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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.'"
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...
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.
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).
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>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.
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And what exactly do you think "lock-in" is, if not a dependency on backwards-compatibility?
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.
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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.
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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.
The confidence of ignorance will always overcome the indecision of knowledge.
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.
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.
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