OSNews is pleased to host today an exclusive interview with Waldo Bastian, the well known KDE developer and SuSE employee. Waldo has been involved pretty much in all levels in KDE’s code, from Konqueror to kdelibs, to games and Kicker. Waldo speaks today about the success of KDE, its future, UnitedLinux, development and much more.1. KDE is today leading the XFree86 desktop envinronment’s userbase with well over 50% of usage worldwide. It seems that the “eternal battle” with Gnome is over, at least as the numbers of usage suggest (Gnome reportedly has around ~21% these days). Will this success have an impact to the way the KDE developers work, into something more “corporate” or “serious”, or will it continue as is?
Waldo Bastian: KDE has always concentrated on making the best desktop for its users, the level of popularity of GNOME does little to influence that. The existence of GNOME has influenced KDE of course in the sense that Trolltech has GPL’ed Qt, the existence of GNOME certainly played a role in that.
I don’t expect any change in the way how KDE developers work. People work on KDE because they enjoy doing so. It’s nice if some company can save a few million on its desktop licenses because of that, but that is usually not what motivates people to work on KDE.
2. KDE 3.1-alpha was released recently and a lot of people seem to love the new goodies. What are the future plans, feature-wise, after the release of KDE 3.1 at the end of the year?
Waldo Bastian: We have no idea yet. KDE in general has never planned very much ahead. It was only with KDE 3.0 that our current release manager, Dirk Mueller, has introduced release feature plans in which developers can list the things they plan to do before the next release. The result of that can be seen here. Whatever
falls out of that typically moves up to the next release. The feature plan
for KDE 3.2 can be found here. But as you can see it is still very empty at this point.
3. I read in the KDE devel mailing lists that TrollTech does not always “listen” to the KDE’s needs. KDE sometimes require changes to the code or new widgets, but TrollTech does not always comply. What the KDE project can do about the issue?
Waldo Bastian: In general TrollTech is reasonably responsive to our needs. But just like all of us they have a finite amount of developers and time and an infinite amount of wishes and demands for features. Some things to make them more responsive:
* Tell them about the things you need. This is so trivial that people sometimes forget it. It’s like those discussions on a mailinglist where people say “they should make this” and “they should make that”. But when you
don’t send that to the Trolls themselves it is very unlikely that they start doing that all out of themselves. Keep in mind that there is a difference between telling what you need and demanding to have it by tomorrow afternoon.
* Do it yourself and send them patches. After all, we have the source.
* Catch a live Troll, lock it up and feed it beer till it promises to make whatever you need. Milka chocolate also gives great results.
It should be noted that the same tactics probably can be applied to KDE developers as well.
4. Tell us about SuSE’s involvement to the KDE project. Will UnitedLinux also choose KDE?
Waldo Bastian: SuSE has been very supportive of KDE pretty much since the start. Over the years they have provided KDE with money, hardware, bandwidth, SuSE CDs, assistance during conferences and expositions. And certainly just as important 🙂 they have hired me and allow me to work almost exclusively on KDE.
UnitedLinux will include a very basic KDE 3 desktop. Since UnitedLinux is aimed at servers it will not include any KDE applications (not very many at least)
5. A lot has been said about UnitedLinux. What is your opinion on trying to further commercialize the GNU/Linux platform? Do you believe that Linux has a better chance to increase its installed userbase with the help of big companies adopting it as their product, or with the “traditional” method of GNU through spreading the GPL philosophy to new users?
Waldo Bastian: There are many different Linux users that all have different needs. UnitedLinux aims at a very specific set of users, enterprise users, which have very specific needs. For these big users having guarantees is very important, for them it matters if you say “yeah, I think it will work” or “yes, I guarantee that it will work”. Some people ridicule PHBs who ask “Who am I going to sue when it doesn’t work?” but for them that’s a big concern, not that they have much of a chance of suing with todays software licenses, but at least they will sleep better knowing that they have their own ass covered.
That said, that isn’t a reason why the installed userbase couldn’t be increased through grassroots efforts at the same time. Linux has reached many server-rooms through the grassroot efforts of techies and there are many more places where Linux can become a success through grassroot efforts, think of your friends and family, your aunt, your granddad. There is an enormous potential there. I think that that is also a very powerfull aspect of Linux: everyone can take it and modify it to better suit his or her purposes, and everyone can do so at the same time.
I think commercial success for Linux, in any market, is important because it adds to the credibility of the platform as a whole and it tends to makes more people available to improve it. On the other hand it is important to recognize that companies act in their own interest and not necessarily in the interest of the Linux community. I don’t think IBM spends so much money on Linux because they fully agree with Richard Stallman, they spend it because they think it is an investment that pays off. Whatever their motives, the result is that quite a few extra people help out to improve Linux. I think that’s beneficial for Linux.
6. What are you currently working on? Any exciting new projects?
Waldo Bastian: No, I only do dull things 😉 I am responsible for a fair amount of code in the base libs so I spend quite some time on bugfixes and maintenance work there and providing other developers with functionality that they need. I also am working on the kde-usability list to get usability issues resolved.
Apart from that I’m working together with the GNOME people and others to create some common standards.
7. What are the top 3 changes that you would like to see in the Qt API to make your programming experience more confortable?
Waldo Bastian: The Qt API is very comfortable, I am very happy with it as is. There is a small change that I would like to see that would allow us to do icon-loading on demand, which would improve start up time. Lubos Lunak made a patch for that and that will hopefully be part of Qt 3.1. Apart from that I have a collapsable QSplitter on my wishlist and for the distant future I would like to see a more modular plugin approach for the various dialogs so that Qt-only applications running under KDE will automatically use KDEs file dialog etc.
8. What do you think about the development tools on Linux? Do you believe that the lack of tools or abilities like Purify, auto-vectorizing, recompiling part of an app while it’s running, or incremental linking can have an
impact on the overall quality and speed of the Linux applications?
Waldo Bastian: I think that the lack of in-depth development tools is being addresses rapidly at the moment. Since the start of this year we are using valgrind within KDE. Valgrind is comparable with Purify but much easier to use, Free Software and doesn’t have a hefty price tag. Julian Seward really has done an outstanding job with that.
I can’t comment on th auto-vectorizing part because I have no experience with that.
The recompiling and linking issues that you mentioned don’t really influence the quality or speed of applications in the end, it’s more that they make the development process itself more bearable for the developers. Especially compiling C++ is a relatively slow process at the moment. The GCC people are working on (or already have?) support for precompiled headers, and that will hopefully improve things quite a bit in the future.
One of the things that I still find lacking are good performance analysis tools. gprof works ok for a simple piece of C code, but for a typical KDE application it is inadequate. Also I do not know any tools that would allow you to look at system performance as a whole, taking into account I/O and the scheduling between processes.
Last week someone alerted me to some sourceforge projects that where working in that direction but I haven’t had time to check those out yet.
9. How do you see Linux in the next 2-3 years? While Linux has already proved its success to the server market, what does it need to be done to be considered a viable desktop as well?
Waldo Bastian: I think it is very close to being viable, in fact I expect to see an increasing number of large deployments this year. I think the business desktop is viable right now, especially for organizations that have an IT department already. The consumer desktop is more difficult, partly because Linux still requires a certain level of expertise from its users, partly because the OEM market is under mob-rule from Redmond. I think Lindows is very bold in this regard by selling PCs through Walmart with a KDE-based desktop pre-installed. They will be a good test to see if Linux is ready for the consumer market.
10. Even with the changes in the KDE 3.x and even when using object prelinking, C++ applications are still loading pretty slowly on Linux. Is any work being done to the GNU/Linux Loader to fix the issue?
Waldo Bastian: The library loader that comes with SuSE 8.0 has changes which effectively cause the same level of improvement as “object prelinking”. That makes object prelinking pretty much obsolete. That fixes approximately half of the linking problem. The other half is going to be fixed by “prelinking” support in the
GNU linker. (I use quotes because “object prelinking” and “prelinking” are really very different techniques) I don’t follow the issue very closely at the moment so I don’t know if is part already of a stable release.
I’m looking forward to the day when this new linker is widely in use because then it will become painfully clear where the linker was causing the slowness and where it is solely to blame on the application developer. At the moment it is much to easy for developers to shift the blame on the linker.
11. Being a bit realistic, not many people are running KDE in anything less than 166 Mhz PC with at least 48 MB of RAM. Do you think that switching the actual code from pure i386-centric to use and require MMX at places that speed is critical, can help to significantly increase the overall speed of KDE? Would the KDE project consider a switch to require i586-MMX for the x86 version of KDE?
Waldo Bastian: The KDE project creates source code that runs on a variety of Unix platforms. It’s up to either the end-user or the distributor to compile it with additional optimization options that it sees fit. There are few places where
we provide processor specific optimized code, e.g. that makes use of MMX, mostly in the multimedia area, to take advantage of MMX when available.
Whats the future for KDE used in an office environment?
I find KDE lacking in integrating with distributed filesystem, network resources(e.g. autoconfiguring mailservers). All this together with a single signon system woild be great.(hints are Kerberos, SLP, LDAP, InterMezzo/Coda/NFSv4). All this, or something similar should really have a KDE interface…
I would like to see a GUI installer/uninstaller that actually cleaned up EVERY FILE created when installing an application. I would like to see a way to remove any K-Application I don’t like that’s taking up space on my HD. Or a graphical user interface during compile/install time so I could at least choose which ones I want installed.
KDE may have 50% of the user market, but that doesn’t make them the best!
Competition stimulates us to do a better job and we should be happy with Gnome and also the smaller window managers/desktop managers.
GNU/linux developed to where it is today by all the different intelligence working together.
I’m working on this issue at the moment and will have something *really* cool when I’m done… patience 🙂
distributed filesystem, network resources such as autoconfiguring mailservers and that other nifty things are not the job of KDE, it’s the job of your underlying. please realize that KDE is desktop environment, not system configurator etc etc
Well, this type of comment was around since long ago where OSS community seem to complain about Window$ weakness and bad portion. However, until today Window$ still conquer the highest majority of world market share. Why? Because they know how to attract ordinary users that don’t care about the good or bad design principal of OS or its application. What is more important to them is the usability aspect.
So if Gnome want to get the higher market share, being the best Desktop Environment won’t do but the improvment on usability and consistency will contribute a lot. (Well maybe somebody will tell me “you want it you do it by your self”). For me I’ll switch back to Gnome if its can give a better approach compared to KDE.
I also recommend everyone to try Equinox Desktop Environment at http://ede.sourceforge.net/. I still love the look of KDE and Gnome compared to it but the speed and GUI concept impressed me very much.
I really liked listening to what Waldo had to say. It is so much more refreshing than the doublespeak you get out of the GNOME people who are basically just low-end Microsoft cloners anyway.
New GNOME look = Linux XP
Evolution = Outlook
Mono = .NET
GNOME in one line:
cp -r Windows Linux
Yeah, I’ve got an attitude about GNOME. It’s part of an mindset that I see that doesn’t believe in innovation, but merely replication.
KDE seems like an honest effort to build great software. It is funded by Linux companies, not by Microsoft. It’s staffed by honest developers, who call it as it is.
I hope the KDE team continues their great work and I look forward to many incredible developments in the future.
#m
Once again, congratulations to all those that have contributed to KDE and helped it reach the current state!
Keep up the good, quality work …
Nassos
Eugenia is always quoting statistics on desktop share in a “leading” manner, to imply or flat-out state the Gnome may as well pack it. Where do her statistics come from? The figures I’ve seen show Kde with around 50% and Gnome with around 25% but I don’t think the sample base is large enough to mean very much.
<p>
I think interest in Gnome is growing, especially among developers, in spite of the fact that kde has more of a sense of community for developers and users. Kde is also installed by default by more distributions. But it’s fate is sealed by a dependency on Qt, which is tightly controled by a proprietary vendor, Trolltech. That will prove disasterous.
<p>
Kde is clunky an slow compared with Gnome, and that’s not all or even mostly because of GNU’s substandard C++ compiler and linker. C++ applications developed with toolkits other than Qt on linux are quite responsive. Part of the problem it Qt and part is bloat added by Kde. Kde does look more “commercial”, though. Evidently that attracts the type of person who wants a desktop to look more like Mac OSX or Microsoft Windows, but these people are always switching back and forth between Kde and Gnome on the basis of superficials. Mostly teenyboppers trying to go with the flow. So, I don’t think Gnome has much to worry about in the long term. In the short term it doesn’t help much for kde boosters to be making a big deal about statistics. That will come back to bite them before much longer.
<p>
More important are the figures on linux desktop usage overall. Some put it at around 1% of desktops worldwide, others at around 5%. If someone could direct me to a website which keeps reliable statistics on such things it would be appreciated. What is the percentage of total desktops running linux or any of the free unices? Any estimates? This would include machines which dual boot windows or some other system, so long as linux is actually used at least part of the time on that machine.
<p>
Waldo handled himself very well in the interview. Much better than other kde developers who get nasty or vindictive in their responses.
And your’s is not! >:(
Yeah right, Gnome 2 looks like XP? WTF are you talking about?
Evolution might have it’s interface cloned from Outlook, but did you notice that basically every other Mail App (including KMail) looks almost exactly like Outlook Express? Besides of this, Evolution is only _one_ application. I’m not complaining that Konqueror is basically Internet Explorer for Unix, am I?
And this is reason enough for you to start the trolling and bitching again? I hope you are at least serious about this and I didn’t just fall for a professional Troll again…
Please open your mind and don’t let your favourism dictate your attitude!
Either you know nothing about GNOME, or you’re just trying to spread FUD.
> It is so much more refreshing than the doublespeak you get out of the GNOME people
What “doublespeak”?
> New GNOME look = Linux XP
The “New GNOME look” is almost the same as the ‘old’ GNOME look, which predates WinXP by about three years.
> Evolution = Outlook
Evolution was designed by Ximian to be a drop-in replacement for Outlook. Businesses are afraid to try new things partly because of the costs and time needed for retraining. This is not a problem with Evolution. Similarly, Konqueror was designed to be usable as both a Web browser and a file manager like IE. I see nothing wrong in that approach, provided that it is done well.
> Mono = .NET
Mono has nothing to do with GNOME. There is non Mono code in GNOME, and there are no plans to change that.
> cp -r Windows Linux
ln -s FUD-troll Michael
> Yeah, I’ve got an attitude about GNOME. It’s part of an mindset that I see that doesn’t believe in innovation, but merely replication.
Ummm… How’s that? As much as I like KDE, it looks a lot like Windows to me. GNOME is far more flexible and customisable.
> KDE seems like an honest effort to build great software. It is funded by Linux companies, not by Microsoft.
That’s true. But what does that have to do with GNOME?
I’ve checked out equinox or e.d.e. It looks just as good as kde or gnome – has a nice, fresh clean look. Equinox uses fltk which is a more lightweight C++ toolkit that’s been around for a while. It includes a modified version of icewm, file manager, and all sorts of utilities. It’s about 10 times faster than kde or gnome and uses very little memory.
<p>
The problem is that there are so many C++ errors that e.d.e. doesn’t compile with recent versions of gcc. Also it doesn’t help that e.d.e. uses unstable pre-alpha versions of fltk 2.0 instead of the stable branch. I did try an older binary version of e.d.e. some months ago which is the basis for the positive comments above. It’s a nice desktop.
<p>
This project could motivate a lot of other people to use fltk if only the developers would clean up their code and do a little work on the web site to make it look more finished and ready for business.
Yeah right, exactly what we need. A third big toolkit.
Just making everything lightweight and fast isn’t really all it’s about. Gtk and Qt are both very fast (fast enough) and are capable of doing basically everything you want. Adding even more fragmentation just because something is more lightweigth, is definetly not worth it IMO.
“KDE has more of a sense of community for developers and users”
I am pretty sure that Gnome and Gtk have far more developers than KDE. The support of FSF is helping them a lot. Many geeks still think Qt is not free (please remember, Qt is GPL). Look for example at the number of patches available for Sylpheed. If KMail had that many patches waiting, it would be for sure the greatest mailer ever.
“KDE is also installed by default by more distributions.”
Have you ever wonder why ? My guess is simply that KDE is better for the basic user. This is also why KDE has a wider user base than Gnome.
“But it’s fate is sealed by a dependency on Qt”
I agree. It is condemned to succeed because of that.
“Qt, which is tightly controled by a proprietary vendor, Trolltech.”
I fail to see how a vendor can be labeled “proprietary” when it gives away a GPL toolkit. Once product is GPL, you don’t have that much control on it. Anybody can fork Qt.
And trolltech has long proven to be composed of very talented developers, which, yes, have a tight control on their version of Qt. They satisfy a huge customer base and the KDE project (see, Waldo has almost nothing to suggest to improve Qt). Because trolltech developers are paid to work on Qt, the toolkit move forwards very fast and is very good quality. Trolltech is one of the key to KDE success, not to KDE’s doom.
By the way, are you aware than Gtk is tightly controlled by Redhat ? Do you think it will doom Gnome too ?
“Kde does look more “commercial”, though.”
You mean professional! In KDE, the look is standard. Every toolbar can be configured the same, the KDE UI guide is respected, every applications works mostly the same to configure stuff, and all look consistent.
Every time I run Gnome, I see that this is not the case. I understand it will improve. I hope so.
“Evidently that attracts the type of person who wants a desktop to look more like Mac OSX or Microsoft Windows, but these people are always switching back and forth between Kde and Gnome”
Obviously, you don’t know the user base very well. The people you descrive usually settly on one desktop that seems to them the closest to what they want (on usually not very argumented reasons) and don’t switch. This is the kind of people that want their computer just to work, not to work with the latest software, or with the FSF desktop. Just a desktop that work.
“So, I don’t think Gnome has much to worry about in the long term.”
Gnome is initially 9 month late on KDE. Now, the distance is something like 2 years. KDE is moving forward, Gnome is still strugling to get more application to be ported to Gnome 2.
Many people have predicted KDE’s doom many times, when they have started with a non GPL toolkit, when they have dropped Corba, when Ximian and Eazel were funded, when Sun has chosen Gnome.
KDE is till there, on schedule, though, and far better than Gnome despite all the support KDE does not get.
Gnome has to worry in the long term. Not for KDE which is already a success, but for Gnome. The poor technical choices that were made in the beginning now have their consequences.
I agree with you on statistics, it would be good to have accurate ones. But these thing are hard to get.
“In the short term it doesn’t help much for kde boosters to be making a big deal about statistics.”
You are probably suggesting that we should ignore them ? If people choose KDE, we can be proud, just like Gnome can be proud to have Sun support
Oh, and I forget about the Qt dependancy stuff. The equivalent to Qt is four or five packages in Gnome.
Do you know how many library a typical Gnome application depends on ? This is called the dependancy knightmare. I have counted 60 packages for the Gnome 2 release.
Compare this with 16 packages released for KDE 3, plus one for Qt.
Which one is easier to manage in your opinion ?
In my view, the DE XWindows is not the factor that slowing down the GUI. Their GUI concept is also quite straight forward which easier to understand for first time user (but I just dont like the look). If they could do it, I think KDE or Gnome could also do it. The end user at last benefited from the improvement and reduce complaint about the GUI slowness abd bloatness of OSS especially Linux.
It should be “the DE proved Xwindows…..”
Huh, I was disappointed to once again see a weird comment about some GNOME/KDE battle, which also praised KDE as being the winner. This is odd why OSNews also takes this path with issues that touch either GNOME or KDE.
However, it was nice to see that the response to the question was “correct”. For, I don’t believe there has ever been any (eternal or not) battle between GNOME and KDE. Sure, in the beginning GNOME got started because of KDE [not being free], but other than that, has there really been any battle?
The developers of both communities are just simply developing their projects. Neither has any agenda of attempting to bring the other project to an end, or to be better than the other project, or “win”. They are developing for the project itself, and for the benefit of the community that uses the project.
Sure, there are flame wars and battles, but is it not so that these battles are between the (idiot) users of those projects. Sure, even the developers may end up in those flame wars, but that’s unfortunately what humans do. The projects are not in combat, they are doing what they are doing and don’t care about the other, as such (and when they do care, it seems that these days they care because they want to be compatible with each other).
Gnome2 > KDE3
Once Gnome2 goes 2.2, the shift will be the other way.
YOu just wait. The next MS Windows version will be
1) stable
2) better than linux
3) offer better value
4) simpler
An so on. These preannouncements are boring, wether they come from Ximian/Redhat or Microsoft.
I view the energy spent on the GNOME vs. KDE as a lack of focus more than it is healthy competition, healthy coopetition or healthy cooperation.
From a topline view, having disparate user interface systems makes creating applications more of a hassle. Now why is that?
Let’s say I’m an ISV. Which one should I use? Why? Either way, I get to learn a completely different system. Informal numbers would lead me towards choosing KDE as that is what more of my potential users would have running. My application would be speedier if they are already running KDE. Additionally, I could use Borland’s tools which are based on Qt. So there are really nice dev tools if I go the KDE/Qt route.
If I go the GNOME route, I am exposed to a team that wants to base GNOME on .NET (Mono), including a Linux implementation of all the client .NET stuff, including WinForms. Do I want to have this exposure in my applications? Certainly not. On the other side, do I want to base my application on a system that is being driven by Sun? How many LINUX machines does Sun sell? The big fat goose egg zero, that’s how many. Sun will drive GNOME in a direction that’s good for Sun, not in a direction that’s good for Linux.
Beyond the macro picture, GNOME is a mess with all the dependencies. Will this get cleaned up? Do I want to deal with this added headache as an ISV?
So there is little clarity. For my ISV dollar, I’d go with KDE today. It is the people’s choice and is already implicitly endorsed by a neutral ISV tools vendor (Borland).
If the GNOME users hadn’t whined so much, Borland wouldn’t have even supported GNOME. They found it technically inferior to KDE/Qt.
I’d be interested to hear what other ISVs have to say.
#m
Also computers with Mandrake preinstalled, you can buy now.
The FUD keeps flying, doesn’t it?
I view the energy spent on the GNOME vs. KDE as a lack of focus more than it is healthy competition, healthy coopetition or healthy cooperation.
Open source development is all about evolution and competition. Read The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric S. Raymond. In the interview, Waldo said “The existence of GNOME has influenced KDE of course in the sense that Trolltech has GPL’ed Qt, the existence of GNOME certainly played a role in that.” Competing projects influence each other, and the competition drives the participants on to do bigger and better things. Without GNOME, KDE would probably still be at the 1.x stage.
From a topline view, having disparate user interface systems makes creating applications more of a hassle.
Not really. There are efforts to make KDE and GNOME more compatible. For example, QT3 now uses the standard X clipboard just like GNOME. Besides a few little problems, they already work quite well together.
If I go the GNOME route, I am exposed to a team that wants to base GNOME on .NET (Mono), including a Linux implementation of all the client .NET stuff, including WinForms.
WTF are you talking about? Please show me where and when the GNOME team decided to use Mono and .NET. Miguel de Icaza once made a statement that he personally would like to see Mono in GNOME. That was his own opinion, not the opinion of any other GNOME developer. In fact, it was discussed in the GNOME mailing lists and quickly dropped due to opposition.
On the other side, do I want to base my application on a system that is being driven by Sun? … Sun will drive GNOME in a direction that’s good for Sun, not in a direction that’s good for Linux.
Sun’s involvement in GNOME is very minimal, limited to usability and accessibility issues. The contributions by other companies, like Red Hat and Ximian, balance this out. How can Sun “drive” GNOME when it is GPLed? If the (non-SUN) developers don’t like it, they can easily fork it. It’s happened with other projects.
Besides, KDE is already being ‘driven’ by TrollTech. If you want to write a non-GPL app with it, you need to pay them. GNOME/GTK doesn’t have that restriction.
How many LINUX machines does Sun sell? The big fat goose egg zero, that’s how many.
Wrong. Take a look at http://search.sun.com/search/suncom/?qt=linux . Sun’s Cobalt machines run GNU/linux: http://www.sun.com/hardware/serverappliances/ . They will also introduce (or have already) low-end GNU/Linux servers running Intel chips.
For my ISV dollar, I’d go with KDE today. It is the people’s choice
For my ISV dollar, I’d go with Windows today. It is the people’s choice, with some 95% of the market. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the best. There are many more cockroaches than humans — does that make them any better?
If the GNOME users hadn’t whined so much, Borland wouldn’t have even supported GNOME. They found it technically inferior to KDE/Qt.
I think it’s clear that you’re just making that up. QT (Borland don’t use KDE) was chosen because it is based on C++, which is closer to Delphi/Kylix than C. GTK+ has C++ bindings, but they aren’t as developed as QT’s (yet). GTK has many strengths (e.g. although weak in C++, it is stronger than QT in many other languages), but QT fitted Borland’s needs better. That doesn’t necessarily make QT better, it just makes to more suitable for that specific job.
Great trolling.
I’m sure you will have success once again…
That’s really sad. Personally I’m very happy with KDE’s success and see no reason to talk bad about it. If KDE “has won”, why do you even care anymore? This is weird, you should just be happy but in fact it’s you that is still bitching. Do you see Gnome users bitching that companies are stupid for choosing KDE? Guess not. Remember when Gnome congratulated KDE to it’s 5th birthday? That wasn’t fake, there is no hostility. I don’t understand you people.
KDE will not die because of Trolltech (stupid) and Gnome will not die because of Sun (stupid again).
You are right (whoever it was), people often trolled that KDE would die but that’s crap. KDE will continue and it will continue to deliver great software, increasing it’s userbase. And so will Gnome. Gnome is now where KDE was with 2.0, in other words not really matured. But it’s on the way and it won’t be long until this situation has changed. Then both desktops are mature and competitive and it will take some innovation to get or keep the edge again. That’s what I call healthy competition, call it like you want.
I don’t like gnome as much as kde because I don’t feel that
it is as ergonomic ( keyboard shortcuts etc ). The latest kde
does take up a lot of processing power/memory but who cares ?
For €999 I can get a 2000 mhz machine w 128mb ram, for an extra €100 I can boost the memory up to 500mb. This is dirt cheap.
If I want a window manager that uses little power I can run
blackbox or whatever but what does blackbox do for me ?
The answer … not much. I can run everything under it but the experience sucks.
Kde uses up more power …true . If I’m really concerned about power I would just run my system headless anyway and turn it into a server.
KDE is the best local desktop env for linux and the guys on the kde team are still the best.
–B
Yes it rocks.
But just out of couriosity:
“I don’t like gnome as much as kde because I don’t feel that
it is as ergonomic ( keyboard shortcuts etc ).”
Are you talking about Gnome 2? I think it’s very ergonomic, or would you disagree (why)? I’m always looking for opinions of what should be improved in general (besides of the polishing).
I don’t like gnome as much as kde because I don’t feel that
it is as ergonomic ( keyboard shortcuts etc ).
You can assign keybindings in all GTK+ (including GNOME) apps. Simply highlight the menu entry to which you want to assign a keybinding and enter your desired key combination. To erase the binding, select the menu entry and press <delete>. Sawfish key and mouse bindings can be configured in the Sawfish configurations menu.
“distributed filesystem, network resources such as autoconfiguring mailservers and that other nifty things are not the job of KDE, it’s the job of your underlying. please realize that KDE is desktop environment, not system configurator etc etc”
I really think there should be ways to set you ip adress/change resoulution and bit depth from the KDE Control panel. Something like SuSE:s stuff but more generic (and Free!) so it works on every *nix and GNU/Linux distribution. Not an easy task I know but one can wish :-). These things are really needed for home desktop users and consultant types like me using laptops, to plug in everywhere all the time. In an enterprise setting where an administrator does all these things I see that this is not som much needed.
Oh, and I forget about the Qt dependancy stuff. The equivalent to Qt is four or five packages in Gnome.
Do you know how many library a typical Gnome application depends on ? This is called the dependancy knightmare. I have counted 60 packages for the Gnome 2 release.
Compare this with 16 packages released for KDE 3, plus one for Qt.
IMHO, for me these 16 packages would better be 60. There is one little problem – there are several applications included in KDE, which depend not only on QT and kdelibs, but on several other libraries. I don’t use these applications and have no need either for these applications or for these non-KDE libraries. But – the KDE package depends on them, so I have to install them – or they are installed automagically by automation tools.
So, which one is easier to manage?
> QT (Borland don’t use KDE) was chosen because it is based on C++
Actually that was bad for Borland because they needed a C API for their integration.
So they made C bindings on which they built their components.
That’s why Kylix app depend on two libs and only one of the is libqt
Kevin
> But – the KDE package depends on them
If you exclude those apps from the build, you don’t need those libs.
If you are referring to binary packages, you are using the wrong distribution
Kevin
I cannot believe the near-religous zealotry going on, ranting back and forth of the merits/flaws of KDE and Gnome. It’s just silly. If it works for you, fine, but don’t try to shove it down my throat.
No flame on an internet message board will ever make me change what software I run.
Hank
Oh, and I forget about the Qt dependancy stuff. The equivalent to Qt is four or five packages in Gnome.
Do you know how many library a typical Gnome application depends on ? This is called the dependancy knightmare. I have counted 60 packages for the Gnome 2 release.
Compare this with 16 packages released for KDE 3, plus one for Qt.
Which one is easier to manage in your opinion ?
Answer:
Qt alone depends on many external packagakes (not as much as Gtk which is itself composed of several libraries) and Kde depends on still more, in addition to the burden carried from Qt. True, Gnome is composed of more individual packages and these depend on more packages than Kde. However, the picture you paint is very misleading.
There are advantages and disadvantages. Kde is easier to build from source. However, Gnome is more modular. Unless your’re building a Gnome development environment, in which case you need all the libraries and development libraries, Gnome allows more flexibility.
This is a very minor issue which will be somewhat resolved by consolidating some of the Gnome libraries in the future.
By the way, the total Gnome 2 release is not a “typical Gnome application”. It includes many libraries and applications. So, you are saying that total dependencies for all Gnome applicationsis 60 packages.
The toolkit equinox uses is not a “third big toolkit”. Fltk is quite compact and has been around just as long as Gtk and Qt, at least. Probably that’s what Kde should have used in the beginning instead of getting in bed with Trolltech. Not as polished as Qt, but Kde developers could have made it more polished.
Equinox is a small project that probably only has 2 or 3 developers and is designed to work well on older and low end hardware. Kde doesn’t run well at all on such hardware. Gnome runs somewhat better, excepting Nautilus, but Gnome might be overkill for many users.
Qt/Kde and Gtk/Gnome are not very fast and Qt/Kde most certainly isn’t anywhere near fast enough for low end hardware, which just means perfectly good systems that are a few years old.
Eugenia, where do you get these figures you’re always quoting for usage from? It’s not good journalism to to keep pulling these figures out of a hat, without giving any sources at all. It doesn’t enhance your credibility.
You obviously dont get my point. What good is a desktop environment if it cant take full advantage of the system?
Wouldnt it be nice to e.g. have a KDE frontend to Kerberos’ kinit (its been made,but not maintained).
Secondly, KDE have by far surpassed “only a desktop”, it already includes a browser/filemanager, mail client, heaps of nice thing to configure (see the kde control center), it even comes with a frontend to wu-ftpd.
“KDE has more of a sense of community for developers and users”
>I am pretty sure that Gnome and Gtk have far more developers than KDE. The support of FSF is helping them a lot. Many geeks still think Qt is not free (please remember, Qt is GPL). Look for example at the number of patches available for Sylpheed. If KMail had that many patches waiting, it would be for sure the greatest mailer ever.
Kde does have a unique sense of community. Although kde is run by a relatively small inner group, most people involved don’t seem to mind that. There is a lot more activity on the Kde mailing lists – people helping each other, etc.
Whether or not Free Qt is GPL is not very relevant because its development is tightly controlled by a software vendor in the business of selling proprietary licenses. Redhat is not in the business of selling proprietary licenses.
“KDE is also installed by default by more distributions.”
>Have you ever wonder why ? My guess is simply that KDE is better for the basic user. This is also why KDE has a wider user base than Gnome.
I think the real reason is that Kde is more like Microsoft Windows than Gnome is.
“But it’s fate is sealed by a dependency on Qt”
I agree. It is condemned to succeed because of that.
“Qt, which is tightly controled by a proprietary vendor, Trolltech.”
>I fail to see how a vendor can be labeled “proprietary” when it gives away a GPL toolkit. Once product is GPL, you don’t have that much control on it. Anybody can fork Qt.
>And trolltech has long proven to be composed of very talented developers, which, yes, have a tight control on their version of Qt. They satisfy a huge customer base and the KDE project (see, Waldo has almost nothing to suggest to improve Qt). Because trolltech developers are paid to work on Qt, the toolkit move forwards very fast and is very good quality. Trolltech is one of the key to KDE success, not to KDE’s doom.
It’s not feasible to fork Qt and there is no reason for anyone to want to do so unless they feel that Gtk and other free toolkits aren’t good enough. Qt most certainly is a proprietary toolkit although a free, GPL version is also released. It’s not a good thing to treat Qt libriaries as system libraries, like kde does.
>By the way, are you aware than Gtk is tightly controlled by Redhat ? Do you think it will doom Gnome too ?
Already answered above.
“Kde does look more “commercial”, though.”
>You mean professional! In KDE, the look is standard. Every toolbar can be configured the same, the KDE UI guide is respected, every applications works mostly the same to configure stuff, and all look consistent.
To the degree that the applications work. If the applications don’t work or if the system is bloated and chashy who cares about a standard, uniform look?
>Every time I run Gnome, I see that this is not the case. I understand it will improve. I hope so.
Standard configuration of toolbars is not a good reason for anyone to use Kde or not to use Gnome. That’s such a minor issue.
“Evidently that attracts the type of person who wants a desktop to look more like Mac OSX or Microsoft Windows, but these people are always switching back and forth between Kde and Gnome”
>Obviously, you don’t know the user base very well. The people you descrive usually settly on one desktop that seems to them the closest to what they want (on usually not very argumented reasons) and don’t switch. This is the kind of people that want their computer just to work, not to work with the latest software, or with the FSF desktop. Just a desktop that work.
I totally disagree. Most people who are very concerned with the Linux desktop as users are interested in fashion, and switch on that basis. However, this is a very small percentage of the total desktop users who do want something that just works, or settle for what is widely available (Windows). Most linux users today are technically oriented and can get either Gnome or Kde to work ok, but they don’t really need either. A simple Window manager and xterm is enough for them. So they make fashion statments in the desktop they use or identify with. The average desktop users (who currently uses MS Windows) is not concerned with such things.
“So, I don’t think Gnome has much to worry about in the long term.”
>Gnome is initially 9 month late on KDE. Now, the distance is something like 2 years. KDE is moving forward, Gnome is still strugling to get more application to be ported to Gnome 2.
Gnome 1.4 works just fine and there is no great hurry to port everything to Gtk 2.0. Kde did have a head start, but Gnome is not 2 years behind Kde. I wouldn’t say that Gnome is behind Kde at all in most respects.
>Many people have predicted KDE’s doom many times, when they have started with a non GPL toolkit, when they have dropped Corba, when Ximian and Eazel were funded, when Sun has chosen Gnome.
The only people who predicted KDE’s doom when those things happened were Kde people themselves. Kde is on a tangent and Gnome is center field, more broadly based. That has helped Gnome attract venture capital but the investment is not the important factor. It’s that Gnome is more broadly based while Kde is in its own world with Trolltech and is beholden to Trolltech, more or less isolated from the rest of the linux community.
>KDE is till there, on schedule, though, and far better than Gnome despite all the support KDE does not get.
>Gnome has to worry in the long term. Not for KDE which is already a success, but for Gnome. The poor technical choices that were made in the beginning now have their consequences.
>I agree with you on statistics, it would be good to have accurate ones. But these thing are hard to get.
“In the short term it doesn’t help much for kde boosters to be making a big deal about statistics.”
>You are probably suggesting that we should ignore them ? If people choose KDE, we can be proud, just like Gnome can be proud to have Sun support
I don’t think we should ignore statistics. But in making a big deal about Kde having more users, Kde is setting itself up for a big fall. Dependency on Qt will be Kde’s undoing. Wait and see.
> Eugenia, where do you get these figures you’re always quoting for usage from?
This figure is a summarization of many polls on a number of OSS news sites, including the recent big OSNews one (gnome had 17% there and KDE 46% in our recent poll). Also, at OSNews we can see which articles have more popularity in general, gnome-related or kde-related. Putting all together, KDE has above 50% and we have witnessed it to continue to rising fast, especially
after its 3.0 release, while Gnome is steadily declines to less than 20-22%.
Personally, I still use WindowMaker or Blackbox (both around at 8% currently). I am neither a KDE or a Gnome user, while I do have them installed, along with 5-6 more windowing environments.
Let’s face it!
That Miguel de la casa, or what tha heck his name is, realises that GNOME can’t be coded using C anymore…read some heating debate a couple of month ago. – Use gtk# instead he seem to be promoting (not that many agreed 🙂 )
I tried to program in gtk a coupple of years ago and that was ok, but not as productive as using C++ for desktop apps.
It’s no wonder that GNOME never gets time to polish its user interface even though a lot of commersial effort seems to have been provided in form of developers…
KDE will provide a better desktop for at least five years if not more …
…The best thing would be if the two projects merged over this time in respect of theming, DCOP/CORBA-component-programming etc, but that I only can dream about.
So, please – give it to me hard – I want some pain!!!!!!!!!!!
Hello
There currently is no code in gnome that runs on mono, but you are wrong about the plans. The leader of gnome has stated that it will be using mono at the next major release.
Ben
There currently is no code in gnome that runs on mono, but you are wrong about the plans.
Sorry, but it is you who is wrong about the plans. Read the GNOME mailing list archives — everything is in there.
The leader of gnome has stated that it will be using mono at the next major release.
I think you’re getting confused with Miguel de Icaza, who has not been GNOME leader for over a year. Miguel merely stated his hope that Mono would become part of GNOME. That is only his opinion, and not the policy of the GNOME Project. Miguel has no more power than any other developer (he sits on the GNOME board, but so do several other developers). The issue was brought up on the GNOME mailing list, but was dropped without any serious discussion.
As it stands, there will be no Mono or .NET in GNOME. Please do some research before making such statements.
“Whether or not Free Qt is GPL is not very relevant because its development is tightly controlled by a software vendor in the business of selling proprietary licenses.”
Do you even know what GPL means? How can a GPL project be lead to ruin by a proprietary vendor?
“It’s not feasible to fork Qt and there is no reason for anyone to want to do so unless they feel that Gtk and other free toolkits aren’t good enough. Qt most certainly is a proprietary toolkit although a free, GPL version is also released. It’s not a good thing to treat Qt libriaries as system libraries, like kde does.”
It’s just a feasable to fork Qt as it is to fork the Linux kernel. Should we not use the Linux kernel because IBM, a vendor who sells proprietary licenses, has submited patches to it? I would really like to hear your reasoning why someone should be concerned about using GPLed libraries as system libraries.
And don’t give me this crap about Qt being proprietary, it only proves that you have no understanding of what the GPL is or how it works. Using Qt in this respect is no different than using GTK, since both are GLPed.
“To the degree that the applications work. If the applications don’t work or if the system is bloated and chashy who cares about a standard, uniform look?
…
Standard configuration of toolbars is not a good reason for anyone to use Kde or not to use Gnome. That’s such a minor issue.”
It is a minor issue to tech savvy people, which make up the current Linux population for the most part. It is a major issue to everyone else. Continuity reduces confusion.
“Most people who are very concerned with the Linux desktop as users are interested in fashion, and switch on that basis. However, this is a very small percentage of the total desktop users who do want something that just works, or settle for what is widely available (Windows). Most linux users today are technically oriented and can get either Gnome or Kde to work ok, but they don’t really need either. A simple Window manager and xterm is enough for them. So they make fashion statments in the desktop they use or identify with. The average desktop users (who currently uses MS Windows) is not concerned with such things.”
You are technically correct here, but you’ve totally missed the point. Since, as you point out, most Linux users would be perfectly functional with wm/xterm, what is the point of projects like KDE or Gnome at all? Could it perhaps be to EXPAND the user base? And how would we go about doing that except by making the transition comfortable for average desktop users?
It appears that you understand the concept of user base about as well as you understand the GPL.
“I don’t think we should ignore statistics. But in making a big deal about Kde having more users, Kde is setting itself up for a big fall.”
Humans are social animals, and as such tend to follow the rest of the herd. If a new Linux user sees that more people are currently using KDE than Gnome, they will be more likely to use KDE, since that’s what everyone else is using. It’s the same thing that keeps Windows dominant, just on a smaller scale.
So, how exactly is KDE setting itself up for a big fall by pointing out that more people use KDE than Gnome? Are you expecting that all of those KDE users are suddenly going to switch? Why?