Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
I don't know what this KDE 4.2 is supposed to represent, but KDE 3.5 is the future baby!
Instead of all these FlameWars you should ask THiS: why is the KDE-logo above the GNOME-logo?? What does kdawson wanna tell us?
The K still stands for Krap.
" 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.
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
I owe a debt of gratitude to KDE 4.x. It caused me to finally switch to a Mac and its unlikely I'll ever go back to a Linux desktop again. I'll just run Linux under a VM. Now I have the best of both worlds, an awesome desktop that doesn't suck and I can hack in Linux.
I've been loyal to Linux and waiting for a Linux desktop to not suck for like 10 years. KDE 4.x was the last straw. I've reached the point I just want a desktop where everything works and I simply don't think the open source model will ever achieve it on the desktop. Open source seems to be awesome for kernels, servers and command line utilities. It just DOESN'T seem to work for GUI apps, at least that I've ever seen. GUI design is hard and it requires a lot of vision and discipline the open source model doesn't seem to have.
Apple makes sure their hardware and software work right out of the box, and they make sure the UI is consistent and reasonably well thought out as long as you can live with their UI conventions. I've reached the point in my life I will trade some proprietary lock in, and higher cost, just to get a desktop that always works, and always works well.
I am SO tired of having to spend days trying to find why something doesn't work right on Linux. ALSA and audio is probably the worst part of Linux. The whole audio situation on Linux is an EPIC FAIL, and if you can't do audio right you can't do a desktop right. How many fracking audio API's are there on Linux now and NONE of them work right. My last PC the audio levels are broken and you can't turn the audio up past audible, and maxed out its low enough to be annoying. Sure I could spend days sifting through hacks on the web, patch the kernel, tweak knobs, and probably eventually get it to work, but I just don't want to any more.
The Mac just works out of the box and the apps are awesome and consistent.
I'm not really one to judge why KDE 4.0 was so bad but I do have a few observations:
- It seems to be a consistent issue with Trolltech and Qt that they DON'T make enough effort to maintain backward compatibility. I have a relatively small Qt app I developed on Qt 3.x and it was a royal pain to move it to 4.x. It must have been a complete nightmare to migrate a huge body of code like KDE. Sure supporting old cruft sucks, but as soon as you have a bunch of people using your toolkit YOU DO IT, so you don't piss off all your developers and force them to spend all their time just keeping all their software working chasing your whims for how to do things better, instead of developing their application.
- The KDE team made some really bad design decisions. The decisions to redisng the desktop paradim with those little floating pallets alone made me completely hate KDE after being a loyal user for years, I just stopped using them. Maybe it is better now, but that deature should have NEVER been deployed until it worked right and even then only as an option.
- The decision to push KDE 4 out to the world when it completely sucked was a monumentally bad decision. Anyone foolish enough to switch to it at 4.0, which seems to include me and Linus, were so appalled we we switched to something else. People need their desktops to work, communicate and live in the digital age. When you screw that up as bad as KDE 4 did people won't soon forget. The whole point of this open source model is you aren't supposed to release stuff as anything but beta until its ready. Shoving crap out on a deadline is supposed to be the proprietary software way of doing things.
KDE 4 was the Vista of the open source world.
@de_machina