What is wrong with KDE 3.x? What is wrong with GNOME 2.8+? These seem to be the two questions arising from the recent revival of Linus vs. GNOME spat. We all know the history; Linus called the GNOME guys 'interface nazis' and advised Linux users to use KDE, which resulted in the longest comment thread on OSNews ever. That kind of fizzled out, only to be brought to light again by Linus submitting a few patches to make GNOME behave more like he wants it to behave.
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Member since:2005-07-06
"Try Amarok vs Rhythmbox or Kate vs Gedit."
The problem with that sort of comparison, is that the apps rarely have the same goals. Amarok is always supposed to be a "bigger" than rhythmbox, so if you want the extra stuff, then it will be better. On the other hand, Exaile is a gnomey app, that's almost exactly like amarok as far as I know.
And with gedit: KDE has (had?) kedit and kate, while gnome has gedit and any number of addons/plugins so it can be a simple editor and a more powerful one as needed...
"I know that Firefox isn't a Gnome application, but I think that most Gnome users use Firefox."
That's almost certainly true, but of course Epiphany is the "real" gnome browser, and is a lot more integrated altogther, as well as probably faster.
Woah, that's a lot of "s today.
Member since:2007-02-20
Member since:2006-10-08
"KDE is generally much faster than Gnome."
Generally? Are you talking about KDE and GNOME on modern PCs or did your statement include older systems as well, such as a 200 MHz P2 with 128 MB RAM? I'm just asking.
On modern hardware, I found KDE working quite fast. Because most Linux distributions come with KDE preinstalled and preconfigured, I found it hard to have a comparable Gnome DE setup so see if the speed is better / worse / equivalent.
Most Linusi spend their time working on KDE (preconfiguration etc.) and missing to do the same on Gnome. Maybe Gnome could be faster then? (Take a look at Solaris using Gnome - works fast and supports productivity.)
BTW, "Linusi" is one of the inofficial plurals of "Linux". :-)
KDE did a lot for Linux bringing it to the home users desktop. You even find KDE in professional settings (maybe because of KDevelop). This tendency is increasing. So let's be happy with it and work on it instead of firing at each other's side saying "Your DE is *insert claim here*!" If you're keen on eye candy such as most home users seem to be, KDE surely is their choice. Internationalisation of KDE (language, translation, charsets, fonts etc.) is very good in fact.
"Maybe it is because of QT, maybe something else."
Maybe it's allowed to differ as follows:
{ Qt apps [ KDE apps ] } ./. { Gtk apps [ GNOME apps ] }
("./." means "versus"; german jurisdiction)
I just wanted to try to illustrate the subset relationships. You could divide Gtk in subclasses, too, such as Gtk, Gtk+ or Gtk 2.0.
For example, there are many Gtk apps to be used with GNOME, but there are also Gtk apps that do not rely on the GNOME frameworks (e. g. gstreamer).
"And a lot of KDE-apps just works a lot better than the corrosponding Gnome-apps. Try Amarok vs Rhythmbox or Kate vs Gedit."
As it has been stated before, you're comparing different classes of applications / different goals. In the same case, you could (not) compare Gmencoder vs. K3b or even Gnotepad+ vs. KDevelop.
"What about a mail-client? If you use Gnome I think you would use Thunderbird or Evolution. Try to scroll the list of messages in these 2 applications, and try changing the window size. Then try to start up KDE and use Kmail: It is just a lot faster! "
What about Sylpheed? :-)
At this point, I'd like to say that I like both KDE and GNOME, and, of course, XFCE and WindowMaker. The right tool for each task. Such as new users usually find KDE mor appealing than GNOME, I like WindowMaker much better than both of them, just because I don't need a desktop environment and still can use KDE, GNOME or whatever applications alltogether. At work, we use XFCE. It's not because we don't like KDE, it's because it wouldn't run at an accaptable speed on our machines. On my Solaris box, there's GNOME, and I like it very much the way Sun configured it. Everytime I may use MacOS X I'm happy with it, I also like Apples desktop. And for some purposes, a KDE application works better than a GNOME application, and for another case a GNUstep application would be the best solution.
To come to an end: To insult someone as "interface nazis" isn't stupid only, it's an insult of the victims the nazi regime left behind. I honor the freedom of individual opinion very much, but that's too much! You just can't make such comparisons! If Linus has an attitude against GNOME, he should not use it anyway. If he likes KDE, he should use it. It's so simple. It's the freedom of choice. Nobody has the right to tell me which desktop I have to use. No Steve B., no Bill G., no Steve J. and no Linus T. Period.
Member since:2007-02-20
"Generally? Are you talking about KDE and GNOME on modern PCs or did your statement include older systems as well, such as a 200 MHz P2 with 128 MB RAM? I'm just asking."
I am talking about a 500 MHz AMD k6-2 with 96 MB RAM and about a 1600 MHz AMD Athlon 64 with 2 GB RAM. In both situations Gnome feels slower and not as smooth as KDE. But: Gnome is getting quicker and quicker - that is a good thing.
The people using Linux have a lot of different demands and fortunately they can use whatever they want: Someone don't need a desktop environment and use WindowMaker, but a lot people wants a desktop environment where the standard applications are well integrated. But the users of Linux are very few, so a lot of hardware manufacturers don't create drivers for Linux. That is a big problem. In order to get more hardware manufacturers creating drivers for Linux, we need more Linux users. So we have to steal some Windows users. But they won't use Linux because there are too many different ways to use it, and it is way to slow!
So if we want to steal some Windows users, we need one desktop environment where you can control almost everything in your system. And the desktop environment has to be as quick as Windows XP. That also means that cool effects (like what you can get from Beryl/Emerald) have to wait until they are finished before they get into the desktop environment. When you resize windows it should be just as quick as in Windows XP and Vista.
I hope that the war between KDE and Gnome will stop one day, so we don't have to make 2 versions of every application. I don't care who is going to win, but I hope that the winner will be really fast. At the moment KDE is still the fastest and allmost as fast as Windows XP.
Member since:
2007-02-20
KDE is generally much faster than Gnome. Maybe it is because of QT, maybe something else. And a lot of KDE-apps just works a lot better than the corrosponding Gnome-apps. Try Amarok vs Rhythmbox or Kate vs Gedit.
What about a mail-client? If you use Gnome I think you would use Thunderbird or Evolution. Try to scroll the list of messages in these 2 applications, and try changing the window size. Then try to start up KDE and use Kmail: It is just a lot faster!
I know that Firefox isn't a Gnome application, but I think that most Gnome users use Firefox. Try to start up Firefox on a site like http://www.osnews.com and then resize the window. It is much slower than Firefox in Windows. Then try to start up KDE and fire up Konqueror with http://www.osnews.com . When you resize the window, you will notice that it is just as fast as Firefox or Internet Explorer in Windows.