The Desktop Wars

An anonymous reader writes "Sam Williams at Upside.Com on the Gnome vs KDE wars with real quotes from real people." It's interesting that this debate has faded so much. This article is a nice summary of the situation right now too- lots of interesting bits (although the server seems laggy).

Comments

There can be only ONE! (Microsoft/Highlander...)

[Anonymous Coward]

Why have we managed to inherit this 'ONE winner ONLY' attitude from Microsoft. I can see that some things need a single standard, like X Windows. I can also appreciate that a desktop manager is a BIG project, making duplication of effort a question-worthy practice.

But desktops are a darned personal thing. Nobody questions multiple window managers, for that matter nobody questions the sheer number of wm's that clone NeXt, alone. The desktop is at least as personal as a wm, even if just a little more development resource intensive. But I'd like to have my preference, and I don't mind if you have yours. But please don't try to send my preference into oblivion.

I'd be far more concerned about seeing some level of interoperability between KDE and GNOME. I look at some of the new announcements, and think, "K-this, G-that, and F-You!" I'd rather pick the desktop environment I like, pick the applications I like, and just run.

I also kind of wish KDE and GNOME were a bit more different - to emphasize the choice aspect a bit. They both chase WinXX a bit too much, I sure wish someone would chase the OS/2 WPS a bit harder.

Integration science

[raph]

The Gnome/KDE "war" gives us the opportunity to think about competing systems in a totally new way. A lot of people think about it in essentially the same terms as Win vs Mac, but I think this is a narrow view.

There are basically two ways of getting a unified system. You can start with a design for how things Should Be Done, and reject anything that doesn't meet the design. It's a good approach - the Mac has done this with great success. We laugh at newbies who try to put a Mac disk in a PC and expect to run the software. Should we?

The other way to do it is to work to make the pieces integrate well. And this, my friends, is more the Linux Way, if you ask me. We don't talk about NFS vs. Samba vs. Netatalk. You've got a heterogenous network? Run 'em all!

Now, to get KDE and Gnome to seamlessly integrate is quite a challenge, both technically and politically. But I have some hope that the two teams are willing and able to work on it, in a way that Microsoft and Apple never could.

Here's a specific example of what I have in mind. Both Gnome and KDE have some mechanism for "themes", ie the ability to configure the graphical look. What if there were a theme setting application that set the themes of both desktop environments, and so that they're consistent? Ultimately, a person might not need to know or care whether an app is KDE or Gnome - it will be a matter of developer preference.

Of course, this vision takes quite a bit of work. A bi-theme application is quite a bit harder than one for a single desktop. Work will no doubt be required to bring the theme systems in harmony. But I think all of this can and will happen.

Raph, a Gnome developer who supports KDE

The teams themselves

[aheitner]

have been on good terms for some time now, according to Ian Peters, the GNOME Games maintainer. Apparently they're working towards interoperability of object models, which will allow components of one desktop to be used with components of the other, giving end users even more free choice.

I'll also note that the moderation system on /. has greatly increase S/N aroud here and reduced pointless flamewars. And increased prevalence of what Ian calls "score whores" -- people who always write long detailed comments (guilty as charged). It's an improvement, by any measure.

Now for a hard jab: I'm not at all impressed with Gtk--. You shouldn't have to do signal handling that way in C++, dammit. I know Gtk+ does things that way, but it's C, it has an excuse. I want nice civilised event handling via virtual functions. Someday I'll write it m'self, I guess.

My thoughts

[Cid Highwind]

> a more stable and better xServer

XFree 4.0 is going to be a quantum leap. Modular design, plug-in drivers for different video cards, native TrueType font rendering, accelerated 3D in a window, etc. check www.Xfree86.org/releaseplans.html for the whole list.

Choice is good...or is it?

[logycke]

While unix systems in general, and Linux in particular, are in my oppinion the best systems for developing and testing new ideas, they are also notorious for violating what Fred Brooks considered "the most important consideration in system design."

For those who have not yet read this, I quote:

Most European cathedrals show differences in plan or architectural style between parts built in different generations by different builders. The later builders were tempted to "improve" upon the designs of the earlier ones, to reflect both changes in fashion and differences in individual taste. So the peaceful Norman transept abuts and contradicts the soaring Gothic nave, and the result proclaims the pridefulness of the builders as much as the glory of God.

Against these, the architectural unity of Reims stands in glorious contrast. The joy that stirs the beholder comes as much from the integrity of the design as from any particular excellences. As the guidebook tells, this integrity was achieved by the self-abnegation of eight generations of builders, each of whom sacrificed some of his ideas so that the whole might be of pure design. The result proclaims not only the glory of God, but also His power to salvage fallen men from their pride.

Even though they have not taken centuries to build, most programming systems reflect conceptual disunity far worse than that of cathedrals. Usually this arises not from a serial succession of master designers, but from the separation of design into many tasks done by many men.

I will contend that conceptual integrity is the most important consideration in system design. It is better to have a system omit certain anomalous features and improvements, but to reflect one set of design ideas, than to have one that contains many good but independent and uncoordinated ideas.


-Fred Brooks, The Mythical Man Month

Choice is good

[Kaa]

I don't see the parallel existence of KDE and Gnome as a bad thing. On the contrary, I believe it to be very good for Linux to have competing desktops. The reasons are, basically, (1) Choice is good; (2) Competition stimulates improvement and destroys complacency; (3) Two parallel systems are good for robustness and insurance; (4) Forcing applications to be able to deal with both reduces their tendency to exploit "undocumented features" in the API and in the end makes them more robust and upgradeable.

I don't buy the duplication of effort argument. If Gnome didn't exist, its developers would NOT have all been working on KDE. Besides, the outcome of the Mongolian Hordes approach is well known.

The networking arguments (as in, the more fax machines are in the world, the more useful yours becomes) for a single desktop environment make some sense, but not all that much. There is a fine line between too much standardization and not enough standardization. Clearly it's good that most everybody can talk TCP/IP. Clearly, it's not good if everyone is forced to use the same key mappings in, say, an editor. This fine line is shifty and blurry, but IMHO a single desktop for Linux is too much standardization. Again, choice is good.

Kaa