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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.'"
In the second paragraph, the blogger says:
s/journalists/bloggers/ and you've got this story.
My pics.
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)
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.
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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...
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.
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).
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
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.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
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.
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...
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.
Similes are like metaphors
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.
Football Odds
Usability is inversely proportional to the number of mouse clicks required for the user desired feature.
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