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GNOME vs. KDE: the Latest Round
jammag writes "The debate about whether KDE or GNOME is the better Linux desktop is longstanding. Yet as Linux pundit Bruce Byfield discusses, it has entered a fresh chapter now that both desktop environments have versions that are radically different from their incarnations just a few years back. Moreover, 'the differences in KDE 4.6 and GNOME 3 (the latest releases) are greater than they have ever been,' he writes. Casting aside his usual diplomacy, Byfield acknowledges that he's heard rave reviews about GNOME 3, but disagrees: 'I suspect that the majority of users are more likely to be satisfied with KDE 4.6 than GNOME 3.'"
I've preferred to use Gnome over recent years as I just found KDE to be not right - couldn't get on with it. With the way both are now going, I can see myself having to switch again. Given my recent hunting round, I really hope that the Enlightenment crew actually get their shit together and get a stable, solid release that can be used as it is simple, clean, easy to use, easy to configure and add gadgets to.
Next on Slashdot: vi vs Emacs, GPL vs. BSD, red vs. blue.
Me, I use KDE. But as long as you uninstall the stuff that depends on Mono, I have no big problem with GNOME.
*sigh* who cares? Most distros toss skins on top of them that make them indistinguishable anyhow.
vi is better than emacs... :D
In the years I experimented with Linux in various distros, I always found KDE to be too busy, too ugly, and too rigid to be of any use to me. Gnome actually looks and feels user friendly.
The whole idea of linux is choice. I run xfce4; once in a fit of stupidy I suggested my wife log in using KDE as it was closer to Windows and not as sparse as XFCE. Bad idea.... Turns out some people (4 for 4 in my family) prefer the sparseness of XFCE to any complicated desktop. I know this will bring forth an avalanche of "What about Ratpoison, Windowmaker, etc, etc, etc?"
Exactly. Run what you like and let the pundits amuse themselves.
Having been in both communities, I characterize the Gnome community as very MS-like in these more modern times.
While working at MS, I saw a lot of the same "Not invented here" crap that I see in the gnome community on a daily basis. I also saw the same political maneuvering, the same tribal fears, and in general the same of what is in my own personal opinion a great lack of regard for others over their own projects/groups/goals.
I see the KDE group as entirely different. They work as a team, have the same common goals (in general) and let good ideas thrive even if it violates somebodies pet project or personal goal.
Posting AC an not mentioning the company by name for obvious legal reasons, but consider your here I figure your smart enough to get what I'm trying to say.
GNOME 2 or KDE 3.x with compiz were very close to the ideal desktop. If GNOME would have made 2.x's yelp help browser startup faster, it would have nearly been a perfect "minimal" desktop. KDE 3.x was a little further away but was still close to a perfect "power user" desktop. Now we are stuck with two less than optimal desktops that, despite the goal of being easier to use, seem more confusing for beginners. Devs MUST learn that past some point of complexity, evolutionary change is the only way to go.
Funny! All these desktops look the same from inside a command prompt.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
It doesn't matter and hasn't for years. You can install Gnome & KDE apps side-by-side and they just work. It's even gotten to the point where many distros can be set up to use Gnome or KDE icons across the board, no matter the family. In fact, Canonical's Unity 2D project is based on qt and uses many gtk libraries as well. It's all about the tools and what works the best.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
We can do better.
There are others out there. Has it finally come to it that people can only gasp the concept of pro or contra?
And isn't choice a GOOD thing?
I don't run either as a Desktop and am grateful there are others that do what I want it to do. I do run KDE and GNOME programs as well as any other that does what I want.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I think the free software community has really shot itself in the foot by continuing this division between Gnome and KDE.
Around ten years ago, I was interested in building some GUI apps for Linux, but there was no clear path as to which of the two GUI APIs I should learn. I found the lack of a clear path to be enough of a discouragement that I ended up losing interest. I doubt that I'm the only one who has felt that way about it.
I've just started using Gnome 3 on a laptop with Fedora 15. It was a bit of a shock -- where's my f$%#ing menu? But now I like it. I've added Avant Window Navigator and the combination is very Mac-like. http://www.sterndata.com/content/gnome-3-and-awn-new-desktop
--Steve
We better figure this one quick, seeing as how this is going to be the the year of the Linux desktop...
I switched to Jolicloud and haven't looked back
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
XFCE, LXDE, EDE, Enlightenment, ...
plus all of the alternative window managers like Openbox, Fluxbox, IceWM, FVWM, twm ...
I've left desktop managers altogether. They were so full of crap -- even the light ones. I admit many of them are great for some people, but I just build my Linux desktop from the ground up, with every single component being thought out -- it runs, because I told it to run.
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
The fundamental flaw here is that programmers love to think they are designers. They are not.
Here is what programmers need to be doing:
Make it easier for designers to do cool things with your platform. Then, let the designers duke it out with the users.
Instead, we are getting many hard-coded designs by programmers. And the only reason real designers can't fix it is because it is so inaccessible from a designer perspective. What designer wants to code C++ and device drivers? Seriously?
Follow the success of the web. Use HTML+JavaScript. Let the web designers who already have a suite of awesome tools to come in and design the desktop. Allow users to install different designs (similar to add-ons/extensions in Firefox). Stop holding our desktops hostage because only a select few people actually understand the GNOME/KDE codebase well enough to code their ideas.
Boy, it would be awfully nice to have screen shots to show us what the ()*&*(&%^&^ GUI looks like.
My problem with KDE (and, this was like a decade ago, so it's likely meaningless) was the ridiculous obsession with "K"s (bolor with a K? Silly bunt) and at the time, a lot of the apps were really, er, incomplete.
At the time, it also felt like KDE was trying for a much more uniform (and annoyingly Windows 3 interface), and on the system I had at the time, many of the K* apps were more like placeholders that didn't do much.
Some of these seem to me like a bunch of people telling me that I should be using the One True Window Environment, and that if I've not drunk the Kool Aid and using the entire suite of KDE, I'm somehow missing out. It just never felt that way to me.
I've used Gnome for over a decade, and while I'm willing to concede that a lot has changed in the intervening years ... but I distinctly thinking that KDE felt like it was the simplest possible interface meant to be OK for everyone. To me it came across as somewhat lacking and pretty lame looking.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
As far as bugs.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
The whole desktop thing is overblown. I have very little use for widgets or what what ever your desktop calls program updated icons. As far as customization that can also go too far. I want a nice clean UI elements and wall paper. The big weakness for the desktop right now are notifications. What it really comes down to is the API as far as I am concerned. Your desktop environment is used to launch apps and maybe manage files. Everything else is just fluff. The API that it offers the developer is the key IMHO. Yes having complete scripting control is cute but who cares? I use a computer to do thing.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
because KDE4's new graphical UI (plasma is it?) is CPU intensive and does not run smoothly on old hardware - which is where I usually install linux on.
oh, that and the fact that you cant run a vncserver on kde 4, because once again the graphical UI, looks like crap: http://forum.kde.org/brainstorm.php#idea90400_page1
I run an architecture firm entirely on Linux. All our workstations have two reasonably big screens and use Gnome. I have used Gnome since its earliest inception in various flavers of Redhat, Fedora and Ubuntu.
I have to say that as much as I don't want to, we are going to have to change to Xfce or some other alternative. Gnome shell is a disaster for the way we work. I can't believe that the developers and UI designers have completely failed to take into account those of us that are actually using our workstations to do heavy duty computational, graphic and design work.
We have spent the last 20 years moving to ever larger and multiple screens because we need the real estate. Now we are supposed to work as if we were using a cell phone? What a joke.
The developers need a good whack will a clue stick. As does Redhat. The least they could do is have a fall back to the Gnome 2 series.
We don't want to be the subject of an experimentet about how we "should be working."
This is serious business to us and has a big effect on our bottom line.
Kurt
Part of the Lubuntu distribution, which works great on netbooks or laptops with minimum RAM (128 meg) or processor speed (1000 MHz). In June 2010 Jim Lynch reviewed Lubuntu 10.04, saying, "One thing youâ(TM)ll notice about using the Lubuntu desktop is that itâ(TM)s fast. Very, very fast. Even on an underpowered machine, Lubuntu should perform very well. Itâ(TM)s one of the best things about this distro; it leaves behind the bloated eye candy that can sometimes bog down GNOME and KDE..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LXDE
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
One was too austere, they other over-eye-candied. Neither had any significant impovemnets in functionality over earlier versions.
Now, Gnome and KDE just get in the way of using my desktop environment to complete actual work.
Hello to IceWm and LXDE.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Byfield acknowledges that he's heard rave reviews about GNOME 3, but disagrees: 'I suspect that the majority of users are more likely to be satisfied with KDE 4.6 than GNOME 3.'"
I've actively sought out reviews and have yet to read a single positive review of Gnome 3. Not one. In fact, they are as universally bad as they are universally duplicates of each other. They all seem to very quickly identify and cite the same core problems with Gnome 3's usability, the specific and seemingly broken process which yielded Gnome 3, but also touch on Gnome's process failures and general lack of specification and healthy process.
I'm personally excited to see what all the brouhaha is about with Gnome 3 (hell, can always revert to Gnome 2 or KDE), and I say that as a current Gnome 2 user, but frankly, based on a wide number of reviews, I have exceptionally low expectations of Gnome 3.
Seriously, if you know of some good, unbiased Gnome 3 reviews, please post them here. Thus far, I've never read a single one.
'I suspect that the majority of users are more likely to be satisfied with KDE 4.6 than GNOME 3.'
I'm certain that the majority of users are likely to wish developers would stop fucking with the interface they're already comfortable and familiar with and find something more useful to do with their time.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
And yet, nobody mentions Fluxbox...
Until then, GNOME is the only option. I can't stand a desktop that harasses me with a popup every time I want to move a file (95% of drag 'n' dropping) because it's afraid I might want to copy or link (5% of drag 'n' dropping). And which gives me NO way to change that behavior short of making my own fork of KDE. Forget it. Worse usability decision EVER.
i mean .. who gives a shit .. i mean really ? .. .. or want to seem cooler than someone else.
the only people who get turned on about this 'great debate' are, er
need free minds too
dulllll.......... the desktop wars are well over. did no one tell you ( the OP ) ?
Moreover, 'the differences in KDE 4.6 and GNOME 3 (the latest releases)
GNOME's latest release is actually 2.32. Version 3 wasn't released yet.
Everytime they change something in the interface to make it more loaded and complex, it really annoys me and it takes longer to load the desktop. So after going back and forth between GNOME and KDE for years I switched to Xmonad, that was the best thing i could do. Of course, it took a week or 2 to get used to it. But after that, it's amazing how efficient it is, specially for work. I'm not going back to GNOME or KDE!
The shell is awesome. Linux has needed it's own visual style for a long time. Hey you guys still like the win95 look, I still have a disk for you here somewhere.
The thing that turns me off KDE the most is not the technologies, which are usually excellent, but the consistently crap UI. Try to add a contact to the address book: form disaster! Use Dolphin or KWord: massive toolbars and small content area. Gnome may not have the same sweet underpinnings, but it does seem to pay more attention to usability and design.
GNOME and KDE are the two extremes of GNU/Linux desktop environments, neither particularly good at what they set out to do. GNOME 3 tries to be different for difference's sake, while simultaneously presenting itself as fundamentally newbie-friendly. They did pretty good at being different, pretty much throwing out the desktop metaphor alltogether. However, they've also concealed and obscured most of the customisation tools and options, because people are intimidated by choice, right?
KDE is at the other end of the spectrum. From the start, you're hit in the face with dozens of overlapping and redundant choices, superfluous GUI elements that don't appear to serve any particular purpose, and generally a ton of "look, we can do this!" features.
I find both desktops envirnments to be profoundly bloated and useless to my work process. I much prefer a smaller DE or WM, such as openbox or LXDE.
this is your last chance. ... are you red or blue on this?
KDE supports modifiers like Windows and OSX for drag-and-drop, it only asks if you do not use a modifier. It is better to ask rather than move files by default like some older versions of Windows used to. Sorry, but this is good thing that prevents accidents without getting in the way of power users.
Thought not. I don't use either. Neither are sufficiently configurable to be truly productive environments.
I tried KDE4 before it was even "out" in the sense that got *other* people into trouble. I've used Ubuntu Netbook components, heck even xmonad. I even went a week with nothing but virtual terminals and apps like ogg123 for playing my music. Unity is the first desktop I can be happy with, without reconfiguring everything. It's like perfect for me. Mac is a close second, third would be classic gnome. Everything else? Screw it.
IMHO, and from a "power user's" perspective, there is just way too much clutter in KDE (from the break from 3.5 and onwards), and all of the background services, databases, yadda yadda yadda - just make for a more complex journey through the daily working. KMail and all that that entails are dreadfully slow, dreadfully NON-standard (especially with HTML and RTF mail); as well, I have a tendency to utilise ancient hardware for my own purposes - not the fancy dancey brand-new stuff, therefore, KDE moves like a herd of turtles across a plain of peanut butter. GNOME, OTOH, allows me to streamline it and sterilise it enough to make it daily usable and stable - especially having Compiz functionality, Cairo-Dock, Screenlets and what-have-you. It's not prone to having "hissy fits" and just hanging on some background service dependency. XFce4 quite nicely fills in the secondary spot - it's always fast, always happy with GTK or QT stuff, doesn't hang, highly customisable, usable, and not primitive in graphics or function (sorry IceWM and LXDE)... If you really get down to brass tacks, there's always WindowMaker - most stable of 'em all.
YankDownUnder Veni, Vidi, volo in domum redire
Go back two or three years, and I think you had the same situation when KDE 4 came out. Everyone and their dogs hated it and 'switched' to Gnome. Sounds like it's reverse that's happening here. For what it's worth, I appreciate it when developers exit the status-quo and create something new. Remember when Firefox first came out? Then Chrome? Diversity is a good thing in my opinion.
Goodbye Slashdot. You've changed.
883 MB RAM for a desktop is a joke.
My fluxbox is using only 3.4 MB RAM and additional urxvt 4.2 MB with screen 0.9 MB and this environment is capable to do anything.
I think their programming models are getting more and more outdated, considering DHTML is becoming a better environment for application deployment every day.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
I had a friend that was showing off Enlightenment to me nearly fifteen years ago. Why is anyone still holding out for a real usable release? It's been in development as long as Duke Nukem Forever...
Am I the only one that noticed how much more screen space Qt4 (so KDE) widgets take compared to Qt3 ones?
"I'm selling these fine leather jackets"
What comes with Ubuntu by default is good enough for me.
And cue the 10,000 replies of people who supposedly use that window manager from 1968, insisting that a minimize button is a crime against nature. Or browsing the filesystem with anything more than 2 colors a keyboard.
Personally, having checked them both out, I think that KDE 4.x and Gnome 3.x are both a couple of steps backward in terms of utility, functionality, and ease-of-use. I am currently using Gnome, but I was a big KDE proponent until 4.x came out, which was the pits, as far as I'm concerned. Has anyone in these development communities ever heard the term "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"?
When KDE4 came out, my scanner ceased to work, the new Amarok was worse (and still doesn't work with PostgreSQL), etc. Many applications broke, and remain broken or or remain not as good as under KDE3.x. So, I ran FC8 for as long as I could. Finally I was forced to upgrade to FC14 and switched to Gnome2. But, it looks like the Gnome team was just as stupid as KDE and repeated the same mistakes...It's too bad that Linux doesn't have a Linus Torvalds (or Jean-Louis Gassee) to direct the user environment....
Thought everyone got the memo: There'll never be a stable release of enlightenment. I've been using it for over a year. I update it between 5 to 8 times in a month via bleeding edge svn and am yet to encounter any stability issues. It's been my fave running on top of a minimal debian/ubuntu install.
Only inside your head were there any voices making that claim. And of course the more obscure the desktop the more vaguely 'productive' it must be.
I prefer Aero.
Ubuntu has decided to use it's own GUI as the main distrobution, Android has taken over Linux as the main open source operating system and Linux use is under 0.7% after 20 YEARs of development. Linux wasn't on the desktop then, and will never. In 2021 we will still be having this converstation while MacOS XI and Windows 10 are still way ahead of it.
I never cared for KDE, its always been heavy and to me a pita to use, gnome was my choice as it was semi close to a windows type environment but even now its getting heavier, I just installed mint 10 with gnome on my older "work bench" computer and it feels like windows 7 on an atom, keeping in mind this is not that old of a machine (2gig ddr 1 8x agp gf7600gt amd x64 2ghz)
I just got done installing mint LXDE on my craptop and gee its useable, no waiting on gnome menus to drag ass into place, no more waiting for applications to redraw the screen a line at a time, just the change of desktop and its freaking faster than that same computer with XP on it
Honorable descendants of Vroomfondel & Majikthise....
I couldn't care less about KDE versus GNOME as the desktop. I don't pay much attention to the desktop. It all comes down to konsole, kmail, and konqueror. Because those are the tools I always use and can't give up, I am running KDE, no matter how silly the rest of the desktop gets.
Well played, worthy descendants of Vroomfondel & Majikthise!
Back in the MS-DOS days, people used to complain about how non-user-friendly Unix was. It had too many commands, and that was soooo confusing. Much better to have MS-DOS, where there weren't very many commands, and half of them didn't work.
Now, Macintosh people could get away with saying Unix wasn't user-friendly, because their system really was.
These days, you're mostly using any of these systems to run a browser and a media player, and you deal with the media player by clicking on a file name, so it hardly matters what's underneath.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
When I went to RTFA, all I saw was a big Microsoft ad.
I have heard some people rave about GNOME 3. But they are outnumbered at least two to one by people who dislike it.
does it even matter which is better? just use what you like.
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
So, observations.
I've kind of ended up on GNOME in most cases. So these are just observations. On the KDE4 times where I fire up the distro, the nested menu seems to have been designed by someone with more sarcasm and comedy than Sinofsky. (Yes, Sinofsky, your Win7 UI and shell was on a new level of stupidity).
Do you like nested menu items where nothing is where you want it to be, and you are forced back or forward in and out of menu's? No idea, but not fun. In terms of customisation, I have to say its been odd to watch as Win 7, KDE, and GNOME all seem to have a theory that less, and less.. and less.. is more. Its not.
In 2.32 Gnome, and far as I know every version before it, you can have multiple workspaces, but the customisation is so limited that you are only allowed one wallpaper. Thats very 1990's and retro, but I don't like it.
And in general, I can't explain why or how we ended up here, but in the main, (and this is starting to afflict webpages, design, UIs and OSs), there seems to be a theory of My menu or tool bar is better, fatter, more useless, and more wasteful that yours. Fnaaar Fnarrr.
People seem to have thought that additional screen sizes should be offset by retarded dumn and wasteful UI, and a removal of the ability to really cut that down. And in 2011, new UI's don't come with a decent customising interface, no no, you need to go code your own in CSS. Bleh.
Call me a bit odd, but I'm reaching the stage where I've started to think it would actually be nice to have a desktop that was a user desktop, that could be totally skinned and shaped and made how the user might like it. And not just a sterile, wasteful 'locked down' branded desktop going by the name of KDE or GNOME or Unity.
Seems to be more important to have your name and brand smashed across my desktop than to actually deliver a nice dsktop to a user.
Now, in both KDE and GNOME, YES, I know, you can 'configure' them. But I've simply found them not very configurable overall.
We`re all equal
Deep in my heart I'm a WindowMaker/GNUstep guy. Unfortunately, that environment is particularly 'all or nothing' and without a reasonably browser, office suite, image editor, I have to use non-GNUstep apps and the experience breaks down quickly. I also really really don't want to go without 'scale windows with window title filter'/'present windows' now that I have it.
XFCE/LXDE are nice enough, but lacking certain features I want that come with a larger user base.
Gnome has been quite sufficient and gvfs with fuse does a *lot* for having arbitrary applications enabled for non-admin access to network resources. The problem has been they have been fighting a war against configurability. It's bad enough they don't want to present a UI, but they don't even want to add 'hidden' gconf options even when given patches. Gnome 3 has been the last straw for me, going too far in forcing the specific vision of the developers.
Unity offers an alternative, but suffers the same fate of their way or no way (not even able to move their 'dock'.
Currently I'm in the KDE4 camp. A lot of the defaults were not what I wanted, but I was able to configure it easily enough to fit my preferences. One issue I do have is they are on their high horse on KIO, and have outright refused to embrace some fuse based bridge to ease life on people forced to use applications that aren't KDE. This is even worse because out of the box most distros select the Xine phonon backend instead of gstreamer, meaning KDE's own media players cannot even use KIO. Embracing fuse out-of-the-box to provide a POSIX entrypoint into KIO would fully get me inte KDE.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Am I the only person who likes Gnome 3 more and more with every day? Except for multi monitor support (which is broken on the X level, so it's not Gnome's fault it doesn't provide a hack for that), it makes my work easier and is feels consise to use. It is very stable for a first release and while it might miss some of the more advanced features, I'm sure those will get implemented over the next 2-3 releases. What I like so far in switching from Gnome 2 to 3, but also in comparison to windows and kde, is really the fact that I don't have to study the Window lists in the task bar anymore until I find the window(s) I need (GIMP, anyone?). When I want to launch a program I hit the +key and type the name and it will either start the program or open the active window. I also like the way the workspace is organized with very little redundancy.
or was that blog posting written by an obvious KDE user? Had it been written by a GNOME user it would've gone the other way entirely.
I wonder what someone who's really never used either would say.
I'm seriously looking forward to Debian getting all of GNOME 3 Proper into it's Experimental branch. What I've seen I like much more than KDE 4.6. There is definitely speed improvements to 4.6.1 in Debian experimental via Qt/KDE debian.net but the more I see this Plasma crap the more I try to get it out of the way. I'm looking forward to testing GNOME 3.
Seriously.
One should be able to choose a given UI-style and DEs should be open to user preference, instead of forcing people to adopt a single uniform behaviour.
Even pre-historic Windows has two options. Is that so hard to do?
So I have to use a modifier 100% of the time instead of 5% of the time? That's completely idiotic. As for accidents, any reasonably intelligent person can figure out what Windows is going to do after using it for a couple of hours (at most). A complete idiot (who wouldn't be using Linux in the first place) can figure out what it's going to do in a week. If accidents happen, that's what "Undo" is for. And they're going to happen regardless during the learning phase anyway. And on Windows (though not Gnome--I don't know about OSX), if you actually want a popup for any reason, you can get it by drag-n-dropping with the right mouse button instead of the left.
The KDE faithful defending this appalling design decision is equivalent to Southern Baptists defending a Young Earth and Catholics defending the ban on women priests and contraceptives: something they claim is reasonable, but which is really a result of blind religious devotion and dogmatism.
Since the difference between them is even more now, each will bring in users that fit the workflow that it operates. A KDE user doesn't use KDE because he likes the K, he uses it because it fits the way he works. This argument doesn't have any meaning in the real world. Now if we were to ask what could one project learn from another, that would be a much more productive discussion.
I always hear people complaining about kde4 being too complicated for there daily use, not only newbies but more tech saavy peopele like here in slashdot. What I dont get is that the world is in love with windows 7 but find kde4 complicated! thats just utter rubbish. With the release of kde 4.6 the community has shown us the future of linun desktop.
Try Bodhi Linux. It's E17, based on Ubuntu, but extremely minimalist. You really only get the base running system, Synaptic, and a web browser. Anything else, from word processors, chat programs, etc, you have to download. I like it, since I don't use a lot of stuff, so I don't have it clogging up my system. If you do, it would probably be a hassle to install everything. I believe PCLinux also has a working E17 distro, which is full-featured right out of the box.
I have zero reputation and mods, but I don't care and I'll say it: It's the LIBRARIES that make or break things. The stupid desktop environment is pretty much irrelevant. Both KDE and GNOME have traditionally had some convenient libraries that were usable in either environment, or in completely different environments altogether. But not anymore. Now, everything is getting tethered to a single desktop environment.
KDE4 has it's faults, but the biggest sin I see is plasma. With KDE3 apps, I could run them anywhere, especially the tray icon based stuff. But now? So much has been re-written in Plasma. If I want to go back to MWM with trayer, I can't RUN these things anymore thanks to Plasma...I have to be in KDE4. This SUCKS. And thanks to the braindead design of distros like Ubuntu, a lot of core functionality and configuration depends upon these applets, like the Network Manager crap, or Power Devil. Thanks to the plasma-fication of these functions, they won't work outside KDE4.
And what about GNOME3? How much will REQUIRE you to be running the Gnome Shell? This is ass-backwards. Remember the days when they used to jump through hoops to support "whatever your favourite window manager is?" Bloody holy wars were fought over this interoperability. We managed to score a decent compromise with opendesktop.org, which now everyone is walking away from to tilt at their favourite windmills.
I won't even talk about Unity. My LAPTOP is not a damned netbook, and I don't want or need a large chunk of my screen real estate taken up by that stupid strip.
They both glow goatballs with beautiful eye candy.
I am surprised KDe 3 didn't fork. For the survival of Linux on the desktop gnome 2.x needs to fork. Do not get me wrong I like the architectural changes and the more modern look to bring on par with MacOSX and Windows Vista/7. But Gnome through out all the free usability lab studies donated by Sun by overhealing it. What a shame.
You need less mouse clicks and not more. You have to click all over to do something simple like switch the windows pager. Opening an app you need to click several times to find it. Under gnome 2.x you select a menu and click on it. Maybe later versions of Gnome 3 will do this but for now it seems very alpha proof of concept framework but no real substance.
Gnome shell and Trinity both look like a cell phone or Tablet OS rather than a desktop.
http://saveie6.com/
I don't care about choice per se, I care about getting the desktop environment I want. Having choice kinda betters the odds I will, but, on the other hand, between an OS with a single good desktop, and another OS with 5 sucky ones, I'd choose the first.
Honestly, as a non-tech person, I'm a bit lost when it comes to Linux Desktops. I've installed a few VMs, and frankly, I don't see much difference to care about. There's a menu somewhere, you click it, a list pops up (or down), you click your a pp to launch it, and then you start working. There's usually a keyboard shortcut to siwtch between apps, and sometimes desktops, though I rarely use that.
I'm kinda wondering what the fuss is about. I guess that means I should try xfce ^^
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
I don't really see any useful features that Gnome or KDE offer over a more vanilla window manager. Mostly it's junk that doesn't really work right like notifications or Network Manager. Neither is really that easy to configure and neither has a particularly useful interface. You know, Windows 7 actually looks very attractive in comparison. If you really need to run anything Unix-like just use VMware Player and an image that boots to a nice CLI.
KDE is still not targeted at the average user, once they start referring to applications by their purpose and not their name then it will have come of age. Why does every application have to start with K can't you just have a "Text editor"?
Gone to OSX and not coming back, even after having written six books on Linux over a ten year period and converted countless Windows users.
KDE4 and GNOME3 are simply not usability wins. They're toys for curious coders that want to play with UI design.
Some of us have work to do, and Apple these days is the company letting workers get to work.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
to hide the fact that there is not a single desktop environment in Linux that works well, feels polished, is stable, doesn't suffer from jarring visual issues or compatibility issues of some kind, and offers a comparable feature set to non-Linux offerings.
It's not just choice, it's a Hobson's choice in disguise: you can have anything your heart desires in Linux so long as your heart doesn't desire very much.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Bodhi Linux seems interesting. I'm on a low download limit net connection and the ISO is around 350 MB. Will be nice to play around with.
BTW @ parent - Sure e16 / e17 has been around for a while. The intention was I think to create the foundation libraries for Enlightenment and the E core libs seem to perform really well on new and old hardware. Maybe it a running joke to not have an E17 1.0. But even as a 'beta' version number, it runs really well for a lot of people. I had it on a Slackware desktop for > a year. E17 is running on cell phones, a few refridgerators, some car stereo, and some other stuff.
I use KDE since far over ten years. I tried Gnome several times just to stick with KDE.
But I don't use KDE because I think it's good, there is just no reason to get used to another desktop, if that one isn't significantly better than the other.
I haven't found THE desktop yet.
cb
What? Why's that? Did they take it (gnome-terminal) out?
I'm on Ubuntu Lucid (10.04), and I haven't upgraded to either 10.10 or Natty Narwhal. I've put off the decision at least until 12.04, but I'm really considering what to do at that point.
The funny thing is: who is there left who doesn't know how to operate a desktop computer? Who are they making all these changes for? And if you need to give granny or the kids an easy computer, give them and iPad or a TouchPad.
But don't dumb the desktop down to the level of an iPad.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Although the OP has a point, and I'm not saying he's saying this, but:
If Apple put's an "i" in front of anything and everything, it's brilliant, innovative, a breath of fresh air, and why-didn't-anyone-think-of-this-before-the-genius-Steve-Jobs: iPod, iPhone, iMac, iPad, iLife, iWork, iMovie, iWeb, iDVD.
But, let someone else do it, and it's old, tired, boring, hackneyed, cliched.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
I used to have KDE 3.5 and I was very pleased with it. When the new revolutionary version came along I decided to try it and switched to Gnome. For KDE 4.0 to 4.5 I kept going back but I never could used it more than 30 minutes, so Gnome is what I use now and I am pretty comfortable with it. Now it seems I have to switch again. I always hoped development on KDE 3.5 would be restarted due to the demand. After Gnome3 will be released I think the issue will be gaining some more traction (especially since reading about KDE 3.5 used in a 2011 release).
"I suspect that the majority of users are more likely to be satisfied with KDE 4.6 than GNOME 3."
Use a distribution that supports Gnome 2 for another 7+ years then.
>>> The whole idea of linux is choice. >>>
Perfect, let's increase choice. I'm waiting for Mark Shuttelworth to buy Qt, hire experienced Qt developers from KDE, port Gnome to Qt, kick out Mono, merge the best of the two desktops, conquer the market.
After which, I hope the idiots fixed on the 'choice' mantra will be satisfied. And we'll get what we need: endless choice but an overwhelmingly predominant platform.
I'm the "debian-stable" kind of user, So i was until recently under KDE 3.X, and very satisfied. I has seen KDE 4.x running, and wasn't that convinced... Then, debian squeeze went stable, I just followed the way. OMG, what did they do to my box ??? It's just so slow now !! Coincidentally, I upgraded my computer. OK, brand new machine, let's see how KDE 4 is doing now... Then again, I couldn't find my marks. OK, let's give a try to gnome (2.30.3 with squeeze). Well, after a bit of tuning, I'm quite satisfied with its usability. Nethertheless, I'm still using of few KDE Applications, for which I didn't find a good replacement on gnome (Konsole, Akregator, Kdiff3, Klipper...). Use to be a KDE Fanboy, i'm not anymore...
Every time theres is article about KDE and GNOME, people start talking about window managers. KDE and GNOME are desktop environment. Applications made for KDE and GNOME are very very important. When i'm using KDE desktop, i use only KDE applications (generally), it would be stupid to run GNOME (gtk) applications with KDE. So i think choice beetween KDE or GNOME is about applications there are for those platforms.
All mumbojumbo about WindowMaker and Enlightenment is NOT related to this any way. Sure you can use any window manager you like with both KDE and GNOME, but that's not the point.
I was a gnome earlier, because kde was too buggy on all the machines i had tried it on. Especially on the netbooks at home ( im the computer guy at home :) ), gnome had a definite edge and i actually prefered running gnome classic to UNR when using ubuntu.
Gave KDE 4 a shot again when i dual booted freebsd on my netbook. was very impressed at first, but i slowly came to realise its too much of code to do a really simple job.
I dont use desktop icons ... i need my desktop to look minimalist but inspiring and give me access to some essential data, i need my window manager to be very efficient at being just that - a window manager - and not take up much memory on my netbooks, at the same time i dont want it to be TWM-esque ... and thats when i started experimenting with e17 and openbox.
And openbox is my pick ( the slightly adulterated openbox of crunchbang that is ). I dont agree with the usual criticism of openbox being an experts only desktop environment, ive found it to be far more convenient than gnome and kde by many degrees. Its light and it does the job, its very customisable, and no, you dont have to do that in a text editor, theres gui menu plugins for everything in openbox.
and yeah while gnome/kde by default look much better than openbox.
i spent the same amount of time and effort turning openbox into my perfect DE as i did turning gnome into my perfect DE.
so, thats where im at now and the gnome vs kde thing is no longer something i care much about.
i really do feel a better looking default environment is the only thing missing in openbox. crunchbang is a good example of that, although default crunchbang might only appeal to nerds and closet nerds :)
The developers need a good whack will a clue stick.
No no, you see, the usability experts in the GNOME camp are *scientists*.
That means that when they pull a person into their lab and asks them to do a small piece of not-real-work and x% more succeed and do it y seconds faster, that means the interface is objectively better, and the ivory tower economic planners know what's better for you than what you do. Did I say economic? I meant UI...
And never mind that it doesn't capture an essential part of the real work people do. It's scientific and statistically significant, ZOMFG!
Last time I checked, the OCD mandate of every program having a K in the name was still in full force. Not much different than the Walled Gardens' love affair with the letter i, IMHO.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
My phone has 16GB of storage.
And how much of that may be sent over the air per month? In addition, a lot of users in developing countries and developing parts of developed countries were stuck on dial-up last time I checked; has this changed?
God, please, PLEASE, DON'T allow GNOME 3 to come up. It sucks ass.
-- Xfce user (gnome apps in daily use)
I hate the fact that app names of 80% of KDE apps start with K. Why can't they name their apps normally? Why KRunner? why Kopete? why KBluetooth?
If you can only afford dial up you can often not afford a computer of your own.
Parts of the United States have no DSL and no cable. For customers living there, the next step up from dial-up is either A. satellite Internet, which last time I checked had multi-hundred-dollar hardware and installation costs for the modem and dish, or B. tethering to your phone.
"I suspect that the majority of users are more likely to be satisfied with KDE 4.6 than GNOME 3."
I would imagine so. But is that really a fair comparison? GNOME 3.0 will be rough around the edges, just as KDE 4.0 was. Give it some time to mature and then see how they fare against each other...
/* No Comment */
One video says more than a thousand pictures
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Tg_FaUQkw
It IS nice!
Also by the same guy: "Nine Current Flame Wars in Open Source", "FOSS, Business, and Psychopathy" and "Ubuntu: Where Did the Love Go?" (which IIRC was recently featured on Slashdot and described as bullshit as pretty much everyone who bothered to RTFA).
No thanks, I think I'll wait for an actual review.
I am sooooooo tired of hearing the claim that "choice is a good thing". It's not. In fact, a good way to frustrate people is to give them too many choices.
You show two possibilities: no choice or too many choices. This is a false dichotomy. For example, the average user will not discover alternative, independent window managers--he'll either use GNOME and its wm, or KDE and KWin. But if he does find them, it's no different than finding the thousands of shareware and freeware apps available on Windows software megasites. I don't see you complaining about that.
Moreover, the wide choice of windows managers is an example of Linux market failure.
This is begging the question: Is Linux--either as a vague term, or a specific reference to the kernel--aiming to fulfill the needs of a specific market? I assert that:
1) without defining "Linux" for the purposes of your argument, your argument is moot;
2) neither the kernel nor the "ecosystem" are aiming to fulfill one particular market;
3) the kernel actually meets the needs of a wide variety of markets--therefore it's a success;
4) the rest of the projects in the "ecosystem" each have their own goals and target "markets"--to claim "Linux market failure" demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how Linux and FOSS works. You should instead look at individual projects, and individual companies that contribute to FOSS and Linux to ensure that each project meets its own needs (e.g. Red Hat, Intel, IBM, Google, etc.). You will find that "Linux" meets the needs of these "markets" very well.
People don't use computers to run various windows managers, they use computers to run applications that perform tasks.
This is a strawman.
The fragmentation of low-level libraries for sound, graphics, UI, packaging, etc., means that developers don't have a clear target for Linux apps.
This is another false dilemma. The truth is that developers either aim at an application-specific target (embedded, or vendor-supported), or at a general Linux/FOSS target. The embedded/vendor-supported Linux target has clear requirements--not an issue. The general target has more choices, but is not such a problem as you claim. A developer targeting teneral Linux platforms can choose Gtk or Qt for UI; GStreamer and/or PulseAudio for sound, or OpenAL; OpenGL is the only 3D standard (and works on Windows too), and Deb or RPM packaging (which are well-established and widely-supported--many, many projects easily support both--or he could support the "TGZ package", which is no different than Windows software being distributed in ZIP files). Having these choices is no different than choosing between Win32 or .Net, Windows Installer or InstallShield/NSIS/etc, OpenGL or Direct3D, or between any of the other many toolkits available for the Windows platform. If your point is that there are actually many other insignificant alternatives to the choices I gave on Linux, that is another false dilemma, because the existence of those minor alternatives does not present a problem in any way. There are also thousands of libraries available for Windows development, but developers use what makes the most sense--they don't pick something just because it exists.
For open source efforts, this means wasted efforts on ports, plugins, and duplicate projects.
Ports are not wasted effort--they often help fortify code against bugs that might not otherwise be found. Supporting multiple platforms is not wasted effort. I submit that the true wasted effort is on the creation of proprietary platforms such as Windows and Mac. All the effort put into those incompatible systems could be put into Linux and FOSS platforms that could solve software problems once-and-for-all (basically).
Plugins? Huh? Another undefined strawman.
Duplicate projects? Another strawman. There are plenty of "d
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
How is this any different than the choices a Windows developer faces? C or C++? Win32 or MFC or .Net? Java? Swing? Python? DirectX or OpenGL? Both? MSI or ZIP? Steam or DVD? DRM?
The fact that choices exist is not a problem. The problem is that people think it's a problem, and that they're blind to the same "problem" existing in their own platform of choice.
Freedom is a good thing. Freedom to choose is a good thing. Having choices from which to choose is a good thing. Take any of those away and THEN you have a problem.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Compiz + cairo-dock + command line, best desktop environment ever :)
I've been running this combination for the past 5 years and love it, nice and clean desktop, no worries about new version removing features.