Don’t expect hegemony from a single Linux vendor on the desktop comparable with Microsoft’s Office, as rival frameworks and implementations tackle different markets. That’s according to Red Hat fellow Alan Cox, who said research indicates users are adopting KDE and Gnome to serve different scenarios. Evidence from different reports suggests KDE is more widely used in Europe and Gnome in the US.
Probably due to the fact that Suse is a KDE based distro and Redhat is Gnome don’t have to be a genius to figure that one out. What exactly is he try to say? whether its KDE-Linux or Gnome-Linux its still Linux on the desktop.
I assume that he wants to explain the supperiority of the KDE Desktop which of course is a good thing that could happen for Linux and all the derivate POSIX compliant OS’ that KDE runs on. With KDE it’s easier for people from the Windows world to imigrate because they simply feel home.
I realize you’re probably trolling, but actually, research disagrees with you. I’m afraid I don’t have the article handy, but I recall reading a while back that usability studies had indicated that people switching from Windows to Linux found Gnome easier to use, due to the fact that it was clearly different to Windows, but still familiar; whereas KDE is so similar that it confused users who expected it to be therefore identical.
> whether its KDE-Linux or Gnome-Linux its still Linux on the desktop.
Not necessarily. I use Mandriva as my main distro, but at the moment I run Suse 10.1a on one of my computers, and I will try others as they come.
I always run KDE, though – I consider myself as a KDE user, much more than a Linux user.
In the end, I might wind up with some BSD variety, or maybe Solaris, as the underlying OS. (Even windows, maybe, since Qt 4 will run on windows 🙂
But the desktop in the forseeable future will be KDE, since I just can’t stand Gnome (although I use a few gtk apps – I have nothing against gtk as such).
>I consider myself as a KDE user, much more than a Linux user.
I agree. But from a GNOME users standpoint.
The phrase ‘I use GNOME’ is much more descriptive of my computing tastes than ‘I use Linux’ or ‘I use Ubuntu’. I could switch my distro or even kernel tomorrow, but I’d still be using GNOME.
Sort of depends on what you do on your computer I suppose. For a system administrator, distro is the best way to describe what they value; but yes for most of us doing any sort of creative work on our computer your environment is more important.
But *nix does support a wide variety of users. Everything from the inept (XandrOS, Lindows) to those who want to do all the work themselves (gentoo, LFS) to those who want quality quality quality (OpenBSD).
It’s not focused on those who are too oblivious to understand the concept of virtual workspaces…
And don’t know which one is the best, it’s cool to have the opportunity to choose !
There is also Enlightenment / Xfce who are great.
Anyway the big problem of linux if they want to take the market is to have driver … Some things are still really difficult to setup for windows user or non experienced user ( mouse with more than 2 buttons / multimedia keyboards / midi / … ).
What should be great also, would be to simplify the mountain of hidden, non-interdistro-compatible files …
It’s really weird how it is done/configured.
I’m trying PC-BSD which have a good idea : no dependancies between package ! => each software in his own repository … how futuristic !
PC-BSD is nice and I run it on one of my systems. The problem is that there is a lack of applications that use the PCB format. Otherwise you are using portage or doing the ./configure, make, make install routine.
It’s kind of funny, I found myself using Gnome for most of my linux days because the apps I use were GTK based (gaim, xchat) and only one set of libraries need to be installed. Nowadays I’m finding myself using KDE a little bit more and more for 2 of the most silliest reasons, 1. I think KDE has better eye candy 2. KDE has the better games package i.e. kde-games vs. gnome-games. It doesn’t get much better than KAtomic and KSokobon. But the problem with having KDE installed is that I still need the gnome/gtk libs intalled to run xchat and gaim. Oh well, thats the price I have to pay.
But the problem with having KDE installed is that I still need the gnome/gtk libs intalled to run xchat and gaim
Just use Konversation and Kopete: you’ll love them, they are really cool.
Suse (German-based distro) and Mandrake/Mandriva (France) have both defaulted to KDE as the desktop for years. Knoppix is KDE. Redhat and Gentoo (U.S.) have been Gnome. KDE was more dominant in the recent years I’m guessing. But Gnome is becoming more popular with Ubuntu et al. I love QT Designer, but I hate C++, so Gnome looks better to me.
I also like Gnome and hate C++ 🙂
I also use FVWM and WINDOWMAKER/GNUSTEP without problems and I am very happy. I wish I was able to touch CDE but this is a problem. I have to pay some fees to XGI (xserver+DeXtop), closed and expensive.
I wish DeXtop was made available for Xorg and open even though I had to pay for it.
Slackware, as of 10.2, no longer offers GNOME. I used to use GNOME and if I didn’t have to do admin duties I probably still would. But adding and managing user accounts in KDE is a lot easier, so I switched.
I still run games from either DE, I’m not sure why that would be a problem unless you had a disk space issue. I have 3 18GB drives so I just install everything. When all I had was a 4 GB drive there was an issue that required lots of detailed installation work.
I also like XFCE and WindowMaker.
But it’s the same problem as America, too much freedom of choice! Obviously it’ll never go anywhere. {(o;|>
I love QT Designer, but I hate C++
I am not sure I see the connection here.
Do you mean you don’t like designer because it is written in C++ or because one of the possible languages the XML output can be transformed to is C++?
I tend to run KDE as the desktop and then apps like Firefox, Xchat, Gaim that are gtk+. The gtk-qt-engine works great.
Frankly, I don’t see either of these desktops ever being serious contenders to windows though.
Why don’t you see KDE or Gnome being contenders to Windows? I use Gnome at home, and Windows (XP) at work, and I truly find Windows /painful/ to use. Aside from simply being unaccustomedly ugly, it lacks functionality that I consider vital: multiple workspaces being on the top of the list. The Windows multiple workspace addin is incredibly slow, and consists of nothing more than a panel with four buttons to represent each workspace. I have no ability to shift applications between workspaces, view workspace previews on the panel, select the number of workspaces I want, etc. And as I said, moving between them is very, very slow. Windows’ keyboard shortcuts are limited, and its gui’s general functionality is extremely stunted compared to that of Gnome (and KDE, I believe, although I haven’t used KDE in a long time).
To be honest, your comment seems quite incongruous. I could certainly understand someone saying that Windows will never be a serious contender to Gnome or KDE, because I don’t believe it will be; anyone who wants to get work done and takes the time to learn how to use Gnome or KDE will never want to go back to Windows. Windows Vista may change that, but to be honest, Microsoft is really lagging behind the open source world at the moment (I include Apple in the group, since Apple really pioneered much of the gui functionality we’re seeing emerge on Linux at the moment). Given the quite rapid pace of Gnome and KDE development, and the existing functionality in those DEs which Microsoft isn’t going to replicate for at least another six months (when in 2006 is Vista being released?), I just don’t see them ever really catching up. Not soon, anyway.
.. right now because I simply feel I can CONFIGURE.
In Gnome I find really difficult to figure out how to configure different aspects of the system.
He said it is unlikely that the leading Linux and open source distributors would co-operate on a single desktop offering until the market matures. “That will only happen at the point where there is no commercial differentiation in those tools,” Cox predicted.
Except it won’t mature without support from the ISVs, and the ISVs won’t target linux until there is a stable desktop environment.
Oh well, there’s always a disconnect with the hobbyist and business reality.
Except it won’t mature without support from the ISVs, and the ISVs won’t target linux until there is a stable desktop environment.
Target GTK or QT and you produce an application that will run on any modern distribution. Almost every desktop Linux user has both libraries on his system.
The reason why ISV’s don’t produce desktop applications for Linux is (a) We don’t spend money on buying proprietary applications and (b) Generally we don’t approve of using them on principle. So generally they will only produce them if there is a reason to give them away free such as with Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0.
On the other had ISV commercial applications to run on servers at the backend are growing very rapidly as Linux servers more and more become the norm in business.
Except it won’t mature without support from the ISVs, and the ISVs won’t target linux until there is a stable desktop environment.
Target GTK or QT and you produce an application that will run on any modern distribution. Almost every desktop Linux user has both libraries on his system.
The reason why ISV’s don’t produce desktop applications for Linux is (a) We don’t spend money on buying proprietary applications and (b) Generally we don’t approve of using them on principle. So generally they will only produce them if there is a reason to give them away free such as with Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0.
On the other had ISV commercial applications to run on servers at the backend are growing very rapidly as Linux servers more and more become the norm in business.
Except it won’t mature without support from the ISVs, and the ISVs won’t target linux until there is a stable desktop environment.
You are perhaps talking about ISV’s like Computer Associates, selling a product being one of the finalists for Linuxworld Magazine “Best Linux Desktop Manager” in 2004.
Oh well, those CA guys are in reality nothing more than a hobbyist outfit anyway.
The only hope that desktop linux has of ever being significant is for someone to design a desktop for Linux and not one that happens to run on Linux.
It’s probably too late though. Linux is fine as a server.
There is at least one clear reason why GNOME is not used more in Europe and that is poor localization. For example Evolution – the number one core GNOME application – is not even able to have localized dates in calendar. The email component can show localized dates but calender doesn’t which means that you have two date formats inside of one application. This bug has remained open in bugzilla for years.
Maybe another reason is that Europeans like to use longer their old good computers and KDE is more suitable for that purpose because of it uses less system resources.
There is at least one clear reason why GNOME is not used more in Europe and that is poor localization. For example Evolution – the number one core GNOME application – is not even able to have localized dates in calendar. The email component can show localized dates but calender doesn’t which means that you have two date formats inside of one application. This bug has remained open in bugzilla for years.
Maybe another reason is that Europeans like to use longer their old good computers and KDE is more suitable for that purpose because of it uses less system resources.
Its not just Europe. The most popular Linux distros here in Brazil, like Mandriva (formerly Conectiva) and Kurumin (Knoppix derived) are KDE-centric. And there are thousands of hobbyist Linux users around here. I suspect that this is also true to some extent for the rest of Latin America.
That alone tells me that KDE is way more used than GNOME by any account…
DeadFish Man
Don’t expect hegemony from a single Linux vendor on the desktop comparable with Microsoft’s Office
I have no idea how the author can compare a Linux distribution to an application.
Maybe that should have beedn “Microsoft’s Windows”?
Comparing an office suite to either a operating system distribution or desktop environment just doesn’t make any sense.