Mike's Planet Just a Big Ball of Gas

1. 

   EvilDead
   February 26th, 2007 - 11:39

   “One thing KDE and Gnome developers could do is get rid of the idea KDE/Gnome applications. Design a framework where applications could be build for either desktop environment and the look and feel and system integration would working on either desktop environment.”

   Not sure how this could be done, since these two DE use very different internal mechanisms… Even GTK and QT don’t have the same capabilities, so developing a common framework would reduce the possibilities offered by each of them.
2. 

   nixternal
   February 26th, 2007 - 11:54

   The same reason us Chicago Cubs fans root for them to win every year and say they are going to the World Series. PRIDE!

   No really, I think some of the poking we see in respect to KDE & GNOME is at time done to poke a little fun. I am a KDE user, have been almost since day one for KDE. I have used GNOME as well and though I don’t prefer it over KDE, GNOME is still a killer DE and I am sure 99.9% of the KDE Devs will say the same and vice-versa with GNOME devs. What I take flames for most of the time is being considered a Fanboi, so maybe this has a lot to do with it as well.

   The same goes with the distributions as well and with the VI and Emacs ordeal. Although we can say Emacs does provide the most extensive editor there is, it isn’t for everybody.

   I think also it goes deeper than just within the Linux community. We all are guilty of bashing Microsoft, well a majority of us, damn it I know I am not alone on this one The entire IT world has been separated since the 80’s and it has only gotten worse. I remember back in the 80’s the flame wars on BBS, ya you all know that slinging MUD was fun

   I think it is great that we have the love for our work, our philosophy, and the freedom we choose, but remember we aren’t always going to like the freedoms others choose either. As long as the “fighting” stays fun in nature that is OK, but taking it to the point of ignorance is a failure on our parts I believe.
3. 

   Zamber
   February 26th, 2007 - 12:00

   Right on dude, it’s bad that evryone is arguing around. We should make the Linux family more united and complex. Anyway, it’s your choice if you want to make or destroy ;].
4. 

   Songwind
   February 26th, 2007 - 12:10

   I’ve really just become an enthusiast myself, after several earlier periods running Linux but neither sticking it out nor getting that interested in getting under the covers.

   I believe that the DE/application compatibility minefield is probably one of the things that is hurting the adoption of Linux as a more mainstream OS. I think that Joe User wants to be able to look in System Requirements, see “Linux vWhatever, 800Mhz Processor, 256Mb RAM” and be done. The more universal things could be made the better off we’d be.

   Even a universal set of standards from which Gnome and KDE could extend would be a great start. That way an app could be “vanilla,” have extensions specific to Gnome, or to KDE, or even a set for each if they were feeling very ambitious.
5. 

   Roman Kennke
   February 26th, 2007 - 12:15

   You mean, like, for example, using Java? At least I consider that an interesting starting point, especially since OpenJDK is around the corner now.
6. 

   textshell
   February 26th, 2007 - 12:16

   I don’t think the real core people of KDE and Gnome fight much. As far as i know the cooperation between those two projects is rather high. kde4 and modern gnome will cooperate in so many new ways (dbus, mimetypes, menu, … you get it, the whole freedesktop.org stuff). Trolltech rewrote the lowlevel parts of Qt to seemlessly integrate with glib, added an theme that looks like one of the popular gtk themes etc.
   Sure KDE/Gnome is a sometimes heated coopition, but i sure there are not much hard feelings among the people working on the desktops.
   And duplication is a normal thing in every healthy economy, because only that way the pool is big enough for the real gems to emerge.
   But as always you only see the vocal people, and that’s the fanboys, and people like that.
   I don’t think putting something like wxwidgets ontop would solve that problem…

   “Disclaimer:” I’m a “mix them all” person, i use g*, kde/qt and “other toolkits” in the same amounts. And they play together nicely.
7. 

   alex
   February 26th, 2007 - 12:23

   I second the first comment. I see no point in combining GUI and functionality. Separate the libs in GUI and functionality libs and let me use these KDE apps with my Gnome libs!
   Leaves the design philosophies. At this point I second Mike. KDE and Gnome can both learn a lot from each other. I don’t see the difficulty in presenting a simple and clean (read Gnome) interface and add a little button to each app reading “advanced” that gives me all the options there are. (read KDE)
   Right now both, KDE and Gnome can do it better. I can’t see why the one cluters and the other cuts me off of the options. Both ideas are one step short of a good solution.
8. 

   Chris
   February 26th, 2007 - 12:49

   It would actually be nice to have KDE apps work great in Gnome and vice versa.

   I do think that state of integration is ok, but it ca be better. We need some standards in font selection, DPI etc.

   So when a KDE app is running in Gnome, it should look more or less like a Gnome app and vice versa.

   Also, it would be nice to have a common VFS layer also, because this is where Gnome falls flat out its face while KDE excels.

   It would be nice to have a shared file dialog interface although I assume that nobody can agree how that should look
9. 

   JimboJoe
   February 26th, 2007 - 12:53

   Your framework exists : Portland !
10. 

    Mike
    February 26th, 2007 - 13:27

    Have two different desktop environments is one of the biggest obstacles to mainstream acceptance of Linux. It also makes supporting Linux users much more difficult than Windows or Mac OS X, where everyone is using pretty much the same desktop environment.
11. 

    Nick
    February 26th, 2007 - 13:36

    Well, people have made efforts towards this. There’s around half a million returns from this Google search:

    gnome kde interoperability

    (True, raw numbers out of Google don’t always mean that much, since there may be more than one reason why three words may appear in the same document.)

    FWIW, I think Linus Torvalds had a good point. It seems to me that GNOME has gone too far in removing options. However, by contrast, KDE interfaces are rather too fussy, too crowded, and often fairly inconsistent in their layout. So it’s not a simple matter. However, I’d understood that the KDE people had recognized the need to clean up their interfaces.

    Perhaps my understanding is correct, and Linus Torvalds is using GNOME to fire a warning shot across KDE’s bows!

    Using OS X more than I use either Linux desktop (or Windows) I’m struck by how far both Linux desktops follow what Windows does–often to their detriment.

    Also, this is a trivial enough point, but as a regular OS X user I find GNOME rather dispiriting to use, because of it’s appearance. By contrast, KDE has a rather cheerful look with more detailing and some gradient in the panels and window borders and a hint of translucency here and there. I’m sorry, but I have to say I don’t like the Ubuntu default look; and even if you change the wallpaper and select the “clearlooks” theme (because who’d want a Zune-coloured desktop?) you have these expanses of flat grey and rather clumsy-looking flat blue window-borders in GNOME. I don’t know about Epiphany but the Firefox browser widgets are fairly nasty compared to what Konqueror uses, too. Parts of GNOME remind me of nothing so much as Windows 95. I think the looks of an OS are going to matter increasingly to users, and GNOME doesn’t seem like a good place to start.

    It’s curious just how closely the GNOME and KDE desktops follow Windows. If you “Get Info”–look at the properties–on an item in OS X’s file browser you’ll find close, minimize, zoom buttons in the top left-hand corner of the window (as with any other OS X window). GNOME in this and similar dialogs displays a redundant “OK” or “close” (the name varies from app to app) button in the bottom right as well. KDE really apes Windows adding not just a redundant “OK” button but a doubly-redundant “Apply” button as well. If Microsoft jumped off a cliff would GNOME and KDE follow?

    Another point that must strike anyone coming from OS X is that GNOME and KDE follow Microsoft in having menus that are “Window-centric” not “application-centric”. You can, actually, use a universal menu bar in KDE–the option is in “Desktop Behavior”–and that helps both to unclutter the window borders and to put the menu options in a predicable location whatever the size and desktop position of the current window. However, that still doesn’t give you true “application-centered” menuing, as you’ll find if you open two separate Konqueror windows and then choose “quit” off the menu.

    The menuing feels clumsy and dated–and it is:

    “MS Windows and associated ‘desktops’ such as GNOME and KDE do not have the target-action paradigm. Their programming languages do not afford such possibilities, and their application architecture won’t let it happen either.

    Applications are not object-oriented. Document windows are ’singletons’. Dropping a file on a document window prompts the system to ask you if you want to save the current document before opening the new one. There is no facility for opening further document windows – it’s one or the other but never both.

    Because application and window are one and the same, menus are not independent of their document windows but bolted to them. When dialogs pop up they lock out messages to the main window, including access to the menu.”

    http://rixstep.com/2/20050529,03.shtml

    FWIW, I much prefer KDE to GNOME for a number of reasons, most of which I haven’t touched on here, but I wish the NeXT-based objective-C environment GNUstep had had a higher profile and more attention over the years. Then there might have been an open source desktop for Linux and *BSD with some of the elegance, stability (Konqueror crashed even as I typing this *sigh*) ease of use, and possibilities for rapid software development of OS X’s desktop environment.
12. 

    Adam Petaccia
    February 26th, 2007 - 15:23

    I’m not sure how well cross GTK/QT engines have come, but i think those would be a start; IE: When in Gnome, QT apps are themed to look like GTK ones (stock icons and everything) and when in KDE, GTK apps are themed to look like QT ones. I know the tango project has come a long way, and portland I think is going in the right direction.

    What I would really love to see though, is a unified HIG for the OSS desktop, much like what Gnome has now (I don’t know if KDE has one), but I think having apps _look_ right would be a big step for end users (I know this doesn’t make developing it any easier; that’s portland’s job, right?).
13. 

    Christer Edwards
    February 26th, 2007 - 17:26

    That was the same conclusion I came to in the end of my Week With KDE series. There were some things that I really liked with KDE, and some things that I really liked with gnome. What makes us great is that we have *choice*. If we stop realizing that we’ve lost who we are as a community. Open Source is about freedom. Freedom to choose.

    (p.s. do you mean to say KDE vs gnome “ceaSe Fire”)
14. 

    Mike
    February 26th, 2007 - 17:30

    Doh, Curse my fat typing finger:).
15. 

    Huygens
    February 27th, 2007 - 02:21

    I don’t understand also this fight. I mean, I always find it funny this “pride” (like someone said) jokes we do that everyday for sport, national, language, food, etc. What I do not like is the harsh talk of Mr. Torvalds
    Actually, the desktop environment (DE) does not do the whole thing. It is its integration within a distro that makes it rocks or not.
    When I first had the choice between Gnome or KDE, I think it was on Mandrake 7. Well, I installed Enlightenment in the end, because none of the DE where having decent performance on my old hardware. When I finally got a decent computer, I started to use Gnome first. Then, I decided to try KDE and I stick to it. I liked it a lot, it felt more comfortable and was satisfying my geeky side for customising everything.
    Later I heard of Ubuntu (was Breezy at that time), but it is using Gnome by default… So I decided to try Kubuntu and as a side effect, I got in touch with the ubuntu user community at large. I don’t know why, but I liked it! But even though I really like KDE, the integration in Kubuntu (was Breezy at that time) was a bit disappointing. For example, some application for configuring the network where cumbersome to use on my laptop because they required a screen bigger than 1024×768, while others had little functionality!! So I decided to give a try at Ubuntu (Gnome). And everything felt well integrated and fully functional, but I missed many programs from KDE.
    The cool thing nowadays is that you don’t have to be stuck with Gnome-only application or vice-versa with KDE-only apps. So I installed Amarok and a bunch of other KDE apps in my Gnome environment. Now I am a happy user. I have the advantage of the Ubuntu community, the Ubuntu developers neat work and my favourite KDE apps.
    The only drawback is that KDE has perhaps better support for bluetooth devices (like for a PDA) and other small stuff like that. But it is not something I cannot live with.

    Open Source is about choice you said Mike and I agree. My choice is to combined what *I think* is best from the FOSS world in regards to what I need. Today Ubuntu based on Gnome with some KDE apps is my baseline, tomorrow might be different, who knows!
16. 

    mpt
    February 27th, 2007 - 02:56

    Mike, there are quite a few frameworks for writing lowest-common-denominator applications. They include XULRunner, Java with Swing, Flash, HTML, and the framework OpenOffice.org is written in. They are naturally slower and/or less integrated with the rest of the operating system than native applications are (for example, Michael Meeks toils daily on making OpenOffice.org less out-of-place in Gnome, work that simply isn’t necessary with Gnumeric). The same would be true for any framework that tried to sit on top of either Gnome or KDE.
17. 

    alex
    February 27th, 2007 - 10:48

    “Open Source is about freedom. Freedom to choose.”
    Yeah true. But in this case choosing means: one _or_ the other. In some cases you want
    a) both
    b) none

    This is where you have to put the ‘choose’ _in_ the DE not in front of it.

    read: yes I want to be able to choose my DE _and_ I want to choose how it behaves. I do not want someone to force his view of the world on my the moment I start using his software.
18. 

    Roman Kennke
    February 27th, 2007 - 16:01

    You mean like, for example, . I think this is an interesting option, especially since OpenJDK is around the corner now.

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