

Newer HD Radeons (r600, r700): open source support isn't there yet, stick with commercial catalyst/fglrx for the time being.

nVidia: Gotta use the proprietary, soul-stealing, subjugating commercial driver. The open source nv driver won't cut it.

Intel: Great support from the open source driver.

Re:Unmentioned benefit of KDE 4 - Xorg+drivers

[Brandybuck]

You noticed that too? At least in the 4.0 era is seemed that way. The Open Source radeon driver has caught up though, and handles the desktop effects just fine.

Re:Unmentioned benefit of KDE 4 - Xorg+drivers

[ion.simon.c]

Linux desktop users do NOT care open or closed source...

This Linux desktop user *does* care about open vs. closed source.
Regardless, it sounds like you shouldn't buy Kodak printers in the future. :(

Re:Unmentioned benefit of KDE 4 - Xorg+drivers

[ion.simon.c]

The Open Source radeon driver has caught up though, and handles the desktop effects just fine.

Yeppers. Too bad that there is no shader support for the R420. Are the radeon devs waiting on Gallium3D and its LLVM magic?

Re:Unmentioned benefit of KDE 4 - Xorg+drivers

[ion.simon.c]

Is there anything special KDE4 is doing with composite?

I'm not sure. I use the "make unfocused windows translucent", "zoom the desktop and follow the mouse cursor", and "present windows" [0] plugins. I haven't explored my options, but do know that there's a "write on the screen" one that works reasonably well.

(E.g.: You can efficiently manage windows on two large widescreen displays using just the keyboard.)

The "present windows" plugin allows one to select a window to activate with the keyboard. The windows aren't presented in a regular grid, so I'm not sure that the keyboard navigation makes much sense. The only plugin that I see in my KDE 4 installation that allows for predictable keyboard navigation of zoomed-out stuff is the "Arrange all of the virtual desktops in a grid." I have so many desktops (and so many windows on each one) that this plugin is not very useful to me.

[0] Present Windows is an expose knock-off. (In all of the "manage desktops" or "manage windows" plugins, all of unminimized windows have a "live preview" thing going for them [unless you disable it].)

Re:Unmentioned benefit of KDE 4 - Xorg+drivers

[ion.simon.c]

Anyone with an ounce of sense who relied on KDE before has been given ample demonstration of just how catastrophically unreliable that project can be.

Heh. I guess I don't have an ounce of sense. I'm happy with my KDE 4.2.x and 4.SVN installations. I was happy with my KDE 3.5 installations before that.
WRT the 4.0 mess: mistakes were made. What does any of that have to do with the current state of KDE 4?

Re:Unmentioned benefit of KDE 4 - Xorg+drivers

[Brandybuck]

You don't need shader support for the KDE desktop effects.

Don't bitch to KDE about the state of graphics drivers in X.org, bitch to ATI and NVidia. Yeah, ATI opened their specs, which is better than what NVidia did, but fully functional stable drivers don't just fall out of specs magically.

Re:Unmentioned benefit of KDE 4 - Xorg+drivers

[ion.simon.c]

You don't need shader support for the KDE desktop effects.

Oh! I know! I wasn't trying to claim otherwise. IIRC, the only thing that needs shader support in the KDE desktop is the Marble plasmoid.

Don't bitch to KDE about the state of graphics drivers in X.org

Yeah. I know that the KDE folks aren't responsible for that. airlied et. al. are responsible for the radeon driver. I was asking my question on the off chance that you had some insight into their plans.

Re:Unmentioned benefit of KDE 4 - Xorg+drivers

[moonbender]

Ah, I see. That's pretty much exactly what Compiz does. I'm sure each does a couple of things better than the other, as usual. The Compiz version of Exposé is called Scale, incidently. ;)

In the end it won't matter - it is a server OS and

[Anonymous Coward]

no one really cares.

masochism or sadism?

[AliasMarlowe]

ripped the bandage off the scab

Eh.. that is usually a bad thing to do.

Unless you're a masochist, and promptly pour some Tobasco on the open sore.
Or you could be the victim of a sadist - KDE 4.0 actually made me scream.

Written by a KDE user.

[Anonymous Coward]

The article seems to be written by a KDE user, since it mostly ignores important changes in gnome, for example the change from gnomevfs to gvfs: although it's not directly visible to the user, but mostly relevant to programmers, the user *will* notice, as its much more feature complete and stable. Transparent access to files is a very important feature for a modern desktop, since users work with files from various locations these days (local harddrive, lan network, internet services, etc).
The author says gnome is a "random collection of applications", but ignores the fact that these applications are carefully chosen to fill specific gaps in functionality that people expect in a modern desktop. There are no 2 applications in gnome that do the same thing. Yes, most new apps in gnome have existed for a while before they become an official part of the gnome desktop, but imho it's better to re-use exising technology than to try to reinvent the wheel every time, like KDE has done for 4.0.
The author mentions a few new things in KDE 4, but most of them have been present in gnome for a while. Gnome has a new sound system too (pulseaudio replaced esound), gtk2 is still good enough that it doesnt need replacing (and gets improved with every new release), and svg graphics have been supported in gnome for ages.
He even calls D-bus "inspired by DCOP" but ignores the fact that D-bus is not part of gnome, but gnome has instead switched to a universal standard that is not desktop-specific, and was already used by non-gnome applications on the system, including low-level components such as udev and hal. I'd wish KDE would do the same, no one needs a 2nd seperate message bus system on his machine.
Same story for PolicyKit, PackageKit and all the other Kits they come up with these days. They are not part of gnome, gnome simply reuses what is already present on the system, where KDE often tries to do its own thing. I like gnome's approach better, it causes less overhead.

Some people call KDE "more powerful", but even though the gnome UI prefers simplicity over functionality, gnome has a lot of features under the hood that you can configure in gconf-editor. These are mostly for power-users, or for developers to create a utility around. I actually like not having my desktop cluttered with configuration options you only use once in the machine's lifetime (after a fresh installation usually).
But this is all personal preference. I can see good points about KDE too, and even though i don't see myself using anything other than gnome soon, i don't want KDE to go away, cause choice is good, and not everyone has to agree with me.

Last, i wanted to mention that, altho the author says "people are apt to overlook that they are not saying anything objective", he then goes off and does the same thing. For him, a development model may seem like "something objective", but it is not. A development model is based on personal preference, just like GUI design choices are.
If the author reads this, I'd like to ask him not to bring up this old gnome vs kde discussion again, since it is indeed pointless and always bogs down to the same level as people arguing whether a blue or a red car is better.

Re:Written by a KDE user.

[Computershack]

The article seems to be written by a KDE user, since it mostly ignores important changes in gnome, for example the change from gnomevfs to gvfs: although it's not directly visible to the user, but mostly relevant to programmers,

New users don't give a shit What they do see though is that this supposed cutting edge OS looks virtually exactly the same as it did FOUR YEARS AGO

Re:Written by a KDE user.

[marsu_k]

He even calls D-bus "inspired by DCOP" but ignores the fact that D-bus is not part of gnome, but gnome has instead switched to a universal standard that is not desktop-specific, and was already used by non-gnome applications on the system, including low-level components such as udev and hal. I'd wish KDE would do the same, no one needs a 2nd seperate message bus system on his machine.

...which is why, probably, KDE4 uses DBus. But don't let the facts get in the way of a good rant.

Re:Written by a KDE user.

[Anonymous Coward]

It was not my intention to post rants based on incomplete information. The author of the article however, made it sound as if KDE was still using DCOP (at least that's how i understood it), and since he seems to know way more about KDE's development process than a gnome user like me, i assumed his remark to be truth. Thanks for correcting me though.

Re:Written by a KDE user.

[Anonymous Coward]

and the worst thing is, the so-called legacy-free KDE still depends on the now very old-fashioned and limited KIO framework.

attempts to switch to gvfs in kde were turned down by making the unconstructive suggestion that gnome should switch to KIO.

And a large chunk will be help

[Anonymous Coward]

But if it were left out, then there'd be the complaint that Linux doesn't have any good documentation.

Fooked whichever way it goes.

PS I preferred GNOME until GNOME2.0. Then I found that the speed difference wasn't there any more and so I went KDE because it was fewer clicks to get what I wanted up and running.

Incremental approach

[Yenya]

I think it is not because of an incremental approach of GNOME, but rather because of their decremental approach.

Things like replacing GDM with a rewrite that still does not match the original GDM feature-wise (it even could not do XDMCP for a long time and it cannot do auto-login for single-user systems even now), replacing Sawfish with Metacity, replacing Galeon with Epiphany, which - even with epiphany-extensions package - still cannot match Galeon (despite the fact the development of Galeon has been dormant for several years now), etc.

I guess the next decremental step would be kicking out Ekiga in favour of Empathy.

Re:Incremental approach

[rrossman2]

"and it cannot do auto-login for single-user systems even now)" You may want to re-checked... I've been running GNOME on my laptop for the last.. well long enough, but Ubuntu 7.10 (IIRC) and Ubuntu 8.04+ (I know for sure) allow for single user auto-login. That's how my laptop is setup.

Re:Incremental approach

[Yenya]

I stand corrected on the autologin issue, thanks.

Another thing the new GDM cannot do is to specify the arguments of the X server command line (e.g. for running two X servers in a multiseat setup).

Re:Incremental approach

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for this post. You found the exact words that describe my thoughts that I have been having for years now.

What I mostly hate is the GDM login screen with the silly "avatar browser" (without support for actually setting your avatar) that lists all users who have ever logged on the machine but cannot be disabled in favor of the well-established (and more privacy-aware) login/password screen... This is a really infuriating regression that was meant to be temporary since Fedora 9 and is still present in Fedora rawhide after almost one year.

I agree on all the examples you cite. You forgot one, though: broken session saving!

Re:Incremental approach

[Anonymous Coward]

Something more regarding session saving: a main GNOME developer saying "I know some people really missed session saving." seems to suggest that he did not care about that at all...

His post is here.

Re:Incremental approach

[perryizgr8]

You forgot one, though: broken session saving!

session saving has never worked on gnome, never since i've been using linux, around 2000. why do they not remove the gui option for it? why confuse users?

Re:Incremental approach

[sirlatrom]

2.20.10-0ubuntu1 can, and is the one still used in Ubuntu (even in 9.04).

The newest version of gdm available in Ubuntu, version 2.25.2-0ubuntu0.1 in the try-out gdm-new package, really cannot auto-login, nor can it do timed login or allow you to theme it much more than changing the background picture.

It's in the plans to make 2.25 (or a newer version) the login manager in Ubuntu Karmic (see the blueprint here), and they have (had) discussions about gdm at some gnome mailing list (I don't have the link presently).

Re:Incremental approach

[badkarmadayaccount]

Can you even theoretically run two X11 instances on one machine? Won't they make a cat fight or something?

Re:Incremental approach

[Yenya]

Theoretically? I have been running a dual-seat configuration on my home workstation for about 5 years now.

Absolutely spot on.

[Computershack]

It's spot on about Gnome. If you take screenshots of Ubuntu from 5.10 and compare them to 8.10, apart from the wallpaper and some very minor changes, it looks virtually identical. Other Gnome based distros are pretty much the same. It's one thing that for me personally, gives the impression that Linux distros really haven't come on much since Gnome 2 came out.

KDE OTOH has changed massively but 4.x is basically broken and to be considered Alpha/Beta1 at best and IMO, can't really be counted.

Yeah sure, a massive amount has gone on under the hood with Linux but the bit that the user sees has barely changed whereas in Windows, there was a massive noticable change from Win2k to XP to Vista to Win7 so people "feel" they're getting a new OS.

Re:Absolutely spot on.

[Larryish]

The functionality in Gnome is good, the underlying subsystem and supporting apps (add/remove programs, pulseaudio, etc) have been gradually improving.

Fancy widgets are no match for solid functionality.

better equals faster

[petes_PoV]

These desktops are so bloated with useless features that the choice is for the least-bad, not the best.

To give an example, Gnome's file browser takes 5 seconds on my home PC (Athlon, 2GHz, 3GB) to list a 161 entry directory. A virtualised W2K instance on the same box takes less than 1 second to list the same directory - even though it's running in a VM and has to go through SAMBA on the host to access the directory. When doing this, I took precautions to ensure no entries were cached on either instance.

Whether that's due to a mis-configuration on my part (tho' the Ubuntu installation is simply "out of the box", no tweaks) or because the browser is badly written and poorly designed, I don't know.

What I do know is that this effect is not limited to the file broswer and is a severe demotivator for using Linux - or recommending it to others.

Lose the bloat, remove 50% of the features, optimise the code, THEN talk about which desktop is best.

Re:better equals faster

[Aladrin]

Is Gnome providing more stastics, previews, etc? That would make a huge difference in the time it takes to show a directory.

Also, have you tried KDE instead, to see how it stacks up?

Re:better equals faster

[petes_PoV]

Is Gnome providing more stastics, previews, etc?

previews and thumbnails are turned off - I was wrong when I said "out of the box" installation, as I turned these features off right after installation as it was far too slow. It does list the number of files in sub-directories, which is not configurable through the preferences dialog (or if it is, I've missed it).

Re:better equals faster

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, this all stems from the "write code now, optimize later" approach that too many people seem to think is correct.

I'm not exactly sure when the trend started but at some point this attitude of "make a good design, then make it fast" came to prevalence. Sorry but doing it that way is just stupid. If you don't consider performance at the start it will be really freaking hard to do it later. Often optimized solutions have radically different designs.

Performance is part of a good design. Don't optimize later.

Re:better equals faster

[Aladrin]

Ah, yeah. The picture viewer on my n800 does that same thing with subfolders and I absolutely hate it. I also don't need to see a preview of all the images in a folder before I open one of the images... Stupid.

Re:better equals faster

[ookaze]

Gnome's file browser takes 5 seconds on my home PC (Athlon, 2GHz, 3GB) to list a 161 entry directory. A virtualised W2K instance on the same box takes less than 1 second to list the same directory - even though it's running in a VM and has to go through SAMBA on the host to access the directory. When doing this, I took precautions to ensure no entries were cached on either instance.

What do you mean by that?
What you're talking about was a problem years ago, I remember seeing developers talking about it, and it was fixed a long time ago. So I wonder what you mean by "takes 5 seconds". Mine clearly doesn't have this problem since years.
Also, which distribution are you using?
This is a problem worth taking upstream, whining about it won't do any good. But really, this problem should be fixed.

This beside the fact that Windows Explorer is broken, so that when you put the drawer view on the left, often it won't update, even with few directories. Or it will show directories that supposedly contains other directories, when actually they don't. Common tricks to be faster, but my Gnome file browser (Nautilus) was always faster after the fix, without those tricks.

Re:better equals faster

[turing_m]

I'm not exactly sure when the trend started but at some point this attitude of "make a good design, then make it fast" came to prevalence.

I would credit Donald Knuth - "We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil."

In a lot of cases he's right. I can deal with slow but usable. I would lump the general Ubuntu (Gnome?) experience in that category, especially Openoffice. And on my machine that would have been top of the line in, oh, 2005 - it runs those things fast enough to suit me. If it's fast but unusable, I won't run it.

It all comes down to resource allocation. It's a huge tribute to the Gnome team that someone on slashdot is even comparing the speed of Gnome with the speed of XP. How many orders of magnitude did the resources thrown at XP outweigh those volunteered for gnome?

Re:better equals faster

[Anonymous Coward]

No only optimise the code, but stablize it as well. I've recently gotten rid of the DM all together, after some unstability in KDE 4.2, and gone with a tiling Window Magager (currently using xmonad, which has sped up moving and placing windows, so I don't have to worry about it).

Having more and more programs that can mess with your desktop experience and get in your way is just silly. Just like you keep a very stable kernel to run a server, don't tie in more than you need with your xorg experience.

I maybe ignorant of all the benefits that come from using a DM, but between xterm, firefox, mutt, (g)vim, gcc, and openoffice, I haven't run into a productivity problem yet.

Re:better equals faster

[prefec2]

Your request is GNOME's primary goal. Only add useful features and remove bad options. The performance of nautilus is indeed not the best. however, they replaced the virtual file system layer recently and so it looks like there is some room for improvement. However, the new file system API is definitely better than the old one.

Re:better equals faster

[gauauu]

And this is why I changed back to windows. I used windows for 2 years on my fast dual-core, 4gb machine. It sped along. I switched to ubuntu with gnome. It CRAWLED. Opening nautilus took a few seconds each time. Unacceptable.

So I played with other "lightweight" file browsers -- thunar and such. They were nice and snappy, but were missing useful features that I had in nautilus and windows -- network file browsing, proper drag/drop support, etc.

So I switched back to windows. It's a shame.

Re:better equals faster

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Gnome providing more stastics, previews, etc? That would make a huge difference in the time it takes to show a directory.

Then those things should be asynchronous and still load the listing before having all the information. Statistics and previews are fun, but they are not things that should slow you down.

Re:better equals faster

[Neil Jansen]

Try disabling Assistive Technologies and reboot. Seems to be enabled by default for some Ubuntu versions. It will defintely kill the Nautilus experience, as one guy put it.

See this page.

Re:better equals faster

[Anonymous Coward]

I would much rather my file browser be usable while it is loading that data. Thunar and Windows explorer both seem to do a pretty good job of this: loading a camera card's photo directory happens quickly, but the thumbnails are visibly filled in while the files are listed and the file browser is usable. Especially important because 99% of the file information a file browser loads, I do not care about. It is just nice to have it load because it does not know which info I will actually look at.

Re:better equals faster

[CannonballHead]

Is Gnome providing more stastics, previews, etc? That would make a huge difference in the time it takes to show a directory.

Does it matter, though? Yes, that'd make it take longer, but that doesn't mean that's better or even worth the extra 5 seconds. When I open a directory, I usually am not looking for statistics. I think Windows actually got this right, for the most part... clicking the folder showed statistics on the left sidebar or whatever of the window, but it didn't load all stats for the all entries right away.

Granted, it still took a while for folders with a ton of files (e.g., C:\Windows, hehe) but I have noticed the slowness at time as well.

That said, I liked KDE 3.5 and dislike KDE 4.2. 4.2 felt kinda like a toy, Plasma crashed and got strange duplicate settings every now and then (and didn't save the ones I wanted, had to manually edit the setting files in ~/.kde4..), etc. OTOH, it was "prettier." I also found that the prettiness sometimes got in the way though, unfortunately. I started using Ubuntu instead of openSuSE 11.1 and I am liking Gnome a bit better, it's a little more intuitive... but I am sad I can't quite change as many settings as I want to. Easily, anyways. :)

Re:better equals faster

[jcupitt65]

That does sound slow. On my Ubuntu 8.10 machine (2.7GHz Opteron) FileChooser shows /usr/bin (2,500 files) for the first time in about 4s. This time is mostly (I think) to load the icons for all the files. Subsequent visits are very quick (under a second?). Logging out and in again makes it slower for the first visit again.

A lot of work went into filechooser performance, mostly by the wonderful Federico. He has an interesting technical blog here:

http://www.gnome.org/~federico/news.html

Re:better equals faster

[Anonymous Coward]

I have tried this, and it did not help. I have given up on Nautilus already. I use Thunar, which is fast enough. Nautilus just plain sucks, there is no excuse for it.

Re:better equals faster

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, gnome is probably (because it does it by default) doing a file(1) on each file to determine the type. Whether that's good or bad is up to you.

Re:better equals faster

[Anonymous Coward]

You can never provide enough stastics

Re:Meanwhile, MS Has Recovered From Vista...

[bug1]

All thats happened is Microsoft have improved their propaganda, woops i mean to say PR.

Its not software (GNOME vs KDE) thats holding back the adoption of Free software, its educating the brainwashed masses.

Warning - Honest opinion below

[bhunachchicken]

As someone who has been using KDE 2001 (around KDE 2), I have to say that I think the latest version of KDE is fucking shit. It's a MAJOR step backward from KDE 3. I feel like the developers have taken everything that was good about KDE, thrown it in the bin, and made every effort to drive me to another DE altogether.

Things that have so far fucked me off:

• Removal of icons on the desktop - Seriously, WTF?!! (as far as I know) EVERY OTHER FUCKING DE ALLOWS THIS!!! (I believe it might be back in now, but in the form of a hack..?)
• Panel Configuration - Before, I could right click on the panel, select Configure Panel, and get a nice window containing a bunch of things to be tweak. Now I just get this messy stack of... of... well I don't know what the hell that is.
• Mounting devices - It was easy before, but now we have this strange menu that doesn't provide all the functionality that the previous 3.5 implementation did.
• Some of the new DE is JUST PLAIN UGLY! The calendar, for one, doesn't look as neat and tidy as the one in KDE 3.5
• ... probably some other things that I cannot call to mind.

I upgraded to KDE 4.2 a while back after everyone raved about it, but ended up reverting back down to KDE 3.5. I'm still not sure what the KDE team are attempting to achieve, but I would rather have seen a KDE 3.6 with all the fancy effects than what we have now.

I'm going to look very carefully at KDE 4.3 when that comes out, but I have little hope that it will reach the 3.5 standard, if I'm totally honest. Rant over. Sorry, had to get this off my chest. Am I the only one that feels this way? I'm sure when 4.2 came out Slashdot commentators were proclaiming it to be THE KDE 4 we'd been waiting for. Not me.

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[elmaxxgt]

i have to say that i like kde3.5 better than 4.x because of the functionality of certain applications. for example, kopete (kde4 version) just doesn't work as friendly as k3.5. and on the other hand, amarok [latest] for example just doesnt run (at least on my set up) on 3.5. So yeah, i feel a bit hurtful because i feel forced to use kde4. BUT! that's just a small inconvenience in exchange on what has been a wonderful experience since 2007. lll! (long live linux!)

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[petes_PoV]

>quote>everything that was good about KDE, thrown it in the bin,

Well it is a hobby for the open source authors, not a job. So you can't really blame them for goofing around and doing the things they get satisfaction from, rather than taking a professional approach of requirements, design, debugging, support, documentation and optimisations.

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[lbbros]

Removal of icons on the desktop - Seriously, WTF?!! (as far as I know) EVERY OTHER FUCKING DE ALLOWS THIS!!! (I believe it might be back in now, but in the form of a hack..?)

Appearance Settings > Desktop Activity Type > "Folder View" (4.2 or later) Very hackish... so hackish there's even an option to do so.

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[rrossman2]

Do you know if they fixed the Desktop "icon" delete bug? I tried KDE 4.0 or 4.1... I can't remember beause it was a very short period of time I actually used it and that experience was horrid... but if something was placed into the ~/Desktop folder it would show up on the desktop as an "icon" or whatever they are. I'd hate to call them icons since they at the time were not, I'm not sure what they were! If you right clicked and deleted the thing on the Desktop, the "icon link" would be removed, but if you "cd ~/Desktop | ls" the file its self was STILL THERE. I think the reserve held true as well (when you "rm -f ~/Desktop/*" the icons still appeared on the Desktop)

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[Civil_Disobedient]

Desktop Activity Type

Sorry for the derail, but who comes up with the names for these things? Desktop Activity Type!? What does that even mean? What is a "desktop activity" besides, I dunno... clicking. Moving my mouse around. Does "staring off into space" count as a type of desktop activity? Why couldn't it just be "Desktop"?

And they wonder why Linux isn't more popular with the everyman...

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[lbbros]

That's because you can have "Activities", which are (for now) ordered collections of widgets, independent one of each other. The plan is to integrate those with virtual desktops and provide "Contexts" to group desktop stuff (and I hope also appllications). This is of course in ongoing development. It's called "Desktop Activity" because there are other kinds of containers (like the panels). Once everything is properly integrated, I expect the terminology to change.

Also, the way the desktop is done is via a plugin (hence the need of a "Type") , so potentially you can write your own desktop addition that puts icons upside down, for example. Some have already done so (openSUSE, creating an additional desktop type without the toolbox on the upper right corner).

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[rec9140]

>Am I the only one that feels this way?

NOPE! Pretty much summed up how I feel.

I am long time user of KDE, and don't consider anything else up to par.

KDE 4.x should be forked off of the mainline KDE to WMvistawannabecrap.

If KDE wants to rewrite KDE in Qt 4 fine, go right ahead.

BUT....

Don't change my desktop by default to some lame mode that I don't want or use, and if I want widgets or other stuff then SuperKaramba and Conky will do just fine thank you.

4.0 should never have been released as anything other than a ALPHA, 4.2.1 might be about the 3rd beta if you stretch it.

I'll be keeping my 3.5.10 KDE till every thing shrivels and dies off for it and then I guess I will just have to live with an outdated, unsupported KDE as 4.x is not useable.

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[bflong]

Hey! Thanks for that! I missed that new option when I upgraded to 4.2.

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[Anonymous Coward]

>> # Removal of icons on the desktop - Seriously, WTF?!! (as far as I know) EVERY OTHER FUCKING DE ALLOWS THIS!!! (I believe it might be back in now, but in the form of a hack..?)

Never happened so don't be an idiot. There was always Folderview, and now you can even use it as the desktop. That's not a hack, that's actually quite good design. No longer are you limited to a single desktop folder if you want more, or in my case, I don't like icons there anyway, so I removed them all.

>> Panel Configuration

The config dialog (or lack thereof) looks a bit different, and that made it on your top list of complaints? Wow, you need to get out more.

>> Mounting devices - It was easy before, but now we have this strange menu that doesn't provide all the functionality that the previous 3.5 implementation did.

It provides all the same functionality. I don't really know what you're talking about. Without specifics your complaint is useless. It's up to the apps to add their support for devices and then they'll show up in the window, just like in KDE3.

>> Some of the new DE is JUST PLAIN UGLY! The calendar, for one, doesn't look as neat and tidy as the one in KDE 3.5

I'll give you that one. The calendar is a little overdone, and I think that has changed. Not exactly a reason to scream about but hey.

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[m_ilya]

Removal of icons on the desktop

I was always wondering what's the point of icons on desktop. The idea is really silly - most of the time desktop is covered with opened windows so you cannot access the icons without closing or minimizing windows. Good to see KDE 4 got rid of them :) Perhaps I should switch back to KDE; systems which not allow to remove all icons from desktop always annoy me a bit. The only time I see empty desktop I'd rather see an abscured background there.

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[pembo13]

If in 4.2 you couldn't get icons on your desktop, then you simply did not want them.

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[AaronW]

I am in the same boat. There's too many things that still don't work very well in KDE 4.2 that I use all the time in 3.5. I use some KDE 4 apps, but won't switch over until a number of issues are addressed. One of my big beefs is that the task bar won't span monitors in Xinerama mode and the key bindings don't support a number of the keys that work with 3.5.x.

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[Anonymous Coward]

As I understand it KDE 4.x made major changes in order to make a lot of what you describe more configurable. It sounds like (1) they have not actually presented that configuration in a way that meets the users' needs and (2) they are lacking in sane defaults.

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[Anonymous Coward]

i am Anonymous Coward and i approve of this post.

i'd also like to add that a spanning taskbar for dual monitors has been marked as "won't fix" by the plasma developers. their reply has been to "just add another panel on the second monitor".

that ISN'T what i want as a user. i want ONE fucking taskbar spanning both monitors.

and "Folder View" is not the same as icons ON the desktop.

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[Bambi Dee]

Do you have dual (usable) monitors on any virtual desktop past the first? My 2nd monitor turns into a dead black area there, with a "busy" mouse cursor and no functionality whatsoever. That is - with KDE 4.1. I was wondering if this has been fixed for KDE 4.2, but there're no up-to-date KDE 4 packages to try it with.

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[Roberto]

If you use a folder view, you have icons in your desktop. How the hell is that not icons ON the desktop?

You actually want to have to move your mouse to another monitor to switch to an app in the first monitor? Because that's what is going to happen with a two-monitor taskbar.

It's really quite nuts as a request.

OTOH, if you want a taskbar n each monitor with each monitor's apps, that would make *some* sense but is not what you wrote.

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[Max Littlemore]

Yep. All of your critisms are explained by the fact that KDE4 is just an attempt to make a bloated version of e17.

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[ion.simon.c]

...the key bindings don't support a number of the keys that work with 3.5.x.

Examples?

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[ion.simon.c]

That is - with KDE 4.1. I was wondering if this has been fixed for KDE 4.2

In all likelyhood, yes. A *LOT* has changed since KDE 4.1. If you still want to work with KDE, you *really* might wanna consider trying to get a copy of KDE 4.2 or (when it's released) KDE 4.3.

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[ion.simon.c]

that ISN'T what i want as a user. i want ONE fucking taskbar spanning both monitors.

Why? What information is on this taskbar?

...and "Folder View" is not the same as icons ON the desktop.

How, exactly? What's missing from the Folder View Activity?

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[ion.simon.c]

I was always wondering what's the point of icons on desktop.

I don't have more than a couple of icons on my machines at home.
However, at work (on the Windows machine), I have many icons on my desktop that I use to access frequently used programs and projects. If Windows shipped with a CLI shell that was worth a shit, (or Cygwin wasn't so rather slow) I would have very few icons on my work desktop. :)

...most of the time desktop is covered with opened windows so you cannot access the icons without closing or minimizing windows

You need to use multiple desktops, my man. They're even supported by official tools from ATI and nVidia.

Good to see KDE 4 got rid of them :)

KDE 4 didn't get rid of them. KDE 4 lets you *choose* to get rid of them. :)

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[ion.simon.c]

Do you know if they fixed the Desktop "icon" delete bug?

When using the Folder View desktop Activity on KDE 4.2.1, it seems that your issue has been fixed. Copying a .desktop file (or any other file for that matter) resulted in a new file appearing in the Folder View Activity. Removing a file (.desktop or otherwise) from the FV Activity resulted in its deletion from ~/Desktop.

I'd hate to call them icons since they at the time were not, I'm not sure what they were!

How do you mean?

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[ion.simon.c]

amarok [latest] for example just doesnt run (at least on my set up) on 3.5.

Interesting. I have yet to come across a KDE 4 app that won't run under another WM. Does Amarok2 run under KDE 4 on the same machine?

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[ion.simon.c]

(as far as I know) EVERY OTHER FUCKING DE ALLOWS [ICONS ON THE DESKTOP]!!!

IIRC, WindowMaker does not allow this. Neither does twm. (but, who cares about twm, right?) ;)

I believe [desktop icons] might be back in now, but in the form of a hack..?

It's not a hack. It's a fully supported option called Folder View. Check out the replies to your rant for more information.

I could right click on the panel, select Configure Panel, and get a nice window containing a bunch of things to be tweak.

What do you want to tweak that you currently cannot?

Mounting devices - It was easy before, but now we have this strange menu that doesn't provide all the functionality that the previous 3.5 implementation did.

What menu are you currently using?
What functionality are you missing?
Have you looked into using the Lancelot launcher and the Lancelot Parts plasmoids? (The Lancelot Parts plasmoids (LPp) let you tear off parts of the Lancelot launcher and add them to an Activity. [Yes, even a Folder View Activity can have these on it.] I use the LPp to hold a list of currently attached removable disks, so's I can easily mount and unmount them.)

but I have little hope that [KDE 4.3] will reach the 3.5 standard...

The 3.5 standard was reached after two major revisions. That's (depending on how you count it) five to eight years worth of effort. KDE 4 has been around for... almost a year and a half now? I know that this is the age of VB.NET and all, but software development hasn't gotten all that much faster. Give KDE 4 some more time. (And be sure to continue to complain when irreplaceable features go missing.)

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[Bambi Dee]

KDE 3.5.10 suits me just fine, and I know my way around it more or less... but I'd rather not "fear" the upgrade should that time arrive. (At the moment the state of Ubuntustudio's realtime kernel keeps me from upgrading, and I don't have the patience to try and see if I can start over with 64 Studio, Jacklab, what have you).

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[waferhead]

You can set up a KDE4.2 desktop so that it is virually indistinguishable fron a KDE3 one.

I've been keeping Mandriva cooker current, release of 2001 spring is sometime this month...

Works very nice, now.

There is no longer any urgent need to install KDE3x as with 2009.0.

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[ion.simon.c]

Don't change my desktop by default to some lame mode that I don't want or use...

A one time change [0] back to Folder View mode is unacceptable for you?

4.0 should never have been released as anything other than a ALPHA...

All of the documentation handed to the distro packagers indicated that 4.0 was a technology preview that was intended for developers. The story from every KDE developer was the same: "It won't eat your dog, but end-users don't want to use it." No distro maintainer *should* have been packaging it in any *stable* release. Regardless, mistakes were made. Lessons have been learned. What does all of this have to do with the current state of KDE 4, again?

I'll be keeping my 3.5.10 KDE...

That's your choice. I earnestly hope that someone decides to keep maintaining the KDE 3.x line.

[0] Per user, per machine, natch.

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[ion.simon.c]

*wishes that he could banninate the phrase "sane defaults"*

Your sane defaults are not my sane defaults.
Regardless, there still is work to be done WRT configuration dialogs.

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[ion.simon.c]

I like the KDE release schedule better.

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[ion.simon.c]

but I'd rather not "fear" the upgrade should that time arrive.

Anecdotal evidence isn't worth the electrons used to distribute it. Having said that, I went from Gentoo's KDE 3.5.10 to KDE 4.2.x for all of my daily needs on my laptop and have not looked back. From what I can tell, if you turn off Desktop Effects [0], KDE 4.2.x is no slower than 3.5. If you have reasonably decent drivers for your graphics card, the Desktop Effects don't slow down the "KDE Experience" at all. There are still some missing apps (knetworkmanager, ferinstance) but they will get worked out with time.

Anyway. What do you use a realtime kernel for? Do you do realtime programming? If so, is that sort of thing much different from ordinary programming? Is there a realtime API or sumptin' that you have to use to get scheduling promises out of the kernel?

[0] Desktop Effects are generally disabled by default.

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[Bambi Dee]

The realtime kernel (in my case) is for audio, actually. My life doesn't depend on it, and it's largely voodoo to me, but it gets me lower CPU usage, lower latencies, and fewer under/overruns in JACK.

KDE 4.1 didn't work for me, for several reasons, the dualhead thing among them, so of course I'm wondering if KDE 4.2 has the same problems. (My own anecdotes are actually quite relevant to me!)

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[Max Littlemore]

I like the KDE release schedule better.

That's a little like saying "I like gastric influenza better than pixie dust".

Re:Warning - Honest opinion below

[ion.simon.c]

That's a little like saying "I like gastric influenza better than pixie dust".

I've never had experience with either one, so I can't comment on that. :)
I can comment on release schedules, though.

Decent defaults are the key

[TheLink]

"For KDE, why won't you then customize it to your heart's desire?"

That is not the point. Read his post - he said "I could turn off or tweak most of that junk".

If the OSS GUI people keep picking crappy defaults and require 90% of the people to customize/tweak stuff to achieve "decent usability", then that means their desktops are unsuitable for public use - it means they FAIL! Sure one may feel Windows requires lots of tweaking etc to be decent, but it has the market advantage of being "defacto/preinstalled".

A good GUI designer picks good defaults, so that 90% of the people will find it tolerable or even usable and won't need to customize it.

Think of GUI design as "user choice + huffman coding". The most popular options should be only one or two clicks/choices away, the advanced options should still be possible, just more steps.

GNOME fails the latter - they seem to have the development philosophy of totally removing/hiding features just because they might confuse the user.

KDE fails for having poor defaults. Look at their latest default menu, how many people want to keep clicking backwards and forwards to navigate their stupid new menu to look for the application to launch? BTW I tried Kubuntu recently and KDE was crashing way too often - so that's another fail.

1) The typical desktop user would not know how to customize his/her desktops OR want to know, so the desktop environment FAILS if it requires customization to achieve a good level of usability.

2) Even if there are "resident geeks" around to customize stuff for the desktop users, this results in zillions of different customizations because every geek will have their own favourite customization. This creates a big problem when users try to call 3rd party "Customer Support/Helpdesk" - the helpdesk agents and people writing the helpdesk scripts won't even know where the caller's taskbar will be.

At least with windows, the typical user's "start button" will be in the lower left hand (windows users who have moved it elsewhere don't normally call support to look for basic help- they call support to try to get to some higher level tech ;) ).

How would the designer pick the defaults? They could test various designs with a large sample of users.

Just asking people what they want doesn't work that well, because often the users themselves don't know what they want or don't say it. After all, millions of people wanted chunky spaghetti sauce, but never said it in surveys till Howard Moscovitz did some taste tests with dozens (100?) variations of spaghetti sauce and found that a lot of people liked chunky sauces (at that time there were ZERO chunky sauces on the supermarket shelves!).

So a good designer will narrow down the variations (getting rid of the totally crappy ones - you don't bother testing varieties of spaghetti sauce that are totally awful) to a manageable number of varieties for testing.

Re:Decent defaults are the key

[bogaboga]

OK...I got your point(s). Now I believe you will agree with me, that defining what a "decent default" is may take lots of effort around here. There are too many skill sets and tastes when it comes to Linux and its desktop environments.

It possible to create theme and menu packages that reflect various "decent defaults" to users. This is especially so in KDE. The users can run a script that would ask questions and later create a package that satisfies them. Think of it as similar to what takes place when one has to compile a kernel.

Question is: Where do we start? Or will this idea be dead on arrival?

Re:Decent defaults are the key

[Hognoxious]

The default doesn't have to cover many "many skill sets and tastes". It just needs to be usable out of the box, simple and basic.

I've had to use knoppix to rescue a laptop, the settings for the touchpad were insane - oversensitive & wild acceleration, plus it autograbbed anything it touched, sensed doubleclicks if I lifted off & touched down again... It took me longer to turn all that off (I had to creep the cursor round the outside a few mm at a time) than to do the rest of the operation.

Re:Decent defaults are the key

[TheLink]

Yes defining a decent default takes lots of effort and thought. FWIW Microsoft does many little things better than KDE, and apparently the Mac UIs aren't too bad.

For example, the taskbar in the previous KDE (when set to more than one row in height) ordered tasks from top to bottom first, then only left to right. Whereas Windows does it from left to right first then top to bottom. IMO, the way windows does it is better because with windows, if you close one task in the middle, only the leftmost and rightmost tasks will change positions. Whereas with the KDE method, if you close one task, ALL tasks to the right of the closed task will change vertical position! That makes it harder to keep track of where things are.

Subtle things like icons and colours used in them are also important (and hard to get right). I found the KDE and other "Linux desktop app" icons so indistinct that I still had difficulty _rapidly_ telling stuff apart even after 3 years of using KDE. Maybe I have brain damage or something. Icons seem to have similar shades, or similar shapes. KDE's stupid idea of naming a lot of their stuff starting with K doesn't help me.

Re:Decent defaults are the key

[ion.simon.c]

I've had to use knoppix to rescue a laptop, the settings for the touchpad were insane...

Being usable out of the box for every chunk of MMI hardware out there requires access to said hardware. This sort of thing is beyond the budget of most OSS developers.

Besides, what are you doing using the mouse on a Linux machine? Why aren't you emulating the behaviour of Real Men(tm) and using xterm? ;)

Re:Decent defaults are the key

[ion.simon.c]

Your "taskbar ordering" anecdote is interesting.
OTOH, I don't understand folks who use the taskbar when they can make as many virtual desktops as they wish. :)

Re:Meanwhile, MS Has Recovered From Vista...

[Narishma]

And who says Linux's (and Gnome and KDE) goal is to beat Microsoft?

Re:Meanwhile, MS Has Recovered From Vista...

[gbjbaanb]

the troll has 1 relevant thing to say here:

instead of getting your shit together.

Now, I don't care so much about gnome v kde, but I do wish there was more consistency for all Linux GUIs. If everyone had a common standard to work to (eg the Windows Style Guidelines) then the Linux desktop would become a better place to work. MS did wonders for themselves with this, and until recently kept with it - unfortunately, now they've replaced the menu bar with a round button thing, no-one can find the print option anymore - which only goes to show how important and powerful the guidelines were.

Linux has the opportunity to be great (we all know that, even the MS trolls), but isn't necessarily following up on its potential. Gnome v KDE is probably the biggest factor stopping this from happening.

Can't we all just get along?

[DJRumpy]

I've never understood why they just don't offer a 'simple' and an 'advanced' user control panel rather than all this bruhaha about KDE and Gnome. I prefer my desktop to work. I'm not interested in shiny icons, or whatnot. I was a KDE fan until 4.0. I've since switched to Gnome. I find it serves my purposes.

Honestly I think people put far to much discussion into the G vs K thing. It's not like it's hard to drop both on there now. Why don't they just merge and go with the Simple vs Advanced option and be done with it?

Maybe if we're lucky it would bring about an end to all the stupid app names like kChat (is that a sneeze), or gfloppy (did I just throw up a little in my mouth?). I can't stand that everyone tries to throw a damn K or G in front of every app for those desktops.

Blegh...

Re:Can't we all just get along?

[bogaboga]

I prefer my desktop to work. I'm not interested in shiny icons, or whatnot.

This is "Free Open Source Software" you can always do what you want. The "shiny icons or whatnot" are there because for some people, they are a joy to look at and work with in the first place. Of course, if they were a thorn in the butt, they would not exist. Someone loves them. That's why they are there.

I was a KDE fan until 4.0. I've since switched to Gnome. I find it serves my purposes.

Good for you man. Just continue using GNOME.

Limitations of GTK+ ?

[Viol8]

FTA:

"About the same time, GNOME developers started complaining about the limitations of the GTK+ toolkit with which the desktop is built, and looking for ways around those limitations."

Theres one very simple way around them - get off your lazy backside and go and learn Xlib and extension programming. What do these whingers, sorry "GNOME developers" think is lying underneath all these toolkits FFS?

Re:Limitations of GTK+ ?

[ray_mccrae]

I'm not a GNOME developer, but presumable because GTK+ is meant to be a portable layer. Mixing GTK+ code with Xlib code is going to create a big mess. I looked at GTK+ once a few years ago when it was version 1. There was an intermediate layer between the two called GDK for low level drawing of widgets.

However it begs the question what the supposed limitations of GTK+ are. I don't think it's lack of widgets.

Re:Limitations of GTK+ ?

[Viol8]

Its limitations are probably just that it doesn't have some obscure functionality someone once wanted. No toolkit is ever going to do everything everyone wants - thats where lower level APIs come into play.

Re:Limitations of GTK+ ?

[krischik]

Theres one very simple way around them - get off your lazy backside and go and learn Xlib and extension programming.

And be even further away from an fully working Gtk+ / GNOME which does not need an X-Server. While KDE 4 works nicely on Windows and Mac OS X without the need of X. And for me as the user it make a huge difference is is X required or not.

ripped the apps too

[rastos1]

KDE has done what's necessary and ripped the bandage off the scab.

Slackware moved KDE4 from testing into -current only a few weeks ago. So I was expecting that it is considered ready for general use. I was disappointed to find out, that the major applications such as KDevelop, Quanta and K3B are missing. And they will not come out soon either. KDE 4.2.2 will be released in a few days and still it will not contain KDevelop/Quanta/K3B. There are no dates given beyond KDE 4.2.2. KDE 4.0 was released in January 2008 (with alfa and beta releases published months before that). A year later the major apps are not ported. The change is too drastic if the major applications can't catch up in reasonable timeframe.

Re:ripped the apps too

[lbbros]

No, simply K3b, Quanta, and KDevelop suffer from a lack of (human) resources. K3b was essentially maintained by one person (Sebastian Trueg) who then worked mostly on Nepomuk (now Mandriva is helping him porting k3b). Quanta depends on KDevPlatform, which is a component of KDevelop not yet released (again, because workforce is low).

Re:ripped the apps too

[Anonymous Coward]

Digikam just released for KDE 4 in the past couple weeks.

Re:ripped the apps too

[ion.simon.c]

The "typelist" feature (aka "intellisense") of KDevelop 4 has been getting a *LOT* of love. Given that KDevelop 4 is a complete rewrite, and there are -IIRC- two guys working on it, its bound to not be ready yet.

KDE has gotten too abrasive

[BlackCreek]

There are two observations I would like to make regarding "development" of these two major DE for Linux:

1. Duplication is a shortcut to madness.
I regret the NIH mentality that still seems to be everywhere. There are many good choices of applications for both DEs, but instead of working to make a nice application component more robust and flexible and to work to integrate that with the other DE. People insist in this NIE mentality and write a copy of it.

While choice is good, it is not a good thing to have 5 choices of incomplete apps that either won't play
nice with GTK or to QT.

If you only live inside one code base, you may not see the damage that that causes to both users, and to the people in charge of deployment (which in this case are the dists). But the damage will be there nonetheless.

2. You fail to understand failure when you blame it on your users.

The simplest big short coming of a developer is not to take responsibility for its blunders.
The developer controls the code. Decides what to rewrite, what to add, and what to remove. The devs are the ones with commit rights, not the users. A release gets made, and users refuse it. The developers start yelling and swearing on the users?

I browsed some 3 or 4 KDE-4.X (stable or beta) release forum thread (the one that goes under the announcement). All were filled with devs _literally_ swearing at the users who still thought KDE-3 to be better. On KDE4.2 beta 1 or 2, someone went on to mention that that wasn't a nice thing to do. ASeigo, KDE's president, came along to swear at the guy asking for respect for different opinions.

Amarok links developer blogs in their front page. Amarok2 gets released. Someone starts a post asking for attention in order to swear at users who still thought better of KDE3.

As a developer, I have no respect for a project that talks to its users like this. The project leadership thinks it is "OK" to blame and swear at its users?

Re:KDE has gotten too abrasive

[Civil_Disobedient]

Links? Genuinely curious.

Re:KDE has gotten too abrasive

[rec9140]

Yes, links please.

Re:KDE has gotten too abrasive

[BlackCreek]

This is what I could find... it's not like I am collecting them...

http://dot.kde.org/2008/12/18/kde-42-beta2-canaria-testimony-bug-fixing-frenzy

Thank you very much for this. Please ignore the "it's not like KDE3.5"-morons, but keep on innovating. It's very much appreciated.

you evidently haven't tried 4.2 then, as your complaint is pretty stupid in light of the achievements in that release.

http://amarok.kde.org/blog/archives/862-KDE-Trolls,-eat-this.html

Anyone else noticed the extreme amount of hate & trolling against KDE lately, and especially against KDE 4? I have a special message for you trolls:

You're fucking idiots.

the guy swears like this, and then proceeds to quote Gandhi.

Re:KDE has gotten too abrasive

[Anonymous Coward]

You Sir, fail at basic reading comprehension. Go back to elementary school.

Paying any attention?

[Uzik2]

" it could very well mean continuing to be dragged down by support for legacy sub-systems. It means being reduced to an imitator rather than innovator.' "

Which sums up Microsoft to a "T". One of the most successful computer companies on the planet. Clearly this author has an agenda.

Shoo! Troll!

[Anonymous Coward]

Stupid little kids spouting the same garbage year after year.

It's like trying to not think about elephants

[edittard]

If there's anything guaranteed to get people talking about X (no, not that X) it's to say "Setting aside X", "Leaving X out of consideration" "For purposes of simplication, ignore X".

It's like trying to not think about elephants.

I don't run desktops, I run *APPLICATIONS*

[knorthern knight]

The pox on both your houses KDE/GNOME. I run Blackbox, because it doesn't get in the way. I got used to it on my old Dell 450 mhz PIII with 128 megs of RAM. KDE/GNOME were simply out of the question. I could see the desktop icons being slowly painfully drawn at startup.

My current computer has more video RAM than the old one had main RAM. But that's not an excuse to waste resources. Blackbox flies on a modern machine, especially with *PROPERLY OPTIMIZED* Gentoo (I said optimizied, not riced up). I run mostly Firefox/Gnumeric/AbiWord/Mplayer/GIMP on the GUI, and I generally flip back to a real textmode console to run mutt (email) and slrn/slrnpull (usenet news).

At work I'm stuck with Windows. After a while I get used to it, but it seems that with every new version (95/98/2000/XP) it all changes, and "everything you know is wrong". What's wrong with sticking with something that works?

They're both too much like Windows...

[argent]

Attacking Microsoft on its own ground is rarely a good strategy, otherwise we'd all be using fvwm95.

Second System Effect

[ciderVisor]

There's a whole chapter in The Mythical Man Month dedicated to exploring the "Second System Effect". Gnome developers avoid it, KDE developers embrace it. I think this is KDE's Achilles Heel.

Another result of Gnome's glacial progression is that its interface is 'less surprising' than KDE's. This is usually felt to be A Good Thing.

Gnome is more stable, at least on my machine

[Logic Worshipper]

I have stability issues with KDE, and it uses more memory than Gnome to run. Why would I use KDE when Gnome is perfectly good, and doesn't crash like KDE does?

Re:Gnome is more stable, at least on my machine

[HatofPig]

Your first sentence answered the question in your second. Is this a trick? What do you want from us?

Former KDE Lover

[Prototerm]

I've been a KDE user for many years, but with the advent of version 4.0, I was forced to switch to Gnome. Why?

1. The default KDE looks like Vista. I find Vista's GUI to be an ugly, unpleasant monstrosity. What's with all this black, anyway?

2. KDE 4.0 was buggy and incomplete. If I wanted to use beta-quality software as Release Quality, I'd still be using Windows.

Hopefully, by the time the developers get around to screwing up Gnome with some new "artsy-fartsy" new look and feel, KDE will have gone through enough iterations to be feature complete and stable (not to mention have plenty of new non-black themes I can live with).

Re:Former KDE Lover

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, do you live under a rock? KDE 4.0 was released more than 1 year ago, and the developers already stated that it was not for average users, not even for geeky users, but really for developers. Do you recall OS X 10.0 or Windows XP before any Service Pack, or Gnome 2.0 (have you ever used Gnome 2.0?), none of them was praised for stability and completeness?

Re:Former KDE Lover

[SomeKDEUser]

Uh... Let me get this straight.

You are a happy KDE 3.5.10 user. Presumably, you prefer it to GNOME.

KDE releases 4.0. You do not like it. So you switch to GNOME instead of your preferred KDE 3.5.

This makes no sense. Unless of course you have assumed that upon the release of KDE 4, the devs sacrificed many chickens and magically erased all previous versions in hard drives throughout the world. And you acted on that belief.

See, the problem might not lie with the KDE devs...

Kan't kand KDE

[epr]

Kow ko kyou keople kope kwith kall ke K:s? Ki kan't karry kon kusing kit kor kore khan kive kinutes kefore ketting khe kurge ko kuffokate ka citten.

Where is the point?

[prefec2]

I was reading the whole article and I was looking for a solid argumentation, for proof, but I didn't find any.

Instead I found that Bruce haven't made his homework. First he claims that GNOME is only gradually improving its environment and applications, and then he claims they will do a major change to GNOME 2.3 (he got the numbers wrong here it should be 2.30).

If GNOME is really going to be innovative with 2.30 and introduce for example the task based environment proposed [http://live.gnome.org/BrianMuhumuza/ToPaZ] by Brian Muhumuza then there will be a great vision available for the project.

Also the actual GNOME 2.x series has a goal and all these little changes over the past years can be seen in that light. GNOME want to deliver a desktop which is easy to use, which works, which is modeled for users. Therefore the philosophy is more good defaults and less options.

KDE has another philosophy therefore there are more options and switches.

While GNOME is becoming more userfriendly over time, the KDE project didn't pay attention to this aspect very well. And then they realized that userfriendlyness is important. While GNOME had developed the HIG, KDE did not have a style guide with the same quality. So they decided to focus more on this subject for KDE 4.0 with some success (except the start menu it is a mess).

Right now it is not very clear what GNOME 2.30 oder GNOME 3.0 will be, however GNOME has the potential to reshape the desktop with a new vision. And in the beginning there will be some confusion, because the new system will be very different. But in the end it will be the most innovative desktop environment for PCs.

Re:Where is the point?

[ultrabot]

GNOME want to deliver a desktop which is easy to use, which works, which is modeled for users. Therefore the philosophy is more good defaults and less options.

KDE has another philosophy therefore there are more options and switches.

None of this is very relevant for the discussion at hand - this is about rewriting the underlying framework as opposed to polishing the existing one.

Settings & such are to be implemented in individual apps.

It's a stupid controversy anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as Linux never becomes OSX (Where you have the choice of OSX's UI or nothing) or Windows (Where you have the choice of Windows UI or run the risk of completely crashing your machine), why worry? Some people will use Gnome, some KDE, some other systems - but generally the apps that run on one will run on the other, so this "Gnome vs KDE" thing is kind of silly...

Two Projects: 1 Cycle

[ambrosius27]

Both KDE and GNOME follow the same basic cycle: large dramatic changes in infrastructure and layout are followed by years of relatively small, incrememental changes. How many years did KDE go between 2.0 and 4.0? (KDE 3.0 was a break in ABI but the infrastructure and layout were largely the same.) And how many years have there between GNOME 2.0 and the planned GNOME 3.0 next year?

The big difference right now is that KDE made their big change last year and are now incrementally fixing, improving things. GNOME, on the other hand, are working on their big change, which will land next year. The cycle is the same, but the two projects are on different parts of this cycle right now.

There are a couple smaller differences, as well. First, as I understand it, KDE developed many parts of their new infrastructure for a couple years, and this infrastructure landed for use at KDE 4.0. GNOME seems to be inserting many pieces of its new infrastructure in the GNOME 2.x cycle before putting all the new pieces together in GNOME 3.0. On the one hand, this means that the various pieces will (hopefully) get more testing, and thus more bugfixing, before 3.0. On the other hand, 3.0 becomes a little bit less exciting because piece x and piece y are not exactly new. The second difference is that Qt underwent a big overhaul for its 4.x series, which forms the basis of KDE 4.0, whereas GTK 3.0 will be cleaned up, rather than radically changed.

This does not mean that big new technologies are not going to be in GNOME 3.0. Clutter, gjs, seed, and gnome introspection, to take a few examples, are separate libraries that will form the backbone of GNOME 3.0. It seems to me that tech journalists hear the news about GTK+ 3.0 and decide that GNOME 3.0 will have no changes. That should not be the case at all: next generation GNOME shell.

KDE has dependency problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

IMO, KDE's biggest problem is with dependencies.

I run XFCE, and mostly use GTK applications. I avoid any Gnome applications that rely on special gnome daemons.
I currently avoid all KDE applications due to the the kitchen sink dependencies.
Perhaps it's better than it was previously,
but here is an example:
(Again, I am running XFCE as desktop)
I install and run konsole.
I use ps to see what KDE parts are running.
Only konsole is running (to my surprise).
Type exit in konsole.
Lots of text spews by ??
I use ps to see if KDE parts are running.
klauncher and kdeinit4 are running.

Re:Meanwhile, MS Has Recovered From Vista...

[perryizgr8]

are you saying linux's goals do not include increasing market share? because if linux has to grow, that growth has to come from microsoft's loss of share. and last time i checked, capturing someone else's market share was included in the list of things to do to beat someone.
so what exactly are you suggesting?

What about Mono/Gtk#

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have like to have seen the article talk a little more about Mono/Gtk#. Gnome has made good use of Mono in a great many of its apps. That may prove to be a big help for them in the coming years. KDE does have some C# libraries but they are pretty far behind at this point

I realize that .NET is not well liked by all but it does open opportunities to Gnome that KDE does not yet have. Despite its short comings managed code is not going any where and can be a very useful tool.

Re:What about Mono/Gtk#

[mrpacmanjel]

I've been playing with Mono recently and one thing I would like to see is some kind of desktop alternative, something a little more focused than Gnome and KDE.

Personally I think Mono is a superior implementation of Microsoft's .NET and given the chance Mono could really benefit the community given the chance.

I've used both desktops and of course there are good and bad things about both of them. I am grateful that we have an actual choice.

What really impresses is me is how powerful QT 4.5 has become - for me this is where the true power of KDE comes from and the current QT is way beyond GTK (for the record I am a Gnome user).

Have you seen the QT demos(included with QT) - very impressive!

Re:What about Mono/Gtk#

[ZERO1ZERO]

What QT demos. Where can I see them?

Re:What about Mono/Gtk#

[Roberto]

Not C#, but there is no reason you couldn' t do it using C# too. And I must say it's a heck of a demo!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py_eUAQS1UY

!Gnome: Both have evolved too in leaps and bounds

[GyroCaptain]

Here's what three Gnome users just sayd to me: Noob Gnome user: Main menu components is moved around even if locked. What am I doing wrong? Normal Gnome user: Window resizing border width still ONE PIXEL wide! I resize all the time, why just ONE SINGLE PIXEL WIDTH? Power Gnome user: Still no Alt+Tab while dragging! Maybe I should buy a better laptop in order to use Compzfusion, which is able to Alt+Tab. Arrgh! - I'll stick with it.

Good GUI in MS Office 2007?!?!

[mdielmann]

There are almost no complex programs with a good GUI in Linux (programs like photoshop, paint shop pro, 3ds max, ms office 2007, ...), because GTK doesn't support doing floating and dockable toolbars or multiple open files in a good way.

Leaving aside most of the other applications, but MS Office 2007?!?! Good GUI?!?! Sure, pretty. Also, pretty useless. It reminds me of the MacBook Wheel. "EVERYTHING is just a few hundred clicks away."
Then there's the other features. I love how Excel has a new extension for spreadsheets with macros. Of course, since the default in Windows is to hide extensions, the only clue you have as a user is the tiny icon with a slight difference.

Re:Well, I think CureAid or BandAd?

[davidsyes]

You literaturelly put KDE on the "bleedey edge"... Sore Users might want to splash a little "Camp or Phennicky" on their Open Sores Wounds...Sore to speak.... hehheehhee

Regardless of the metadiscussion...

[Anonymous Coward]

... about hits and things, the fact is a John Doe Linux user like me can now buy a Linux computer (it's easy, somewhat inexpensive, available at many stores and -- to the extent a notebook with batteries can be usable -- it is ok).

Now, I'm a long time KDE user. If someone likes Gnome, well, props to him/her. I don't -- even if there's great apps which I'm forced to use (like e.g. Gimp/The Gimp). So, we must have gtk _and_ qt libraries... life sucks.

What I'd really would like is a three mode interface:

a) One gray, featureless for authors to publish books and newbies find themselves inside the machine;
b) KDE, because me and family need it (did I mention it's WAY better than the alternatives?) and
c) Gnome for my higly esteemed colleagues which deserve my full consideration, despite being wrong.

That's it. You buy the computer, turn it on and there's an option: (S)imple, (G)nome or (K)DE interface?

For the sake of economy, the gray, featureless interface might just be Gnome -- because it already fits this role very well 8-P

Ubuntu does this (gotta have internet, so it sucks), Mandriva does this (better) but I need this to happen with any Linux PC not just the ones of HP which carry Mandriva.

Also let me put this bluntly: Mandriva I want to buy your excellent product, if not for anything else, because the company is competent and I've noticed this for many years ( where many >=4 ). But you suck at distribution! I want your product to drop at my lap, not get two hours of bad traffic to get a CD; also, to paraphrase a genius: Repositories! Repositories! Repositories!

Repositories help build communities which make the blood of a distro.

That's it, thanks for your time. HTH.

*all this is my personal opinion/ brands and trademarks belong to their owners*

Here's what's missing in both

[melted]

Transparent access to network shares from the command line and third-party apps. When I say "ls smb://servername/sharename" I want it to do something, just like it does in Windows. I want Java apps to be able to access unmounted shares, just like Gnome apps. I want Open Office to not ask me for a goddamn password again when I'm opening the file from a VFS SAMBA share. This is extremely amateurish and annoying.

Another thing that's partially broken is Active Directory interop. Granted, you can join AD these days fairly easily with Likewise, and things _sorta_ work. But on Ubuntu 8.10, for example (don't know about others) you won't be able to add a user to local groups anymore. WTF?

The point is, there are issues far more fundamental than differences in the UI. Community needs to focus on those, even though they're not as sexy.

Re:Meanwhile, MS Has Recovered From Vista...

[Narishma]

What I'm suggesting is that Linux's goal (if it even has one) is to be a good OS. It doesn't care about Microsoft.

KDE vs GNOME

[Anonymous Coward]

Say it with a song?

http://spamatica.se/music/spamatica/default/spamatica_-_kde_vs_gnome-1.8.ogg

Re:Meanwhile, MS Has Recovered From Vista...

[Anonymous Coward]

He's suggesting that beating Microsoft would be nice, but it's not the point. The point of Linux is to have a system that works well for the people who use it. If it wins converts, great. But it's not the point.

Gnome & KDE... who cares ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who really needs a fancy desktop ? Not me for sure.

My computer is there to run *applications* not mess about doing animated cubes, fancy menus, mouse over effects and other assorted crapola. It's 2009 and they're still piddling about with animations and other such useless CPU cycle wasting waffle.

This is why I have a Windows XP machine and a MAC to do my real work on as the people who code for these platforms write *applications*.

If the KDE/GNOME developers spent some of their time concentrating on writing useful applications then maybe, just maybe, desktop Linux would be of some use. As it is every application that runs on desktop Linux mostly has a functionally superior counterpart for Windows/MAC.

But Linux has a spinning cube I hear you say. It has windows that explode, that burn up that can be transparent. Wow. That excited me for nearly a full nano second before I thought "why am I wasting CPU cycles on something that resembles bad flash on a web page" ?.

Also when I use the latest KDE I feel like I'm using a hammer which also has a built in TV, radio and microwave oven. When I'm using GNOME I feel like I'm using a hammer which has neither a handle or head.

KDE ? Krap. Gnome ? Gno use.

Pricing Model

[krischik]

A Mercedes is more expensive Volkswagen. And a Volkswagen is more expensive then a Kia. That's the way it is. And if you think the Mercedes is overpriced then buy the Kia.

On the bleeding edge...

[m6ack]

I got a new T400 a few weeks ago... so I decided to take the plunge and load Jaunty as its primary OS.

I thought, "Since I'm going to be on the bleeding edge anyway, might as well try KUBUNTU." And I tried it...

KDE 4 looked /slick/, but notifications were annoying, and I couldn't get dual-monitors on my docked laptop working (a very key feature for me).

I got fed up and went back to standard Ubuntu on Jaunty with Gnome.

So, for me -- if obvious things are broken on my system, I'm not going to care so much about the eye candy... I'm going to get the slickest interface that I can on my primary machine, but I'm more interested that it is functional.

So, I guess that I prefer an incremental philosophy to radicalism. If KDE now shifts to incremental improvement on it's current (very, very slick) base, then it will probably win... but any more "radical" improvements in the short term will force even more people away -- just to get their systems running the way they need them to. With every person that switches, some percentage will decide that it's just not worth the hassle to go back, and some will just see KDE as a pile of code churn.

OS/2

[krischik]

That reminds me of OS/2 2.x. The Dos box with it's Windows 3.x was nothing else then what you described. Worked like a charm. Apart from Microsoft trying to beak the set-up with each new Windows 3.x release.

And then there was a planned OS/2 3.0 (not the 2.3 marketed as Warp 3) which was top run OS/2, Dos /Windows 3.11, Windows NT and AIX on top of XEN like hyper-visor. Of course Microsoft killed that by jumping the boat.

If MS wanted that they could have had it long ago.

Linux centric

[krischik]

I noticed that the discussion is very Linux centric. However both KDE and GNOME can be used on Windows and Mac OS X. And there the KDE development model has the edge as Qt4 / KDE 4 does not need an X Server.

Ahh yes, theoretically Gtk+ does not need an X server either. But more the 50% of the GNOME apps on MacPorts will fail if Gtk2 is compiled with "+quartz". And the error messages suggest that the applications are looking for an X Server.

Compare that with 100% of KDE 4 apps compiling fine when Qt is compiled with "+cocoa".

And it is similar on Windows.

Re:Linux centric

[domatic]

A fully usable GTK port has been "coming soon" to OS X for years.

It's free (as in speech) software!

[ParkyDR]

Arguing about which is best pointless, it comes down to personal preference. There's too many people saying that KDE/GNOME should be the Linux desktop, it's free software, you have a choice. If you want a single desktop without any choice, use windows. I might not like your choice of desktop, but I'll fight for your right to choose it.

They could both be a lot better

[thaig]

GNOME and KDE compete with each other in things that don't matter much (e.g. effects) but don't solve real user experience issues.

e.g. I find a photo in my file browser (e.g. Nautilus) which has previews and so on to make it easy, then I try to upload it to a website - this means that within my browser I have to navigate my way to the file again, using a different and inferior UI (the filechooser) - very annoying.

Another example: It's incredibly difficult to select multiple files with a rubber band in List views in nautilus (or any gtk treeview apps) because it keeps thinking that you are trying to drag and drop an item instead of starting a selection.

These UIs don't have very "joined up" thinking when it comes to the user's experience. They need to get past the "application" model and start thinking about objects and what people want to do with them, so that the browser and the filemanager, for example, can work together to allow someone to upload some selection of files.

Another Example: why do I need to load up a program to view a photo? Why can't I just zoom in on the photo in my file manager - after all the file manager shows me a thumbnail that can be zoomed into up to a point, so why do I suddenly have to have to click and see some other window
appear with totally different navigation etc.

Also, why is there a need to load different programs to edit and display images? Why does that make sense outside of the old considerations of memory usage and performance? Can't I just get a paint tool from my toolbox and start editing the image wherever it is on the screen (even in my file manager)?

From what I have read, Android's GUI seems to have a much more intelligent approach - I wonder if it could be applied to a PC DE. Then we could dump both KDE and GNOME and end the war.

Re:They could both be a lot better

[badkarmadayaccount]

Thank you. Just plain thank you.

If you buy a Kia Apple won't let you on their road

[Rix]

Even though a Kia might be perfectly suitable for your needs, or even more suitable than a Mercedes.

Walled gardens are a bad thing, no matter who's building the walls.

SMB is a stinking clusterfuck

[Rix]

Unfortunately, that's just the fact of the matter. It barely works under the native Microsoft versions.

SMB is not a published protocol. It's a series of hacks held together with duct tap and chewing gum.

That the Samba project works as well as it does is nothing short of amazing.

Re:SMB is a stinking clusterfuck

[melted]

Oh, and BTW, SMB IS a published protocol these days. Jeremy & Co are working on the next version of SAMBA straight from the specs.

GTK != Gnome != Gnome apps

[Rix]

You can't blame GTK for Gnome failures, nor can you blame either for failures in apps that rely on either.

I'm sure there are plenty of KDE apps that will not compile or run without X or other dependencies expected on a Linux system.

Will Konsole work with Windows' cmd.com?

Re:GTK != Gnome != Gnome apps

[krischik]

You can't blame GTK for Gnome failures, nor can you blame either for failures in apps that rely on either.

But we are talking development models here. And I do blame the Gtk development model for failing to create a consistent development environment. And this in turn leads to less consistent applications produced.

I'm sure there are plenty of KDE apps that will not compile or run without X or other dependencies expected on a Linux system. Will Konsole work with Windows' cmd.com?

Don't know. Konsole works on Max OS X without X.

Martin

KDE release dates and 4.2.2

[vdboor]

KDE 4.2.2 will be released in a few days and still it will not contain KDevelop/Quanta/K3B.

All 4.2.x releases only contain bugfixes. They won't include new features, let alone new applications.

There are no dates given beyond KDE 4.2.2.

*kuch* http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules/KDE_3.4_Release_Schedule ..?

Re:KDE release dates and 4.2.2

[Anonymous Coward]

try this instead: http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules

Re:KDE release dates and 4.2.2

[rastos1]

Right. The GP mistook 3.4 for 4.3. The Release schedule for 4.3 is not yet defined. Just like Release goals. The Feature plan does not list kdevelop/quanta/k3b.

KDE is butt ugly and always was

[Anonymous Coward]

kde 3.5 looked like the buttons would rattle if you shake your laptop. kde4 has taken a few to many cues from vista, same god-awful messy graphic style and interface design. No one with any design sensibility would prefer kde. It's bling with no brains design wise.
Gnome is pretty damn pretty, although some dialogues are getting to large.

(5 years design education + 3 years in practice)

C++

[speedtux]

What's more "graudalist" than KDE's continued insistence on using C++?

Gnome has a good migration path to modern languages like Python and C#, without being weighted down by the legacy of lots of C++ code and support.

Re:C++

[Roberto]

Let's see:

1) GNOME wraps C libs for C# and Python

2) KDE wraps C++ for C# and Python

And from that data, you reach the conclusion that KDE is weighted down by the legacy of lots of C++ code (why isn't GNOME weighted down by the legacy of lots of C code then?).

Sir, you have an excepcional brain.

Re:C++

[speedtux]

And from that data, you reach the conclusion that KDE is weighted down by the legacy of lots of C++ code (why isn't GNOME weighted down by the legacy of lots of C code then?).

The C++ runtime and standard libraries are a large superset of the C runtime and libraries, with the bulk and overhead to go with it. When using and binding C++, you have to deal with issues such as RTTI, name mangling, exception handling, template instantiation, new-vs-malloc, stream-vs-stdio, etc. None of those complexities buy you any functionality for KDE or Qt over Gnome/Gtk+; quite to the contrary, C++'s object system is singularly unsuitable for writing any kind of GUI software.

The first evolutionary step towards a better desktop is to eliminate C++ from GUI and application software altogether. Gnome has taken that step, KDE hasn't.

Sir, you have an excepcional brain.

So I have been told.

Re:C++

[Roberto]

It' s obvious you have no clue:

GNOME never eliminated C++: they just never got there.

Glib, Gobject and others reimplement most of that "overhead" you mention.

C++ is very suitable for GUI development: example Qt!

Re:C++

[speedtux]

GNOME never eliminated C++: they just never got there. Glib, Gobject and others reimplement most of that "overhead" you mention.

Yes, Glib implements its own object system. Its key features are that it only depends on the C standard and C standard library, and that it's a dynamic object system.

Qt uses a static object system, and then adds non-standard extensions on top of that because the C++ object system isn't good enough. And Qt doesn't even take advantage of the features C++ has for writing safer, more reliable code.

C++ is very suitable for GUI development: example Qt!

Your reasoning is circular. In fact, Apple rejected C++ for GUI development, Microsoft has abandoned it, and Linux has created an alternative.

The KDE community can continue invest an extraordinary effort to keep it alive and try to keep it up to date, but Qt is already an anachronism and an evolutionary dead end.

Gtk C code isn't pretty, but it has a much easier migration path to the future because its object system is much more suitable to GUI programming and because it isn't saddled with C++.

Re:C++

[Roberto]

No, it's not circular. Qt is a GUI toolkit. It's written in C++. It's awful nice. Ergo, you can have a nice C++ GUI toolkit. It's pretty straightforward, really.

You seem to have this idea about Qt being written in some language that is not C++. Let me disabuse you of that notion: Qt is written in C++. The proof is in the pudding: C++ compilers love its code.

And please, go educate yourself about Qt's metaobject system. It's not what you seem to think it is.

If C++ is a dead end, so is C, since it is noticeably *worse*. As you said, Apple rejected C too! and Microsoft abandoned it ages ago! For C++, even!

It's weird that you go on and on making arguments that hurt your own case, though.

Re:C++

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's not circular. Qt is a GUI toolkit. It's written in C++. It's awful nice.

Obviously, you have neither taste nor experience with real object systems. Like most Qt/KDE developers, you're just ignorant.

It's weird that you go on and on making arguments that hurt your own case, though.

You don't know what you're talking about.

Re:C++

[Roberto]

No, it's not circular. Qt is a GUI toolkit. It's written in C++. It's awful nice.

Obviously, you have neither taste nor experience with real object systems. Like most Qt/KDE developers, you're just ignorant.

What are you, a LISPer?

Are you actually, seriously pushing forward GObject as a real object system preferred by developers of discerning taste? Are you drunk?

It's weird that you go on and on making arguments that hurt your own case, though.

You don't know what you're talking about.

That was specifically aimed at your silly concept that Apple preferring Objective C instead of C++, and MS dropping C++ for C# is somehow a validation of C+Glib+GObject.

C was not even running in that race. C was the dead horse from which they made the glue to attach the plaque to the trophy of that race.

Re:C++

[speedtux]

That was specifically aimed at your silly concept that Apple preferring Objective C instead of C++, and MS dropping C++ for C# is somehow a validation of C+Glib+GObject.

It shows is that C++ is a dead end for GUI and desktop application development. Hence, Qt and C++ are evolutionary dead ends.

Are you actually, seriously pushing forward GObject as a real object system preferred by developers of discerning taste?

No, I'm saying one shouldn't write applications in either C or C++ at all. And if one is writing in languages like Python or C#, then Gtk+ is a better toolkit to bind to those languages and build on. Qt only makes sense if your primary GUI development language is C++, but if it is, you might as well give up.

Re:C++

[Roberto]

If C++ is a dead end, so is C and your GNOME preference makes no sense.

Binding Qt to other languages is actually easier than binding Gtk nowadays (check libsmoke).

The Python Qt bindings are awesome, so you are, in the best case, giving a personal opinion that Gtk's are better (in my opinion they aren't)..

So all your position boils down to is "I like pygtk better"?

In short, you just keep saying things, without backing up anything, except by obviously silly, purely subjective or misleading statements.

Re:C++

[speedtux]

If C++ is a dead end, so is C

Quite to the contrary: it is usually overly complex forms that are an evolutionary dead end, while the more primitive forms continue to survive. C++ has become too bloated, while C will continue to survive as a small systems programming language.

Binding Qt to other languages is actually easier than binding Gtk nowadays

If it's so easy to bind, where are up-to-date bindings for C#, Haskell, OCaml, Ada, or Scheme?

(check libsmoke)

libsmoke is used only by Ruby and Perl bindings; it isn't even used by the Python bindings.

Re:C++

[Roberto]

C# bindings are libsmoke-based, called Qyoto, and part of kdebindings.

I don' t know bindings for the other languages you mention, but I haven' t looked, either. In any case, that's not an indication of a difficulty in binding them. It could even be a signal that coding in C++ is so much nicer than doing it in C, that there are not enough desperate developers.

The Python bindings predate libsmoke, are mostly automatically generated, and work, so noone bothered doing a libsmoke version.

There are also bindings for Lua, and PHP, also libsmoke-based.

As usual, all along this thread, you are wrong.

Re:C++

[badkarmadayaccount]

Speaking as someone who has worked with it, I see...

Re:C++

[Anonymous Coward]

C# bindings are libsmoke-based, called Qyoto, and part of kdebindings.

OK, so why did they drop Qt#?

I don' t know bindings for the other languages you mention, but I haven' t looked, either. In any case, that's not an indication of a difficulty in binding them.

Sure it is. Gtk+ is bound to most languages, using a single mechanism. Qt has numerous different bindings and mechanisms and is bound to only a few languages.

As usual, all along this thread, you are wrong.

Wrong? I asked a question. You provided an answer, but your answer only confirms what I have been saying: C++ is hard to bind to different languages.

If you think that C++ is as easy to bind to other languages as C, you're a fool.

It could even be a signal that coding in C++ is so much nicer than doing it in C, that there are not enough desperate developers.

You just don't get it, do you? Both C++ and C are horrible languages. But C is going to survive as a systems programming and glue language. C++ is just plain dead.

Well, thank you for confirming that KDE and Qt developers are bigoted idiots.

Re:C++

[Roberto]

"Why they dropped Qt#?"

No idea, ask the author. Qyoto exists.

Using libsmoke it *is* easy to bind Qt. You can sing nyah, nyah with your fingers in your ears if you want. That is easy too.

The number of KDE developers is growing. The number of GNOME developers is stagnant. That is a more interesting metric for ease of development than your repeated assertions.

Developing in C++/Qt is simply not horrible (even if I prefer PyQt myself!).

About 95% of GNOME *is* currently developed in a horrible environment.

That is simply not the case with KDE.

Why would that not cause an emphasis in bindings on the GNOME side? It's a simple, rather obvious thing, you just dismiss because of your pigheaded C preference, when it doesn't even mater to the point at hand.

Re:C++

[Roberto]

Well, thank you for confirming that KDE and Qt developers are bigoted idiots.

How did I do that? I have not been involved in KDE since version 2!

I am just a PyQt hobbyist nowadays.

Re:C++

[Anonymous Coward]

have you ever timed the compile of Qt vs glib and gtk ? or a stripped version of kde vs a featured gnome? compare the compile times and footprints and maybe you'll start to feel tux's point here...

Re:C++

[Roberto]

Since he has never mentioned anything about compile lengths, why do you think that's connectd to his "point"?

And no, I have not in the last few years. Then again, why would someone working on KDE or GNOME need to rebuild Gtk or Qt anyway?

I mean, yes, if you are working on kdelibs you will need to work with qt-copy for a period, but that's a tiny fraction of desktop development.

In any case, as I said, I don't see a connection to anything he wrote.

SMB itself has nothing to do with this

[melted]

SMB actually works pretty well. It's just that it, and other protocols (such as sftp, etc), needs to be WAY more integrated if Linux is to compete with Windows on the desktop. There needs to be some kind of "VFS interceptor" on top of everything else that would map the shares, log you in using single-sign-on (and therefore talk to Kerberos), etc, etc. It should be fairly low in the stack, so that console programs "just work" with it.

This is a very un-sexy bunch of work, so it won't get done. Right now file sharing on Linux (or Mac OS X for that matter) is a half assed, broken hack.

KDE 4.2 rocks!

[bensch128]

I know that a lot of people here are dissing 4.2 as buggy and unusable but on my Ubuntu 9.04 laptop, it rocks!

I have tons of graphical eye candy and it's super easy to add/remove plasmoids. Probably, the system bar icons should be movable to plasmoids seamlessly,
but mostly the whole package hangs together well. The audio worked out of the box and the volume setting is visible when you change it. (Note, I had to manually change the control to master, it defaulted to pcm)

The compositing eyecandy is great and adds a little more bling. And so is the screen switching.
Now I just need to stop reading /. and get back to hacking krita.

Re:Meanwhile, MS Has Recovered From Vista...

[pod]

Microsoft has been breaking their own UI guidelines (that everyone else has to follow to be "Certified for Windows") ever since they first created them. Primarily with Office.

Why...

[zogger]

...aren't you separating your working programs from your fooling around programs on different workspaces? That's why they are there, to help organize your flow better. One click then, poof, back and forth, Gimp to browser or whatever.

I know that is only half your complaint (never used gimp so no idea there on all the buttons), but it is a solution to the first one you mentioned. No need to cram everything you are doing all on one workspace/desktop.

biggest problems with both

[Teunis]

I've lots of experience working with hardware with borderline drivers or borderline conditions that crash a lot.
Fault tolerance is still not 100%.

gnome-session doesn't save or restore sessions entirely yet (but it's improved)
sessions do not keep track of state.... but most recover nicely. (gnome-terminal does not and used to)

KDE saves and restores sessions well, but is not particularly fault tolerant either - and doesn't recover nicely.

both are more fault tolerant than windows or MacOSX though. (although both architectures provide easier APIs for providing fault tolerance *heh*)
I think I'm going to continue to develop with and around gnome. Of the alternatives, it's the one that's adapting best to industrial architecture - as well as making large-scale developments easier.

however I run cast-off, old and frequently not entirely functional equipment as I haven't been reasonably employed in quite some time. It isn't that easy for someone who'd prefer to work open source to find an income.
it also means I'm going to prefer the environment that crashes less and uses less resources.
At this point, that's gnome. (qt is fairly low load but kde developers seem overly fond of flashy stuff and excessive monitor resolutions)

Tip

[mahadiga]

Usability is inversely proportional to the number of mouse clicks required for the user desired feature.

Re:Meanwhile, MS Has Recovered From Vista...

[gbjbaanb]

that's true, but that's solely the exception that proves the rule. (back in the day) if the rest of Windows wasn't so consistent and usable, maybe no-one would have run it to get Office, or it wouldn't have had such a massive take-up.

Most other applications work correctly, and Windows is all the better for it (insert your own 'imagine how bad...' comment here)

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Sorry you lost me

[krischik]

Sorry you lost me as neither Mercedes nor Volkswagen not Kia own roads. So I have difficulties seeing how your parable connects back to Apple.

But if a Kia os more suitable for you then a Mercedes then good for you as you can save some money. But that does not mean that Mercedes pricing policy is wrong.

And the same for Apples pricing policy. I think I got great value for money. Others disagree. Fair enough.

And as for garden walls - if they stop the neighbours dog from littering on my lawn or they keep unwanted guest off then that not a bad thing at all.

Re:Meanwhile, MS Has Recovered From Vista...

[badkarmadayaccount]

It does have that goal. But that can't be realized without good driver support. The kernel team's efforts are heroic, truly, but we need the vendors for this.

anyone here use a source distro?

[Anonymous Coward]

My main argument against KDE has been and still is, the qt* libraries. They are large and clunky, and take hours upon hours to compile even a largely stripped base.

Compare this with compiling a base (or even featured) Gnome with gtk* libraries and there's little comparison (the qt footprint is larger and takes longer to compile...) not to mention the plurality of build errors.

With the release of kde4 I decided to give it a try, but was still dissapointed by the disorganization of the codebase. I appreciate the innovation and cross propogation of ideas from both sides, but I think the kde/qt teams still have a while before they're there.