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That's right. Such comments only devide the Unix community even more, which is the opposite of what should happen. Why don't we see MPlayer vs. Amarok flamewars or OpenOffice vs. KOffice then? This is the opposite of what should happen. Open-source has the word "open", like in "Open-minded". I hope its leaders don't forget about the word "open". I'm thinking about Linus and Stallman.

Such comments only devide the Unix community even more, which is the opposite of what should happen.

I agree. We should refrain from expressing unpopular opinions and just settle on what's right for most people. This way some people get what they want, and the other's are open-minded. Win-win. This is the most open-minded comment I've read all month, for example. Thanks for being a team player.

I'm thinking about Linus and Stallman.

They're in my thoughts and prayers as well. Things were going so great while they were keeping their bright ideas to themselves. When will people learn that leading is about sticking to the story or keeping your mouth shut?

"We should refrain from expressing unpopular opinions and just settle on what's right for most people."

"Things were going so great while they were keeping their bright ideas to themselves. When will people learn that leading is about sticking to the story or keeping your mouth shut?"

Wow!! Is this sarcasm? If not this is the most frightening comment i've read all month..

Why in the world should it be a bad thing to discuss about which software is better? I agree that discussions about taste and colors are futile, i can't demonstrate that blue is better for you. But can't we say "this algorithm is more efficient because..." or "this system is more modular"? This is normal discussion, this is science, working together doesn't mean we should always agree. Pluralism and individual thinking is what makes the occident so great. Why should Linus be friend with every open source project?

Edited 2007-02-20 16:43

Erm... That was exactly what the parent poster meant. But he used a little bit of sarcasm and irony to better convey the idea to the original poster.

damn.. i just re-read your post in threaded view! Obviously you were sarcastic

I've witnessed mplayer V xine flamewars before.

I've seen Rhythmbox V Amarok flamewars, but that's just an extension of the Gnome KDE war.

And I believe KOffice isn't popular enough (sorry guys) to have a flame war with Open Office. Not to mention, the Open Office crowd seems more interested in Windows users...
I have witnessed Open Office V latex flamewars though.


I hold that the unique ability of the human spirit is to argue about crap and get uselessly offended when others disagree.

I hold that the unique ability of the human spirit is to argue about crap and get uselessly offended when others disagree.
That's not true, you moron!

"""
I've witnessed mplayer V xine flamewars before.
"""

The difference is simple. With Mplayer, you click on a movie title and Mplayer plays it. With Xine, you click on a movie title and it politely explains why it can't play it.

That's why I use Mplayer and VLC rather then Xine and Totem.

Edited 2007-02-21 05:10

"""
The difference is simple. With Mplayer, you click on a movie title and Mplayer plays it. With Xine, you click on a movie title and it politely explains why it can't play it.

That's why I use Mplayer and VLC rather then Xine and Totem.
"""

I want to be very up front about the fact that I am not griping about my quoted post being modded down.

But I *am* curious as to what someone obviously disagrees with.

These "drive by" moddings don't accomplish nearly as much as they would if they were accompanied by a reply which explained the rationale.

I stand by my original post. It accurately describes my experiences with the mentioned apps. But I am open to having the error of my ways explained to me. ;-)

Exactly the same with me, I have tried KDE (QT-software, that is) several times and there's just something that annoys me and so I always switch back to Gnome and GTK.

I've been using Gnome since the 1.0 release, though. I always fancied GTK to be more attractive to eyes than QT.

I think we shouldn't call them flamewars , sometimes people get very heated about it, but as mentioned in the article the same points are raised over and over again. I am a gnome user. I have been there a long time,but KDE , even though the changes are less visible ( they have different release and announcment schedule - i think gnome's is saner :-) ), you get the feeling that major changes to the way the system works are underway to address the issues that keep on coming up. I don't get that feeling with the gnome project.

I aggree working on projects like those mentioned is not easy , because of their openess it is difficult to please everyone, and I applaud the devs of both project over and over again ,to keep up the good work ( -ing? ) .

Back to the point , before I veer of. I think this is healthy discussion and Linus's voice ( his own very "biased" opinion ) adds weight to the importance of the issues raised rather than issue of whether the user or the devs are wrong. comprendez ?

I have the exact same feeling with Qt/KDE. KDE also has too many options and setting. I really get lost in all of them. It's hard to find the right setting I am looking for.
There shouldn't be any reason for Gnome to be bashed like that, there is room enough for everyone.
Linus should be a advocate for freedom an diversity and stay friends with Gnome.

P.S. I don't think I am more stupid since I have been using Gnome as Linus suggests.

Edited 2007-02-20 14:07

This isn't about flamewars or getting along. Quite simply, Linux is a passion-fueled culture, perhaps unlike any other in the industry. This stems from the inherent freedoms afforded by the platform.

Look, passion is good. And heated arguments are good. Whenever you have a situation where everyone agrees, then you know you are in trouble. There is a certain amount of healthy dysfunction in any relationship. And I love to see the passion-fueled arguments that ensue.

The fruits of these sometimes derisive squabbles will reveal themselves in ways that would not otherwise be achieved in a "civilized" manner.

Yes, friends and collegues, allow me to wax poetic with the voice of reason. And with that said, GO KDE 4! j/k HAHA

RGCook,

I disagree. I don't think that heated arguments are good. Actually, I do think that they might be good on those rare occasions in which the participants make up again and realize that there are ideological ties that bind more strongly than the trivial bits that they were previously arguing about.

But some rifts never close.

We, as human beings, are odd. Once we immerse ourselves into a community where people think as we do... we start looking for places to disagree, just to keep things interesting. Don't deny it! It is true!

In the Original Star Trek Episode "The City On the Edge of Forever" written by Harlan Ellison, the author writes, and Kirk says, that a poet born on a planet circling a far away star will write that the most important words ever uttered are "Let Me Help", inching out "I Love You" for the top spot.

I have to wonder, though, if "I Was Wrong" should not take top honors.

...Linux is a passion-fueled culture...
I might even be so bold as to state that it is the IT (and then specifically the 'nerds'...) culture that is so passion-fueled...

This is what open source is NOT supposed to be about.

I was talking about Linus submitting his patches That is definitely what open source is all about.

..True

I am just referring to his 'bitching' about Gnome and telling people off for using it!

That's not what open source is about!

I don't recall him telling people off for using GNOME. His complaint is that GNOME's preference system basically assumes the users are idiots.

... and that is exactly why a lot of people like GNOME. They where used to Windows (THE OS for dummies) and when switching to Linux/GNOME is a very good alternative for Windows.

"This is what open source is NOT supposed to be about. Open source is about alternative and respect of the alternate, not about telling people off just because you're famous for starting a now huge open source development like Linux...."

First let me ask you... You say you've always liked Gnome better than KDE... did you use Gnome 1.x? Or did you only recently start using Gnome 2.x series?

I think a lot of Gnome users, who are Gnome users right from the start, from the 1.x series, feel in some way neglected. We are programmers, we are advanced power users, we used to like and support the Gnome platform. And all of a sudden, there's this whole "my grandma is having a hard time with Gnome, so it needs to be much much simpler"-movement. And in Gnome 2.x all configurability is removed (or pushed in gconf-editor). It's as if the target group for the desktop environment in Gnome 1.x were programmers or advanced users, and the target group for Gnome 2.x is grandma and grandpa. So, of course, the Gnome developers upset their longtime users, because they neglect their longtime advanced users, while adjusting the whole Gnome platform for some target group (grandma and grandpa) who, right now, is not using their platform. I'm not saying that Gnome 1.x series was perfect and I actually think the ideas behind Gnome 2.x are good, but the Gnome developers went way too radical about it. They definitely shouldn't neglect their current (and previous) users.

I believe that is the frustration that Linus is feeling. I'm feeling it too and I know other people are feeling it too. We, the loyal Gnome users, are pushed aside, so that the wishes of the Windows using crowd can be fulfilled. That's how it feels to me. But, of course, when I say it, that's not gonna make much noise. When Linus says it, it does make a lot more noise. In my opinion, respecting your original target group is just basic respect for your users, whether the software is open source or not.

Amen!

I couldn't have said it any better...

+1

What specifically is missing now for you to feel not neglected?

Although I'm not the OP, I have had similar experiences, so I will try to explain:

First, let me tell you (just in case you haven't used it) that GNOME 1.x was sometimes a bitch to configure, esp. if the distribution focused on KDE (like SuSE, which I was using back then). It took me some time to adapt GNOME 1.x to work with me (and it took even longer to get the hang of the things it didn't allowed me to adapt). Next, replacing the underlying WM was more common for GNOME setups than for KDE back then (I once configured a GNOME installation at a colleages desk and it took me minutes to figure out, that the reason some of the advanced options were in a strange place was, that he was using sawfish instead of my familiar WM. I was less familiar with Linux then :-) ), so that behavioural patterns for configuration were not always transferable across distributions / installations. I was initially (to use this stupid market-speech) "very excited" when the 2.x series of GNOME promised to fix this issues.

I had my first "what the duck" moment when the galeon (which was my default browser) 1.3 release and the subsequent fork into the galeon/epiphany double occured, leaving me with approx. half the configuration options in both browsers I had grown to rely on. At the same time (IIRC, this is some years from now, please correct me if I'm wrong) many more - partially obscure, I admit it - configuration features got axed in the sake of simplicity and the new HIG. All in all nothing wrong with that, but the decisions (aka the "sane defaults") ran many times counter what I have got used to previously during the "GNOME-1.x-vs.-myself-adaption" stage. With no first-class-citizen access to "advanced configuration options" (I will try to keep calm while thinking about gconf-editor, thank you for asking), I felt limited and came finally to the conclusion, that I was no longer the intended audience for this DE.

I left GNOME with the 2.6 release (the spatial-or-not-spatial debate was fun to watch from a safe distance) for good, because I found a more suiting environment (XFCE) that has so far allowed me to adapt even minor settings to my pleasing (I like for example non-flat buttons in the taskbar still better, thank you for letting me set this back even in 4.4!) while staying out of my way during work.

So what would be needed to get me back to GNOME? An "Advanced Settings" panel/tab/button for most applications and dialogs, even if I don't need them 90%+ of the time. A more straightforward way to build GNOME releases from source and perhaps a little-more open attitude towards users who are not afraid of learning curves even "later" would not hurt either.

But OTOH, since there are many GNOME users who are happy with what they got, I doubt, that this will
(or even should) happen, because otherwise, GoneMe would probably have been more successful.

Wow! 528 words and you still didn't answer the question:
What specifically is missing [from the GNOME 2.x series]?

Do you have any concrete examples, I'd really like to know? Is it just the ability to set flat/non-flat buttons on the task-bar?

I'm a Gnome user since the 0.3 series, and I'm perfectly happy with the usability focus that's been integral to the project since 2.0. From my perspective, I'm happy to never have to wade through pages and pages of useless junk-settings to find the one I'm looking for. Here's an example from the bad old days:
http://www.gnome.org/~jdub/2003/sequelsyndrome/mgp00015.html

Actually I was there in the 1.x days and might actually have disliked it for some of the reasons you seem to like, e.g. the more configurable GUI.

However, I do not at all dislike the fact that you'd be able to configure it more freely, on the contrary I'd like to see a somewhat Mac OS X like centralized settings interface that was easily extensive and I actually find this to be very nicely suited for the Gnome 2.x approach to things.

I'd like Gnome to be more akin of Mac OS X than of Windows, where as I feel like being more in a 'Windows-like' environment on KDE (I'll probably get slayered for this...) and I really like the fact that all though simple and easy to use, Gnome remains its own.

Elegance and clean design really means a lot to me. I'm sorry, but it's just worth more to me than being able to make my desktop look like WOW or something like that. At the same time I do miss more of this in the open source communities, where functions seem to come before usage, which is a shame, since I personally know graphics designers that would love to give a helping hand in this respect. I don't really know if these people are targeted by the developing communities to help straightening out these aspects of software development. Anyway, they should be...

Instead I see badly organized GUI layouts, extensive use of background images (e.g. the K3B main window) that absolutely just pollutes the look'n'feel of the application. This is what the Gnome HIG tries to fight, and I like to say I favor this over anything on *nix.

I understand that Linus might be disappointed, but I don't like the fact that he supposedly wants us to switch to KDE because he's sorry about the state of Gnome affairs - that is for everyone to decide for him self! (Just as I hate the appalling 'I'm a Mac - and I'm a PC' ads...)

Wait. When you say you like developing applications with GTK+/GNOME libraries, are you saying that you've tried writing both Qt and GTK+ applications and you find the latter easier? And do you mean that you've written applications in straight GTK/GObject, or that you used GTKmm?

I ask only because I've coded a bit in all three, and compared to Qt, GTK/GObject is PAINFUL, and GTKmm isn't amazing either.

The GNOME developers may agree that writing applications in C is "madness", but a whole ton of the GNOME core is written in C, and I can't blame people for not wanting to touch that codebase with a ten foot pole.

>Wait. When you say you like developing applications with GTK+/GNOME libraries, are you saying that you've tried writing both Qt and GTK+ applications and you find the latter easier?

Yes. I've used Qt before (used to constantly rave about it). I still think it's a superior toolkit. I've also used GTK+ with the C# binding (pretty good). But I don't care for C#. I've used GTK+ with the C++ bindings, which are pretty excellent.

However, I can't seem to stand anything other than C. I hate C++ and I hate doing OO in it. That is why I prefer GTK+ to Qt when it comes to developing applications. Not necessarily using them.

If you don't mind my asking, why do you feel that GObject is a better implementation of object-oriented programming than C++'s? And also (this is a separate question), aside from its OO model, why don't you like C++? There are a whole bunch of C++ features -- iterators, the STL, and templates, to name a few -- which aren't particularly object-oriented, but which I really like, and I'm somewhat surprised to hear that you don't (or that there are other parts of C++ which turn you off enough that iterators are irrelevant).

While it may be on FreeBSD, it certainly doesn't always work well with FreeBSD. Some things are very linux centric.

For me, MilesTeg hit the nail on the head.

I love having the choice between DE's and often switch between them, especially when a new version has been release. That said I too get a tad frustrated by the development library (if that is the correct term to use) specific nature of apps of KDE/QT and GNOME/GTK as I find one app from one DE will do a better job than the equivalent app from the other DE.

Neither DE is perfect yet but the very fact they are both under constant development can only mean they are striving for their own idea of perfection.

"Why can't they just be linux apps instead of KDE, Gnome or GTK-specific?
I'm (not yet) a programmer but this simply looks wrong to me. "

Because it would be a pain and end up looking completely ugly to make a gui app without a toolkit like QT or GTK. They make it easier to program and easier to make look nice.

"There simply needs to be a common, flexible, fertile ground where a programmer can start creating linux apps with GUIs"

That is what both GTK and QT were designed to do.

I think it was Linus Torvalds, but what's in a name.

Well, I am about as pro-KDE as Linus is, and I can see his point:

Because I am used to how the "save as" and "open" dialogs look like in KDE (more or less a fully featured filesystem browser) I also want to have that look and feel (or at least similar) if I want to save a JPEG from GIMP, which to this day is still the better image processing tool).

Sad thing is, if a open the "save as" dialog from GIMP, I get an interface I am so totally unused to, that it takes me 10 - 20 seconds of hard pattern recognition work to make sure I am saving at the correct location in the filesystem tree.
If I could configure the "look and feel" of these dialogs I could at least make them behave more like what I am used to, but alas, I cannot.

That is, what makes us KDE-only guys so mad about. There would be so many great programs out there, but the one or two things we would like to have to get us hooked there cannot be achieved because of a lack of configurability, or because these things are hidden.

I might add, that I too find KDE sometimes a little bloated, but that I can handle myself, I can configure away much bloat. The main problem with Gnome I think is, that they do not provide features although they would not introduce bloat. Best example of having loads of features without bloating your pants off would be Konqueror with all its Kparts. You have the features when you need them, but if you don't need them they don't get in your way.

How about vica-versa? I didn't know I can configure the open and save dialogs in k3b to fit with my Gnome desktop.
If someone uses Gnome and tries to make it work like KDE, they won't like it. If someone tries to use KDE and make it work like Gnome, they won't like it.
It's really that simple; if you really like one desktop (like you really like KDE and I really like Gnome), then the other just will not work for you and will annoy you.

isnt there work being done on a library that will do just that. as in allow a call for dialog to use kde or gnome dialogs based on what DE your using, not what library the program happens to be written in?

There are ways to do that, and even a project (the portland project) to make it possible. But that'll take time and effort from the developers as well.

"Try Amarok vs Rhythmbox or Kate vs Gedit."

The problem with that sort of comparison, is that the apps rarely have the same goals. Amarok is always supposed to be a "bigger" than rhythmbox, so if you want the extra stuff, then it will be better. On the other hand, Exaile is a gnomey app, that's almost exactly like amarok as far as I know.

And with gedit: KDE has (had?) kedit and kate, while gnome has gedit and any number of addons/plugins so it can be a simple editor and a more powerful one as needed...

"I know that Firefox isn't a Gnome application, but I think that most Gnome users use Firefox."

That's almost certainly true, but of course Epiphany is the "real" gnome browser, and is a lot more integrated altogther, as well as probably faster.

Woah, that's a lot of "s today.

"And with gedit: KDE has (had?) kedit and kate, while gnome has gedit and any number of addons/plugins so it can be a simple editor and a more powerful one as needed..."

True, but I find kate much faster when handling large text files than gedit even without addons.

"KDE is generally much faster than Gnome."

Generally? Are you talking about KDE and GNOME on modern PCs or did your statement include older systems as well, such as a 200 MHz P2 with 128 MB RAM? I'm just asking.

On modern hardware, I found KDE working quite fast. Because most Linux distributions come with KDE preinstalled and preconfigured, I found it hard to have a comparable Gnome DE setup so see if the speed is better / worse / equivalent.

Most Linusi spend their time working on KDE (preconfiguration etc.) and missing to do the same on Gnome. Maybe Gnome could be faster then? (Take a look at Solaris using Gnome - works fast and supports productivity.)

BTW, "Linusi" is one of the inofficial plurals of "Linux". :-)

KDE did a lot for Linux bringing it to the home users desktop. You even find KDE in professional settings (maybe because of KDevelop). This tendency is increasing. So let's be happy with it and work on it instead of firing at each other's side saying "Your DE is *insert claim here*!" If you're keen on eye candy such as most home users seem to be, KDE surely is their choice. Internationalisation of KDE (language, translation, charsets, fonts etc.) is very good in fact.

"Maybe it is because of QT, maybe something else."

Maybe it's allowed to differ as follows:

{ Qt apps [ KDE apps ] } ./. { Gtk apps [ GNOME apps ] }

("./." means "versus"; german jurisdiction)

I just wanted to try to illustrate the subset relationships. You could divide Gtk in subclasses, too, such as Gtk, Gtk+ or Gtk 2.0.

For example, there are many Gtk apps to be used with GNOME, but there are also Gtk apps that do not rely on the GNOME frameworks (e. g. gstreamer).

"And a lot of KDE-apps just works a lot better than the corrosponding Gnome-apps. Try Amarok vs Rhythmbox or Kate vs Gedit."

As it has been stated before, you're comparing different classes of applications / different goals. In the same case, you could (not) compare Gmencoder vs. K3b or even Gnotepad+ vs. KDevelop.

"What about a mail-client? If you use Gnome I think you would use Thunderbird or Evolution. Try to scroll the list of messages in these 2 applications, and try changing the window size. Then try to start up KDE and use Kmail: It is just a lot faster! "

What about Sylpheed? :-)

At this point, I'd like to say that I like both KDE and GNOME, and, of course, XFCE and WindowMaker. The right tool for each task. Such as new users usually find KDE mor appealing than GNOME, I like WindowMaker much better than both of them, just because I don't need a desktop environment and still can use KDE, GNOME or whatever applications alltogether. At work, we use XFCE. It's not because we don't like KDE, it's because it wouldn't run at an accaptable speed on our machines. On my Solaris box, there's GNOME, and I like it very much the way Sun configured it. Everytime I may use MacOS X I'm happy with it, I also like Apples desktop. And for some purposes, a KDE application works better than a GNOME application, and for another case a GNUstep application would be the best solution.

To come to an end: To insult someone as "interface nazis" isn't stupid only, it's an insult of the victims the nazi regime left behind. I honor the freedom of individual opinion very much, but that's too much! You just can't make such comparisons! If Linus has an attitude against GNOME, he should not use it anyway. If he likes KDE, he should use it. It's so simple. It's the freedom of choice. Nobody has the right to tell me which desktop I have to use. No Steve B., no Bill G., no Steve J. and no Linus T. Period.

"Generally? Are you talking about KDE and GNOME on modern PCs or did your statement include older systems as well, such as a 200 MHz P2 with 128 MB RAM? I'm just asking."

I am talking about a 500 MHz AMD k6-2 with 96 MB RAM and about a 1600 MHz AMD Athlon 64 with 2 GB RAM. In both situations Gnome feels slower and not as smooth as KDE. But: Gnome is getting quicker and quicker - that is a good thing.


The people using Linux have a lot of different demands and fortunately they can use whatever they want: Someone don't need a desktop environment and use WindowMaker, but a lot people wants a desktop environment where the standard applications are well integrated. But the users of Linux are very few, so a lot of hardware manufacturers don't create drivers for Linux. That is a big problem. In order to get more hardware manufacturers creating drivers for Linux, we need more Linux users. So we have to steal some Windows users. But they won't use Linux because there are too many different ways to use it, and it is way to slow!

So if we want to steal some Windows users, we need one desktop environment where you can control almost everything in your system. And the desktop environment has to be as quick as Windows XP. That also means that cool effects (like what you can get from Beryl/Emerald) have to wait until they are finished before they get into the desktop environment. When you resize windows it should be just as quick as in Windows XP and Vista.

I hope that the war between KDE and Gnome will stop one day, so we don't have to make 2 versions of every application. I don't care who is going to win, but I hope that the winner will be really fast. At the moment KDE is still the fastest and allmost as fast as Windows XP.

"what does GNOME lack that would make you more productive?"

I can't answer this from a KDE perspective, but there are certainly things that slowed me down moving from a (heavily tweaked) windows.

Two obvious speedups in general productivity are keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures. These are both right in the middle of KDE, but hidden/not there in gnome. This certainly made working in gnome feel slower to start with.

The reason I have never held this against gnome is that you very quickly learn to work with gnome as it is, rather than try and change it. As soon as I got the hang of how gnome does things, I was happier and faster than ever - and without having to experiment with lots of settings, because someone else had already done it.

You can run the kde hotkeys and mouse gesture daemon in Gnome or any other DE for that matter. I remember right before I finally gave up Gnome for KDE that I used khotkeys in Gnome and XFCE. I jumped ship for the same things Linus is complaining about almost a year ago.

I don't currently have GNOME installed so I can only tell from my - admittedly vague - past experience with it:

I used it a couple of months and while I got used to it somehow it never felt as natural as KDE. When I need an option under KDE 99% of the time it's where I think it is. When I need an option under GNOME 99% of the time it's either not where I think it should be or it's not there at all!

By comparing customizing your DE with tuning your car you miss how important it is. You use your car to get to work but you use your DE when you actually work.

I would compare it to the place where you do your work.
You could choose a desk that's a little too small, a pen that does not really fit into your hand and scratches when you write, a chair thats uncomfortable and so on. Every little detail does not make a big difference but they add up. When I need to concentrate I have exactly zero brain power to spare and thus want zero avoidable distractions. I'd rather pay ten times as much for a pen than use one I don't like. Similarly I don't mind tweaking KDE because it fits my mind really well after I'm finished tweaking it.

It may sound strange to you but GNOME does not fit my brain. I miss right click options all the time, I feel like being handcuffed. Actually, too few options scare and confuse me.

It's not that GNOME is wrong, it's just that it seems very weird _to_me, unlike KDE.
And I'd rather bend my DE than my mind :-)