Comments on: KDE vs. Gnome: Cease Fire!!!

By: Roman Kennke

Roman Kennke — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 23:01:36 +0000

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

By: alex

alex — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 17:48:26 +0000

“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.

By: mpt

mpt — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 09:56:39 +0000

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.

By: Huygens

Huygens — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 09:21:19 +0000

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!

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 00:30:21 +0000

Doh, Curse my fat typing finger:).

By: Christer Edwards

Christer Edwards — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 00:26:47 +0000

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”)

By: Adam Petaccia

Adam Petaccia — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 22:23:32 +0000

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?).

By: Nick

Nick — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 20:36:30 +0000

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.

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 20:27:48 +0000

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.

By: JimboJoe

JimboJoe — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 19:53:02 +0000

Your framework exists : Portland !