Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 14th Aug 2007 22:04 UTC
"We want to develop a free and complete set of user friendly applications and desktop tools, similar to CDE and KDE but based entirely on free software." Those were the opening lines of Miguel De Icaza's email announcing the GNU Network Object Model Environment, better known as GNOME, exactly (in my timezone) ten years ago, on 15th August 1997. They have come a long way from this, to this.
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Member since:
2006-12-24
First, let me congratulate you and superstoned for once again highjacking a discussion about Gnome/GTK+ to why you believe KDE/Qt is superior. You both manage to troll by stoking the flamewars and the rather mythical antagonism between the two projects while at the same time not (usually) appearing to be inflammatory. Nicely done.
Some more comments about this particular post follow:
The problem is, GTK is only viable on Unix/Linux systems - and it has some well documented problems, some of them pointed out by Nokia, even at that.
You are misrepresenting the statements by Carlos Guerreiro at Nokia and are otherwise spreading FUD. Mr. Guerreiro said that there are some new effects that he would like to do that are difficult or not possible with GTK+ in it current incarnation. That is not the same thing as saying "there are well documented problems" with GTK+. Qt, I believe, instituted a new animations and drawing framework in the recent releases of Qt4.x. By your logic, Qt3 had well documented problems that made the whole toolkit defective. I don't think the folks at Trolltech or more KDE developers would agree with that.
Similarly, the GTK+/Gnome folks are currently experimenting with new canvases and animation frameworks based on OpenGL or Cairo, and the experiments may end up in GTK+ (either the 2.x series or an API-breaking 3.x series). See Clutter, Pigment, HippoCanvas, etc. Just because they are looking to break out in new directions doesn't mean they believe that GTK+ 2.x has "well documented" problems.
The Windows and OS X ports are a disaster to the point of being unusable.
What is your evidence to back this up? It smells like FUD to me. Have you developed a GTK+ application on Windows? If so, what are the specific problems you encountered? Did you file bugs with GTK+ or even the WIMP theme maintainer, Murray Cumming? Just because many toolkits use native Windows controls on Windows doesn't mean that GTK+ is a "disaster" on Windows.
I knew this thread would turn into a Qt Vs GTK crap just so the Qt gang can tell us how superour Qt is when it's not.
Well, it's reasonably on topic considering that Miguel de Icaza's e-mail about starting Gnome tells us how bad Qt and KDE was, and how it won't be too hard to keep up with it. The reply to that mail is still relevant now.
Obviously that's as still wrong today as it was then.
The sad thing is Miguel went out of his way in the original post to be complimentary of KDE. It's also sad that you feel the need to argue a licensing debate that became moot in 2000 when Trolltech relicensed Qt to the GPL. By that time, Gnome had already taken off, and its purpose was not to replace the (now libre) Qt but to provide a desktop its developers wanted to develop.
KDE and Gnome are complimentary and a source of good-natured competition, each taking and learning from the other. It's sad that you feel the need to denigrate GTK+/Gnome at every chance.