A long-time Gnome user takes a week to try out SimplyMepis to see what all the hubub is about. The result is not only a favorable look at a capable Linux distro, but an examination of the state of the Desktop Environment landscape, and the areas in which KDE can tempt even a dyed-in-the-wool Gnome fan.SimplyMepis 2004.06 or: Gnome Guy goes KDE
Most of the readers here probably know from my previous reviews that I am an avid Gnome user. Thus I prefer Gnome-centric distributions like Ubuntu and Fedora. This time, however, I wanted to give KDE another try. So the first thing I had to do was choose a proper distribution. I hesitated between Novell/Suse, Mandrake and Mepis, but finally decided to settle for SimplyMepis 2004.06. This review is kind of split: it is a review of SimplyMepis 2004.06, but it is also a look at a tested and proven implementation of KDE from a Gnome-user perspective. I am fully aware that SimplyMepis 2004.06 has KDE 3.2.3, an already outdated version of the KDE desktop. I still chose this distribution, mainly because I was interested in the small hype around Mepis Linux.
Part 1 – The review:
Initially, I had planned to install SimplyMepis on my main workstation, replacing Fedora Core 3 completely and test it for around a week. However, I, err… decided to cop out and just install it on my secondary computer: this is a pure workstation (and a pretty loyal one at that), a 500MHz Pentium 3 with 256MB RAM, IDE and SCSI hard drives, some old 4MB graphics card and some more 1999-standard hardware. I did not expect to have any hardware compatibility problems, as I never had any with other Linux installations, and, as expected, everything worked right out of the box. SimplyMepis 2004.06 is a full-featured Live CD, I just put it into the CD-ROM drive and booted the computer with it. I logged in with username and password “root” started KDE with the “startx”-command and installed SimplyMepis with very few easy clicks on my primary hard drive. You’ll need basic knowledge about Linux terminology but on the whole, the installation process is very straightforward and I really like the idea of installing my operating system after I have already successfully booted it. This minimizes unexpected installation issues. I proposed such a routine in Fedora’s Bugzilla a long time ago. I really think this installation method is superior and should become standard for all modern operating systems. I hope that others will, over time, adapt a similar installation routine.
Regarding the software: SimplyMepis comes with a slew of packages (ca. 950 vs. ca. 450 on my Ubuntu system), most of which are a bit outdated. That is perfectly fine because 2004.06 is a maintenance release that targets maximum stability. The (for me) most important pieces are Kernel 2.6.7, XFree 4.3.0, KDE 3.2.3, Mozilla 1.7.2 and OpenOffice.org 1.1.2. Just as with Ubuntu, most of my install was English even though I chose German during the installation. This was not unexpected because SimplyMepis comes on a single CD. I found out that I had to install Synaptic (via apt-get of course), which is probably a shame because this program is a worthy addition to every Debian-based distribution. Then I installed the packages kde-i18n-de, openoffice.org-l10n-de, openoffice.org-hyphenation-de, and mozilla-locale-de-at. That solved the issue mostly, but there were still missing pieces: the printer configuration dialog showed up in English and there were a few English words and texts scattered all over the distribution (not a real problem for me). Then I added Juk, because I am a regular Rhythmbox user and planned to compare these two.
I have used SimplyMepis for more than a week now and I am quite pleased with it. The transition from Gnome to KDE was easier than I thought, I do not miss any specific application. SimplyMepis 2004.06 lived up to my expectations to be a “KDE Ubuntu”. Being based on Debian you never have to hunt for a specific package on the internet – if it’s not available via apt-get and Synaptic, it probably doesn’t exist. While the software is a little outdated, the system is very stable – in fact, not a single application crashed for me during the test period. Also very nice: SimplyMepis 2004.06 comes with all the delicate stuff pre-installed: Java Runtime Engine, Flash Plugin, MP3 playback, Videoplayer. There’s probably an application for every possible task included in SimplyMepis. The problem is, you sometimes have to search through the slew of packages and the complex menus for quite some time until you find the right application for the job you want to get done. SimplyMepis includes three distribution-specific tools, Mepis System Center, Mepis Installation Center and Mepis User Utilities. The latter does not have many features, but you can do two small jobs: clean userspace of logs, history and cache and align Mozilla’s fonts with KDE. The Mepis System Center is a central place where you can set some preferences that the Mepis team wants to have in one location. You can, for example, set your apt-repositories and some apt-preferences here. I didn’t quite understand the purpose of these two tools. They’re just two more tools, in a distro that already has a big KDE Control Center and every other configuration tool available because it’s Debian based. The third utility however, the Mepis Installation Center, proved to be quite good. Also, I see the need for this application as SimplyMepis has its special installation procedure – thus neither the Debian installer nor Anaconda is an option.
A small conclusion: SimplyMepis 2004.06 is an astonishingly bug-free, stable distribution. I’d recommend it to everyone who likes KDE. You get a distribution that has the power of Debian behind it, comes on one handy CD and, overall, makes a fine, polished impression. All the software included, though a little outdated already, is of top quality and will get the job done. Installation is extremely hassle-free, probably one of the main strengths of SimplyMepis 2004.06.
Part 2 – The KDE-Gnome shootout:
Here comes the delicate part of this article. I have not used KDE for more than 2 years now. I used the KDE 2.2 series back in 2002 on Suse and Mandrake but jumped ship as soon as Gnome was getting usable (probably around Red Hat 9). I have followed the Gnome development ever since version 2.0 and used it with growing satisfaction. In the meantime, I’ve read through a lot of KDE reviews, but the screenshots that I saw were quite a turn-off to me. As Gnome got simpler and more straightforward (and a lot of people are arguing that it became too simple), KDE seemed to get more messed up from version to version. On second thought, that’s not true: KDE probably improved the “messy situation” from version to version a bit but with Gnome becoming slicker at a rapid pace all the time, KDE looked worse in comparison. As if two 120 kilo people decide to lose weight and, a year later, one of them has 70 kilos and the other has 100 and everybody only seems to compliment the slim person. I would have loved to test a more recent version (read 3.3.1) of the desktop environment, but it was much easier to use what was included in SimplyMepis 2004.06. Well, let’s jump right into it and start comparing applications:
The KDE Winners
Let’s start with the KDE applications that I preferred to their Gnome counterparts. JuK is a better music management application than Rhythmbox. I have major gripes with Rhythmbox, because it lacks essential features. The most important thing for me: JuK includes a well-designed and perfectly usable tag editor. It even displays the compression setting, so whenever I find a bad quality mp3, I can rerip it now with good quality. Another welcomed feature that Rhythmbox is missing: JuK can sort my music by year (O.K., it’s not THAT important, I admit…). A minor bug: when I sort by year, JuK fails to keep the correct order of complete albums, instead sorts by song title. But that’s really a small issue. On the whole, JuK is a very nice and clearly laid-out application. In fact, JuK looks so polished, I thought I was looking at a Gnome HIG-ified application! There’s not much optical difference between these two music management applications. I just hope Rhythmbox’s next version has the features JuK has right now. Way to go, Juk-team!
Next jewel in KDE: Quanta Plus. Quanta Plus has no direct competitor because Bluefish and Screem are not official Gnome applications. On initial startup Quanta Plus looks pretty bloated and the first thing I did was close a lot of small windows and remove some – for me – unnecessary toolbars. After that, it was a pleasure to work with Quanta Plus. It is as close to being “feature complete” as a web development application can get. HTML Tidy is integrated, preview works fine, syntax highlighting is perfect. I normally work with Bluefish and Screem and they both do not feel as feature complete as Quanta Plus.
Next up we have K3B: again there’s no direct competitor in Gnome and that’s a very unpleasant blank spot in the Gnome Desktop. K3B does a decent job at burning data, creating Audio and Video-CDs/DVDs, and copying discs. I don’t really like its design but everyone who has worked with Nero and the likes before will be able to handle K3B. K3B especially helps to make KDE a “feature-complete” desktop today. As I said, I prefer Gnome, but I really have trouble recommending it to everyone because I know that you can’t even burn an Audio CD with it.
Close Race – Tie!
Next matchup: gedit vs. KWrite: both applications serve the same purpose: easy text editing. While gedit looks a little more polished, its syntax highlighting feels a little rough: it highlights words like “for” and “and” in php-files, even when they are part of the plain text. And, worse, syntax highlighting has a nasty bug when it encounters a ‘ (also in php-files). KWrite on the other hand does a better job at syntax highlighting, but fails to highlight entites (&…;) which is quite handy in gedit. Kwrite uses nicer colors, but I guess here beauty completely lies in the eye of the beholder. One more word on text editors: I compared KWrite to gedit – and not Kate or KEdit – simply because SimplyMepis opened this editor when i clicked a text-file. I believe having three different text editors is kind of redundant, but this matter has been beaten to death by other authors before me.
On to the “instant messengers” Gaim and Kopete: a clear draw for me here. One can use Kopete as a drop-in replacement for Gaim when switching from Gnome to KDE. Both applications are very simple, clearly laid out, yet mighty tools. Both are integrated in their respective desktops nicely and can connect to all the established networks.
gThumb vs. Kuickshow: another draw. I like Kuickshow, just as much as JuK. It’s a well-designed and optically pleasing application, just as its Gnome counterpart. gThumb stills looks a little more polished to me (probably because I am used to the Gnome desktop, I admit, but I tried hard to view them as objectively as possible). I don’t like that Kuickshow opens a new window when I click on a photo. But also gThumb has its weak spot: rotating pictures, a very commonly used option is not easily accessible, but a matter of four clicks (yes, I am quite picky when it comes to Gnome usability…). Altogether, as I said, a draw.
To be honest, I didn’t test the mail application KMail much. I don’t use Evolution either, I’d go for Thunderbird anyway just because I am very used to it. I played around with KMail a bit however and I was not pleased with the account setup. Every mail program I know sports an easy wizard to guide me through creating an e-mail-account, adding name/e-mail address/incoming and outgoing server and password. In KMail I had to set up account and respective servers independently. The setup process is definitely more complicated than in other mail applications.
Where Gnome shines!
Konqueror vs. Nautilus and Epiphany. It’s difficult to compare these applications. Konqueror acts as a hybrid between file manager and web browser, just like Explorer for Windows. Gnome took another route and split these two tasks between the file manager Nautilus and the browser Epiphany. I guess it’s completely impossible to compare Konqueror, the file manager and Nautilus because both handle this task completely differently (read more about this here). The browsing capabilities, however, show a small advantage for Epiphany, mainly because it uses Mozilla’s rendering engine, which has, due to the tremendous success of Firefox right now, more support. I took Konqueror on a couple of small surfing sessions and visited all my bookmarked sites. It had severe problems with two out of 28 websites, all the others displayed flawlessly. I understand that these sites are composed in old-school, bad HTML (and I would help rewrite them today). When I do web design, I never have problems with KHTML. I guess Konqueror just has to improve its routines to handle HTML in compatibility mode (a programming job that’s probably quite a pain in the ass, so to say). I hope that Apple’s cooperation will bring KHTML on par with Gecko fast.
The main advantage of Gnome over KDE is definitely the better menu structure and the rigid rules on interface design that the Gnome Human Interface Guidelines impose. KDE’s menu structure is a big mess compared to Gnome’s. Just compare the screenshots over at osdir.com between Ubuntu Warty (screenshots 26-32) and SimplyMepis 2004.04 (screenshots 52-65). The KDE team has to do something about this because it effectively worsens the usability of KDE. Take JuK or Kuickshow as positive example and throw some more bloat out of the other applications. The KDE Control Center, for example, is a nightmare. I definitely think Gnome’s way of handling things is better here: the Gnome team tries to reduce all programs to their most important tasks so you have easy access to these most important functions. All the other options can be changed too, for example, through the command line or the GConf-Editor. Many KDE applications on the other hand try to present every possible option to the user, but that doesn’t make sense to me: that just diminishes the usability convenience for all users, experts and novices alike, because it takes longer to find the few important, everyday features that are so clearly presented in Gnome applications. So, adding more features to an already “full”, if not supercharged user interface offers nothing but diminishing returns. Also, who is the targeted user audience? Experts are able to edit text-files or use the command line anyway, novices are just scared away by too many features.
Conclusion:
Let’s stop here because these are the applications that I use regularly. There are of course a lot more applications, but as I don’t use them I did not feel qualified to write about them. I intentionally left the system configuration tools out: if you’ve made it this far, you probably know that I don’t like the KDE Control Center, and the Gnome System Tools, as presented in Ubuntu Linux 4.10, are nice, but far from being complete. I also left out one program that I use all the time, the GIMP because I think that it does not have a KDE competitor. Additionally, the GIMP is also not a real Gnome application.
So what’s my final verdict? Well surprise, surprise, KDE 3.2.3 won’t win over a Gnome aficionado like me. But I was impressed by a lot of things in KDE and I think I’d be able to switch to a KDE-based distribution pretty easily if I had to. Now that I’ve seen how applications like JuK or Quanta Plus have evolved, I see Gnome’s problems more distinctly. I’ll hope that Gnome 2.10 solves some of these issues. If not, I might take a close look at KDE again.
Finally, a prediction for 2005, since it’s the end of the year and everybody around me is making predictions too: desktop environments will become even more important. We will pick our distribution of choice even more because of the flagship desktop they include. Distribution makers will be well advised to pick either KDE or Gnome and throw their entire force behind making their selected environment as polished as possible. This is probably the best way to produce a really well integrated distribution. At the end of the 2005, we will not have the “Linux Desktop”, but the “Gnome Desktop” and the “KDE Desktop”, both Linux, GNU and X powered, with a highly modified and integrated OpenOffice.org as Office Suite (and maybe Firefox as browser). Many people will choose inferior programs because they come with their desktop environment instead of a mixture of the best applications available (just the way every single Rhythmbox user effectively does right now). And I don’t think that this will be necessarily a bad development because this will hopefully boost development speed until KDE and Gnome both are full featured, nicely usable desktop environments, each with its own set of quality applications for every major task, each on par with, let’s say Mac OS X. That also means we will see less graphical applications that don’t “belong” to either desktop, thus probably even less commercial 3rd party applications. And the ones that do survive (Firefox, OpenOffice.org) will do their best to integrate with Gnome and KDE. In other words, happy times ahead, folks!
—
Christian Paratschek, 28, likes living in his Gnome cave, but eventually comes out to examine the wooden huts that the KDE Neanderthals have built recently. Then he mumbles something about UI design and goes back to sleep in his fully HIG-ified cave.
Well, it’s nice to see a Gnome user actually giving KDE an honest shot (it would be nice to see KDE guys give Gnome one, too). Usually, there are a lot of knee-jerk reactions by KDE/Gnome fans and they don’t actually TRY the other environment.
I think that his take on KDE would have perhaps been more positive had he tried SUSE instead of Mepis (it’s more polished out-of-the-box) but Mepis uses (if I recall correctly) the “vanilla” KDE with very little modification, so it’s still a pretty fair test.
last time i checked the main kde community have a very pragmatic view on the existance of gnome, but at usual there is allway a vocal fringe that wants to go after anything that looks similar and call it copycats…
I have SimplyMepis by here, but it’s Ubuntu that I have installed on all my three computers. Nowadays, I can update and upgrade my systems without worrying it’s going to boot up again. And I haven’t had to learn any new tricks to do that. One of the policies of Ubuntu is to support a release up to one year and a half. So I have two wartys and one hoary to try out the new things. I only wish some brazillian guy created a national distro based on Ubuntu, that would be simply (pun) awesome. 🙂 I’m trying to get the Kurumin community interested, but it’s not easy to make the conversion. 🙂
And thats where Gnome easily ooutshines KDE. I have given Konqueror hours of configuration effort and I still cant get it to funtion like windows explorer or Nautilus Browser. I dont doubt Konquerors power but I find it totally unusable. Until they do something about it I will remain a faithful Gnomer.
I’ve never understood why people say that Konqueror is “unusable”. A bit cluttered, maybe, but “unusable”? It’s a file manager, and it does its job well IMHO. It’s not going to behave just like Explorer or Nautilus because it is not Explorer and it is not Nautilus – it is Konqueror. For me, at least, the file manager is not the end-all be-all (keep in mind that I do use both KDE and Gnome); the aforementioned file managers all do their jobs. I have always basically had the impression that the choice between KDE and Gnome is based more often on aesthetic taste than functional superiority.
And thats where Gnome easily ooutshines KDE. I have given Konqueror hours of configuration effort and I still cant get it to funtion like windows explorer or Nautilus Browser. I dont doubt Konquerors power but I find it totally unusable. Until they do something about it I will remain a faithful Gnomer.
You see, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I love konqueror, but I can’t stand Nautilus. I will say one thing about konqueror, mind – the default toolbar is far too crowded. I always spend 5 minutes on a new installation reducing the toolbars to a single toolbar with the same buttons as firefox. Much nicer, and I don’t know why this isn’t the default.
No matter how I try and configure Nautilus, I simply cannot get it looking the way I want. The icons are always either spaced too far apart or packed together.
It’s a good thing there are (at least) two desktop environments, as I don’t think it would ever be possible to satisfy everybody.
I’ve been running Mepis for 8 months now after switching from Mandy. I think the only 2 things Mepis lacks is, out of the box beautifull desktop setup (theme, color scheme, icons, not crowded desktop) and good graphical system tools.
Unfortunately, I don’t share author’s opinion about Quanta+, because I really find it the most buggy webdevelopment app.
Oh, quickshow is much faster than gthumb and mepis has more plugin support out of the box in my experience.
Thanks, good article!
maybe you could define what behavior of windows explorer or gnome natilus that you cant get in kde konqueror? blanket statements like that dont help in the future development of anything…
I use Gnome, KDE, Xfce4, and Enlightenment all the time. I don’t have two machines running the same DE anymore and I really like them all for different reasons. I end up switching around all the time just for a different feel on my main desktop.
I do, though, have an opinion on which is the best for a newb; and it isn’t KDE. KDE is far too much for a non-geeky person. It needs to organize a control center with fewer options for normal people or something like this. Gnome has done this: gconf and desktop preferennces.
It also needs to explain to its app developers that you don’t need an introduction screen for every program.
Have you tried gwenview? It’s actually quite good IMO.
http://gwenview.sourceforge.net/
“It needs to organize a control center with fewer options for normal people or something like this.”
I agree with you on this…a “look and feel”-centric control center and a separate system-centric control center would clear a lot of things up for KDE noobs.
Ubuntu was the first Gnome experiance I’ve had that I felt like (hmm,this isn’t so bad after all) so I am trying. I think the deal is that by this time I’ve just become so comfortable with KDE that it’s difficult to make the switch. That coupled with the fact that KDE just keeps getting faster and faster with every release, not what one would expect from something that so many refer to as bloated. And to me, all of the kio slave functionality is very difficutl to beat . . . but I’m giving Gnome a try.
Garret
hmm, are not the general kde control center just a collection of diffrent kpart settings dialogs? should not be that hard to seperate them.
still, after some looking around i found the general kde control panel quite logical. all the settings for looks are more or less gatherd under the same sub-section, with the rest being under the section dealing with personal settings like language and keyboard layout…
I don’t mind the KDE control center as much as a lot of people do, but it is a big mother and can be a bit confusing (especially for new users). For some reason, it’s always also bothered me that there is a “look and feel” AND a “desktop settings” section in it. I personally think it’s kinda nice to have everything in one place, but the placement of the controls can be a bit odd. I think that more than anything is what needs to be cleaned up about it. I don’t think it would hurt at all to consolidate “look and feel” and “desktop settings” into one control center and have that control center come up when users right-click on the desktop instead of just “desktop settings” (even if it just did that and wasn’t a truly separate control center, a lot of noobs would be less confused by it).
Just remember that we are all creatures of habbit. I use konqueror even in xfce just because I’m used to it.
I think KDE team should do something about putting a ‘K’ for everything I think is annoying.
I tried to like Gnome…
“usability”. You use it too many different ways for it to retain its meaning.
and I really don`t have anything to say, just one thing:
To try kde in it`s pure form try it on slack or Suse.
Gnome try it on that Umbutu something, not Fedora. Why I am saying this Fedora gnome is slow compared and don`t look that good.
Kde on slack is just FAST and very crisp
Can you contact me at rrezende gmail.com? I have a few ideas to make ubuntu more brazillian friendly and maybe you’re interested too.
Never heard of that one!
Thanks for the advice, definitely worth trying!!!
I definitely think Gnome’s way of handling things is better here: the Gnome team tries to reduce all programs to their most important tasks so you have easy access to these most important functions.
And just that is the most what I don’t like in Gnome: if I want to do some config quickly, I am better off with gterm. It’s true, that mostly I’m also doing so under KDE, but thing is, if I want to do the config stuff by clicking around, I can find my way quite quickly and easily – given that I use KDE since KDE2 betas. As always. it’s just a metter of getting accustomed.
When I use Gnome (which I do from time to time, it’s always installed and I always update it regularly – I use Debian SiD by the way since ages for my main machine), so when I use Gnome, there are some things I just couldn’t manage to do quickly with GUI tools. Gnome/Nautilus VFS-based config for me is just another piece of “gnome solutions” which drives me insane from time to time
Oh, and if you use Nautilus file browsing capabilities in normal mode (i.e. not in spatial mode), then again you find yourself at a point where Konqueror just rules.
Yup, one more thing: I had to wait years for a usable gtk-based file selector… The only one which I liked appeared with gtk2, which was a bit late for me… KDE had good and usable controls for ages.
One can call KDE too shiny, too candy, sometimes evenbloated, but its usability is still pretty damn good – no matter how well Gnome’s GUI guidelines are (which I also know well enough to consider it a very good piece of achievement, onfortunately I can’t tell that about the actual status of the Gnome environment).
I just forgot to mention Kdevelop – which the writer also didn’t mention, how come – which is a wonderful piece of software, especially now, since GUI-editing got integrated. It’s just on the way of becoming a very good RAD tool indeed.
It’s quite fair review. I’m using KDE (at work, Debian SID), Gnome (at home, desktop, Ubuntu) and XFce (laptop, Slackware). I can use all of them without any problem.
> I am fully aware that SimplyMepis 2004.06 has KDE 3.2.3, an already outdated version of the KDE desktop. I still chose this distribution, mainly because I was interested in the small hype around Mepis Linux.
You could have chosen ProMepis Beta 3 with KDE 3.3.1 then.
Hello,
That also means we will see less graphical applications that don’t “belong” to either desktop, thus probably even less commercial 3rd party applications.
This seems to be a big confusion among commercial 3rd party vendors which environment to support. The quickest way to port an UNIX-program to Linux is to use Motif libraries, which normally have been used for UNIX too, but Motif is really outdated nowadays. So IMHO there are two possibilities, either to use JAVA, which is only viable for applications developed from scratch (too much hassle to connect the existing C++ backend and JAVA frontend together), or use QT. It seems that many vendors are starting to port its application to QT, because they can use C++, it is supported by commercial vendor and the API is pretty stable and well documented. Neither KDE nor GNOME APIs are stable enough, because of the steady refinement and change of these DEs. Another point is, that QT is pretty cross-platform. So to get back on topic, it is really required that KDE (which should be easy) and GNOME interoperate with QT, if Linux should become a serious player on desktop. The problem is that many workers need some commercial apps for their work, so if these apps will be ported to Linux then on QT basis.
Regards,
Anton
Over the last year and several months, since I went completely Redmond free, I have tried quite a few distibutions. Each had the preference of its team of creators.
An individual, organization, or institution has the choice to use KDE, GNOME, or other window managers in the wild. I, personally, am partial to GNOME 2.8. It is easier on my eyes and my method of accessing data on a computer.
I don’t like “take-no-prisoners” attitude presented by sys-admin wannabes or clueless neophytes who are locked into a single technical mind-set that my desktop system is better than yours.
Even though I prefer GNOME does not mean I dislike KDE. I like its power but usually have to dress down the eye candy to a somewhat plainer theme like Plastik to make it usable for me.
Both GNOME and KDE are, from my experience, mature, stable, well tested. They both have a huge collection of tools and programs that assist “power system admins”, “enterprises”, “small businesses”, and “mom-and-pop” computers. Each window manager brings its set of strengths to the proverbial table of computing. At almost all levels, it still basically boils down to file-and-print serving, web serving, e-mail, office productivity, databases, graphics, media, and web-based research.
I think it’s good to know both GNOME and KDE, even though I am partial, so that it can be used in our personal knowledge kits.
I had used Mepis in the past. It has excellent hardware support and all of the other distributions at the time had problems with my laptop – power management, display/graphics, touchpad. . . Mepis did brilliantly there. The bit problem with the system is that it purports to be “Debian-compatible” which is very different from Debian-based. Installing packages and upgrading using apt often will leave you with a useless system. Ubuntu is not Debian-compatible either, but they don’t say they are and unlike Mepis, they have their own repositories for apt.
As for KDE and Gnome, their equivalents seem to be Windows and the Macintosh. KDE throws useless masses of features, tons of non-descript buttons everywhere, etc. all with no regard for usability or esthetics (just like Windows). On the other hand, Gnome focuses on these areas where KDE is lacking and polishes everything. Gnome usually doesn’t put as many features in an application in favor of ease of use and simplicity.
An easy place to see this is Epiphany and Konqueror. Epiphany uses a very minimal, easy and elegant interface that allows people to do everything they need (or at least 99% of users). By contrast, Konqueror has a lengthy button bar that is unlabeled and a menu system that takes a lot of getting used to. Now Konqueror does include features that Epiphany doesn’t – like the ability to change your user agent so that you look like you’re using MSIE or Netscape or whatever. Of course, do you need such a feature? Do you need all the features like it that are added simply to claim features while weighing down the interface?
Gaim and Kopete are the same way. Kopete tries to be everything, but then when you just want to get a buddy’s info, you have to right click, go to the bottom, go to a sub menu, then go to the option. In Gaim, it’s the first option when you right click.
I don’t know about K3B myself. I don’t burn CDs – I have an iPod for my music and files and so all I burn is ISOs and I can just right click them in Gnome and select write to disc for those. Everyone says that Gnome is really lacking here, but since I don’t use it, I don’t notice it.
Fundamentally, there is a difference in philosophy. KDE tries to add features. Gnome tries to enhance the user experience.
I can’t speak for the Bluefish developers, but as the author of Screem I don’t believe such applications have any place as part of a specific release of a desktop environment, they are just not common use apps. As such Screem will probably never be proposed as part of Gnome.
It doesn’t seem right that just because Quanta has an “official KDE” label you seem to discount Screem / Bluefish. Feeling it more feature complete fine, but complaining because they aren’t labeled “official GNOME”? bizzare.
Kde has a big problem with defaults, take kicker for example, it’s more powerfull than gnome panel, but it just looks hideous, too big and cluttered, there’s buttons all over the place, big ugly fonts and that stupid big ugly “digital” clock. Xandros has a cleaner look but it’s an exception and is still much uglier then Gnome panel which looks much cleaner. And it takes to long to customize it the way you want.
Well, this article was a little better than usual for a Gnome writing about KDE. But as a distro review of SimplyMepis it was not very interesting or enlightening.
The comments on the other hand fast deteriorated to the same “too crowded” nonsens as always on this site. As always talking of the hypothetical newbie, and forgetting the fact that he/she soon evolves to a experienced newbie. Combined with the way the human brain works. The way the brain filters out unneeded information are awesome.
I think the main reason I’m at home using KDE over Gnome is KMail. I’ve never seen so bugridden program as Evolution (on RedHat 9). I need to use it at work (to be compatible with Outlook) and one never knows when it’s going to next freeze or crash. KMail at home has never frozen or crashed on me.
To be fair, Evolution hasn’t lost mail yet although it crashes (or I need to kill it because it has frozen) and I got almost 1GB of mail at work…
> The way the brain filters out unneeded information are awesome.
Sigh, you’re not a usability expert, apparently..
In a ‘fixed setup’, the brain filters out unneeded information ok, but as windows are iconified and maximised, the setup is far from being constant!
It’s more like ‘experienced newbies’ will (hopefuly) learn to remove from their toolbar the unwanted junk to improve the behaviour of the desktop/application.
Unfortunately, *many* users will never reach this state: I recently had to change the configuration of the wallpaper for an user because she didn’t know how to do it, and I got ‘criticised’ for changing the with of a colum under explorer, she asked me to put back the colum to the previous width as she didn’t know how to do it.. She is simply not interested enough to learn.
Every time i use a KDE desingned system and install Gnome,
or use a Gnome desingned system and installed KDE, i get
a messy installed DE that i have to tweak so much it not
worth to try anymore. So if you need to use Gnome and KDE
on your system (together) the best choices are Mandrake
and Fedora IMHO. But the day your made your pick you will
allways miss one anothers applications. (same as Winblows
and Linux).
i definately appreciate the KDE vs Gnome arguments. personally, i choose not to use either one. i appreciate KDE in terms of integration, speed, and easy configuration. i like that Gnome is HIG-ified and simple.
honestly, i think KDE is a better DE than Gnome, but i think the best applications are still GTK based. Gimp, Inkscape, Gaim, and the Mozilla family aren’t Qt/KDE apps.
for myself, i choose to use Xfce. i use non-Gnome apps when possible (the only ones i still have to escape from are gimp and bluefis.) for what i do (web and graphic design, general school stuff) GTK is the answer. not KDE, not Gnome, but GTK and Xfce.
here’s a quick run-down on GTK alternative to Gnome apps:
gThumb – gqview: i actually like it better than gThumb
gedit – leafpad: again, i think it’s actually better.
nautilus-cd-burner – xcdroast: works for me, but took a while to get used to
rhythmbox + totem – xfmedia: i don’t need a program to organize my music
nautilus – xffm: when i need a gui file manager, i like it to be usable
there are plenty more, but that’s enough for now. i think too often, Gnome apps get confused with GTK apps and vice-versa. i like GTK more than i like KDE or Gnome.
Except for a few comments this is one of the more mild mannered KDE vs. Gnome Disscussion I’ve seen in a while. As for my personal view, both DE have ups and downs, as for people who act like KDE is going to be picked over Gnome or Vice Versa, I would say it’s very split. I have been installing Linux on Desktops for family and friends who are sick of viruses and just Windows in general and can’t afford the price of a computer to run OSX (which is always my first recomendation, since it commercially supportes and still in some areas easier to use than either KDE or Gnome). That being said the reason I know it’s split because in offering people a chance to pay with both for awhile using my many installs, I get a very consitant split in request for each desktop. And most of it as previously mentioned is based on aethetics more than pure functionality. Since mostly of the machines I’ve installed on are for school and home web browsing use, they could careless about all the really fancy application like Quanta and Screem, they just want to browse the web and write reports, this can be done in either one, as well as the third most requested function, playing solitare. The reason most people tend to choose gnome is it’s clean appealing apperance… as for most people that I know who choose KDE is cause it kandy for the eyes. I do get more calls from people using KDE to have simple configuration done I would agree with everyone else the control panel is too cluttered as well as the menu’s, but in gnome there missing a good cdr app. I personally use gnome for most my work, i do web design and like screen and gimp and like the gtk+ toolkit as well, my wife chose the same because it very clean and the menu’s are easy for her to move through, my brother and his wife on the other hand love kde, tons and tons of stuff and eye kandy to boot. So really there very comparable and I’m honestly glad there is two desktops to choose from, I just wish the application for each integrated better, that would make more happy I love Scribus and gnome really doesn’t have anything that compares, also people complain the gimp doesn’t look the same as the rest of there desktop… oh well I hope they both continue in there own direction, and it would be nice if the communities could work together to create some good middleware to cooporate between the two
As gnome lover konqueror rocks
hi!
thx for your answer.
>I can’t speak for the Bluefish developers, but as the >author of Screem I don’t believe such applications have any >place as part of a specific release of a desktop >environment, they are just not common use apps. As such >Screem will probably never be proposed as part of Gnome.
very interesting comment… do you really think? evolution is a complex program too, and so is rhythmbox. ok, mail and musicbox programs are more common use than web development… but i guess it’s quite possible that screem gets included into gnome some time in the future. a hig-ified deluxe web devel suite might be just another “pearl” in the gnome desktop., don’t you think? time will tell, i’d say…
>It doesn’t seem right that just because Quanta has an >”official KDE” label you seem to discount Screem / >Bluefish. Feeling it more feature complete fine, but >complaining because they aren’t labeled “official GNOME”? >bizzare.
i am not complaining. i just thought that the only reason why gnome has no “official” web devel suite is that both bluefish and screem are not ready enough for official inclusion. i never thought that it might be not planned at all to include a web devel suite. so, i merely mentioned the fact that none of them are included into gnome as an excuse. i wanted to compare “official” software like gedit and kwrite, rhythmbox and juk. when there was no “official” counterpart, i mentioned it just to for the sake of accuracy.
so, what’s left to say? keep up the good work. be sure that i enjoy screem almost every day. it’s a fine piece of work and i would love to see it as the default web development suite for gnome 🙂
christian
If the case was compare KDE to GTK applications (Like Quanta vs Screem)then why not compare the GIMP vs whatever exist in KDE?
You said:
I do, though, have an opinion on which is the best for a newb; and it isn’t KDE. KDE is far too much for a non-geeky person. It needs to organize a control center with fewer options for normal people or something like this. Gnome has done this: gconf and desktop preferennces.
——-
GNOME’s control center is too simplistic. KDE’s is too complex. Gconf-editor is too geeky. Unfortunately, real users are somehwere in between.
For instance, I find GNOME’s control center too restrictive to make the desktop look exactly the way I want. There is always a sense of not completely configuring every aspect of the desktop. At least with KDE, maybe it takes hours, but I can make it look entirely un-KDE like. So I get a more personalized feeling with KDE.
What we really really need is a control center which is somewhere between the GNOME control center and that of KDE.
I use both KDE & GNOME on a variety of distributions – a strong KDE on Slackware & Mandrake etc, etc… a strong GNOME on Fedora, Ubuntu etc, etc… don’t really have a problem or issue with tailoring a desktop/distro combination as needed.
Find KDE excellent, GNOME good & improving, XFce weaker but improving etc etc… fair to say that they’re all improving nicely
Isn’t that really a function of the specific distro rather than KDE itself?
Yes, that word’s usability has definitely suffered as a result.
😀
”
I’ve never understood why people say that Konqueror is “unusable”. A bit cluttered, maybe, but “unusable”? It’s a file manager, and it does its job well IMHO. It’s not going to behave just like Explorer or Nautilus because it is not Explorer and it is not Nautilus – it is Konqueror. For me, at least, the file manager is not the end-all be-all (keep in mind that I do use both KDE and Gnome); the aforementioned file managers all do their jobs. I have always basically had the impression that the choice between KDE and Gnome is based more often on aesthetic taste than functional superiority.
”
Konqeuror is horrible usability: the sidebars complicate functionality and the menus are full of clutter. Note that I am not saying this as soem kind of Firefox freak who loves ot reduce things, as I prefer MOzilla suite in terms of interface.
See Xandros File Manager for how Konqueror should have been done if not for the stubborness of certain maintainers and devs.
no offense but Mepis is not a good KDE distro (“good” as in polished usability). Xandros or Suse or Mandrake is a good one. Mepis has 4 different control panels!!!
You missed the great things about KDE!
KDE has a different kind of simplicity which I use all the time and miss when I go to Windows or Gnome. When I want to view a man page, or info page, or anything like that, I just bring up the nearest Konqueror (or hit alt-f2!) and type man:perlfunc (for example).
The KMail which you skipped over is now a part of Kontact, a whole suite of applications where you can schedule meetings etc.
When you add somebody to your address book, they show up in Kontact as well as Kopete, they sync with your KPilot, and everything else. THAT’s simplicity for you! I completely adore it!
KDE has come long way in the UI usability department, at work I still have a box with KDE 3.0 and comparing that to 3.3… well these are two different worlds.
As for the so much praised GNOME HIG… well there is much more to a good app than just the UI. First of all it needs to have the functionality that makes it usefull and the stability to make use of the functionality (and not to forget – speed). Thats where KDE has been better and to me still is.
Another thought on the less is more UI design. What is the most common way how people learn new things?! Tril and error – you see it, you do it (try it), you don’t see it, you can’t even try it because you don’t know its there.
And how many newbies read the manual first and then try it?
File management, Nautilus – have had only bad experiences full of nasty bugs… Konqueror, well its usable, but only if you’re unbearably slow at your keyboard. Luckily KDE has Krusader. Always had a thing for Norton Commander
I’ve used KMail for my mail accounts, but recently tried Thunderbird to see what the hype was all about… well I was not impressed. There is nothing so ground shaking that would give me a reason to switch.
Article – at the end of the day (1:57 am here) it’s still good to know that there are people having a different opinion. Making the world so much more intresting
In terms of technology KDE is the best desktop available on Unix platforms, bar none. Good technology is very, very hard to do right and can take forever if you get it wrong, but it is so difficult to see because it is clouded by top-show a lot of the time.
However, having said that there’s a lot of tidying up the KDE people have to do, especially with Konqueror and the Control Centre, if they are to push usability forwards and progress the whole of the desktop. Even the Gnome people have become blinded by usability from a textbook when they haven’t looked at what it is people practically do with their desktops every day.
Konqueror in its web browsing mode, by default, has a couple of pointless toolbars where a distributor is going to do nothing else but remove them completely. A distributor shouldn’t have to do it. It is far away from being usable in its default form. There’s also the configuration diaogue, but to solve that Konqueror needs to be separated out whilst still keeping common technology between browsing modes.
In its file browser mode it has all the underlying technology it needs to be a perfectly usable swiss-army knife, but in its default form its a mess. What you want to do is copy files to and from your home folder, to devices like floppies etc. and to and from your local network. Doing that in Konqueror is doable, but its far more difficult than it should be. Nautilus isn’t any better at all, and just doesn’t provide the flexibility you need, as is the case with Windows – it doesn’t give you Windows Explorer by default. People shouldn’t have to go looking around to find what to copy files with when they’ve outgrown the usability that has been thrown on them by default. Xandros’ file browser does about the best job on Linux today (Apple do a reasonable job with theirs, but not 100%), and its ridiculous that we’re talking about something as basic as copying files around in this day and age.
The KDE Control Centre – well….. There have been some attempts and mock-ups to tidy it up, but it probably won’t be remedied at all even for KDE 4.0. In order to solve the problem a search mechanism has been discussed (its not the same as what there is now), but this will at most cure the symptoms. Any search mechanism will ultimately reflect the nature of the way KControl is structured internally, and it will still appear an ungodly mess to an end user. When a distributor gets a new version of KDE the first thing they’ll do is to rip out KControl, and worse, some leave it in and put their own control centres in so a user is left with two or more control centres!
What the KDE people should do is re-organise KControl, keep the one window layout, and possibly emulate OS X’s control panel. OS X probably provides the best Control Panel on any desktop today. They can then put any Search/Find technology they see fit over this, but I’m afraid they won’t do it any time soon. If any change is put forward it is usually declined with the excuse of consistency, and it seems that they’re just afraid of change. That happens in any organisation, but nevertheless, it is someting they need to do.
Kontact is a good set of technologies, but again, it is plagued by dialogues that you can’t even see at times let alone use. There is a global Kontact configuration dialogue that is unusable, the KMail dialogue is OK but it really needs a wizard. Thunderbird’s is OK and about the best, but it misses out a lot of the security detail you need to get it working first time.
The mail folders on the left hand side of Kontact are not clearly visible, and are obscured by other columns in a list that are supposed to number your unread mails. Evolution is better in that regard, but it is slower than hell as all reasonably large GTK applications are, and has always been rather buggy even after many years and all the money pumped into it. They want to run this stuff on Mono?! Having slow and buggy applications on a non-solid base also qualifies as bad usability I’m afraid.
I’m probably being a bit hard on KDE here, as I’m going from a CVS release with this here, but why does anyone think its a good idea to leave things in that state (as it has for some releases now)? There are instances where Gnome, despite its new-found usability approach, doesn’t get it right. KDE needs a serious lick of paint and to have its Is dotted and its Ts crossed.
I absolutely love konqi, and I couldn’t find a good replacement for it (when I use fluxbox-devel, although rox comes close). I find the “konqi is unusable” arguments a bit superfluous. Don’t tell me you can’t use it for filemanagement becaouse there are 4 extra buttons in the toolbar… konq works uses the same principles as (non spatial) nautilus: click home, there is your home dir. Click icon, now you are in a directory. Click whatever.avi and kmplayer opens it. Freaks!
And since I’m on a fairly large network, the lanbrowsing (lisa) component is a godsend. Pressing F9, clicking Lan, and I see all the puters on the network, and all the services they offer, just as if it was on my own local filesystem. Now look at this screenshot and tell me with a straight face that “konqi is unusable” or is a “usability nightmare” :
ftp://hatvani.unideb.hu/pub/personal/screenshots/konqi1.png
note that this is a default setting without any tweaks, but without sidepanel (F9).
now with side panel:
ftp://hatvani.unideb.hu/pub/personal/screenshots/konqi2.png (this is the absolute default, using vanilla kde on freebsd)
Let’s just admit that “konqi is a usability nightmare” is just a little (?) bit of an exaggeration
I’ve been running Debian “Unstable” for the past few days, giving the newest goodies from the KDE camp a try. It’s surprisingly snappy and the level of intergration just blows me away. The Kontact – Kopete contact sharing is very nice aswell is kioslaves. This coming from a Gnome user of 2 years, I think KDE despite its usability (in particular Konqueror which has been getting worse over the last couple of releases), has really come along these past few years.
KDE will stay on this desktop.
What you want to do is copy files to and from your home folder, to devices like floppies etc. and to and from your local network. Doing that in Konqueror is doable, but its far more difficult than it should be. Nautilus isn’t any better at all, and just doesn’t provide the flexibility you need, as is the case with Windows – it doesn’t give you Windows Explorer by default.
Not surprisingly (see my post above) I don’t agree with this. Well, I agree with some points, but I think Explorer compared to konqi _is_ usability nightmare. Copying to my usb key: just drag and drop – how can it be easier? (the clutter u see there is due to multiple mount_nullfs for ftp server purposes, not a normal setting in average joe’s environment
) I dragged mp3 foltery to another folder on my usb card:
ftp://hatvani.unideb.hu/pub/personal/screenshots/konqi3_copytousb….
Copy from lan or ftp, the same:
ftp://hatvani.unideb.hu/pub/personal/screenshots/konqi4_copyfromne…
Copy to an ftp – would also be the same (kde would popup an authentification dialog).
This is what an OS X user had to say about KDE – and konqi – with respect to the easyness of copying to and from a network (or copying your mp3 dir from your audio cd – meaning ripping and encoding in one step) :
http://e-scribe.com/osx/freebsd-kde-and-me/
And that article reviews kde 3.1 – and 3.3 has many improvements over that
I don’t say you don’t make valid points on the other hand, in fact I agree with most of what you said otherwise
Interesting that the comments are less about MEPIS and more about KDE vs. gnome. I switched from Gentoo (after about 10 months) to MEPIS. Big change. It’s a nice distro and things just seem to work without much fiddling (just don’t stray too far from the default path of course; even then it’s not too bad). I’ve upgrade to KDE 3.3 and kernel 2.6.9. It runs like a champ on my old PIII.
As for KDE and gnome. I’ve tried both. I think Gnome looks much better but KDE just seems more functional to me. Also, Konqi is a little over-loaded with features but I’ve become addicted to it. Is there anything it can’t do? It’s the center of my computing universe. As for all of you that like gnome better. Good for you. Glad you like it.
Finally is there any particular reason people have to compare GTK versus QT apps when comparing DEs? Most people I know use a mix of both. Gaim, IMO, beats Kopete like a red-headed step-child. I don’t care if it’s a GTK app; I like better so I use it. Amarok absolutely smothers any jukebox type music collection player that gnome has at the moment. So I use that.
I’m personally glad there are both Gnome and KDE (& GTK/QT) because it provides all of us with more options.
Just read Freespace’s comment (http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=9305&offset=30&rows=45#31…
), his users couldn’t care about a web development app. and I suspect this is common, Nice tightly integrated apps for specialist purposes are always great, but just don’t fit into an environment. Another example would be a development IDE, no real place in a desktop platform, only the development platform for that desktop IMO.
Your comments were excellent!
I hope you’re in contact with the kde team…
I understand that KDE is more easily installed by users and distro creators than GNOME. That alone explains why there are so many KDE fans.
Besides that, many distros are based on Knoppix, which chose KDE for a good reason explainded above.
But there are some distros that take care of GNOME for us. Better yet, the latest GNOME is very cool, while previous GNOME versions might have disappointed many. These distros that support GNOME have their own packages which are somewhat independent of the packages of Debian, so a “testing” package won’t be responsible for headaches. On the performance front, many of us have modern machines (P IV, Athlon XP 2400+ or above), so performance is good enough whatever we wish to do in KDE or GNOME.
You see, sometimes GNOME is as a good choice as KDE. KDE is simply too crowded and too comercial (the QT folks that sell licenses) for me to like it. And you see, there is a reason why platforms fight to attract developers. Maybe you can understand why some apps are developed on GTK, maybe not. But whatever you do, don’t rule out any of these desktop environments, because things may change in the future and you may cross the bridge. 🙂
>> The way the brain filters out unneeded information are awesome.
>Sigh, you’re not a usability expert, apparently..
Nope, I’m no so called usability expert, but I have lots of experience with inexperienced users. And I have had to physically put my finger directly over the screen to point to toolbar icons user “did not see” on several occasions.
>In a ‘fixed setup’
But it is fixed, it’s “the window” othervise its hidden and they are working in another window/panel/screen or whatever they use as term.
>It’s more like ‘experienced newbies’ will learn to remove from their toolbar
>the unwanted junk to improve the behavior of the desktop/application.
Nope, they will just ignore it. Or hopfully they will try them out and become ‘immediate user’.
I hear many people complaining that KDE and GNOME are not yet comparable to the two major commercial GUIs. However, I never hear any specifics. What work needs to be done? Is it just general polish or lack of applicaitons or are there specific features lacking that is preventing home and commercial users from feeling comfortable with KDE and GNOME?
I just booted up with my Simply Mepis CD, opened my home folder, and counted more than 50 buttons and icons on the screen. Many of the buttons are too tiny to see clearly. Konqueror’s sidebar buttons especially – the media player button looks like a grey blob and the network button is a circle with a line under it. And what is a user supposed to think the “three blocks” button does (devices), or the clock (history) or the star (favorites)? I won’t even mention the “quick launch center.” Well, I just did.
There is no hope of using motor memory with this sea of buttons. It’s not empowering to users when you slow them down by forcing them to find and interpret little icons instead of just putting the 5 most commonly used ones on the tool bar, or desktop, or panel.
Of course the purpose of SimplyMepis is to show off the technology. But this is KDE’s default desktop stuff….
Gtk+ needs to be written using C++ like MFC or wxWidgets are. It can still have stripped down api subset suitable for game engines that don’t need the whole gui/msg mechanism. There should be one dev. IDE like visual studio and all these tools/apis should be done by one coordinated group. There wouldn’t be this lag that we have now. Kde toolchain is like this but is a bit overpriced for close source dev. in my case. Finally, as a closed source dev I would love to just create one binary installation and have it installed on any distro. Not just the few popular ones. But for this to happen something significant needs to be done with the whole linux platform. Linux is too wild west type of an atmosphere without any thought on cooperation and integration. MFC is integrated inside vc6 so that it automatically writes correct class declaration without having me to type that redundant stuff in like you would do in wxWidgets. This is the type of integration I like to see, less work and more time spent on the actual work I have to do. Do you know why I like wmp? Because it has both music and video integrated into one. I have thus only one tool instead of two and it makes sense to me because as a player I don’t need special functionality dedicated to either one. So some things work nicely integrated like this. This is the reason why there needs to be an oversight committee because individual devs. don’t often think beyond themselves. So you need someone else who coordinates both the video and music devs and tells them to integrate the two into a joint project. Same for glade, gtk+ and anjuta for example. It’s the same thing that Qt and Kdevelop have done and it makes sense. I don’t know. Maybe I’m the only one to see this.
For me the “KDE vs Gnome” argument comes down to two main things:
Applications: I use *no* KDE apps…I don’t think any of them are very good in comparison to their GNOME/GTK counterparts..for instance, the KDE IRC app(ksirc?) is trash compared to X-chat,
Kopete hs crazy config compared to GAIM(and alwasy seems to be behind on atleast one protocol..so i cant use it for all of my accounts),
for music players i hate this trend towards jukeboxes and still use XMMS so..no winner there…
Konqueror as a webbrowser doesnt compare to Firefox very well,
Konqueror as a filemanager is on par with Nautilus in features, but I find in most cases Nautilus is simpler to use when doing things like browsing my network
the only application that is KDE/QT based that I think beats all gnome/gtk counter parts is K3B..
Sound:
Gnome is usually automatically configured perfectly for sound(nothing locks my sound card) whereas KDE is usually a pain..especially if you want to play games(usually they conflict with artsd)
Very true. And you should see the default Debian KDE: it is incredibly naked, but I prefer it that way, I can add the icons I need.
For some reason the panel is also not the default Debian or even the default KDE one. For instance if I add KSysGuard it places itself to the left and it is very difficult to move it.
Well, I have successfully performed an aptitude dist-upgrade both on SimplyMepis and Promepis.
I tend to agree with you though: Mepis is not fully Debian compatible (and they say so): sooner rather than later apt will break the system.
However Mepis is my favourite LiveCD, more so than Knoppix, which is without plugins and without root access (I *want* root access if I must repair something, why make things more difficult)
Of all the Debian derivatives, very few are Debian compatible, let alone Debian based. I have found the only one to be Libranet: once you have learned how to use Libranet you can move to Debian Proper with very little effort.
I hear many people complaining that KDE and GNOME are not yet comparable to the two major commercial GUIs. However, I never hear any specifics. What work needs to be done?
The answer is quite simple: inertia. Nothing else. And ignorance (not the fault of most people!) For the average user that is (for a game freak, linux/~bsd is not yet there).
Take my girlfriend as an example. I installed WinXP (SP2) on her laptop, and she uses it regurarly but just today she asked if she is running OfficeXP (because she heard the name from her father, and thought she is running OfficeXP on her notebook because the XP part rang a bell). She didn’t have a concept of the “OS” at all. Applications matter. (She needs WinXP because she uses SPSS – and there is no free alternative for that).
Most of the time, however she uses my home computer, which is either running KDE or fluxbox-devel. She sits down to browse the net. I showed her firefox, I showed her middle-click > new tab feature. I showed her where she can store downloaded files. I showed her how to attach, detach usb flash drive. I showed her OpenOffice, the taskbar (on top, just browse the ftp site I linked to for more screenshots). She uses amarok, watches movies with kmplayer, tv with fxtv, etc. on by bsd box.
She now knows that FreeBSD is an OS, can start it up alone if I’m not there, enjoys the multiple desktops, knows how to switch keyboard layout, and knows that there is another OS called linux (that has something to do with penguins) – and now something XP on her laptop … and she doesn’t care at all what she is running – as an OS. Is firefox/konqueror good for browsing the net? Is konqi good for file management (she mostly sees the save file dialog anyway). Is OpenOffice good for editing texts? Amarok for playing mp3s? Kmplayer to play movies? That’s what an average user does with his or computer, and these programs are just perfect for these tasks.
And since I have trashed my kde install(just reinstalled it recently) I’ve switched to fluxbox for a while (which I began to like very much btw). And even that switch didn’t confuse her. She just recognized that there is a fluxbox icon on the desktop, and clicked it (I use idesk with fluxbox) without any problems. I had to show rox – but it took 10 seconds to grasp that it’s a ‘different view’ of the same layout. And a different way of saving to her flash drive. And that was it. She didn’t sit in front of BSD, KDE, gnome, flux or whatever. She spent most of the time in front of firefox, amarok, kmplayer, fxtv, openoffice – and as far as she is concerned, that was the OS for her. That’s why I mocked “oh that horrible and unusable konqueror that confuses the hell out me” kinda people. Is FreeBSD or Linux good for her (to use it on her laptop)? NOT! Simply because it doesn’t run SPSS, which she needs for her studies (psychology major).
The details lie in the setup. She wouldn’t be able to set up WinXP with all the functionality she needs (codec-hell, players, net, etc.). I set it up for her. I could have set up FreeBSD on her laptot were it not for SPSS. I didn’t create a separate account for her on my BSD box btw, just showed her where things are in the menu, how the desktop works, etc. It took approx. 10 minutes, and there were only a few things I had to repeat later.
So, to repeat what I began with: what prevents commercial or home users using KDE and GNOME is that most users never heard of them. Most users never heard of Linux, much less of FreeBSD. And many (if not most) users don’t even know what an OS is (and why should they?). If you set up whichever *nix flavour you prefer properly, no one would have problems using it (and you can make a nice fluxbox desktop as well) if it provides all the functionality he or she needs: which, I think is more or less what my girlfriend expects from a computer (well, SPSS is not that common requirement): watching movies, listening to music, browsing google, editing texts, watching tv, checking emails, and playing the occasional simple game.
Is this link useful in any way?
http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/sscc/pubs/7-18.htm
filelight
If there’s something gtk that touches it, I wanna know cause then I can remove kdelibs
.
IRC client: KvIRC – available for other OS as well. Xchat is matched easily.
Konqueror DOES compare well with Firefox today.
Kopete is simple. Maybe so is the poster.
Once you get used to Juk, it’s far superior in many ways to XMMS. But in case you don’t care… just use xmms. Or use Amarok in xmms lookalike mode.
Basically, “luzerlinux” made some derogatory comments a) not based in fact and b) based on lack of knowledge and c) assertively as if he was an authority on the matter. Clearly, he is not.
I dont doubt Konquerors power but I find it totally unusable. Until they do something about it I will remain a faithful Gnomer.
As a long term KDE user I actually agree with you.
If you would care to elaborate on what, you find unusable in konqueror, here and perhaps on the KDE usability list, things might change.
The KMail which you skipped over is now a part of Kontact, a whole suite of applications where you can schedule meetings etc.
When you add somebody to your address book, they show up in Kontact as well as Kopete, they sync with your KPilot, and everything else. THAT’s simplicity for you! I completely adore it!
Yes, the KDE contact suite is very good. But the K-Mail part of it is horrible. Why do I need to have a text on the left side of each mail telling me if it is, or is not a HTML mail?. When I read my mail, I always start at the letters at the side. If they at least had put that bar to the right and had the text run sideways, it would have been much better.
I suppose the intention is to warn users of html mail that could pose security risks or privacy if they e.g. contain javascript or imagelinks. The warning would have been much more effective if it only appeared when a html mail was displayed (and then hopefully displayed in a way that it didn’t blend in with the text in the mail).
This is what keeps me from using kontact. Other than that it is great. I especially like that you can use shared IMAP mailboxes for storing shared calendar, and todo list item.
Thanks Mepis, much better than the Mandrake I have been using.
Kanotix (http://kanotix.com/info/index.php) is a Knoppix derivative based on Debian Sid.
Supposed to be apt compatible with Sid (http://kanotix.com/info/index.php?lang=en). Might be worth a look for those who want that. I’ve played with it briefly, and like it, but haven’t yet used it enough to test it too thoroughly.
Threre are a couple of up and coming programs which are gnome styled and burns audio cds, both a not available in repos atm. But they are Coaster and Graveman
check them out: http://scresto.site.voila.fr/gravemanuk.html
http://www.coaster-burn.org/
Coaster does not have binaries out but Graveman does, rpm and debs.
don’t forget gnustep! http://www.gnustep.org/ — shallow waters are deep
I have been using KDE on Mandrake for years, but am now using Gnome on Fedora Core 2.
I agree KDE has to many options and they are not always in the obvious place. but Gnome … sheesh. I do not see how to change the defaults so it won’t open a new window everytime I click on a folder. It is so Irritating.
The other thing that is tempting me back to KDE (and Mandrake- for that mater) is I cannot fish://server/ in nautilus.
But – Gnome is growing on me – like athletes foot – I just don’t see how I change what I want to change.
oh no – powers out/
It seem that there are no more need for command line ftp. Using konqueror I can browse, copy and paste files between desktop and server, change permission etc on my remote server. Feel like working directly on ther server except the speed which depend on internet line.
Anyway, I’m bit worry about security aspect using “fish” under konqueror. Is there anybody here can give some information on security aspect of “fish”.
By the way, it seem I can also directly upload files to server within Quanta but unluckily my web development station at home doesn’t have internet access, my home actually.
I wanted to switch from Gentoo to debian. Knowing that Debian boasts the biggest repos on earth, I was pretty sure I’d find anything. I tried & couldn’t find many stuff
omnibook (drivers for ma laptop)
skype
gammu (for ma nokia phone)
variant kernels (alan cox , …)
Baah, sure some of them can exist in external repositories, but one central repos sure beats this. All this stuff is directly in Gentoo. So, I guess I learned to admire portage now! Thanks Gentoo teams
I actually like KMail and Thunderbird. I hate evolution. It looks too much like Microsoft Outlook. I like KMail’s support for gnupg. Konqueror doesn’t work with all webpages, but I like the Samba support with Konqueror, since I don’t know how to use samba in the command line. I could just run smb://(IP addy or site) to log into a Windows share.
Christian oly compared KDE apps with there Gnome counterparts. What I didn’t read in this article are the small ‘trics’ that makes me love KDE.
For example KIO slaves. In Gnome, only a few VFS slaves are provided, and these only works in Gnome apps (like Nautilus), not in e.g. The Gimp. I _love_ fish:// for saving files on every remote (SSH-enabled) server. And guess what, this works in every KDE app (yes, I know they’re not working in Qt apps).
Another example is the speed of apps. Most GTK2/Gnome apps feel sluggish, while their KDE counterparts are faster (only when KDE (dcop server) is already running).
Things like man:// and service menu’s are also extremely handy. And I really, really like Alt+F2
These are the things that make me stick to KDE instead of Gnome. I don’t care so much about pixelperfect GUI’s. If I can do my job better and faster with a DE, it’s usable for me, no matter if it has too much options, ugly corners or a ‘bloated’ interface.
> And I have had to physically put my finger directly over the screen to point to toolbar icons user “did not see” on several occasions.
Maybe that is because there were too many icons?
I’m not sure if we disagree or not, I thought that you said that an user with a crowded toolbar will just filter out unneeded icons in the toolbar, to which I disagree: quite often the user will just ignore the whole toolbar altogether..
I know: I tend to do it with Word which has a cluttered as hell toolbar.
You have a distorted vision of usability. There are some kind of apps (for example Word as well as other apps) in which crowded toolbar and even much crowded menus are the only way to go cause that program NEEDS to be configurable and NEEDS lots of options.
The Gnome way IMO is wrong, cause hiding in a registry lots of options is making them to not exist. The only praticable way is providing good defaults, and with the GUI possibility to modify them, if the user feels this need.
Yeah, probably Konqui default toolbar are a little bit too crowded for what the program is meant, at least in internet browser mode, but this is miles away from saying “rich toolbars are bad at all”
To those who likes KDE/Konqueror but has suggestion to make it better. Please consider joining the project either at the newbie KDE-quality project or directly at KDE-usability.
KDE has never had a real problem with developer arrogance, there is just a lot more to UI design than locating problems. To solve the problems you need to come up with a redesign that does not reduce usability for anyone else. KDE-usability would take kindly to mockups of new Konqueror design, use-case analysis etc. Just be ready to change your original design several times to deal with common use-cases you hadn’t thought of. After all, the reason it has changed is because the current interface is very usefull.
Thank you very much for that link
) I will look into it!
I have used Mepis for 8 months now, and have discovered that when I finally manage to mess it up I only need to pop in the livecd, run the hard drive install again, and tell it to preserve the existing Mepis install, and all my settings and desktop configurations are preserved. Very useful!
Since this already seems to have degraded into another KDE – Gnome flamefest instead of having anything to do with mepis, I may as well contribute..
I’ve recently been tinkering with both gnome and KDE(2.8 resp 3.3.2) and while I think 2.8 was a great step forward for gnome, my impression was pretty much “what are those gnome-libs for?”.
If you look at those applications that the people I use to refer to as “the retarded gnome-nuts” like to claim as “theirs” you’ll see that pretty much most of them are gtk apps, pure and simple.
Newsflash for the gnome-nuts:
* GTK means “GimpToolKit”. Not “GnomeToolKit”.
* This means “the GIMP” is not a gnome program.
* This means that gaim is not a gnome application.
* This means that Mozilla is not a gnome application. (Mozilla doesn’t even need gtk. You can compile it agains xlib instead, even if that’s really unstable – probably due to lack of testing.)
I could make the list longer, but I think it’s fair to say that something like 90% of the well known applications the gnome-crowd try to claim is really just gtk apps. Adding gkt-spell and enchant to pango, atk and gtk will even further strenghten the case for calling gtk applications by their right name. Since the integration between these programs really isn’t great, which btw is another evidence that the programs really aren’t “gnome-apps” since they don’t use each other to minimize duplication and enhance functionality, what do the parts that makes up the rest of gnome except gtk really do besides waste resources? Are there any major applications that needs them, or even uses them at all? Evolution is the only thing that springs to mind as both useful (if not for me) and hard to replace that really need gnome. If you compare all of this to kde, all kde apps needs and links to kdelibs. A lot of them even needs each other to add functionality, so the conclusion can only be as far as integration gnome has a looooong way to go to even begin matching kde.
So, from my point of view all you get is a clunky filemanager and a common look for all your gtk apps – one that is both unpractical, a strain for the eyes (schemes too bright – all of them) and to top it, comparetively hard to change. Don’t give me that crap about googling for better themes, kdeartwork provides me with schemes that are prefectly good enough, and much easier to set up.
I agree that if you compare the default settings side by side, KDE looks pretty cluttered to begin with, but the huge difference is that you can whith ease make KDE to look a lot cleaner, AFAIK even cleaner than Gnome. Gnome on the other hand has this annoying attitude that the developers know better than you what you need, and you really shouldn’t mess with the settings. Anyone calling gconf anything less than hostile compaired to Control Center is completely of their rockers.
Conlusion: Gnome offers *nothing* that KDE doesn’t except a cleaner default look, and lacks a whole lot of other things. And if you are after gtk applications I’d say you are with a few execptions better of with a decent windowmanager and just the basic gtk stuff or xfce .
I was expecting to hear why the author selected simplymepis for review. What was the inspiration or motivation? What is the stand-out characteristic that mepis is about?
I tried going to the simplymepis site, and their faq said that mepis was created out of frustration, but it doesn’t specify what kind of frustration or examples of what mepis is supposed to overcome. I just don’t get it.
I’d have to agree–this is more of a “Gnome user’s walk through a KDE distro” than the kind of review I was looking for.
You must have a serious problem if you won’t use KMail for the sole reason it has a bar which says “HTML message” and you think it should be on the right. What a complete insult to the developers who have given their time to program the excellent feature packed into KMail. Can you not see how petty that is?
As for konqueror, my web-browser and file-management profiles has 8 buttons on the one horizontal toolbar (the sidebar is turned off): Back, Forward, Home, Up, Reload, Stop, Address Bar and Go/Enter. It took me about 2 minutes to do. You can customize all KDE toolbars to get rid of everything you don’t use. It’s a shame it’s not the default, but it’s a pretty lame excuse to dismiss konqueror if you can’t take 2 minutes to change some toolbars when you’ve probably spent 100 odd hours trying out different distributions and configuring Linux to work with all your hardware. Konqueror lets me browse the web, manage my files, access remote files via SSH, access Samba etc. from one consistant interface.
And what do people propose to do about KControl (the control panel)? There are hundreds of options available to the user which can be easily changed with GUI widgets. It can be fairly daunting to navigate the first time when you’re looking for on specific option, but what are the alternatives? Group them differently (many options come understand several groups)? Get rid of options? Gnome doesn’t even have a GUI for most options. You either like the default Gnome settings or have to muck around with the registry style editor, which isn’t a whole lot better than editing a text-file and is time consuming. Once you’ve configured KDE, you shouldn’t be visiting KControl that often (beginners probably won’t touch it anyway) so I don’t see why KDE is rubbish just because of this.
IMO, KDE and Gnome are just too ugly to use. Are there any themes that make KDE or Gnome look like these beautiful Blackbox themes? http://bb.nlc.no/themes.html
Also, is there any way to make a right mouse-click on the desktop to pop up the application menu in KDE or Gnome?
If these two fundamental problems can be solved, I might give KDE and Gnome another try.
both Gnome and KDE suits to the Mepis Linux.there should be two options KDE and Gnome,those who likes Gnome will download Mepis Linux-Gnome and who like KDE will download Mepis Linux-KDE
If nautilus added tabbed browsing that Konqueror has (which is just awesome for file management) and used space more effiencently like Konqueror has, see:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=34603&action=view
Then I would say they are closer to equilivent for what I need, i.e. file managment not eye candy.
Look on kde-look.org for lots of themes. You can customize everything in KDE from the control panel, such as icons, fonts, colours, window decorations and widgets. Also, under the desktop configuration, you can make clicking any button you want on the desktop pop-up the applications menu.
I found this: http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=355
It lets you use any blackbox theme in KDE.
And thats where Gnome easily ooutshines KDE. I have given Konqueror hours of configuration effort and I still cant get it to funtion like windows explorer or Nautilus Browser. I dont doubt Konquerors power but I find it totally unusable. Until they do something about it I will remain a faithful Gnomer.
To the contrary, the one reason I CANNOT use GNOME is the terrible file browser. Nautilus doesn’t seem to do all the things Konq can do like split frames with drag and drop ftp/fish/sftp/etc and dozens of other nifty gems. Also, Konq 3.3.2 renders pretty much everything just fine. I rarely ever have to open Mozilla. I would say 2 times a month now. And the convenience of having the file manager combined with the web browser is too good for me to go back to seperate apps.
I can swallow that. 🙂 Let-me use Firefox for browsing, Nautilus to access some files, burn CDs, and the other GTK apps that are great. Keep your new internet explorer, I mean, konqueror, and be happy with it. 🙂
The powerful KDE users are just powerful tweakers and users of Konqueror, after all…
The only appropiate comment to your post is:
ROTFL
Keep your new internet explorer, I mean, konqueror, and be happy with it. 🙂
Can you show me how to split IE window in two? Or access my files on a remote machine through an encrypted connection just as if they were on my local puter? I didn’t know Microsoft implemented tabbed browsing in IE. And last time I checked IE didn’t spellcheck whatever I posted on a forum – it does it now? And…
But just as Vide said: ROTFL
And maybe you could even use Windows instead Linux. Oops, I just gave a great idea to MS…
> That’s why we call Konqueror OVERBLOATED.
And that’s why I call you clueless.
Calling essential functionality bloat is just plain stupid.
csabimano mentioned some of the most important features I use in my daily work.
Is this the typical attitude of the GNOME camp (assuming that’s what you’re talking about when you say “we”)? Thinking you know better than the user what the user needs? I thought that was the Microsoft way…
I found this: http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=355
It lets you use any blackbox theme in KDE.
Cool. The comments to that theme at kde-look.org show that I’m not alone in thinking that a simpler & cleaner look would do good for KDE. :^)
Calling essential functionality bloat is just plain stupid.
No is not, would be valid if atleast 80% of the OS did this but don’t.
Take a look on FireFox, they use something called pluggins, a user browse for them and if he need it they download it and install it, not the case with konqueror, they don’t care if a need it or not they just included there’s where the bload comes, put the neccessary to do your work if you need something else install it, but not, that is why Konqueror is a sad overbloated mess.
Unless you want features that GNOME does not have yet, you could open as many windows as you want and drag and drop like mad. 🙂
You could use some virtual desktop that contains the usual folders that you use and that’s it, just switch to it when you feel like?
Maybe you could use some ftp program to access remote files?
That “fire up the app, do something, quick close it”. And when you need the app again: “fire up the app, do something, quick close it”. Is cool and all, but some other method could work wonders also? Like: “Fire up the app, do something, let the app open, ready for another round of tasks”.
What if you needed to administer several desktops, would you like each one with its own ugly configurations?
Isn’t standardization some goal of the desktop as well? Why so many menu options and meaningless icons? Just because we can’t agree on the minimum apparent options/icons? It seems so… Maybe we should replace Windows with Windows 2.0?
I tell you what. I don’t miss windows explorer, internet explorer, the registry tweaks… They are past for me. I believe that in a couple of years you will see many small apps that will allow easy tweaking of even GNOME. Everyone will write such apps, even you. So yeah, I think Linux is better than ever and will keep improving.
Sorry if I pissed anyone off…
“Can you show me how to split IE window in two?”
Hint: Open explorer twice and place the windows next to each other.
Also, Gnome supports sftp and so on. It looks just like a folder on your desktop. Very nice feature.