This is a desktop comparison of Red Hat Linux 9 and SuSE 8.2 Professional Edition. We have used Red Hat Linux 8 for all our work since last fall, and installed version 9 as soon as it became available. However, we have not been fully content with Red Hat, so we gave SuSE 8.2 a try when it became available this month.
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After trying out Mandrake 9.1 and Redhat 9 and not really being impressed with either one, I had decided to go with Slackware 9 as my distro of choice - I liked it better than either Mandrake or Redhat. However, after reading this little piece, I might just have to take SuSe 8.2 for a test drive.
Not very reasonable...
"A big minus for SuSE is the lack of a Jabber client. There is no PSI and no Gabber. Actually, Red Hat has neither as well, but at least you can get proper RPMs from the Internet with a minimal effort."
What the hell is that? Neither of them have it. Why would you complain about just one of them?
Ok, Windows, Free/Net/OpenBSD, BeOS, QNX, MacOS9/X, or any other operating system comes with RealPlayer. And most without Adobe. My cry to Redhat.
Quote:
"Ok, Windows, Free/Net/OpenBSD, BeOS, QNX, MacOS9/X, or any other operating system comes with RealPlayer."
Actually BeOS did come with a RealPlayer. If you bought it.
As a longtime KDE user, I think it is incorrect to assume that KDE is any faster than Gnome. A better comparison would be to do speed tests with Redhat's KDE vs. Redhat's Gnome instead of using Suse's KDE vs. Redhat's Gnome. I prefer KDE but gnome is much faster on all three of my redhat machines compared to KDE.
> Red Hat's well-known hysteria regarding license issues [snip]
That remark made me hysterical! You know, over there at RH central headquarters they bang each other over the head with bananas when talking about licensing, or so I've heard.
It's very clear this article is totally biased towards SuSE/KDE and mentions few good things about Redhat/GNOME.
I for one agree with his recommendation, SUSE is probably a better or equivalent desktop choice, however Redhat also has some very nice things. THeir tools are limited true, but the ones they have are easier to use. KDE also tends to include krap in some areas, for example the background program. This program takes a screenshot of a webpage and places it as a wallpaper. It even keeps the scrollbar as part of the picture even though you can not use it. All you can do is stare at it, this is nothing like Active Desktop for Windows. In addition the whole DE is easier to use, GNOME is cleaner than KDE and includes mostly what's popular not as many choices. FOr example the KDE context menus are a mess, often littered with irrelevant options, REdhat GNOME's are far better.
ITs true KDE is ahead in functionality, but IMO it is often that the same features KDE has are implemented (to the user) in a more intuitive way. KDE's really very much ahead they have the best technology IMO all they need to do is improve usability and speed. (also maybe include some cool Nautilus features like emblems)
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=3910 Small comparrison of Konquror, Nautilus and Explorer. (yes, older versions of Konqueror and Nautilus, but it still applies)
I have used Mandrake 9.0 and now 9.1. Both recognized all my hardware, including integrated sound card, and installed without any problems whatsoever. Considering that the article states that there were problems during installation with both RH 9 and Suse 8.2, it is an achievement for Mandrake to have a flawless installation process. Now I use 9.1 and am quite satisfied with it. Does anyone know how it compares to RH 9 and Suse 8.2?
I'd just like to point out a few things:
1. Visual taste is extremely subjective. I personally think Bluecurve is really quite good.
2. The author obviously hates GNOME and loves KDE. Again, I personally do not feel the same way. If you can't name a single place where GNOME is better than KDE, you obviously haven't used GNOME enough to make useful comments on the subject. And, to be fair, the reverse is true, too - don't talk smack about KDE until you've used it for a while. Both have certain advantages, and if one had some that were so mind-blowingly great, it would have "won" by now.
3. Gaim has Jabber support, and I thought it was included with RedHat.
4. He implies that RedHat doesn't include "alternate" apps like KMail. I did the "everything install", and damn near any non-commercial app I can think of is there. The only one missing is Bluefish.
That is to say, take all of this with a grain of salt, especially if you disagree with the author on points 1 and 2. I do, and it's no surprise I like RedHat 9 a lot. To each his own - I do think SuSE 8.2 is pretty good as well.
Otherwise, it was an OK article. It seemed to be more like a "why I like SuSE better than RedHat" article than a proper review, but informative nonetheless.
-Erwos
"If you are to remove, list, or check your own packages, command line is your package manager"
--I may be missing the point and given I am pro-RH..but you can double-click an RPM in RH and it installs. Its true that there isn't a program like YaST included for package management, but downloading APT for rpm and synaptic solves that rather nicely 
..however I understand his point there.
Hi like my previous post (several veeks ago) comparing speed from Mandrake 9.1, Redhat 9 & Slackware 9.0.
Redhat's speed is behind Mandrake & Slackware.
This article point the same thing that RedHat9 also slower than Suse 8.2.
So can anyone explain why this is happen?
I hear RH use NPTL that will increase performance why the result is the opposite?
thx.
Actually I was surprised because I recently did that on MDK 9.1. The only thing Gnome is faster at is starting up and then not by much. KDE's speed has increased dramatically of late.
I had originally thought of switching to Gnome because I prefer the way it looks and some of the little touches. WHen I tried KDE again after a couple of weeks, I was blown away by how fast things felt. Personally it responds a lot fast than Windows XP with Classic window decorations and animation turned off.
To truly not be subjective you would have to run numerous tests on different systems though.
Perhaps this would work better as an editorial explaining why the author chose SuSe over RH. The author obviously can see merits of both distriubtions, but it seems he carried a few preconceived notions into the review. The intro section suggests that there was already some dissatisfaction with RH9 at the commencement of the review. Also, the review in several spots addresses the specific preferences of the author (especially when it comes to the issue of DEs) rather than the hypothetical needs of some sort of "joe user" character. (I suppose criticizing DEs leads to quite a bit of flak as we saw with Eugenia's GUI review)
I am writing this from Mozilla on a RH9 PC. Launching applications is excruciatingly slow. Same story with RH8. I upgraded from RH8 and now whenever I click on the shortcut it starts the installer, so I gave up.
I used to use XFCE on RH7.3 (and earlier). Can't find any RPMs for RH8 or 9.
Here's to XFCE4. screen shots look good.
I'm sorry but over and over I read reviews in here that are so obvious fan writings (in this case SUSE and KDE) that it becomes too obvious.
Use and install Suse and Red Hat for yourself and check it out (I did) and you will come to the conclusion that this person in particular is lying. I don't use either of them as distro (Gentoo myself), but Yast2 Is not heaven sent and Gnome2 is on no distro I have slow, or slower then KDE. Try them all, including Mandrake (all of them, a hour installation maximum on >1Ghz machines) and you will see it for yourself, except when you're a fanboy offcourse.
People have said this somewhat already, but I thought I should clarify this. People have different tastes. It is pointless to base a review on something almost entirely subjective (in this case desktop environments). I understand that some people like KDE. I understand that some people like GNOME. If you like KDE, then use it. If you like GNOME, then use it. If you don't like either then, find something else.
In reality there isn't much point in comparing a linux disto in it's default form to another. Very few people leave things in a completely default state. I understand that this person likes SuSE 8.2, but that doesn't mean it belongs in an article. It belongs more in a discussion group where people can argue their points one against another.
Perhaps an interesting article to write would be a summary of arguments taken from the discussion groups comparing all distros in terms of software included, speed, responsiveness, stability, completeness and app stability. The nice thing about a comparison like this would be that it would be from a wide range of people rather than just a single individual.
Just to see if its really that bad apart from the crippled KDE that is. I remember 8.0 couldn't install on an old celeron 466 (stopped during installation) maybe it will work this time.
Most people here who have claimed that Gnome2 is as fast as KDE obviously havent used KDE 3.1. I upgraded to KDE 3.1 on my SuSE 8.1 install, and things are definitely faster than before ... and in my experience, KDE 3.0.whatever was still faster than Gnome2 on *my* system. I guess I'll have to try SuSE 8.2 & see for myself, but right now, Win XP Pro feels faster than Linux-anything on the same machine.
speed is my only issue with redhat. features are there. besides, i try and download all updated software i need from freshrpms.net. plus, in a little while longer, i might just install slackware again, just for the fact that it's faster. i wonder if someone out there could build a "slackware-config" tool that has all the major options (apache, dhcp, samba, etc.) in one easy to use app that can also connect to other slackware computers and configure from one central location. that would be cool. then i'd stick with slackware all the way. no webmin please.
>I can not name a single feature where Gnome would be ahead of
> KDE. Or actually, even close.
KDE doesn't have disk mounting applets AFAIK. Also, the applet menu is categorised iconised in GNOME. Most KDE preferences must be used from the Kontrol Center which means that they will require plenty of resources (which KDE does anyway). Nautilus uses an anti-aliased translucent selection rectangle whereas KDE has an ugly inverted dot one.
Theme selection is another area where GNOME stands out. It is must simpler and easy to use. Themes for the entire desktop can be changed with one click where KDE usually requires one for the style, one for the window decoration, one for the colors and other one for .... etc.
GNOME allows you to set actions when Data CDs, blank CDs, Audio CDs, DVDs etc are inserted as well as integrated CD burning support and KDE does not provide either AFAIK.
If u see then booting process of kde and gnome, gnome is the winner, but if u working with these desktop, kde is much faster then gnome.
"KDE doesn't have disk mounting applets AFAIK."
It doesn't need one at all. Mounted devices are neatly integrated into the desktop.
"Most KDE preferences must be used from the Kontrol Center which means that they will require plenty of resources (which KDE does anyway)."
Wrong. The center only loads the module which you are actually using.
"Theme selection is another area where GNOME stands out."
Especially when it comes to colour selection ;-)
This is really odd. I've seen reports of extreme slowness on Redhat over at linuxquestions.org, but it seems to hit people at random - GNOME is extremely snappy on my redhat 8 box.
I rather suspect these people are using nVidia cards but don't install the official drivers on redhat. SuSE IIRC will automatically download RPMs for it during initial boot, whereas Redhat, which has a rather stronger political stance on free software, leaves you with the very slow nv driver. This has been the cause of the problems on LQ several times.
When I first installed Redhat this caused ridiculous levels of slowness, not just in graphical response but in everything. Not actually the fault of redhat or Gnome per se, unfortunately, like in so many other cases, companies that are more willing to turn their back on free software when it's less convenient come out looking better.
I mean, really, I think Eugenia should declare a morotorium on "reviews", which are little more than ludicrously biased fanboy rantings half the time these days. OSNews isn't so much a news site anymore, rather it's become a drainpipe down which random noise from the ether constantly spills, you're expecting to stick your hand into the sludge to try and pull out the gems.
Oh, I apologise for that last comment, I was just feeling cranky. Obviously I still enjoy reading OSNews, otherwise I wouldn't be here posting comments. Nothing's perfect, but I think this site usually gets it right where many other sites get it wrong.
"KDE doesn't have disk mounting applets AFAIK."
It does - KwickDisk if I got the name right (lives in tray when you minimize it, and can mount/unmount fstab listed drives in a RMB menu), but I am not sure if this is what you had in mind :-)
>> Theme selection is another area where GNOME stands out.
> Especially when it comes to colour selection ;-)
KDE might allow you to change colors on simple themes like kde-default and redmont-95, but complex ones like marble and riscos (on KDE) don't allow this anyway. So in fact, here is an inconsistency (some themes can use colors, others don't) which KDE has and GNOME keeps simple and tidy.
> It does - KwickDisk if I got the name right (lives in tray
> when you minimize it, and can mount/unmount fstab listed
> drives in a RMB menu), but I am not sure if this is what you
> had in mind :-)
Well, unfortunately no. What I'm referring to is the GNOME applets that display an image of the type of media and allow you to mount/unmount-eject the media with a single click. I acknowledge that quickdisk is capable of what you say but it requires you to unminimize it, right click on the media, click it and minimize it again.
This leaves the click count for a single mount/unmount as follows:
GNOME: 1
KDE: 5
Thank you people for your comments to my article.
Seems that KDE / Gnome issue was the one according which the article has been judged, so some counter-comments follow.
KDE and Gnome are basicly very similar (and uninnovative) windowing systems. It is difficult for me to understand why somebody would bother to be a "fan" of either one.
Currently Red Hat 9 with Gnome 2.4 lacks many every-day features that SuSE 8.2 with KDE 3.1 has, but as time goes by, it will have them like KDE will implement the features that Gnome now has but KDE hasn't. The issue of KDE vs Gnome will pass by year 2005. In the meantime, however, you get your ordinary office work done more effectively using SuSE 8.2 KDE 3.1 than Red Hat 9 with Gnome 2.4. Gnome 2.4 is not a bad solution, and if somebody feels a need to say that I "hate" Gnome, I must say that I have no need to hate software products.
SuSE 8.2 with KDE 3.1 is very fast. All key KDE components open in around 1 second or less. Does it need to be faster? Red Hat 9 with Gnome 2.4 is not "slow" but when it takes 3 seconds to launch something that takes less than a second in the competing product, the feeling of slowness is natural. This is the feeling with all PCs we have so far tested, ranging from IBM laptops to self-assembled desktops. And no nVidia cards here. But again, I think this issue will pass as well.
You're absolutely correct, makkus. He stated very precisly in the beginning of the article that it was no review. Now, why is it that you do believe that is IS a review?
This article smacks somewhat of a fanboy writing in support of his favourite. There isn't much objectivity in any part of the review.
However, this doesn't mean that it's OK for everyone to jump in and start defending their own preferences. (Although what I've seen so far is much more reasonable than the flame wars that seem to start from time to time)
I've been a SUSE and RedHat user. I have installed SUSE and RedHat servers and desktops for clients who are all very happy with the results.
To them (and users are what really count), the desktop or server applications they are using are fulfulling their respective jobs perfectly. They don't care about the GNOME v KDE debate, or SUSE v RedHat. They care about getting their work done.
They all seem to be happy - although there have been a few raised eyebrows when my invoice landed
I think people need to be much more constructive in their comments about both sides. At the end of the day, I do NOT think that either desktop will crush the other out of existence. What will (or SHOULD) happen is that applications from ANYWHERE will be able to play happily with each other no matter what desktop the user prefers to use.
That may be a utopian dream, but it's a damn sight better than the distopia that many people claim the "other" world looks like.
As Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney once sang (in a rather rubbish song in my view) . . .
Ebbony and Ivory,
live together in perfect harmony
side by side on my piano keyboard
oh Lord why can't we
Dunk
Uhm, you're talking about GNOME 2.4 while 2.2 is the latest version..
"KDE doesn't have disk mounting applets AFAIK."
Just right-click a disk on the desktop and click Mount or Unmount? Yes, you have to see the desktop indeed so it costs 5 clicks too.
"Nautilus uses an anti-aliased translucent selection rectangle whereas KDE has an ugly inverted dot one."
That's exactly why I like KDE: Gnome's transculent selection is too slow for me. I have a P350 and selecting icons in Gnome is horrible, while it works pretty well in KDE. Not that I use Konqueror a lot - it takes too long to start.
However, besides this, the whole Linux system is rather user-unfriendly. MacOS 7 was friendlier than Linux now. I mean, this is now OpenOffice should be installed: Download openoffice.tgz, double-click to extract, drop it into /opt and that should be all.
And the USB ZIP drive. Tried to use it in SUSE 7.3. At installation it was not plugged in, so when the system was running I plugged it in. Then it should be configured, but nothing of that: I had to research the internet, use a strange command-line tool to find out it was named /dev/sdb, manually edit fstab and then I was finally able to mount it. This is not how it should be: I plug it in, then I want that Konqueror opens automatically in /mnt/zipdrive! Of course you should be able to disable this in case you have a multi-user system :-)
Same for the digital camera. I do not want to manually mount it, I want to plug it in, the system should notice that although this is /dev/sdb too, it should mount it to /mnt/camera and Konqueror should automatically open to this directory - showing the thumbnails of the pictures.
That would be user-friendly. Btw. if you want, read Nautilus instead of Konqueror.
look for KOPETE for kde and GAIM/GABBER on gnome - they both rock your panties and can use a ton of protocols. compared to windows instant messengers it's a pain to go back to windows.
... or try ayttm:
http://ayttm.sourceforge.net/
Does Redhat do anything right? First they messed up gcc and now they neglect basic clipboard functionality. How much programming went into bluecurve, about one weeks worth of work? I switched to the ocean dream desktop theme but kept the default icons. I like how my Gnome 2.2 desktop looks and I don't have any problems with the desktop speed. My only problems were with the evil crime lords at Microsoft who have forced my hand to recently become a Redhat Member for $60 and to never use Microsoft products again. The nice thing about the Linux platform for developers is that no programming efforts are discontinued due to market shift, because others can pick up and leverage the source code at any time. In the future, that task will even be made easier. I think that some standard components should be the same for everyone's PC but I don't like the idea of a world where everyone has exactly the same system. That's another story, and so is the story that vendors should be required to publish information so that all software vendors have equal opportunity to write drivers for it.
"Better check SuSE packages before you give it a go, since several key applications are not installed by default, like "locate" does not work on the command line."
Can't run "locate" from the command line? Did you run "updatedb" first?
>> Gnome's transculent selection is too slow for me
Get a NVIDIA video card and use the official NVIDIA Linux drivers..
(on my system, the rubberbanding is faster than it is using Explorer on Windows XP)
This persons knowledge of RedHat seems very superficial. He didn't even take the time to find out that Gaim (the default messenger) has in fact a Jabber plugin.
Further more while there is no Adobe Acrobat, PDF-files can be read by euther xpdf or ggv, both of which are installed by default.
The mp3 thing is a non issue, solved by 1 download. And this is so well known these days that the file really can't be hard to find. (I wouldn't know, I use ogg)
Finally the copy/paste thing : some apps can't use the normal [CTRL]+[C], for example the terminal program (this kills current program), so these apps switch to [CTRL]+[SHIFT]+[letter] for ALL their shortcuts. A bit confusing but logical nontheless.
Well you're right it is a "desktop comparison". Maybe it is because English is not my mother language, but for me it is the same. He is comparing and thus reviewing two systems.
But about slowness under Red Hat with gnome (or gnome by it self) Take a look in the forums of the distro where I'm more home to, Gentoo (htp://forums.gentoo.org topic Desktop) and see for yourself, the problems we're facing with linux and DE's. There are hundreds of posts in there, some claiming KDE is slow while Gome is fast and visa versa and it becomes obvious that the speed problem is something different then the way Gnome or KDE are structured. Someone who claimed that he has installed and worked with many systems running Red Hat should have seen this problem many times and would have come to the conclusion that something isn't right and it ain't Gnome's fault (I've seen the same behaviour on Mandrake, Gentoo and Suse by the way). But this comparison is just a simple let SUSE and KDE shine article without critical note.
If he wrote this article by just installing Suse ones on a machine while using Red Hat many times on different machines, then he should be ashamed by himself, because he then knows as well as I that the one faultless installation could've been a lucky shot, everything was right for that distro at that moment. I've had many problems with SUSE and a not so faultless installation let you see how well a distro solves problems that you can expect in a working environment where you can't depend on lucky one shots. Again this "comparison" is a fanboy writing of some biased person
Two clear causes stand out for Gnome.
1) Some nvidia drivers can make Gnome crawl. The problem seems to get solved with the newest drivers.
2) If nameresolving isn't done right the the startup of gnome applications can become extremely slow. Solution add the hostname to the localhost line in /etc/hosts.
Thank you for reminding me about Gaim being able to contact Jabber server using a separate plugin. Can it also use SSL?
Red Hat sure has two open source PDF viewers. Both of them have problems opening PDF files, but mostly either one works. Sometimes both of them fail. However, I was pointing out that Red Hat refuses to include any shareware applications that are not open source. I don't actually see how that is to the benefit of the ordinary user that needs to collect them separately.
MP3 (and any other download as well) is an issue when you go company-wide with Linux. Imagine how this conversation goes on:
Secretary: "Hey, I can not play my music files with my PC."
You: "Oh, it's no problem. Just login as root and download the MP3 plugin from the Internet."
... get the point?
> MP3 (and any other download as well) is an issue when you go
> company-wide with Linux. Imagine how this conversation goes
> on:
>
> Secretary: "Hey, I can not play my music files with my PC."
> You: "Oh, it's no problem. Just login as root and download
> the MP3 plugin from the Internet."
>
> ... get the point?
Yes, secretaries should not be listening to music in the first place. Also, the administrator of Machine X is responsible for installing software for Machine X so you're argument doesn't really make sense. Software installation is a common necessity anyway. On Win32 the situation would be, OH! I CAN'T STOP YOU FROM INSTALLING IT!!!
It all comes down to personal preference. IMHO Redhat 9.0's installer is head and shoulders above Suse 8.2's YAST. For instance, Redhat will recognize other Linux distro's and ask you whether or not you want to keep them. It's so much cleaner and easier to use.
Post installation configuration using Nautilus is also much easier. Instead of having to use Yast, Yast2, and the KDE Control Center, Nautilus handles most everything.
Also I had a problem with the fonts in Suse 8.2. Even after installing TrueType fonts they still didn't look as good as Redhat 9.0 default fonts.
To me, Suse seems to lag behind in ease of install, configuration and poor fonts. Thats enough to pass it by.
I almost threw the monitor from my desk when I saw section 2. KDE vs. Gnome. I just knew that it would turn into another KDE vs. Gnome debate. Thus the whole article's focus of RedHat vs. SuSE is moot.
I AM SO FREAKING TIRED OF THIS CRAP. Listen to each other, and you will realize that niether person on either side will give an inch.
The auther evidently did not think this through before he finished the article, because it is a pile of wasted time and disk-space now.
Crap. Crap. Crap.
i stopped reading after i saw R-DVD and RW-CDROM...i dont think these people are computer literate.
>Secretary: "Hey, I can not play my music files with my PC."
>You: "Oh, it's no problem. Just login as root and download >the MP3 plugin from the Internet."
>... get the point?
I can only see that if you are a system administrator you deserve the worst things happening to your systems. No secretary should be able too installl software by herself. If something goes wrong with that system you never now what happened to it, because the user will never tell the truth! Did you never learn from the windows 9x disaster (unmaintainable). If she want mp3 she can ask
Do you get the point?
I've been trying to find some merit in the article and there definately is some, but is this the kind of article we should keep on seeing ?
For those who say it's a "fan boys" view, you evidently didn't read the article correctly :-
[quote]We have used Red Hat Linux 8 for all our work since last fall, and installed version 9 as soon as it became available.[/quote]
The problem with an article of this nature is how subjective it is - one persons Gnome is another persons KDE.
The authour is not ranting and is clear and concise, but the re's not really much meat in the article - it's too brief.
To truly compare two distributions, would require at least a 6 page article.
What I would like to see in future articles of this nature is :-
1. Forget about the installation and go straight into first-time boot, indicating any Generic "Show-Stopping" problems that may occur. To fix problems, does the user have to edit text files, or could the problem be easily fixed via a gui environment ?
2. Brief comparison of the eye-candy and interface usability - when there's work to be done, who cares - most of us are familiar with Gnome and KDE anyway.
3. Setting up on an office network :-
* Connecting to a windows shared printer
* Connecting to a Linux shared printer
* Browsing a windows network
* Configuring Samba
4. Basic Office work
* Writing an standard office document, such as a memo or quite in OpenOffice
* Saving that document for a windows user to open
* Printing the document
5. Operation between applications
* Cutting and pasting text between applications
* Default handling of "common" "windows" filetypes, such as PDF, MS-Word, .zip - i.e. which applications open, are associated or even work on a default install.
6. Basic hardware operation in a production environment
* Hooking up a digital camera/camera media and downloading images
* Hooking up a scanner and scanning an image for inclusion into a document
* Hooking up other USB devices, such as external drives
7. Multi-media capabilities
* Play some mp3/ogg vorbis files
* Play a DVD (if a Dvd player is present)
* movies - what codecs are supported by default
This to me would form the basis of a useful article that could help people decide whether to choose or switch to a specific distribution. Most articles of this nature spend too much time on the install, eye-candy and menu system/look 'n feel.
We got some new machines with the SIS 648 chipset and Pentium 4 2.8 GHz chips. RH 8 and 9 install perfectly with no problems. SUSE 8.1 wouldn't install. The kernel crashed every time we tried. Contrarily to what the author said, on my machines, if I right-click on a Panel Icon and then select properties, there is a line labeled command that tells what application the icon controls. I haven't tried KDE, but I'll give it a shot. I never liked the CDE look and functionality, but find it far behind gnome. However, perhaps KDE has moved on from its origins. I don't understand why the review was mostly a KDE vs. Gnome comparison, when it was labelled a RH vs. SUSE comparison. I can select the KDE desktop on RH, and I would hope that SUSE includes Gnome, although since it won't install on my machines, I can't exactly check it:->
It seems to me that if you're going to have a RH vs. SuSE usability comparison, then you should compare RH's KDE vs. SuSE's KDE or RH's GNOME vs. SuSE's GNOME. That way you have a baseline (i.e. whichever DE you choose) from which you can compare how easy it is to, for example, add rpms in RH versus adding rpms in SuSE.
On the other hand, if you're going to have a KDE vs. GNOME usability comparison, then it doesn't matter what distro you use because you are comparing just the DE's. That way you have a baseline (i.e. the distro you're using) from which you can compare how GNOME's file selector compares to KDE's, for example.
Either way, the article has missed its target. You gotta compare apples with apples and oranges with oranges.
Somebody help this guy format his score sheet at the end of the article.
I think bb_matt is on the right track. Enough KDE vs. Gnome, lets see this distros work rather than debate the software they include.
It was a really bad article when it comes to comparing both systems (just pointing out the flaws in Red Hat from a few examples just doesn't cut it). I also don't agree with the summary obviously. Saying "result: SuSE will make you work more efficiently" simply spells arrogance, especially as thousands of users came to exactly the opposite conclusion. If it wouldn't be for Red Hat, I would see no reason to use anything but my old Windows 98 atm.
Especially cheap was the conclusion that less speed/responsiveness equals less usability. I won't buy that, sorry. Completely ignoring all the tremendous work that the GNOME project did in terms of usability simply makes this statements seem unreasonable.
That said, I think the article is pretty good at summing up the several flaws that still exist in Red Hat. Some are rather minor and beeing worked on (Saving clipboard after closing application) and others are rather major (bad performance, Nautilus launchers, ...). The author even missed out a few _very_ obvious ones (fileselector anyone? 
). I agree with pretty much all of them and hope that we will see improvements in the next months.
Those would be my favorites for developments in the next one or two years:
* Better performance
* More polish and stability
* More standardisation and interoperability (a common freedesktop HIG would just rock)
In no particular order.
"I almost threw the monitor from my desk when I saw section 2. KDE vs. Gnome. I just knew that it would turn into another KDE vs. Gnome debate. Thus the whole article's focus of RedHat vs. SuSE is moot."
Unfortunately that can not be avoided. Red Hat is clearly moving into direction where KDE is not part of its future anymore while SuSE has put its integration efforts to KDE, leaving Gnome aside. Both will soon ship their distributions with one properly configured windowing system only. People using these distributions will be affected by these decisions, and they should get all the information they possible can have about the consequences.
MP3 (and any other download as well) is an issue when you go company-wide with Linux. Imagine how this conversation goes on: ...
Actually I would think that companies that have a lot of Linux pc's would make use of kickstart (automated) installation, which is capable of including custom RPMs in the install and running scripts before and after installation which you can use to customize. This way an administrator could choose to include MP3, or Acrobat Reader or anything else.
I believe SuSE also has this functionality in Yast2 BTW.
Quote:
A big minus for SuSE is the lack of a Jabber client. There is no PSI and no Gabber. Actually, Red Hat has neither as well, but at least you can get proper RPMs from the Internet with a minimal effort.
Suse has Kopete, which has a jabber plugin.
SuSE also got gaim...with jabber-plugin
i found out about another distro its called morphix and you can download an iso with kde or knome and a cd full of games
once burnt to cd it will autoboot and run from disk and you can either run the os from the cd or install it, once loaded you can click an icon to install it its the best distro i have seen so far.
Yes Gnome does feel quite snappy until you have tried KDE, then you get blown away by how fast it is. At least I used Gnome on MDK 9.1 for a couple of weeks and beiny happy with performance until I went back to KDE.
Morphix is great but not yet as stable as Knoppix in my experience. I do like their mini-cd distribution, it's always with me in my shirt pocket :-)
Secretary: "Hey, I can not play my music files with my PC."
Me: That's because your here to work, not listen to unlicensed, copyrighted material that could pose potential legal damage to the company.
When did the development of the KDE 3.x series begin?
When did the development of the GNOME 2.x series begin?
If GNOME is younger than KDE than it has growing up to do, but once it has matured it will be just as beautiful as KDE. I am not just talking about visual appearances, but code maturity, etc.
For me personally using KDE 2.x was a nightmare doing schoolwork, because KDE apps crash within a session. But to say something good about KDE is that KDE 3.1 has become very fast and more stable than previous versions.
i'm surprised that the author found suse/kde to be faster than redhat/gnome - i've always had th opposite experience (KDE is barely usable - gnome runs at a perfectly acceptable speed)
Also i think the author misses one of the main advantages - its simplicity. In gnome things work great out the box, and if i want to change something in the preferences it's easy to find, and i don't have to go through 50 tabs to get there. In KDE it seems that every preferences box has thousands of options crammed into it for no apparent reason other than to obscure the options that normal people might want to change.
...another cheap and private little "review" / "comparsion"
OSNEWS isn't that what it was...
can only go by my own personal experience.
on my system(Celeron 1.3, Asus TUSL2-C mobo, 512MB ram, ATI Mach64), Red Hat9 w/ Gnome is MUCH faster than Mandrake 9.1 w/ KDE.
havent tried SuSE since the 6.3 days. . .
It looks like a continental war! Reading heaps of reviews and comparision writings, I ve seen only few of European gentlements are support redhat+gnome, all the rest is for Suse+kde. That s quite simple to understand ! Quick look at their origination
However, Linus Tovald has now enjoyed a RedHat Box at home , 'cuz he is being in USA :-)
about me: both r good, 'cuz I am neither of them: Euro and USA
SuSE is a much better choice for desktop use because SuSE is aming at that Market, Red Hat wants to target the enterprise and enterprise client desktops, it may be good for what its inteded purpose is but trying to use Red Hat as a consumer desktop operating system is like trying to use a flat bladed screwdriver to take out a phillips head screw.
Nobody seems to care that red hat costs twice the price of SuSE. Amazing!
You're right! RH = free isos, SuSE no free isos. Sure does make trying out RH a whole lot cheaper and easier than SuSE! Score one for RH.
I my self have used redhat,mandrake and SuSE and SuSE does blow the other to out of the water hands down but for some reason the SuSE 8.2 has given me big problems with fonts you may look at them here http://www.madpenguin.org/viewforum.php?forum=36.. At this time SuSE has given me a RMA # and told me to go to Redhat..Now thats Dummmm telling your costomer to go to Redhat lolol I can say that this has put a BIG BUG IN MY ASS, this is not the way to deal with your customers!!!!
I've tried both and I like SuSE better. Therefore, this article must be correct.
Dude, I've got the same problems with my SuSE 8.2 install. The fonts look good in KDE but in GNOME and in GNOME apps they look like total crap. I've tweaked them the best I can, but the fact that they don't even ship a xft enabled mozilla is pretty sad, IMHO.
Get this, too. Just try changing from the geramik style in gnome. You can't get rid of it entirely. I was able to change my metacity theme but the fugly geramik buttons still show up in evolution, even though the rest of the app has my metacity theme in it.
I tell ya, SuSE has screwed up GNOME big time.
I disagree with a lot of this article. I have the retail packs of both Red Hat 9 and SuSE 8.2. I believe Red Hat 9 is a much more useable distribution out of the box. Plus, the fonts in SuSE are absolutely the worst I've ever seen. Even truetype fonts look horrid.
reply_to_comments:=1
I have been a suse user since 5.2 (which I got from a magazine), haave purchased upgrades for most versions since. Before this, I was a Redhat user (purchased 2.1 back when O'reilly published it in book stores here in the UK), but I switched when suse had KDE and redhat had FVM2 (thats a long time ago!) I purchased Redhat 7.1 professional but decided it was not the distribution for me, although I thought the auto-mount stuff was very good!
Given where Redhat 7.1 was, and suse (8.x I think) was at the time, I must agree with the commentors that have suggested a little bias in the review. I AM KDE bias, but every time I see Gnome, it just gets better and in the redhat distribution has some unique properties (like the auto-mount desktop icons) that really help people less familiar with LINUX coming from a Windows/Mac background.
Now after my comment on everyone's comments, some of my own:-)
reply_to_comments:=0
Owning both Suse 8.1 and suse desktop, I think the ideal suse desktop would be a blend between the two.
For example, not having a C/C++ compiler with the desktop edition of suse is bad, my wifi card does not work (please flame me if I have missed it in Yast 2), but a source code driver exists which I cannot compile without using the suse 8.1 disks to load gcc.
The Desktop assistant from the desktop edition is very good. It does not exist in suse 8.1.
Having emailed suse about using the crossover rpms from suse desktop on suse 8.2, I got a reply in less than 24 hours. Hey, this is pre-sales I have not even parted with my cash yet. Basically not supported, but at no point did I get anything but encouragement to have a go.
Suse 8.2 arrives next 2 days, i'll try to get my wifi card, and crossover from the desktop edition all working together and let people know if I manage it.
same problems here. my fonts are terrible in gnome. i hate keramik/geramik and can't get rid of it. suse 8.2 is way overrated, imho. I wish I hadn't spent the money on it. I tried the live eval but it wouldn't install. figures. I should have known better.
Regarding KDE vs Gnome ... it is absolutely valid to compare SuSE 8.2 with KDE to RedHat with Gnome. These are their default preferred environments.
Regarding speed ... the author is just recounting his experiences with SuSE's KDE and RedHat's Gnome. It is a single (but valid) datapoint. Obviously, things vary widely here based on your configuration/setup.
Regarding Keramik vs. Bluecurve ... it is a matter of taste. The author likes Keramik and dislikes Bluecurve. I feel the opposite. Mandrake's Galaxy looks nice too.
Regarding MP3 ... RedHat doesn't have it. I personally agree with their reasoning (the US and European patent systems both suck, the US's just sucks worse), but I do find it annoying that it doesn't support MP3 (and other formats). This is a NON-ISSUE for corporate clients (most corporate clients install machines from images). Lack of user installation ability can be a plus or a minus depending on how you look at it.
This is my experience with SuSE 8.2, MDK 9.1 and RH 9 on my Athlon XP rig:
SuSE is the fastest of the bunch on the default install, MDK is rather snappy, RH is the slowest (even slower than Windows XP).
SuSE is the prettiest, MDK is on par, RH is the ugliest but not by much. (Windows XP is even uglier than RH).
SuSE is as stable as RH, MDK is slightly buggier. (Win XP is worst).
Sorry, but RH and MDK I use are from free isos downloaded from linuxiso.org's links, the retail version may be much better.
" Dude, I've got the same problems with my SuSE 8.2 install. The fonts look good in KDE but in GNOME and in GNOME apps they look like total crap. I've tweaked them the best I can, but the fact that they don't even ship a xft enabled mozilla is pretty sad, IMHO.
Get this, too. Just try changing from the geramik style in gnome. You can't get rid of it entirely. I was able to change my metacity theme but the fugly geramik buttons still show up in evolution, even though the rest of the app has my metacity theme in it.
I tell ya, SuSE has screwed up GNOME big time."
SuSE has standardized on the KDE desktop, they made the best choice, Gnome support in SuSE is lacking but the only thing you need GTK for is Gimp and a couple of other Apps. SuSE 8.2 is the best Linux distro on the x86, iTanium and Opteron side. KDE is a much better DE. IMO, I think the linux vendors need to get together and say one desktop is the defacto standard, and I think it should be KDE. KDE beats GNOME in speed and in looks, and it has a very well supported and well documented Toolkit, I am not saying that GNOME and GTK are crap, but for quality you cannot beat KDE.
I have a dual Athlon MP machine and SuSE runs fine on it. Red Hat lock up hard whenever the screen saver comes on, or randomly within about an hour or two with the screen saver disabled. It's hard to like something that won't run.
Although this review was to focus on the desktop there are two very big differences between the products last I checked. 1) SuSE provides something called SuSE firewall which for basic firewalling can be configured using YAST2 by just clicking on a few boxes. When you do this you get a perfect black hole. And if you want more there is a configuration file with comments that make it very easy to configure most things including bridging. 2) SuSE supports DSL configuration and setup using the graphical installer YAST2 and supports even DSL that uses PPOE (which my internet provider does). No HOWTOs no downloads and no compiles.
Some details in your article show that you are not that much Linux experienced (IMHO), which of course is OK but some statements made should be with a little more care
Locate not being installed by default, that's a choice SuSE has made and which I quite frankly can understand: if you want to use locate, you also have to run updatedb on a daily basis, and updatedb is bit intensive on system resources when it runs. SuSE chooses not to install it by default because it is widely unknown to beginners and to avoid having the harddisk run mad half an hour every day. This choice even gets more obvious when you think about workstations that are not up and running all the time.
So, if you are more experienced and want locate, start YaST, search for locate, install and done
I think that something that could also be pointed out about SuSE is their excellent documentation that is shipped with their distribution: no other distribution comes close to that
What isn't purely subjective is speed. I haven't seen a comprehensive test done comparing speed in Gnome and KDE, but what I know *for certain* is that KDE 3.1 runs faster than Gnome 2.2 on my machines (in Red Hat, Suse, and Mandrake - those are the only distros I've tried KDE 3.1 with). The difference is huge, particularly in terms of how long it takes to open directories that contain lots of files in Nautilus vs. Konqueror, but also just in general. And the fact that the performance difference is massively obvious on the fastest machine I currently own - a laptop with a 1.7ghz P4 and 512 ram, 32-meg Nvidia card - tells me that it likely isn't going to go away when I get a new box this summer. There is no excuse for the kind of performance I'm getting in Gnome on a machine this fast.
I don't hate Gnome, I'm not a KDE fanboy, but as long as I get drastically better performance out of one, I get frustrated using the other. If, a year down the road, Gnome is outperforming KDE on my machines, I'll switch back. I used it for a long time, I like the way it looks and feels, but I can't take the slowness.
(PS -- I'm completely open to the possibility that I'm doing something wrong, and that Gnome should be performing better. If anyone has any suggestions about how to tweak it, or how I might have configured things such that Gnome doesn't work right, I'd be very happy to hear them.)
The comparisons will continue as long as there is something to compare (luky us, as long as it it possible).
It is one of the main points and the main advantages of OSS and linux + desktops.
Gnome and KDE like any linux distro are moving -"objects". Any comparison will involve a person and some specific surroundings at some specific time.
Ari gave his points based on his experience.
I like that, and I agree on most of his points also he is relating to a company using linux and not only to a home user.
The main point, however, is that if nobody has a personal wiev and the currage to write about it then we will loose this opportunity to discuss it. Technically it is only possibly to discuss when sombody i brave enough to write and express his oppinion.
I have used Gnome since (Helix-Code) Ximian, and I like them very much, I think their understanding of beauty is solid. Still I use MD/KDE right now.
I suppose RH had to leave the desktop for a while in order to gather credibility.
I can understand that.
Meanwhile Suse and Mandrake kept on improving the desktop part.
The result is easily visibly now.
Look at (it is still there and should be deleted)
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2103670,00.html
"Red Hat chairman Bob Young explains why Linux is the future, even though Windows will continue to rule the desktop"
But again about the story:
After all the important part is all the comments.
Many very good comments.
Gnome/KDE, RH/and others.
The important point is the competition, if we cannot se that then we have lost everything.
Still I would like the Gnome and KDE people to meet, once or twice a year, for a week or two, on some ship in the Mediterranian or in the Caribbean.
There is a USA/Europe tilt between Gnome/KDE, perhaps.
But,have a look at the car industry. BMW and Mercedes are still very succesfull and still resebling the cars they made in 1950.
Only the americans vhere able to produce something as beautifull as the Mustang and the Firebird.
And then again, it was all destroyed within 10 years, (because nothing can remain beautiful for more than a year?,).
Perhaps we could learn something from each other.
..
I use both RH 9.0 (download) and SuSE 8.2 Pro (retail) on my current box. I had some installation & configuration issues with SuSE, none with RH. While SuSE 8.2 seems to be more feature rich compared to slightly minimalistic RH9, the SuSE's extra features do not always work to full satisfaction... some are actually quite annoying.
Gnome in RH could be (maybe) a bit slower, but looks/feels very professional with it's sleek interface and antialiased fonts, which are CONSISTENT through everything; I rarely see a glitch or crash (if ever). Default Mozilla rocks. Overall, RH9 is very smooth ride.
In SuSE's KDE fonts are driving me crazy exactly for the lack of consistence and uniformity... it seems to be also very dependent on the graphics adapter and monitor/resolution; crashes occurring in Konqueror time to time, and some websites look really horrible in KDE's default browser.. SuSE 8.2 is not such a smooth ride (in my case so far).
Both distros have their advantages, and depends on each user's preferences which one to use; I can't decide myself, so I use both, but mainly RH9 in order to have the daily task accomplished. Most likely, after some tweaking, I'll end up with SuSE as main desktop, but until then I'll stick with RH9, which allowed me start to work instantly after the installation; I'm fairly busy these days and don't have time to toy around with SuSE's small annoyances.
I think that author of the article obviously prefers SuSE over RH; I used to be the same (bought and used most distros since 6.4), until I tried RH9....
Dave
KDE and Gnome are built on different principles.
Gnome is much more targeted at beginners and low end users as the Gnome people have removed all options that most user doesnt need very often. To them simple is beautiful.
In KDE on the other hand everything is configurable, its even so configurable that a search function is needed in the control center to find the controls you need.
What you like best mainly depends on who you are. Gnome with its "do it my way ,as that is the best way, or not at all" paradigm would probably appeal to Mac OS users. While the more flexible but harder to learn KDE would appeal more to former windows users. KDE would probably also appeal more to former Unix users than Gnome as it has a more network centric feel. E.g in a KDE Save file dialog you can save to not only to mounted file systems but to ftp, sftp,... servers.
Normally KDE is somewhat slower than Gnome. My guess is that the differences in speed mentioned is not related to KDE or Gnome but rather to other things in the distros. My guess is that KDE in Red Hat is even slower than Gnome in ReadHat. Perhaps SuSe uses nice in some smart way or have better optimized libraries.
A better test would have bin to compare KDE and Suse on each distro.
Anyway, its nice to see how far the Linux desktop has evolved. I see Red Hat 8
as the starting point of something that is/was very close to usable on the corporate desktop. Now Red Hat is left in the dust by Suse and Mandrake.
It's very nice to see what a little competition can accomplish. Your move Red Hat.
Konqueror can display vietnamese correctly. As soon as I had read this I searched on google for a page in vietnamese (I can't read the language) and Konqueror displayed the text properly without any help from me. Perhaps the distribution you tested it under did not have any glyphs for vietnamese?
I tried KDE 3.1 and Genome 2.2 both under FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE on the same PC. It is quite clear that Genome is faster than KDE!
I read this article with interest since my friend is considering trying out Linux after using Windows2000 professional for...well, forever. He's interested in Redhat and I suggested it to him despite it's faults just because it's so easy to use and install. SUSE is very easy as well...but the last two versions I tried had many broken packages and KDE was buggy.
Having used GNOME and KDE both, I find the article misleading in how it uses these desktop defaults to measure speed. As a former SUSE user, I had both desktops installed, and noticed both had certain advantages. I don't see where the article mentions what file system the OS's have installed, and think that would make for a more valid comparison. I have noticed that GNOME is slower than KDE to load programs, but who is to say that KDE wouldn't run faster than GNOME on Redhat9? I don't see how either distribution would be faster than the other unless the kernels they used were specifically compiled for the machine. Like Gentoo. Or maybe even Debian, which I use.
I also don't see how there's any use for complaining about a lack of certain programs when both distros use rpm, and there are thousands or rpms available online.
Frankly, I grew tired of SUSE's sloppy file organization. I've heard that Redhat isn't any better, and that neither distribution has really made any improvements in that area. I'm disappointed that I can't find any mentions of REAL improvements that SUSE has made. KDE is just a package, using it to measure an OS's 'improvements' is like taking a brick out of a wall and trying to describe the brick-maker.
All that being said, it looks like I'm gonna have to recommend Mandrake to him since neither SUSE or Redhat can get their shit together.
I am looking for an cheaper OS/applications to replace MS Windows/Office. Hopefully Linux (whichever version) can be a suitable choice. To me the ability to run Chinese software (e.g. type a letter in Chinese) in far more important than the look/feel of the OS/desktop. (Anywhere I don't think at the moment Linux offer the speed, ease of use as compare with MS products).