Submitted by “This document was created to show non-KDE people what they’re missing – and if you haven’t used KDE a lot, you’re missing a lot of things and you may interested in reading this page to learn how many wonderful things you’ve been missing. I promise, this is a subjective analysis of why KDE rules. I was a GNOME user for a long time, one of those users who loved GNOME UI, and I didn’t know how much things I was missing with KDE until I tried it.”
306 Comments
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2005-12-29 6:57 pm
Anonymous> You will see from the gstreamer entry on wikipedia that it is going to be the default audio
> framework for kde 4. You will also note that it is currently used by amarok and kaffeine.
This is inaccurate.
KDE 4 will use KDEMM as audio framework that defaults to no special audio system such as GStreamer. It will offer the possibility for people to default to XINE, MAS, ALSA, GStreamer as OPTION. AmaroK also doesn’t default to GStreamer, again it’s an option they offer for people who want to use it.
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Anonymous
Hm, I’d like to see some more authorative source on that before I belive in that. AFAIK it’s one of the *proposed* replacements for artsd. And if they want to stay in that game they better get their shit together in a hurry, since it really sucks compared to lib-xine functionality wise.
2005-12-29 7:13 pm
2005-12-29 8:05 pm
Daniel Borgmann
Funny, none of the projects you cited are part of Gnome.
It’s called collaboration and it’s the open source community’s greatest strength. Don’t try to make it look like a bad thing just to serve your own zealotry agenda.
While I personally would not agree with “the architecture on GNOME is leaps and bounds ahead of KDE”, both platforms have good things going for them.
2005-12-29 6:58 pm
BryanFeeney
DBus is an implementation of KDE’s dcop that runs in C and does not require Qt. There is already a nice Qt library to help KDE developers use DBus, and this is used by the KDE media:/ ioslave since KDE 3.4. So not only does the entirety of the KDE desktop already make use of DBus-style features, but it also supports DBus itself. They’ll probably switch to DBus for KDE 4, but they have no pressing need to switch right now.
Cairo has it’s equivalent in Qt 4’s Arthur rendering engine, which performed better than Cairo when Qt 4.0 was released (I don’t know about now). KDE developers have an project set up (Plasma) to develop the best ways of using these new graphical features. Gnome has Cairo now, but there is no clear plan on how it will be used. KDE has an advantage in this in that Zack Rusin, a KDE contributor and Qt employee, was one of the main architects behind X11’s EXA system that allows for such effects.
Gnome may have GStreamer, but KDE 4 is going to have an abstraction layer that will support GStreamer, Xine, MAS and any other multimedia framework. Thus KDE users can cherry-pick the best framework to suit their setup. There is no such global option in Gnome (most applicatoins use their own systems) and no plan, as yet, to come up with one.
The fact is, KDE has always had the better architecture; lets not forget that ioslaves came before the Gnome’s VFS, and KParts were the first decent COM system in Linux (Gnome had Corba first, but it never took off). And they’ve always done a good job of documenting it. The problem is that they’ve spent too much time on the architecture, and not enough on the apps. Hopefully KDE 4 will see the application side of things improve.
2005-12-29 7:00 pm
Anonymous
>KDE is more or less limited to C++).
C++ isn’t flexible? Limited? If anything C++ gives you too much flexibility, so much so that your likely shoot yourself in the foot before ever complaining “why can’t my language do xyz”
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Anonymous
‘C++ isn’t flexible? Limited? If anything C++ gives you too much flexibility, so much so that your likely shoot yourself in the foot before ever complaining “why can’t my language do xyz” ‘
i didnt say that C++ is limited! i said “KDE is basically limited to C++”. theres a big difference. perhaps you’re another KDE individual who needs to return to school to brush upon their english comprehension skills.
2005-12-29 7:35 pm
segedunum
the architecture on GNOME is leaps and bounds ahead of KDE (eg gstreamer, dbus, cairo, etc)
I’m afraid not. GStreamer is still far from being reliable enough to depend on (whether it will be good enough for KDE 4 is still an open question), DBus is not a Gnome technology, nor does it take much advantage of it, and Cairo is miles away from being able to give all the fancy desktop effects everyone thinks they’re going to get.
What he means is that the infrastructure (programming framework and desktop) is there and available for programmers to just get in and produce great open source applications without getting bogged down in bullshit and debugging their own development tools.
2005-12-30 8:55 am
Anonymous
Well dbus was taken straight away from kde and then reprogrammed, now the kde people basically put their automation interfaces on top of dbus, so much for history,
cairo is not GNOME its an X project and used by both gnome anmd kde in the future, gstreamer has its roots also in other technologies like xine and the windows media api, but I agree that is pretty much the only area where gnome was first.
It is usually like that, KDE has an interesting tech, gnome wants it reprograms it has often a worse solution, the kde people adjust their interfaces to the gnome solution to keep the peace 😉
Gnome still lacks a decent compound document model essential for any office package. The OLE clone BONOBO was a dead end road, due to the same design mistakes and OLE had and due to the flakey CORBA foundation (the kde people ditched corba way before BONOBO due to its slowness and flakeyness)
Well there now is a project which unifies KPARTs and gnome to some extend, thank god! That should have been done 5 years ago.
Face it KDE is basically NextStep radically moved forward and basically really the only system besides OSX which is totally component oriented.
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Anonymous
Well dbus was taken straight away from kde and then reprogrammed, now the kde people basically put their automation interfaces on top of dbus, so much for history,
DBus wasn’t “reprogrammed”. It was programmed from the ground up in C, with a design inspired, among other things, in the DCOP system. “taken straight away from KDE” is overdoing it a lot. Here for more info:
http://dbus.freedesktop.org/doc/dbus-faq.html#other-ipc
http://dbus.freedesktop.org/doc/dbus-faq.html#yet-more-ipc
cairo is not GNOME its an X project and used by both gnome anmd kde in the future,
Cairo is used right now in Gnome. GTK is using cairo since 2.8.0.
gstreamer has its roots also in other technologies like xine and the windows media api,
Xine is a player. There is no way in hell gstreamer shares similarities to xine beyond the use of third party media libraries (like ffmpeg).
Although GStreamer intends to offer the same features as APIs like DirectShow, their design is totally original. And when it comes to free software, there is no library that comes close to the level of features it provides for multimedia.
http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/features/
It is usually like that, KDE has an interesting tech, gnome wants it reprograms it has often a worse solution, the kde people adjust their interfaces to the gnome solution to keep the peace 😉
As is the case with Arts and GStreamer, mozilla and khtml, glib+Gtk and Qt (nice “interface adjustment there”), HAL, evolution-data-server, cairo and arthur (that was released later).
Yeah. “Usually”. Hah.
Face it KDE is basically NextStep radically moved forward and basically really the only system besides OSX which is totally component oriented.
The day KDE is as usable as NextStep was in 1989 wake me up.
What a load of fanboyism.
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Anonymous
“gstreamer has its roots also in other technologies like xine and the windows media api, but I agree that is pretty much the only area where gnome was first. ”
you obviously know what you’re talking about…..not. what do you think the g in gstreamer stands for? its a gnome technology, and always has been. gnome has been the first in about 70%-80% of the time. the ONLY time when gnome has gone after kde is with gparts. the rest of the time, kde has borrowed ideas from gnome.
2005-12-29 4:42 pm
Anonymous
“Personally I favour XFCE for various reasons.”
XFCE doesn’t do anything! KDE provides a file manager with ftp/http/ssh/imap etc. access, cd burning, audio/photo management, RSS reader, mail client, newsgroup client, calender software, download manager, network manager, office software, graphics software, media players, text editors and much more. To actually use your computer, you have to use XFCE with lots of other software to compare it to GNOME/KDE.
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2005-12-29 4:46 pm
RugmonsterUm…KDE is a collection of a bunch of small programs. So is Gnome. A lot of people like XFCE/FVWM and get by just fine with very few GUI applications. Some of us run systems that are older and don’t have to resources to run KDE or Gnome. That or we just don’t like the bloat (read “needless crap”) sometimes.
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2005-12-30 4:50 am
tbostick78>> KDE is a collection of a bunch
>> of small programs. So is Gnome.
Partially… yes, but also (with enthusiasm…) architecture! The concept of a “cohesive” desktop environment has been pursued for how long??? (win3.1, apple-2). Regardless of the number of apps… the whole debate reduces to architecture: do “modules/apps” use shared memory or filesystem or a subsystem such as corba to facilitate “services” or embedded components? How do pieces interact and share? What programming paradigm? What services are available to developers? What is the resource requirements? How well does the whole system behave as an economy? How does its implementation limit or extend it’s capabilities and facilitate it’s maintainance? Architecture!
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Anonymous
“XFCE doesn’t do anything!”
XFCE does a lot. At least for the original poster. A desktop environment, or a file manager, does not need to do “everything”.
Actually this is the reason why I do not like KDE.
And I know that there are many other people who like “simple and efficient” interfaces, instead of the ones where “you’re overwhelmed with options which you’ll never ever need at all”.
(For the record I’m not a XFCE user at the moment).
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2005-12-29 4:57 pm
DittoBoxHave you used XFCE? XFCE is designed so you can still use and run many KDE/GNOME applications. It does exactly what the people who designed it want it do to: not get in the users way, or tell the user what to be.
As long as you’ve tried all the WMs or DEs that interest you, and you’ve all objectively as possible given them a solid chance then whatever you pick is right for you and no one should ever verbally beat the holy living death out of you for finding what works for you.
Software is highly subjective. If you can run windows and make it secure, and like it: good on you. Same with any $distro,($wm|$de) combo. Use what you like, not what everyone else thinks you should use. Just give them all a chance.
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2005-12-29 4:59 pm
SnifflezI’m just curious, which part of the word “personal” did you not comprehend? XFCE may not do “anything” for you, but it apparently does just about eveything for Ringheims Auto since (s)he still uses it.
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2005-12-29 7:36 pm
Ringheims AutoKDE provides a file manager with ftp/http/ssh/imap etc. access, cd burning, audio/photo management, RSS reader, mail client, newsgroup client, calender software, download manager, network manager, office software, graphics software, media players, text editors and much more. To actually use your computer, you have to use XFCE with lots of other software to compare it to GNOME/KDE.
Yeah, but I get by by loading each of these apps seperately, I use KBear for FTP, and maybe konqueror from time to time.
But the point wasn’t really that XFCE is better, it was rather that mostly all modern DE’s are easy enough to use, atleast apart from geek-oriented ones like fluxbox. (I used to run fluxbox for myself and gnome for guests, but found that XFCE works great for both purposes).
2005-12-29 4:44 pm
Anonymous
“you are right in one way, and wrong in another when you say that the technogy on KDE is better. the architecture on GNOME is leaps and bounds ahead of KDE (eg gstreamer, dbus, cairo, etc)”
What about KParts and IOSlaves? These are two amazing features that GNOME has nothing comparable to.
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2005-12-29 5:01 pm
bytecoderWhat about KParts and IOSlaves?
KParts is hardly that great. It’s a clunky alternative to proper single-function apps interacting through known interfaces. IOSlaves basically duplicates the idea of mounting filesystems, except it does it through a completely different interface meaning you have to actually compile your program with it in mind for it to work. If you just create filesystem drivers for the given interfaces (e.g. the gmail one) all programs can access it with no extra effort.
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2005-12-29 8:26 pm
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Anonymous
“What about KParts and IOSlaves?”
i thought i’d already exaplined that. GNOME are working on an equivelent that isn’t tied to one language, but GNOME is quite incomplete. kparts is basically tied to C++ and is only for in process. Xparts is for out of process.
2005-12-29 4:44 pm
Anonymous
I don’t really have a side in the gnome vs kde war, but I do have an issue with part of the article.
he says “but saying “looks like windows”…what the hell does that mean? Do you mean the GUI, the user interface, what? Windows is usually considered a better desktop so I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.”
considered a better desktop than what? by who? are you high? maybe he just hasn’t figured out that many people, besides not liking MS for business/political/moral reeasons, just don’t like Windows and I’m one of them.
and it looks and acts like Windows, is he really trying to claim that it doesn’t? it’s almost a clone. he doesn’t even have an arguement for this, just a Bush-like “hey look over here” distraction and then moves on to something else. I may be petty but the fact that kde is so much like windows really turns me off of it.
of course I mostly use osx so feel free to ignore me.
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Rugmonster
This whole ordeal is about personal preference. You use OS X, you are partial to that. I use Gnome, Windows and KDE occasionally. I think they all have good points. XP was a big step forward for Microsoft. I’m not saying their desktop environment is the be all and end all, nor is OS X, Gnome or KDE. Some people think that Fluxbox is the perfect desktop environment and for them it is, but not for you and that’s okay.
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Anonymous
By default yes it does, however you can in fact make it resemble just about anything you want, nothing is stopping you from changing the way it looks, no coding invovled either. Gnome is fairly flexible, but kde amazingly so.
2005-12-29 4:45 pm
jbalmer
May be KDE is quite popular. But there are other window managers which are equally used amoung a cross section of people. For example, I am a die hard fluxbox window manager fan. And Gnome is equally popular too.
The heading should have been “KDE – a popular desktop”.
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Anonymous
He wasn’t trying to say it’s the most popular he’s saying it’s the best (try looking up the word editorial).
2005-12-29 4:47 pm
Jody
Well not really. He spends a great deal of time covering some of the Kapplications but they are not my annoyance with it. My opinion can be summed up by looking at the following 2 screenshots:
KDE screenshot
http://www.virtualsky.net/lininit/kde-screen.jpg
Gnome screenshot
http://www.djohnson.info/wp-content/home_review.png
KDE with its bright colors and 10 usable pixels of task bar real estate kind of reminds me of of visiting a geocities web page. All it needs is some trails following my mouse around and some scrolling text on that beautiful task bar.
Now if only the QT guys would consider supporting the HTML [blink] tag they could completely recreate the experience for me.
If the KDE UI people need an extra hand maybe this guy: http://www.pixyland.org/peterpan/ is looking for work.
Edited 2005-12-29 16:53
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2005-12-29 4:54 pm
FlipmodePlayaIs that a screenshot of KDE 3.0? A three year old version? With what appear to be dozens of user-added panel applets, icons, and menu entries? Hardly a fair comparison.
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2005-12-29 5:06 pm
h-milch-mannYes, in recent version the colors are even brighter and it’s even a bigger mess. You should be glad he didn’t chose a recent screenshot.
Why KDE Rules – It looks like Toys”R”us is makeing desktops lately.
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Anonymous
Wow, I’m amazed!
You chose a 10-years-old KDE screenshots with lots of user customization against a clean Ubuntu install. That’s what I call a fair comparison!
Are all Gnome users like you?
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Jody
KDE 3 is not 10 years old, and I can’t edit my post, but here is a more recent screenshot.
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/472_or/33.png
Not to say that picture is any less fisher price than the first one.
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Anonymous
thats so very true. KDE are not doing themselves any favours with the contiuation of their fisher-price icon sets (ie crystal and oxygen).
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2005-12-29 7:24 pm
CelerateOh seriously, it’s usable and looks nice, how is that “fisher price”?
Your argument is a complete rip-off of the troll posts against Windows XP when it first came out, it’s a dried up argument used by trolls to get attention, insite flame wars, and bolster support from fellow trolls. If you ask me the KDE interface doesn’t look any less “fisher price” than the Gnome one in all the screenshots you linked to, and if you’re complaining about the layout consider that not everyone is going to create a clone of Gnome consider that not everyone likes Gnome.
You don’t care what KDE is like, you just want to raise Gnome higher up by using KDE as a footstool. Do you seriously think mature (as in over 12 yrs old) Gnome users are going to appreciate you spreading hostility between the two desktop environments. Here’s a clue, they won’t.
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2005-12-29 8:40 pm
thabrainOh seriously, it’s usable and looks nice, how is that “fisher price”?
Fisher Price is know for using Primary Colors on their toys, and using a “cartoonish” design style. KDE and XP use that “cartoonish” look and primary colors in their look too.
I used to use KDE adamantly; I tried using GNOME in earlier versions, but it just didn’t work for me.
Until I tried it again at 2.10. With a few minor tweaks, GNOME was a winner for me.
Why?
1) Simplicity-One product for one use. KDE has too many products loaded to determine which one to use. GNOME picks one (usually best of breed) and installs it.
There’s nothing that prevents people from installing something else, but GNOME and or the distro (in my case Ubuntu) picks one and installs it.
Also, when making system changes, GNOME has one tool for one job. Digging in the KDE Control Center to find the right tool for something can take an effort.
2) Interface-Let’s face it, OS X seems to have the best overall interface (more than several articles have been hosted on OSNews, Slashdot, and Newsforge about the UI of OS X). KDE’s interface uses primary colors and a “cartoonish” look, which would work well as a newbie’s PC, but not for a experienced PC user, where asthetics are a bit more important.
With a few small tweaks, GNOME give the desktop a smooth, polished look, using gradients of color and a down-to-basics look. With KDE, doing the same thing can take quite a bit of time, and it still has some remnant of primary colors and “cartoons” in it’s features.
I’ve shown my Windows users both KDE and GNOME, and while KDE reminds them more of XP, they always go “OOOH” and “Wow” when I show them my GNOME desktop. They like the polished, smooth, instant feel of it all.
Now I will tell you what GNOME could work on that KDE does provide better:
1) Print Function-KDE’s Print manager is much better than GNOME’s. Fully Featured and integrated.
2) Bluetooth Support-KDE KIO slaves work a lot better when dealing with Bluetooth than GNOME does. GNOME’s bluetooth support seems a bit of an afterthought.
3) Power Management- The Power Management tools in GNOME are also not as fully featured as KDE’s, and on a laptop (Dell Inspiron 8600) that’s important.
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Celerate
“I’ve shown my Windows users both KDE and GNOME, and while KDE reminds them more of XP, they always go “OOOH” and “Wow” when I show them my GNOME desktop. They like the polished, smooth, instant feel of it all. “
Not to nitpick, but since you’ve been using Gnome instead of KDE for a while don’t you think you’re simply better at showing off Gnome’s latest features than KDE’s?
2005-12-29 4:50 pm
Duffman
> Why KDE Rules
Because their developers are not nazis ? 😉
——–> [ ]
Edited 2005-12-29 16:52
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Celerate
If you’re blaming the developers for the behaviour of the trolls I would like to remind you that the developers of Gnome and KDE actually get along rather well.
It’s funny how the developers get along, cooperate and colaborate on projects, and then you have kids from either side who compete over which desktop environment is the best like they would compete over who has the biggest penis, and when that fails, who can spit the farthest.
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Duffman
Well, I would like to remind you that it’s just a joke. I neither use KDE or GNOME, I juste don’t care …
2005-12-29 4:53 pm
h-milch-mann
I’ve seen some empty space on its gui that doesn’t has buttons, checkboxes and textentries on it. As all KDE fanboys know, empty space is wasted space. Hell, at least give us a funky, spinning and blinking 3D animation there!
I want to listen to my music and not everything and the kitchen sink.
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Anonymous
Sounds like you want the simple, yet powerful variant of a KDE media player: JuK.
It will be just the right thing for you – and even better: it’s the official KDE audio player!
http://developer.kde.org/~wheeler/juk.html
Screenshots there, so you can make sure it doesn’t spin and blink.
2005-12-29 4:53 pm
Anonymous
im more of a fan of CDE in Solaris 5! Or icewm is also a good one. no need for flash, gets what i need done
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Anonymous
You are amazing!
The first person I encounter who actually likes CDE.
I had to work with CDE on HPUX for 3 years.
I always considered it a space-waster.
A panel which was almost not customizable, the only buttons I ever needed were the virtual desktop switcher buttons, and the “open console” button.
Additionally there was no way to make the panel be one-line with smaller Icons and span over the whole width of the dasktop. CDE’s Panel always wasted 30 pixels vertical, but refused to use the spare 200 Pixels at the sides.
Additionally, the panel was not always on top, so the “maximize” button on the windows were never usable, unless I wanted to dig down to the panel every time I wanted to switch virtual desktops.
The file manager was slow as hell which made it unusable. It needed several minutes to open a folder with a few hundred files in it.
EVERY single dektop I had to use (KDE 1.1 – 3.4, GNOME 1.4, FVWM, Win95-ME, WinXP) was better than CDE in almost every way.
2005-12-29 4:54 pm
LB06
This article summarizes exactly why I am using KDE. As a (web)developer, I really can’t live without KIO anymore. Without KIO, I wouldn’t be able to test small changes during developments, without having to go through the process of logging in and uploading. Thanks to KIOSlaves fault isolation during development has become much more easy.
I mean, in Windows or Gnome I used to upload files to my server after I made many (or critical) changes. And if things didn’t work out as they should, I had to remember what exaclty I’ve done since the last upload. If the error or bug isn’t really obvious (forgot a ; somewhere), it can be a real PITA. And even if it is obvious, I would have to go through the process of firering up my FTP client, logging in and uploading again.
Thanks to KIO I can even test the change of value of one var, without any overhead other than pressing ctrl+s, switching to my browser and pressing F5 (a matter of seconds).
That being said, KDE can use improvements in many area’s. Hey, nobody’s perfect. For example, amaroK isn’t able to detect and connect to freshly formatted iPods, and the GUI is still too… crowded.
That also goes for the Kmenu, for instance. The first thing I do after installing KDE is deleting all program entries for progs which I rarely use, from the menu (or I move them to Other Programs). Having been a XFCE4 user and as a regular CLI user, I know the binaries of my progs anyway.
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Anonymous
Then you didn’t use the correct software under windows or gnome. Any good web editor would be able to sync with a remote site at the press of a key without you even needing to worry about what you changed. Both the big name Gnome/GTK editors, screem and bluefish, support direct editing on remote servers as well (with screem supporting the more sensible sync with remote site as well).
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2005-12-30 1:52 am
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Anonymous
yes. screem, bluefish and dw support scp. screem and bluefish use gnome-vfs so have scp, dav, http…
2005-12-29 5:01 pm
LB06
Congrats, you’ve found a screenshot of KDE2, which is almost a decade old. Try comparing it to Gnome 1.x. That would be a more fair comparison.
Or compare it to KDE3.5: http://www.jeugdvakantiewerk.nl/stuff/kde.png
Btw I uploaded it using the fish(ssh) KIO-slave to my webhost.
@OSNews: Why doesn’t the Theading work properly for me??? It has never worked for me. This was a reply to Jody.
Edited 2005-12-29 17:06
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Celerate
Are you using Konqueror, the threading doesn’t work properly for me in Konqueror. It’s a nice browser, but somehow when the webadmin made the site compatible with most browsers (s)he forgot about Konqueror.
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2005-12-30 12:22 am
cm__IIUC it’s not about browser compatibility but about invalid HTML code that just happens to work in some browsers.
To the osnews staff: Could you try to remove the <p> tag from the form code or to move it outside of the font tags?
<font>
[…]
<p><input type=”hidden” name=”ref” value=”1234″>
[…]
</font>
2005-12-29 5:02 pm
hobgoblin
interesting page. alltho i have to continualy reload it to get at all the images 
is there a mirror up?
2005-12-29 5:03 pm
cendrizzi
Let me cover everything.
FROM KDE:
1) Gnome developers hate everyone, including children (especially the cute ones)
2) Gnome has bonobo, and bonobo is evil! Evil!
3) Gnome is written in C. KDE is cool because it is C++ and the documentation is so cool.
4) Gnomes applications all suck, except the ones that are better than KDE’s
FROM GNOME:
1) KDE hasn’t met a feature it doesn’t like to add, feature sluts!
2) KDE has proprietary licensing issues, paying for a proprietary license is lame.
3) KDE lacks to language freedom that Gnome has, C++ is so 1980’s!
4) KDE applications all suck, except the ones that are better than Gnomes.’
For all of those about to comment why KDE is cooler, or vise-versa then please take this in mind:
WE DON’T CARE! WE CHOOSE THE DESKTOP THAT BEST MEETS OUR NEEDS! YOUR COMMENT WON’T CHANGE THAT.
That goes for this article too.
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2005-12-29 8:37 pm
molnarcsWE DON’T CARE! WE CHOOSE THE DESKTOP THAT BEST MEETS OUR NEEDS! YOUR COMMENT WON’T CHANGE THAT.
Now I agree with that. I don’t agree with this:
That goes for this article too.
For one thing, “This is subjective” is written all over the place. Another thing is that whether you agree with the author’s assesment (kde is the best) or not, you have to admit that writing such an overview requires considerable effort, and it is very well done. It offers a nice overview of the features many users find very attractive about KDE, and many users who are not familier with KDE would find attractive.
So far, most of the comments (including yours) turned this article into yet another GNOME vs KDE thing (yeah, yeah, this is osnews, so it is to be expected somewhat) but this doesn’t do justice to its quality. Not that it is perfect – few are – but still, it is nicely done, and informative (for instance, every single QT related thread is hijacked by “license trolls” and this article, right at the beginning, clarifies a few things.)
Back to the “WE DON’T CARE! WE CHOOSE THE DESKTOP THAT BEST MEETS OUR NEEDS!” thing: this is not for you or me or those who already made a choice. I don’t care for no amount of advocacy work will convince me to use GNOME, for been there, and didn’t like what I saw, and I’m tired of explaining to my girlfriend how to save a file in GIMP (because of the braindead file dialogue). You don’t care because you can (or a hardcore GNOME user probably could) say something like that concerning KDE, and I don’t think I could (or should) convince him or her (or you) to use my desktop of choice. But I won’t say that advocacy of either DE is bad, because “WE CHOOSE THE DESKTOP THAT BEST MEETS OUR NEEDS!” We do, because we tried both (presumably) and found out what fits our needs. This article is for those who didn’t yet, and no amount of shouting will change the fact that you missed this point entirely. GNOME does a fairly good job (arguably better than KDE atm) at advocating their Desktop, so do many of their users… and that is perfectly fine.
This is article is perfectly fine. Is it subjective? It is, and it doesn’t try to convince you otherwise. Is it advocacy? Yes, it is, and that is fine too, for I don’t have a problem with that either, especially since it has some very useful information as well.
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molnarcs
Oh, an UPDATE. I know that most of us engaged in a debate won’t go back to reread the article (so it would be nice if osnews editors posted an update). This underlies my point:
Update: this page was submitted to osnews by a know anti-gnome troll (the guy who forked gnome because he didn’t like the button ordering etc etc). I sent this page to the kde-promo list to get suggestions and make it “more correct” – but apparently some people can’t wait when they just want to harm others. Just don’t listen him and don’t read anything with the name “oGalaxyo” on it no matter what desktop you’re using. And in case you didn’t noticed it – apparently, many osnews readers didn’t noticed it – this is about “why KDE rules”, not “why Gnome sucks” and if you think the latter you’re wrong: I wrote this article just to give people a oportunity to see what they’re missing if they’re not using KDE, so they can change if they want. A “Why gnome rules” doc would be welcome.
This was from the article if that wasn’t clear…
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segedunum
Oh, an UPDATE. I know that most of us engaged in a debate won’t go back to reread the article (so it would be nice if osnews editors posted an update). This underlies my point:
Update: this page was submitted to osnews by a know anti-gnome troll…but apparently some people can’t wait when they just want to harm others. Just don’t listen him and don’t read anything with the name “oGalaxyo” on it no matter what desktop you’re using.
That is not what is updated on the article at all. This is:
Update: In case you didn’t noticed it – apparently, many osnews readers didn’t noticed it – this is about “why KDE rules”, not “why Gnome sucks” and if you think the latter you’re wrong: I wrote this article just to give people a oportunity to see what they’re missing if they’re not using KDE, so they can change if they want. A “Why gnome rules” doc would be welcome.
……..
Update: and now this article seems to have been updated again talking about oGALAXYo
Just leave it alone, OK? It’s misleading. Who posted the article to OSNews is neither here nor there, and it’s a lot of other people around here taking this the wrong way, for whatever reason, as they always do.
Edited 2005-12-30 00:41
2005-12-29 5:03 pm
The Baron
oGalaxyo has a major axe to grind with the the GNOME developers and even attempted to fork GNOME to meet his standards. So it’s not surprising that he wrote this article. He is welcome to his opinion but you need to know the context of his writing.
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Anonymous
oGalaxyo has a major axe to grind with the the GNOME developers and even attempted to fork GNOME to meet his standards. So it’s not surprising that he wrote this article. He is welcome to his opinion but you need to know the context of his writing.
Guess what.. it wasn’t written by oGALAXYo. He only submitted the link. It was written by diegocg.
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2005-12-29 5:06 pm
2005-12-29 5:08 pm
theGrump
after hearing endless comments about kde’s inherent superiority to gnome, i dedicated a night to downloading the kubuntu packages and firing it up, as it had been a couple of years since i had played with it.
okay, its a desktop environment. so?????
to most users these days, their real user environment is their browser, not the desktop system. i am much more interested in firefox extensions today than i am in amarok vs rhythmbox.
this is not to denigrate kde. like gnome, its a useful desktop environment. beyond that, i didn’t get a sense that my experience was being radically improved. i was still firing up firefox in full screen mode and going my merry way.
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Anonymous
What’s so great? If you have to ask that, you have probably not been using your environment to the full extent. KDE has lots and lots of functionality that isn’t obvious to the eye, but very hard to let go of once you have started using it.
For instance
The fish:// integration, which works flawlessly.
The “network folder” thing, which works flawlessly and seamlessly with all KDE applications, as oposed to the gnome variant which:
A) is more than likely to crash nautilus, and b) doesn’t integrate at all with a lot of the so called “Gnome applications”, of which the majority really is a bunch of gtk applications hijacked in the name of propaganda.
Seamless spellchecking using the same spellchecker for all kde applications, from kopete to konqueror.
The “identities” functionality which enables me to have different language settings and so on for different applications depending on which identity I choose. For instance I mostly post messages in english from my gmail account and thus english spellchecking and makes more sense. On the other hand my normal email account mostly sees action in my native language, so there english doesn’t make sense there. And it’s all handled by which sender address I chose.
Another example where KDE works and Gome doesn’t is opening a pdf file and then printing a single page. Works perfectly in KDE, the experience was quite different from the one I got in evince..
I could go on, and on, there are so many things that works in KDE that either doesn’t exist in Gnome or that are totally FUBARed there, but I don’t have all day, you’ll have to find out for yourself.
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Anonymous
“You mean KMix which’s there since years ?”
you obviously don’t have the first inkling of understanding about what the volume manager is. the volume manager is concerned with the automatic mounting and unmounting of all devices.
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BryanFeeney
KDE has an automatic volume manager in KDE 3.5: http://www.jeugdvakantiewerk.nl/stuff/kde.png
Since 3.4 the media:/ ioslave has automatically detected devices.
Since 3.2 the system:/ ioslave has automatically listed all devices in /etc/fstab.
However KDE doesn’t promise to automatically unmount things for you. Why? Because most devices don’t actually send an eject notification (only CDs and ZIP drives). So you have to right-click on the icon in the system:/ or media:/ folder and select Eject or Unmount, depending on what kind of device it is.
Which is perfectly okay. It’s what Mac OS has always made you do, and it works a whole lot better than the Windows method (right-clicking on a system tray icon).
What’s more, KDE supported a form of volume management right from KDE 1.0, whereas Gnome limped along for years with various panel applets that weren’t particularly attractive or easy to follow.
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Anonymous
in that case, the equivelent KDE volume manager has either been buggy or doesn’t work as it should. and certainly doesn’t work as well as the gnome version.
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Anonymous
you obviously don’t have the first inkling of understanding about what the volume manager is. the volume manager is concerned with the automatic mounting and unmounting of all devices.
actually kde does that just fine.
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Anonymous
hey, i compiled kde with hal support and now when i plug an usb key an icon appears in the panel… or on the desktop depending the moon fase
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Anonymous
It is included in kde 3.5 – see bottom of this page: http://www.kde.org/announcements/visualguide-3.5.php
I’m not sure however if it acts 100% same as gnome volume manager as I don’t use gnome
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Anonymous
Browser is their real user environment? eeew.
My mail client, my irc client, my word processor, my spreadsheet, my IDE, my desktop file manager, my music player are my environment, not a web browser, not matter what OS / Desktop environment I am using.
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Anonymous
this is not to denigrate kde. like gnome, its a useful desktop environment. beyond that, i didn’t get a sense that my experience was being radically improved. i was still firing up firefox in full screen mode and going my merry way.
Okay, so you’re entire desktop experience is the web browser. So why are you voicing your opinion on a forum about the achievements of KDE? You obviously don’t care about anything a desktop can offer you other than starting your web browser.
Why do you even deal with all the extras that GNOME/KDE offer, why not run XFCE or Blackbox set to run Firefox fullscreen as soon as you login? Does GNOME have some magic Firefox icon that makes it run better there? I don’t think so.
2005-12-29 5:09 pm
Jamie
Whilst I use both desktops and both have cool features, I do find however that KDE has a much longer learning curve due to too much info being presented on screen at any one time.
Hopefully, KDE 4 will reverse this trend to be feature sluts and enforce a more balanced conservative approach to UI.
Individual unix apps have always been good at doing one thing very well rather than trying to do everything possible. This is where Gnome has done a good job by for example seperating the file manager and web browser into seperate apps. If KDE 4 can follow in Gnome’s footsteps in this regard then it will do KDE the power of good.
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2005-12-29 10:39 pm
renox> This is where Gnome has done a good job by for example seperating the file manager and web browser into seperate apps.
In a word: NO!
I actually like to have Konqueror being a single browser for multiple source of documents, be it the web, the filesystem..
Browsing is browsing *many* functions are identical: zoom in, zoom out, bookmarks, go back, follow link (wether the link is an url, a directory..), etc.. independently of the type of data.
So I think that it is stupid to separate browsing to different applications depending of the type of data, the functions are very similar.
I do hope that KDE developers won’t do what you’re suggesting..
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2005-12-31 6:40 am
testerusI actually like to have Konqueror being a single browser for multiple source of documents, be it the web, the filesystem..
You like it, but no one else. Konquerors marketshare is stagnating. Look at the statistical data of heise.de
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/66968
And don’t tell me there is no movement towards KDE/Linux systems in Germany and even on this technical and linux friendly page Konqueror is still below 2%. Go figure.
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2005-12-31 10:29 am
unoengborgMany Linux distros set firefox as their default browser, even if they install KDE by default. This is probably why konqueror gets so low figures. Another reason is of course that konqueror doesn’t run on windows.
The reason for chosing firefox in Linux distros is probably that it will make it easier for their customers to access services like online banking.
It seam to take a while you can teach organizations like banks to do new tricks. It almost took forever to make them accept mozilla/firefox even though that was a perfectly safe or even a safer alternative to ie, and some still don’t.
As of KDE 3.5 konqueror have improved a lot. Unlike firefox it now passes the acid2 test. This is very good, and will probably attract some people once it gets commonly known.
Apart from the sad figures for konquerer it was nice to see that more and more people find alternatives to IE. The figures are of course very specific to heisse online, but I have seen similar trends on many other German sites.
It is also worth noting that the figures in your cited statistics is only about web browsing. It tells us nothing about how konquerer is used as a file browser.
As of QT4, the licensing of QT will be available under GPL, so lets hope for a konqueror port to windows by then. That way the market share can increase enough to make banks take notice making further growth possible.
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renox
About the movement towards KDE/Linux, I don’t speak german but in the page you gave, there are also figures for KDE, and both KDE and Konqueror figures are the same..
Anyway even if they were different, linking Konqueror success with people liking or not the one browser for all data type is difficult:
– if the web part of konqueror isn’t as good as Firefox, then people will use FF whether they like the one browser concept or not.
– personnally at home I’m using Windows (for games) and at work I’m using KDE on RHE3, on both I’m using Mozilla at it is much simpler to use always the same web browser: the same reason could apply for dual booters.
So why do I say that I like the one browser for everything concept? PDF, it is always a chore to read PDF as the UIs are needlessly different from web browser..
2005-12-29 5:14 pm
kwanbis
I think usability is the art of making things natural to use, as in “i don’t need to think how to do it”.
2005-12-29 5:19 pm
Anonymous
I had been using KDE up until v3.3 and switched to GNOME out of pure disgust. While GNOME is still not as functional as I would like it to be, I would never go back to the garbage that is KDE
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2005-12-29 6:14 pm
ma_d3.4.x is actually good. I left kde on 3.2.0 because it was the worst release of it I’ve ever used.
3.5 is still a little buggy. They screwed up some things like sftp connections, but I imagine they’ll fix it in dot-dot releases.
2005-12-29 5:22 pm
Morty
That’s really the biggest point, it just works out of the box. By having sensible default settings and even the opportunity to easy modify the environment if those default not exactly fit your optimal work pattern. Not to mention advanced core technology working uniformly and predictably over the whole application stack. That’s the reason KDE is the leading desktop environment for Linux/Unix. KDE is all about ease of use, contemporary functionality, and outstanding graphical design, and they are making it better and better with every release, in all three aspects.
2005-12-29 5:22 pm
2005-12-29 5:23 pm
Anonymous
That was a great little read! A lot of things there I never knew KDE could do. KDE seems to be developing a lot of momentum behind it now and this bodes very well for KDE4.
2005-12-29 5:31 pm
2005-12-29 5:35 pm
Snifflez
OK, so this fanboyish article will provoke yet another GNOME vs KDE flamewar full of venomous, angry comments posted by people incapable of comprehending a simple fact that when it comes to technology, people’s preferences are about as rational as their preference of ice-cream.
That’s right, you can sit here and rationalize your preference of desktop environment ’till your fingertips start bleeding, but in the end it’s going to be about as logical as your attempt at providing an objective argument for vanilla flavour. Since I don’t like vanilla ice-cream, and prefer something else, neither your attempt at argumentation, nor your attack on my favourite flavour will convince me. Same goes for your desktop.
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2005-12-29 7:18 pm
diegocgOK, so this fanboyish article will provoke yet another GNOME vs KDE flamewar full of venomous, angry comments posted by people incapable of comprehending a simple fact that when it comes to technology, people’s preferences are about as rational as their preference of ice-cream.
I’m the guy who wrote the article. And I agree: it’s a fanboish article, because I’m a KDE fan
It’s not an anti-gnome article, though, even if some people are looking at it that way, but that’s something I was expecting, some people just don’t like looking things from other points of view…
I wrote this article just to give people a oportuniy to see what they’re missing if they’re not using KDE, so they can change it they want. A “Why gnome rules” doc would be welcomed.
(By the way, if some admin reads this….please change the link to http://www.terra.es/personal/diegocg/kde/index.html (add index.html). I added some “nice” words for the guy who submitted this before time and added some corrections and the link without index.html is cached – it’ll be updated soon though, I hope
Edited 2005-12-29 19:32
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Snifflez
“I’m the guy who wrote the article. And I agree: it’s a fanboish article, because I’m a KDE fan
“I hear ya. I have aRts, kdelibs, kdebase and kdemultimedia installed here, using Fluxbox as my window manager. I didn’t think your article was anti-GNOME at all. As a fellow KDE (sorta) user I liked it. Objectively, I thought it was a bit too much on the fanboy side, but that’s understandable.
My main point was that it’s impossible to fully rationalize desktop environment preference. I don’t even remember properly why I have KDE installed rather than GNOME. I used to run GNOME a long time ago when I was using stuff like Red Hat, SuSE and Mandrake.
2005-12-29 5:39 pm
ValiantSoul
I started using KDE back in the 1x days. Then by 3.0 it got quite slow on my machine (I no longer use that slow machine though) and I switched to GNOME. After a little bit I quickly switched to XFCE and stayed with that for quite awhile until they started adding a ton of additional crap. I used 4 for a little while but then switched to fluxbox which is what I currently use when on a *nix box. Looking at whats going on with KDE 4 I think I may just start using that when released though.
That is, when I’m not in OS X.
2005-12-29 5:43 pm
sappyvcv
This is actually a very informative article. KIOslaves seems like a cool idea.
“This is yet another example of Kioslaves. In many web pages you have a form which allow you to upload files for whatever purpose. Some times, what you want to upload is something that it’s in another web page. So you have to download it first by hand, and then set the form field to a file in your hard disk. KIOslaves saves you time: In konqueror, you can put an URL in those forms. And when you click upload, KIOslaves will download that URL to a temporary storage (after you confirm it in the dialog you see in the screen) and automatically sets internally the correct file path and automatically uploads it.”
I especially like that. I’ve always been able to do that in Windows, so it’s nice to have it elsewhere if I need it.
“This is a example of the FTP KIO. I pressed Shift + Control + L (to “split” the screen, which may look “unusable” but it’s very useful) and I wrote “ftp://ftp.teleline.es“, and wrote my user name and password. This way, I have my local disk at left and my remote FTP site at right, allowing me to upload and syncronize this document. No need to use a “special app” for FTP. No need to go to the command line. Just drag and drop (notice that KDE is smart enought for not trying to render thumbnails from a remote site, although you certainly can enable it in the configuration). Another good example of network transparency is konserve, a backup program which can use network transparency to put the backups wherever you want (a FTP site, a SSH account..)”
Good good. Another thing Explorer has done for a while that is very useful. Glad to hear KDE does it.
It looks like KDE is really starting to come into it’s own.
My only major complaint is that visually, it’s still overwhelming sometimes. For example: http://www.terra.es/personal/diegocg/kde/print-pdf.png . Also, I honestly think the icons in all those screenshots are terrible. I’ve always hated that “Crystal” look. I know you can change them, but I doubt there are themes out there to change all of them. They’re just way too in your face.
I do think aside from the icons, that KDE also has a little ways to go visually.
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Anonymous
> For example: http://www.terra.es/personal/diegocg/kde/print-pdf.png . Also, I honestly think the
> icons in all those screenshots are terrible. I’ve always hated that “Crystal” look. I know you can
> change them, but I doubt there are themes out there to change all of them. They’re just way too
> in your face.
That’s not crystal and not even the default icon set. It’s this ‘children’ icon set that exists in kde-artwork package if I am not mistaken. Personally I use the Nuvola icons and I pretty much love them. But then it’s my personal taste.
http://img498.imageshack.us/my.php?image=snapshot39kg.png
http://img500.imageshack.us/my.php?image=snapshot16jn.png
http://img241.imageshack.us/my.php?image=snapshot42sc.jpg
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sappyvcv
You’re right, some of the icons are the “children” icon set. However, the rest are still “Crystal” AFAIK.
2005-12-29 5:46 pm
Anonymous
As someone who fancies trying Linux very soon
Explain the differences Between Gnome & KDE and which in your opinion I should use
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Anonymous
“As someone who fancies trying Linux very soon
Explain the differences Between Gnome & KDE and which in your opinion I should use”
it depends what you want your desktop for and what your preference is.
you will never know which is best for you by reading about them. you can only decide by installing and using each one.
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BryanFeeney
Gnome has less clutter, but also less features.
KDE has more features, but it’s a bit more cluttered (however the Kubuntu distribution provides a less cluttered KDE desktop).
It’s a harder job to get applications like Firefox and OpenOffice to look natural in KDE, as they’re built on the same frameworks as Gnome. There is however a Crystal/Plastik theme for Firefox to make it blend in http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=11442.
OpenOffice can be blended in using various different methods http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=5065
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=19116
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=7131
KDE is easier to configure, and is more configurable, but it’s so configurable that it’s often hard to find the configuration option that you want.
KDE apps are more tightly integrated, which is generally advantageous. KDE has an easier system for dealing with devices like CDs, floppies and memory sticks.
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molnarcs
Actually, a minor correction regarding openoffice: it is not built using the same framwork as GNOME. If GTK is available on your system, it will use that. On windows, it will use the native widgets. On KDE, it will use KDE widgets. I think the framework they use is a completely separate beast (from GNOME or GTK).
I think oo.o can be compiled to blend in either GNOME or KDE, depending on what you use, although I compiled it (from ports on FreeBSD) only to support KDE. Here is a screenshot:
ftp://hatvani.unideb.hu/pub/personal/screenshots/ooo-build.png
It is themed with the Lipstik theme, just like the rest of kde, and it uses crystal icons on its toolbars. Actually this is ooo-build, not the vanilla openoffice.org (but it works the same way in both).
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Anonymous
> I think the framework they use is a completely separate beast (from GNOME or GTK).
OpenOffice makes use to the Staroffice Foundation Class iirc.
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Anonymous
neither firefox, nor openoffice are built upon gnome frameworks. The bits of gtk they do use is very superficial to fake the look.
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2005-12-29 10:17 pm
chemical_scumExplain the differences Between Gnome & KDE and which in your opinion I should use
I think it would be a mistake to commit yourself to GNOME or KDE on someones advice without trying both first. An easy way to do this would be to obtain live CD’s that feature each desktop. You could then try both desktops out on your current system without installing anything on your hard drive. This also lets you test your systems compatability with these Linux distribution, but remember live CD’s will run a lot slower than a full installation on the hard drive so don’t be put off by that.
You could try the GNOME based Ubuntu distrubution, they will send you free copies of both the live CD and the installation CD from:
There may be a live version of Kubuntu the KDE based version of Ubuntu available. One good introduction to KDE is Knoppix the original Linux live CD distribution. These are all based on Debian, for an RPM based live CD which is KDE orientated you could try the live Mandrake CD, there are plenty of options out there.
I started out with Linux five years ago using KDE, I then moved to GNOME, on to XFce, then back again to GNOME. I am currently a happy GNOME user, but don’t let any zealot persuade you to go with GNOME or KDE they are both excellent desktop environments and only you can decide which is best for you.
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Anonymous
Please note that this article is about KDE not about GNOME. While it’s your good right to express your opinion and even offer people the help by pointing them to the UBUNTU page, you on the otherhand ignore the fact that if we did the same in a GNOME related article then we all would be flamed to death and every comment we would have done would be moderated down regardless of the context.
I think you don’t need to address Ubuntu to the user, if he was willing to read the article (link) then he would already know the difference between GNOME and KDE, just by simply reading it.
2005-12-29 5:48 pm
Morty
the architecture on GNOME is leaps and bounds ahead of KDE (eg gstreamer, dbus, cairo, etc),… GNOME is quite incomplete and broken
And
GNOME are working on an equivalent…., but GNOME is quite incomplete.
It really explains it all, doesn’t it. KDE has had working architecture for years, while they still are working on it.
And the leaps and bounds ahead in technology is perhaps the reason things like gnome-vfs only works with a few applications, and most of those don’t even support all protocols reliable. Or they still use ESD for providing desktop sounds. Or they are removing Bonobo from applications like Nautilus.
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2005-12-30 4:49 am
elsewhere>GNOME are working on an equivalent…., but GNOME is quite incomplete.
It really explains it all, doesn’t it. KDE has had working architecture for years, while they still are working on it.
Don’t knock the Gnomers for that, they’ve taken an excellent lesson out of Microsoft’s playbook: Detract from what your competitor can do today by overcomitting to what you’ll do in the future… and hope you’ll drive them out of the market before you have to actually deliver.
2005-12-29 5:49 pm
macisaac
first off, I think both are nice DEs for the end user. anyhow:
Here’s a test. On a bare bone system, with only the OS, and X.org plus freetype and the minimals, try to install gnome from source. Same setup, try to setup KDE. You can’t use any of those auto-compile scripts like garnome, do it from scratch, piece by piece.
Ok, even better, try to package the resulting binaries for additional users in a distro of your own. Then give your opinion which is better done.
Personally, in the work I’ve been doing for the university I work at, I’ve come to better understand Patrick Volkerding’s decision regarding gnome…
2005-12-29 5:58 pm
2005-12-29 6:04 pm
Anonymous
The Qt license sucks and that’s why all the big players went Gnome.
KDE is not without its own problems though. Eventually they’ll have to move to something besides C++. Of course, it’ll take Microsoft to show them how to do it.
It doesn’t matter though, it’s 2006 and Linux desktop still isn’t taking off.
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Anonymous
> The Qt license sucks and that’s why all the big players went Gnome.
You mean big players like those who went Qt ?
http://partners.trolltech.com/partners/training.html
http://partners.trolltech.com/partners/training.html
http://partners.trolltech.com/partners/service.html
http://partners.trolltech.com/partners/tech.html
http://partners.trolltech.com/partners/resellers.html
http://www.trolltech.com/company/customers.html
Specially pay attention to the last link. So you say Boing, NASA, Deutsche Telekom, IBM, HP and many more bug players went to GNOME ?
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Anonymous
> Eventually they’ll have to move to something besides C++
Why? Please elaborate more on this. Bindings for more languages would be nice, I guess the Python bindings are the most complete ones. But I fail to see why the core desktop environment must be rewritten in another language.
I have done a lot of C++ programming, and with the Qt library it is possible to be just as productive as one would be in, say, java (which I also have lots of experience with).
2005-12-29 6:13 pm
Anonymous
All of the Linux desktop emulators suck, as well as X11.
It amazes me people can get together and create free 3D engines like Genesis and Crystal, but over in the Linux world, nobody has written a simple X11 replacement with integrated hardware rendering and kick-ass APIs.
Linux on the desktop will forever remain a pipedream, I believe.
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Celerate
Oh you mean like Windows has all those fancy 3d effects? Get real! First off a fancy 3d desktop environment would make most computers obsolete based on hardware requirements alone. Secondly who would use it besides the temporarily curious? It would complicate the graphical user interfaces even more and still serve no real purpose beyond what current 2D desktop environments provide today.
Linux on the desktop exists, just not for you as long as you keep raising your standard with every stride Linux takes, pretty soon there won’t be any viable Desktop OS for you if you keep that up.
2005-12-29 6:15 pm
djst
“As you see, you can integrate all your kontacts – sorry, contacts – with kaddressbook. The interface you see in the right side of the window is not kontact – it’s the kaddressbook kpart.”
If this document aim at people who don’t use KDE (like myself), maybe it would be a good idea to explain the difference between kontact and kaddressbook. Based on the quote above, it seems both are handling contacts.
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Anonymous
If this document aim at people who don’t use KDE (like myself), maybe it would be a good idea to explain the difference between kontact and kaddressbook. Based on the quote above, it seems both are handling contacts.
Kontact is a mail suite, more like Outlook. KAddressbook just handles addresses. They access the same contacts through KParts.
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2005-12-31 6:11 am
phoenixThink of Kontact as a wrapper around various other programs. It gives you a consistent UI to access various different programs.
If you want, you can have a single, master window with an icon bar down the left side to switch between the included apps (KMail, KAddressBook, KNotes, Akkregator, KNode, and others). All the apps can pass data back and forth as needed.
Or, if you prefer, you can load each app separately, in their own windows. They’ll still pass data back and forth as needed, they’ll just be in separate Windows.
Kontact is really just a meta-app that puts all the different apps into one windows for ease-of-use. Giving you a UI that looks similar to Evolution or Outlook, but without writing a new app (it builds on all the existing apps).
2005-12-29 6:18 pm
camel
“This is yet another example of Kioslaves. In many web pages you have a form which allow you to upload files for whatever purpose. Some times, what you want to upload is something that it’s in another web page. So you have to download it first by hand, and then set the form field to a file in your hard disk. KIOslaves saves you time: In konqueror, you can put an URL in those forms. And when you click upload, KIOslaves will download that URL to a temporary storage (after you confirm it in the dialog you see in the screen) and automatically sets internally the correct file path and automatically uploads it.”
I especially like that. I’ve always been able to do that in Windows, so it’s nice to have it elsewhere if I need it.
I think you did not yet fully understand KIOSlaves.
It’s not just konqueror who is able to work over ftp. It every single KDE application. I can open kate (a text editor) and enter “ftp://whatever“ and it will work on this exact adress. If I save, it will be done over ftp.
No “Download, edit, upload”. Just “edit”.
Can you do that in Notepad? in Office? In Outlook?
Try it, its a real timesaver 🙂
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sappyvcv
Actually, I did understand what it does. However, I always use editplus for editing anything that is not on my system, which has ftp functionality. Anything else I only need to download and not resave.
2005-12-29 6:20 pm
Anonymous
Why are KDE themes so hard to install. It’s like there’s all these different parts to them. There should be more one-click themes like Gnome.
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Anonymous
> Why are KDE themes so hard to install. It’s like there’s all these different parts to them.
> There should be more one-click themes like Gnome.
If you are just worried about theme installation then you seriously don’t understand KDE as a whole. But then, I only use ‘one click’ to install themes.
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Anonymous
because its not as usable as GNOME is. Komplexity(oops, i meant complexity) is the name of the game on KDE.
2005-12-29 6:22 pm
Anonymous
I use the Gnome desktop, many “console” programs, a few Qt applications, a few Xaw programs, and there is bound to be a Motif application hiding in here somewhere.
Does that make me a heretic? God forbid no. It just means that I have different expectations for different tools. In some cases, I like programs that keep out of my way (the Gnome camp is usally good for that). In other cases, I need obscure features (the KDE camp is good for that), and in yet other cases I need to be able to run the program across the network (“console” programs are good for that).
2005-12-29 6:26 pm
Morty
but here is a more recent screenshot.
A KDE 3.3(1.5 to 2 years old BTW), with Mandrivas theme rather than standard KDE? Is that the best you can do?
What about a 3.5 one:
http://www.tuxmachines.org/gallery/kde35/welcome?full=1
Or since you comared it to a Ubuntu themed Gnome, why not a Kubuntu shot:
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=508&slide=5
2005-12-29 6:31 pm
dogen
I like QT and KDE quite a bit. But don’t call QT free if I can’t walk into a customer site and use it for whatever I want.
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2005-12-29 8:04 pm
CrimsonScytheThat is a rather tired and old argument, not to mention subjective. In a hope that your post wasn’t just flame-bait, I’ll embellish a little. What you’re saying is that you consider the GPL less free because you can’t restrict the freedom of the software users?
You need to realize that freedom isn’t some imperial or metric measurement that is measured on some one-dimensional scale on which one end signifies complete freedom and the other signifies complete lack of freedom. What is complete freedom for you may very well be unacceptably restricted to me.
To draw a parallel to the article at hand, I realize that while I find KDE to be the best desktop out there, in many ways much better than my OS X desktop, it certainly doesn’t mean that there aren’t any other equally valid points of view. If you love GNOME or XFCE, I’m pretty sure that you’d disagree severely with me arguing that your preference is misplaced since it doesn’t coincide with my preference.
2005-12-29 6:35 pm
Kroc 
Up until recently, I had never used Linux before. I am linux n00b incarnate. Under good instruction I was told that Suse was an easy distribution.
Thanks to suse, I hate KDE with a passion. From a n00b standpoint it is an abomination of creature feapism. It’s amazing that I even bothered to try Ubuntu later on after being totally turned off of Linux.
Ubuntu isn’t anal retentive, but at the same time it doesn’t really offer all that much more than I have and am comfortable with, with WindowsXP.
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Anonymous
> I am linux n00b incarnate.
For a n00b you write a lot of stuff that requires excessive througly deep Linux knowledge:
http://www.osnews.com/usercomments.php?uid=3737
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Kroc
I write about what I know – windows and web design. Just because I can use windows, that doesn’t mean I’m not a n00b on a new system. If you had never used RISC OS or Amiga OS before and I handed it to you, you wouldn’t have a starting clue how to use it. Although that’s harsh on RISC OS and Amiga because they’re actually easy to use.
Trying to install a friggin app on Linux, or worse – a driver, was so hard to guess work, I couldn’t do it; not even common sense and wild guessing would work :/
2005-12-29 6:43 pm
Anonymous
From the beginning of the page:
“Also, if you’re using IE you must know that it’s IE’s failure that the page doesn’t render correctly”
As a matter of fact, I’ve loaded the page in Firefox and IE, and it renders correctly, as far as I can see. Conversely, with Opera I can’t see any of the images… (I made the test under windows 2000)
Marco C.
2005-12-29 6:45 pm
2005-12-29 6:51 pm
Morty
the volume manager is concerned with the automatic mounting and unmounting of all devices.
You mean like the KDE media manager, it even has a non ambiguous name.
2005-12-29 6:51 pm
2005-12-29 7:03 pm
apachelogger
KDE isn’t a window manager, kwin is a window manager
GNOME is a window manager, no feature/options, just windows = window manager
xfce is a WM
fluxbox
fvwm
etc.
2005-12-29 7:04 pm
Anonymous
Thanks to the author for leading off the article with a review of Amarok. That first screenshot reminded me of all the things I hate about KDE in a single picture .
Let’s start with the obvious. What’s the main thing you do with a music player? Play music, obviously. Where’s the play button in Amarok? At the bottom of the screen, squeezed in betweeen the visualizer and the “other albums by this artist” box. In fact, all the controls that actually matter (play/pause, seek, skip track, volume, visualizer, playing song title) are crammed into the bottom 2cm of the window. Brilliant! Also, what the heck to those 3 buttons with different cube icons and the 2 with green arrow icons do?
Side tabs were a bad idea when they first appeared in Konqueror, and they haven’t improved with age. Tiny, sideways text is always going to be hard to read. The sidebar with too many tabs to show at once is ugly, too. Options are nice, but really, I don’t care whether Amarok uses MySQL or sqlite or MS Access 95 on a 486 in Siberia to store it’s database, as long as it knows where my music is. The same goes for audio backends.
Major coolness points awarded for having a well-implemented search that supports AND/OR operations, but minus several million for the cluttered, upside-down UI.
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Anonymous
Amarok has two interfaces. There is a simple player interface that simply has the usual stuff, showing control buttons, track time, track name and a couple of other things. The interface you were looking at is primarily used for managing music collections. It does this very well. Once you’re organised, you use the simplified interface to play stuff.
I see this as good usability. Providing you with two interfaces, which are optimised for the particular task at hand.
But feel free to criticise an application after looking at one screenshot. Analysis from a position of complete ignorance is so helpful, don’t you think?
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cr8dle2grave
What’s the main thing you do with a music player? Play music, obviously.
Except Amarok is a audio jukebox, not a music player. It encompasses a wider set of functionality than does a mere music player. Thus it has an interface which is primarily oriented toward organizing and managing large collections of music files rather than simply playing them.
Where’s the play button in Amarok? At the bottom of the screen, squeezed in betweeen the visualizer and the “other albums by this artist” box.
A full height right navigation panel paired with a left content/view panel is one the most widely used and familiar UI conventions currently in use today. Numerous file managers, email clients, admin consoles, and even a good number of popular websites all use this exact same UI paradigm to reasonably good effect. Amarok’s implementation is hardly a perfect example of the form, but it should be quite familiar to anyone who’s used a computer before.
all the controls that actually matter (play/pause, seek, skip track, volume, visualizer, playing song title) are crammed into the bottom 2cm of the window. Brilliant!
Makes perfect sense to me. The control buttons act upon the playlist and are located exactly where I would expect them: below the playlist (above the playlist would be an equally obvious location).
Also, what the heck to those 3 buttons with different cube icons and the 2 with green arrow icons do?
The boxes: random mode, repeat playlist, and dynamic mode. The arrows: undo and redo.
The boxes aren’t exactly obvious, but then that’s what tooltips are for. Hover and learn! You’ll pick it up in relatively short order. And once you do, it’ll seem perfectly natural. Learning things is neat that way.
Side tabs were a bad idea when they first appeared in Konqueror, and they haven’t improved with age.
Hmmm… the side tabs in Konqueror have always seemed to me as a perfectly acceptable solution for extending the functional range of that left navigation panel doohickey we talked about above. The other option would be to add more top-most elements directly into the tree structure, which is an approach that has plenty of merit as well. Neither way of doing things seems obviously superior to the other. Although, adding more top-level elements into the tree should scale up better to include a larger number of distinct navigation modes. Not sure that’s really an issue with either Amarok or Konqueror.
Tiny, sideways text is always going to be hard to read.
True, but it works well enough that its never been an issue for me. And remember: you only need to learn the tab placements and their respective functions once.
Options are nice, but really, I don’t care whether Amarok uses MySQL or sqlite or MS Access 95 on a 486 in Siberia to store it’s database, as long as it knows where my music is. The same goes for audio backends.
I don’t particularly care about the database backend either, but I can easily imagine situations where having the choice would be very nice. So while having the choice of multiple db backends has never benefited me, it’s nice that it is useful for those who do need it. The audio backend issue is another matter altogether. Audio on Linux isn’t exactly at the “it just works” phase, and until it is, such flexibility is absolutely necessary. For instance, I’ve got a lot of hopes for the long term prospects of Gstreamer, but as things stand right now it’s barely usable for many tasks.
And in any case, implementing apps such that they relatively independent of such things as database backends and audio engines is generally considered good programming practice.
2005-12-29 7:04 pm
djst
The article brags about tranparent windows and stuff, yet I see no such options on a vanilla Kubuntu install. What’s missing to enable drop shadows, window transparency etc.?
And why are the font sizes so huge by default (11-12pt) in KDE? And why is the font size for Firefox much smaller, even though the options says that GTK apps should use the same font settings as KDE?
Edited 2005-12-29 19:06
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2005-12-29 10:45 pm
poofyhairguyThe article brags about tranparent windows and stuff, yet I see no such options on a vanilla Kubuntu install. What’s missing to enable drop shadows, window transparency etc.?
Use my guide if you can:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=75527
2005-12-29 7:04 pm
LB06
In reply to sappyvcv (1.12) on 2005-12-29 18:43:16 (damn it osnews, get your systems right).
Anyway, kio is not only about being able to drag en drop your stuff over and back again, but mainly about not having to drag ‘n’ drop at all, ever.
For example: I can fire up kate, go to external locations, select $webhost, double click index.php and start editting. When I’m done, I press ctrl+s. That’s it. Starting to see the beauty of KIO? It makes your sources completely network tranparent. In Windows/Gnome you are only able to edit and save LOCAL files.
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sappyvcv
Again, I know what it does, and I think it’s great. All I was trying to say is that I’ve been able to download remote files (http/ftp) through Explorer/Common Open Dialog on Windows for a while, and it’s great seeing other places doing it as well. I NEVER said KIOslaves was limited to that.
But myself, the only files I need to open and save remotely are files I use editplus to edit. And that does FTP and let’s me hit Ctrl+S to save a remotely opened file.
I don’t know why you or the other guy are so defensive when I give KDE kudos for having a feature I like.
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Anonymous
Again, I know what it does, and I think it’s great. All I was trying to say is that I’ve been able to download remote files (http/ftp) through Explorer/Common Open Dialog on Windows for a while, and it’s great seeing other places doing it as well. I NEVER said KIOslaves was limited to that.
I believe that his gripes were more related to the way how you stated, comparing to Explorer and such. Actually, KFM (the old KDE 1.x file manager) was also capable of displaying websites back in 1997 or so. See: http://www.linux-user.de/ausgabe/2000/01/HomeNet2/kfm.gif
Though, it didn´t relied on on a powerful underlying system such as KIOSlaves as far as I know. KIOSlaves is a different beast from either the method mentioned above or the Windows Explorer way, as another poster already pointed out.
But myself, the only files I need to open and save remotely are files I use editplus to edit. And that does FTP and let’s me hit Ctrl+S to save a remotely opened file.
That´s fine but it is hardly the same thing, don´t you agree? fish:// alone makes any security conscious person drool over his/her keyboard.
I don’t know why you or the other guy are so defensive when I give KDE kudos for having a feature I like.
Again, I believe that it was a reaction (not warranted, though) to the way how you put it, comparing to Windows Explorer et al. I agree that there wasn´t any need to get defensive at all, even being a diehard KDE user and advocate as I am. But then, I have a thick skin…. 🙂
Cheers,
DeadFish Man
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sappyvcv
I believe that his gripes were more related to the way how you stated, comparing to Explorer and such. Actually, KFM (the old KDE 1.x file manager) was also capable of displaying websites back in 1997 or so. See:
Bring on the Gnome folks! OPEN FIRE! Flamewar!, flamewar!! flamewar!!!
I’ve been KDE user since it came out. Every time I tired Gnome, I got new grey hair or lost a few more. With KDE, never a single problem that could not be resolved. No wonder Pat took Gnome out of Slackware (Thank you Pat!), and Linus uses profanity when talking to Gnome programmers; many a times I did! Can’t wait for KDE 4.
On a diff note, happy holidays everyone! (yes, even you Gnome users….)
Anyone whos starts a post with…
Bring on the Gnome folks! OPEN FIRE! Flamewar!, flamewar!! flamewar!!!
or…
Bring on the KDE folks! OPEN FIRE! Flamewar!, flamewar!! flamewar!!!
is a fool. So what if you like a different desktop. Its a desktop, thats all (a D E S K T O P). Use what you like but please keep the reasons why to yourself.
Bring on the Gnome folks! OPEN FIRE! Flamewar!, flamewar!! flamewar!!!
Thank you for the laugh..
I like both environments but I prefer KDE.
Loser
Double loser
Recent studies have shown: Using KDE drops your IQ below room temperature.
If I remember right, Gnome wasn’t dropped from Slackware due to a preference towards KDE, or thinking KDE was better, but because it was a pain to build and package all those Gnome dependencies.
Despite heated debates on this, imho pretty much all desktops of today, be it Gnome, KDE, XFCE, OS X or Windows XP, are generally all good enough and easy enough to use for your granny, pa or other computer user. Personally I favour XFCE for various reasons.
Wether you like Gnome, KDE or whatever I think this is more a matter of personal taste than wich one is technically the best.
you are right in one way, and wrong in another when you say that the technogy on KDE is better. the architecture on GNOME is leaps and bounds ahead of KDE (eg gstreamer, dbus, cairo, etc), but KDE’s architecture is more complete at this time. GNOME is quite incomplete and broken at the moment, but i think that GNOME has the better future because of its more advanced architecture and its greater flexibility (everything in KDE is more or less limited to C++). however, this won’t be realised for some years yet.
> GNOME is quite incomplete and broken at the moment, but
> i think that GNOME has the better future because of its
> more advanced architecture and its greater flexibility.
Watch the keywords “incomplete”, “broken” and then “more advanced”, “greater flexibility” in one sentence. The first two quotes are a plain contradiction tot he second two ones.
If something is incomplete and broken, then it hardly can be advanced or offer greater flexibility.
“Watch the keywords “incomplete”, “broken” and then “more advanced”, “greater flexibility” in one sentence. The first two quotes are a plain contradiction tot he second two ones. ”
in that case, i suggest you return(unless you are still there) to infants school to brush up on your english comprehension, because you obviously have great difficulties in understanding basic sentences. they are not contradictions by any means.
> > “Watch the keywords “incomplete”, “broken” and then “more advanced”, “greater flexibility” in
> > one sentence. The first two quotes are a plain contradiction tot he second two ones.”
> in that case, i suggest you return (unless you are still there) to infants school to brush up on your
> english comprehension, because you obviously have great difficulties in understanding basic
> sentences. they are not contradictions by any means.
I understood these sentences pretty well. But I find it quite contradicting to say “GNOME is incomplete and broken” and then “but it’s more advanced and offers greater flexibility” in the same sentence.
If something is broken or incomplete then it hardly offers greater flexibility. It offers more pain in the butt for a developer to get along with problems of the development framework. This can also not be called “advanced” by any means. Advanced is usually things that has been thought through, proved, works reliable, thought for future in mind – considered practially good. Now if GNOME offers incomplete and broken things then in what ways is that “advanced” ? It’s a contradiction and irritation of the word “advanced”.
Just my 0.5 cents.
“I understood these sentences pretty well. ”
you obviously didn’t because they have no relation to each other.
“But I find it quite contradicting to say “GNOME is incomplete and broken” and then “but it’s more advanced and offers greater flexibility” in the same sentence.”
compare that of the valve and the microchip when the mucrochip was almost complete. the valve is less advanced and less flexible than the microchip, but the valve was more complete.
thats why you need to return to school to brush up on your english comprehension.
> > “I understood these sentences pretty well. ”
> you obviously didn’t because they have no relation to each other.
It was just ONE single sentence that contained all this. So how can there be no relationship ? The sentence he wrote is exactly related to it because the sum of words exactly made that sentence which ends with a point.
easy, because one doesn’t correlate positively with the other. its as simple as that.
something which is incomplete can either be advanced or basic.
something which is flexible can either be advanced or basic.
the architecture on GNOME is leaps and bounds ahead of KDE (eg gstreamer, dbus, cairo, etc)
Funny, none of the projects you cited are part of Gnome.
Hint: freedesktop.org.
“Funny, none of the projects you cited are part of Gnome. ”
according to this, gstreamer, cairo, and dbus are all part of the GNOME architecture:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME
just because KDE are going to be using GNOME technology eventually doesn’t mean they are not part of GNOME. read the part on architecture that states that gstreamer, dbus, and caira are part of the GNOME architecture.
according to this, gstreamer, cairo, and dbus are all part of the GNOME architecture: