“KDE is delivering a better version of what GNOME’s goal has apparently morphed into: becoming a great component framework that you can write to in multiple languages. Nicholas Petreley rebuffs the common GNOME battle slogans and explains why the window-manager’s name needs reworking.” Read the article at LinuxWorld. Commentary Update by Eugenia: The author of that article advocates that Gnome is… lame, but I would just say that these wars “gnome vs kde” are the lame ones.Interoperability between the two environments should be the theme and not unthoughtful trollings like the ones we read in our forums or the 700 comments on Slashdot today. Every elegant desktop OS, has a single DE, so “unite” these two big envrironments under a common ground, before it’s too late (no, they don’t have to become a single DE, just to work under the same rules that unifies the DEs for both users and developers). Unix lost a lot of its market power the last few years, because of fragmentation. Don’t let the same happen to this new headstart we get today with the help of Linux. Don’t let the history repeat itself. But why are you still reading this? Havoc said it best.
Doesn’t really bother me that much, the Gnome architecture (and especially the use of Corba, and the “COM” – Bonobo) is in my opinion better than that of KDE. A new filemanager is as I understand it scheduled for Gnome 2.4.
Gnome might come with “features” later than KDE, but then again its “well done”.
Anyways http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/bongo-bong.html is worth reading.
Personally in user perspective bonobo is a pain in the ass. I have lots of problems with it (db corrupt etc). I’m using Evolution which relys on it. Well I have to fix it quiet often
U know the stuff:
– oaf-slay
– killev
– rm -rf /tmp/orbit-$user
Anywayz ontopic again, I really hate these “vs” wars. As long as people can choice what they want. If it’s KDE or Gnome i could not care less.
“Anywayz ontopic again, I really hate these “vs” wars. As long as people can choice what they want. If it’s KDE or Gnome i could not care less.”
Gotta agree with you there.
“”Anywayz ontopic again, I really hate these “vs” wars. As long as people can choice what they want. If it’s KDE or Gnome i could not care less.”
Gotta agree with you there. ”
Yep i agree too, i mean, one of the largest factors of myself choosing to use linux so many years ago was choice.
cool first time no flamewar will start here?
I like both a lot. However, the file selector in GNOME has got to be the worst ever. I had hoped a new one would appear in 2.4, but wasn’t there a new item posted within the last couple of weeks that said a new file selector wouldn’t be in unitl 2.6 due at the end of the year?
First of all, let me say that I’m not biased towards KDE or Gnome, so don’t get the wrong idea here
For those that like Gnome, the reason I hear most often is – simplicity, which really surprises me. Most people who use Linux seem to like the fact that you can customize everything out the wazoo, which is what KDE apparently gives people. But when it comes to the desktop enviroment, seems that a lot of people want something that is simple and without a lot of options to bog them down. So, what’s wrong with this picture?
“cool first time no flamewar will start here?
”
no kidding. i mean:
kde vs gnome
emacs vs elvis
lilo vs grub
i’ve seen post to newsgroups back in the day where people threaten to hurt each other over it. it’s stupid, and it’s a waste of time. i think linux offering so much diversity when it comes to apps or system services is one of it’s huge strengths. i think people are pretty much split 50/50 on these issues. the average person couldn’t care less.
“But when it comes to the desktop enviroment, seems that a lot of people want something that is simple and without a lot of options to bog them down. So, what’s wrong with this picture?”
Yea, it can bog you down. But only if you want it to. No one really has to change their settings, KDE is functional straight out of the box.
But i do understand what you are saying, alot of the settings are scattered around in KDE. I’ll find a setting change it, come back a week later and want to back to how it orginally was, but i can’t find where i changed my setting. That is the nature of linux. You know what i’m talking about if you used more then 2 different distro’s. I started on slack, went to MDK, then ended up with SuSE. All three are totally different flavors of linux.
I do like being able to make my Desktop Environment look the way I want.
I like the look of the widgets better. : )
That is really it.
VIVA LA CHOICE!
I cant believe this guy, and I cant believe the staff for presenting this as “KDE Vs. Gnome”.
This is pure anti-gnome propeganda! compare the good stuff about KDE Vs. the bad stuff at gnome.
This is cr@p.
What I do is just ignore it. I mean – I think th vast majority of people recongnize that everyone wants something different. So who cares if they use X or Y. As long as they’re _happy_ using it then – the more power to them.
problem with KDE & QT is the license. it’S GPL not LGPL like Gnome.
“problem with KDE & QT is the license. it’S GPL not LGPL like Gnome.”
not familiar with the differences? i know little of the Licensing schemes so could you clarify?
The difference in licenses have to do with development only. There is a free software license for QT, but in order to use it, you need to only produce open source software.
Other than that, the license does NOT affect users at all. You can package it up, redistribute it, even code for it, as long as you produce open source, non commercial software. After that, it’s like $1200 a license.
Most users won’t care about the license, they want the software. If developers don’t like it, they’ll use something else, it’s a moot point. The KDE group decided to use QT, it was their decision to make, they made it. If people won’t code for it (but people ARE coding for it), then KDE won’t have commercial applications. TheKompany ( http://www.thekompany.com ) is making commercial applications in QT, people have accepted this license. I don’t see any problem.
If you want to develop non open source, commercial software and not pay licensing fees, don’t use QT, you can use an LGPL product like GTK. Just don’t make any changes to it or you have to give them back.
GPL for the most part excludes binary only distribution of software that links against gpl licensed code, whereas LGPL allows for linking to lgpl libs by closed source programs. Thus, lgpl libs are favored for closed source commercial development.
However I find supreme irony in that after all the lisence wars were said and done with, Gnome is the desktop that is more commercially exploitable and KDE ends up being the more GNU approved (the don’t call it the lesser gpl for kicks) desktop.
I don’t like the so-called flame wars where the only “evidence” presented is “I like this feature” vs “I don’t like this feature.” I mean, it’s like the Pepsi challenge: so f–king what?! However, this author went at it from a technical standpoint, using facts instead of his personal taste (for the most part). This type of reporting is helpful, as long as what is addressed affects the end users (if not, it’s just esoterica).
“This is pure anti-gnome propeganda!”
Grow up and quit whining. This article doesn’t force you to choose KDE if you don’t want to use it.
This article offered lots of criticism of GNOME, but no real redeemable value. I think it is OK to compare GNOME with other DE, as long as you can do it in a professional manner and provide USEFUL comments. This article boiled down to a pissing contest between GNOME and KDE, which nobody usually wins (especially if it is windy). Had I been a GNOME user (not to mention a developer), I would have been seriously offended…. I think constructive criticism is the name of the game.
It seems as of late there are more and more sensationalist articles being published by these “reputable” Linux sites. These articles get reciprocated around several popular news sites, because the editors (janitors?) of these sites know they will receieve lots of traffic and comments on their websites, which in turn get them more exposure and thus more money from advertising. In the end it just makes the site look juvenile to anyone but 14-year old zealots who seem to feed off of this.
The guy has some pretty good points, I rather see gnome listen to him, think about it, and make use of his observations instead of thinking about it as an attack. If all gnome developers either like this way of doing it, or disagree, that is fine. But simply saying that they guy is wacko is not that constructive. I found all of what he said quite correct myself, and I rather release a new version and say “look, I could do better!” than continue to do bad.
Just my opinion, and I am still compiling X so I can test the latest KDE
>>>smoerk:
“problem with KDE & QT is the license. it’S GPL not LGPL like Gnome.”
So what’s wrong with GPL?
Why was the article posted? It seems like total flamebait to me. People who like GNOME will use it. People who like KDE will use KDE. This whole “desktop wars” idea is nothing more than a myth. This guy is fanning the flames of a non-existent battle, he needs to get a life.
I hate these Gnome vs KDE debates. Its not which desktop is which apps work! The contining “battle” of the desktop drives a MS sized wedge through the Linux desktop efforts.
So what’s wrong with GPL?
Nothing, really. The only “problem” with KDE is that any application you develop using the Qt libraries MUST be GPL (not only open source as somebody said in a previous post).
This is quite ok for most hobbyists/home users, but it was also the main reason (C++ vs C being the other) why Sun chose Gnome instead of KDE; they can’t ship a desktop environment and then say “you cannot develop commercial apps for this unless you pay $1200 to TrollTech”.
It’s a difficult balance, but for Linux to be able to compete with Windows you really need a development environment with LGPL libraries. Imagine if you could only use gcc to compile if the resulting code was 100% GPL…
“you cannot develop commercial apps for this unless you pay $1200 to TrollTech”
While I agree that they can’t do that, I really can’t see any major software house writing Solaris based software that can’t afford this price. I have a feeling that if you can’t afford the tools you want/need for your software, or if you think that you won’t be able to make back said $1200 per developer (most software on this platform costs this much per license), then maybe you shouldn’t be doing closed source software development.
This isn’t a free industry, asside from a select few projects that have made it as far as they have and are as popular as they are: for every one of those there are 20-30 projects that will be dwarfed by their proprietary commercial alternatives.
It’s a great altruistic belief that you will bless your code unto anyone that wants it, for free…but you do not have to do it for free. As an example:
Let’s say I write this fantastic Photo editing software for linux, on the caliber of Photoshop, only better. This is for linux. Instead of the GTK libraries, I want to do this in QT because it allows me to do more of a cross platform release if I choose to.
Now, I have two choices, release it as open source and not pay for the $1200 licensing fee (which at the price of photoshop, would only take 2 or 3 sales to cover) or I could write it closed source, pay the $1200 and already be able to sell this product for Windows, Linux, possibly the Zaurus, etc…
Both choices make sense, I could keep my software open source, and only release the code to your customers, requesting (not demanding) that if they like this product and would like to see future development, it’s important that I recoup my finances. They then can make the choice to either re distribute this software, or keep it to themselves. The are not forced to put the code up on their websites, thus keeping my 3rd party free distribution down to a small percentage.
Anyways, I could always just charge for support, manuals, updates, plugins, certification. It can work, open source development can make you money, just people aren’t catching on to it yet. They are hung up on IP.
No one knows your product better than those who wrote it, why not have them support it as well, trademark the name, then no one can write books on it without payin a fee…you can do a number of things to keep income.
This has branched too much already, I apologize for the the length and the off topicness of my rant pertaining to the post I am responding to.
This really wasn’t a very good article. As evidenced by the title “How GNOME became LAME”, it is little more than the flamebait. The writer seems to miss the fact that Gnome2 was pretty much a clean break from Gnome1.x included a dramatic change in design philosophy. The whole file dialog problem, though valid, is mainly due to Gnome2’s immature state (I think it is on the work list from GTK 2.4, Gnome 2.6).
I find it somewhat amusing how much KDE fans love to bash Gnome. Maybe I’m wrong here, but I don’t sense as much bashing coming from the other direction. So far, RedHat 8.0’s Gnome desktop has a better “feel” in my opinion than any other Linux desktop I’ve seen (though a few pieces are obviously missing).
Just to chime in on the license issue, I personally prefer LGPL to GPL for toolkits because I want commercial applications to make their way to Linux. Granted, licensing fees for QT aren’t terribly high, but it is a philisophical difference.
They both suck 🙂
Seriously. What they’re both missing is a user-centric approach. One of the best rules of thumb I ever heard is to never let the engineer design the UI. Whoever wrote the code has a completely different view on the whole issue than the 99% of the world that focus more on the task than the code.
They both suck 🙂
Seriously. What they’re both missing is a user-centric approach.
Have you ever visited the KDE website(s) (I can’t speak for GNOME, I haven’t used it recently), looked through any of mailing list archives etc..
KDE are seriously open to user input, it is impossible to have a ‘user-centric’ approach without user input (how many times have Microsoft got it wrong by deciding what the user wants).
If you’re a user and you know what you want, then spend some time telling developers, in a constructive manner.
If you’re a user and you know what you want, then spend some time telling developers, in a constructive manner.
I’ve been subscribed to various Gnome- and KDE-UI lists long enough. User-centric doesn’t mean to add a “don’t show this dialog again”-option after a user requests it. It is about developing use-cases, test-scenarios, case studies and guidelines before writing a single line of code.
I found a nice writing from Miguel de Icaza on one of the GNOME mailinglists. Even he admits that GNOME has fallen behind. Read the rest on your own.
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2003-March/msg000…
I’m no programmer, so I can’t judge the underlying technology. I prefer KDE’s user experience: its consistency, its great applications, its overall look and feel. Gnome is a lot less accessible, IMO. But there’s certainly room for two desktop environments in the Linux world, or more. In the end it’s about you having the freedom to chose and respecting the choices other people make. Play nice.
“However I find supreme irony in that after all the lisence wars were said and done with, Gnome is the desktop that is more commercially exploitable and KDE ends up being the more GNU approved (the don’t call it the lesser gpl for kicks) desktop.”
yes. I also get a big kick out of this.
Another is that Miquel has indicated that his preference
would be to do Gnome 4 or 5 in c#, which is a creature of
Microsoft
Adam, I happen to be a 14 year old zealot who’s used over 7 different distro’s, uses them daily, bought 2 of them and works lots in the community to help. I have never flamed or anything, and also found the article to be bad. Age doesn’t always matter, just sometimes.
the resources out of a system. Small WMs like IceWM, Blackbox, mwm (motif wm), or lwm if you want something really minimal, give me everything I need from a wm – the ability to display X clients
.
the resources out of a system. The console gives me everything I need.
Just because you don’t need it, doesn’t mean sucks. Even if you were joking, this is an annoyingly prevalent attitude.
…er, with helpful widgets that is. You don’t even need a wm if you can go without buttons, bars, menus etc.
Unfortunately the console doesn’t allow me to display X clients :0
fulled with lies and cheap rhetoric rivalling that of General Kadaffi.
1) GNOME DOES NOT USE A REGISTRY LIKE WINDOWS, repeat that over and over until it because ingrained and embedded into your brain. Microsoft uses a BINARY REGISTRY for ALL SYSTEM CONFIGURATION, GNOME USES AN XML REGISTRY TO HOLD THE GNOME CONFIGURATION, again, repeat, repeat and repeat until it becomes ingrained into your brain.
2)This person HAS NEVER used GNOME 2.2. He has done the typical zealot thing, upgraded to the latest and greatest product then compared it against the last experience he had with a previous version of the product.
3) He praises KDE to the hills yet, he never actually addresses the core problem with KDE, IT SUCKS ON ANY OTHER PLATFORM. Run it on Linux, no problems, run it on FreeBSD or some other UNIX varient and don’t expect anything like the Linux counterpart.
4) What the hell is wrong with the “file picker”? I have no problems. I can pick a file without an issues, so why make a song and dance about a non-existant issue?
5) He goes into CORBA vs. KParts, yet gives no concrete reason why he perfers KParts over CORBA. Again, he is making a judgement based on his GNOME 1.x experiences.
6) He whinges about the “file manager” and “window manager” being too basic. Here is a hint sun shine, less is more. Almost every newbie user I have given a GNOME 2.x tutorial to have found that the configuration options are MORE THAN ADEQUATE, in fact, MOST DON’T EVEN TOUCH THE CONFIGURATION. Idiots like you keep dragging out the Joe User senario. Here is a hint sunshine, most users I know stick to the default setup of their desk, some may tweak, but NO ONE goes to the extreme of some people, like modifying themes and so forth.
with all of the points abobe except #4, the file picker does need an overhaul.
I like teh structure:
Folders|Files
but everything else needs improvement.
matthew … haven’t i told you this already, don’t feed the trolls.
everything he wrote is a bias, he doesn’t come across as serious.
If he is serious and this isn’t linuxworlds idea of a joke, i’m sorry linuxworld i will never again read your site and furthermore i wish all the misfortunes that happened to salon unto you!
“The only “problem” with KDE is that any application you develop using the Qt libraries MUST be GPL”
I’ve heard in the past that this is not true. I was under the (wrong?) impression that you could pay for a comercial Qt liscence from trolltech and use it with a closed source product.
And on window managers, I usually use KDE but FluxBox kills it in speed. If FluxBox had a start button and a taskbar it would be THE Linux WM.
Sometimes it’s interesting to see how people divide into camps with rather passionate preferences for one piece of software or another. It’s no different than people choosing anything else in life — a car, a political party, computer hardware, a date, etc.
Reminds me of evolution at work, ‘natural selection’.
Personally, I dislike GNOME because of political reasons, not because of technical reasons. And on the other hand, I appreciate its prescence as it is helping to evolve KDE and other software.
Many people are conditioned to avoid conflict and confrontation and don’t have the fortitude to read “this vs. that” articles.
I think the spy vs. spy / distro vs. distro / a vs. b articles are actually helpful… they accentuate why someone likes something or hates something. And that’s good to see.
An astute observer may notice there is very little comparison done in the Mac and Windows worlds. Mostly because there is no real choice, no natural selection, and thus very little evolution. Windows in particular has stagnated for years.
I’ll take the wild and wooly Linux world anyday over a dull cubicle in Microsoft land or a shiny freestanding work area in Mac land.
I’ve heard in the past that this is not true. I was under the (wrong?) impression that you could pay for a comercial Qt liscence from trolltech and use it with a closed source product.
Yes, you are correct. You can purchase a commercial license and create closed-source commercial software using Qt for any platform, including Linux.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend anyone who is underage and uses an alternative OS such as linux, I meant a zealot who blindly follows something as a religion. I think it’s great that there are some younger people getting into free OS’es as opposed to trying to become the next l33t h4x0r. 🙂
> 1) GNOME DOES NOT USE A REGISTRY LIKE WINDOWS, repeat that
> over and over until it because ingrained and embedded into
> your brain. Microsoft uses a BINARY REGISTRY for ALL SYSTEM
> CONFIGURATION, GNOME USES AN XML REGISTRY TO HOLD THE GNOME
> CONFIGURATION, again, repeat, repeat and repeat until it
> becomes ingrained into your brain.
This depends on the view of the things. By writing in capital letters you won’t get me change my mind. GConf is indeed not like the Windows Registry because THE Windows Registry was done correctly. But the combination of Schemas, GConf and GConf-Editor implies it to be similar from functionality of the Windows Registry – thus makes it Windows Registry like – thus what the majority of people using GNOME these days really thinks. A tree that you uncollapse and where you change values. Another extra complication while configurating a GNOME system.
Now people defending it usually argue with the high administrative possibilities it has. Unfortunately these have never been proven. Does anyone of you ever used GConf on a large System with more than say 50+ people and set any global values for them ? I doub so.
People also argue about the ability to have it use different backends. Once again this is only a theoretical thing. The DB3/4 backend that is also shipped with GConf never made it into a usable version and is included totally broken within GConf the XML backend (default one) works. There was a roumor that someone wrote another backend based on writing similar files such as the old gnome-config one but this rumour never came true. In my personal opinion different backends only complicates things, you then have hard times ever changing your home .gconf keys with the .gconf keys at work as soon as these are stored using different backends. With the old common way of storing configurations, such as the old gnome-config or the way KDE did you simply tar it up and untar it at work. Have you tried taring up a LDAP backend config stored setting and untar it at your work where you use XML backends ?
From the various issues with Schema files for developers which adds another complication during development phase i don’t like to write now. Simply ask anyone who seriously used GConf and Schema files. I recall this to be a hell during development of Galeon. I still have the pictures and sentences in my mind when Marco (Galeon Developer) hit his head against the wall because GConf was full of crack.
The issues with some (this means 2-3) applications I got from default GNOME 2.2 installation are really on crack every application used to install his GConf Schemas correctly except 2-3 programms who either crash on first startup because of missing Keys and Schemas file or showing up an Dialog at start telling one that the GConf settings are not installed correctly. Please not installed correctly ? It can’t go more correctly than it is right now. Specially for someone dealing with GNOME every day such as I’m doing. After investigation I found out that the programms who have these issues where faulty. Reported it to b.g.o and till today nothing got fixed. I know some of you will come up just for the sake of arguing that *your* settings are all OK and not broken while it is for anyone else AND proven. Anyways it’s just one example.
It’s easy for me bringing up many more issues about GConf. All the issues I know summed up makes up the question if all in all GConf is really that much better than the old way of doing configurations. And my personal answer to this is *hell NO* therefore I encourage everyone who NOT LIKE GConf. No offense to Havoc Penningtion, he might be a really capable programmer but he definately shot the bird with that BAD BAD implementation. It should disappear better today than tomorrow.
I think it’s great that there are some younger people getting into free OS’s as opposed to trying to become the next l33t h4x0r. 🙂
From what pl4n3t are you? I thought Free OS-es are the the 1337357 thing in the world.
Well, on a more serious point. Personally I like kde better than gnome because I like it looks better and because it is easy to tweak to my liking (for me) while it needs little maintainance in daily use, it Just Works. I am sure that gnome is perfectly fine as well, but when I first tried both desktops kde fitted my needs better. Actually I use one gnome program on a daily base: gdm takes 45 seconds less to start on my laptop than kdm and it looks fancier too, so I am hooked 🙂
And fluxbox is my “if all else fails wm” and it is quite likeable as well, but the problem is that contrary to what my brother thinks since I convinced him to use linux last month (I happened to have packed mandrake in my bag, I didn’t want to inflict gentoo on him since he is on dialup), I am not a console junkie, really 🙂
“3) He praises KDE to the hills yet, he never actually addresses the core problem with KDE, IT SUCKS ON ANY OTHER PLATFORM. Run it on Linux, no problems, run it on FreeBSD or some other UNIX varient and don’t expect anything like the Linux counterpart. ”
This is not true. KDE works very well on FreeBSD. Would you like to tell me which major KDE application does not run on FreeBSD?
I am not a fan of the desktop environment, I like a window manager with a launcher and a windowlist is nice-
icewm, windowmaker and blackbox are all good.
For a filemanager I use midnight commander and for a text editor I use SciTE, you load very little and launce any apps you want, I don’t like being bound to KDE or GNOME, with all the crap they come with.
This is whe way I like it. I understand a lot of ppl like an environment…
The arguement pissing match garbage is lame. There are plenty of good valid criticisms you can throw at Gnome. My favorites are a poor file selector and a file types and properties application that needs some serious work and a total re-write of that horrible gconf-editor (someone is working on that one BTW).
There are others. Gnome 2.x was a big change for gnome but things could be better and I admit it.
Still, there are annoying KDE things as well — huge, cumbersome hard to navigate control center is my favorite, Konsole is a huge pain in the butt in the way it handles TERM and other variables, the defaults are option packed (the file selector) but it feels crowded sometimes and the ways things are laid for a number of different dialogs is a confusing mess. Havoc can get all radical in his approach but how many options do you need to pack into a dialog box.
This is just me. You all might feel the exact opposite. However, calling other project lame and getting all pissy about it is like a 14 year old reader here noted that boorish, ignorant behavior is not something bound by age.
I doubt you’ve used it on freebsd, otherwise you would have come accross the most bloody obvious one, and that is, the slow performance, then followed by applications that link to QT, namely Opera, continuously crashing, the control panel, next to none of the features work. Just look at the font configuration for example, click on the anti-alias box, apply, reboot and see how you X server fails to load. Gee, real great.
Just to clarify that:
the KDE libs are under LGPL as well.
And Qt for X11 is licenced under three licences, one of them being GPL.
I prefer to use both KDE and GNOME. I use them both at the same time. And I like them.
However, I have never liked Ximian. I feel like it is infecting my desktop with bloated cheaply written code by ex M$ code monkeys, rather than skilled professional programmers. That’s a personal distrust that has very little to do with the quality of their software or employees. I personally feel like they are the reason GNOME is having such a hard time attracting developers. Between Ximian and Sun and the heavy use of Python and Bonobo. But look who’s doing all the work with GNOME 2.x.
So what am I saying? I don’t know. Thanks for all the free code.
Hi, I just found another writing on Slashdot that sounds really serious. No biassed or zealot writing. I think it is a good writing made by a common user, well written, objective and I assume it to be correct. Since I value that writing as really cool I think I gonna share it here.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=55517&cid=5417368
Some traffic, some attention on /. (esp if you throw the fact that /. trolls are much more favourable to KDE)… and my decision to block linuxworld.com (it goes to my ‘forbidden sites’ place, thanks squid).
And now I know why I can’t use KDE. Mosfet and Nicholas Petreley use KDE. KDE Core team should prohibit them to use their DE.
“One of the best rules of thumb I ever heard is to never let the engineer design the UI.”
Damn but that’s a good rule! Now, Stew, if you could just email your comment above to all the major OS developers (do it several times a day for a few weeks, if you can), we might see some excellent changes in the desktop experience. Then again…
Cesar Cardoso you have a totally unbiassed opinion. No seriously your reply is nonsense. I think that Nicholas Petreley made some good points in his article and we would be ignorants if we simply ingore them. Even if Slashdot may not be the right place to talk about this but in first the article came up on another place and only discussed on Slashdot. We can’t fool him because the writing came up there.
I give you a slightly simple example and I like to keep it simple:
Linux is split into 2 groups the KDE ones and the GNOME ones. Most of the KDE users and developers fully stand behind it like a rock. GNOME on the otherhand is split up itself into two groups. Those that like the changes as is now and those that are unhappy with various changes (including me).
There is no reason to either put GNOME or KDE into dirt for no reason, what he basically did was a clear comparison between both desktops and he brought up advantages and disadvantages. I share a bunch of his opinions, replied to him and thanked him for his article and told him that there are also a lot of GNOMER’s who share the opinions he made. At the end it’s up to the GNOME developers to actually start listening to their users.
Why can’t the KDE designers just get the artists who worked on the gnome UI to do KDE.
I used KDE in SUSE (because they made it too hard to use Gnome) but gnome always looked better, and now I prefer using Gnome in Red Hat Phoebe.
I find that the fonts are much nicer in gnome. I like the look of Gnome better as well. Nautilus may be buggier than Konqueror, but, damm is Konquerer ever ugly, and no theme can fix it.
Also, I don’t understand why we have to use a browser for the file manager.
If there is an attractive way to do something, and an ugly way, it seems KDE picks the ugly way. If I want to attach a terminal command to the panel in gnome, all I do is pick an icon and enter the command in the preferences. In kde there is a little “run command” dialog box on the panel. Is that ever ugly. There seems to be no other way for me to add a command that isn’t in the menu. For a desktop that has so many (too many?) options in other ways, that does seem a bit of an oversight.
And I don’t know if it’s just because of the red hat beta, or the new kde 3.1, but I can’t get the kweather applet to display more than a panel division bar on the panel.
That said, I do think that red hat neglects kde to its peril. The applications in gnome ARE good, but the k-apps are getting better.
As for a unified look accross applications, as long as there are icons and menus in the same approximate places and order, why should I care. I prefer that it look good on the screen before worrying about whether the print icon is in the same place in every app. I have no difficulty or confusion using and switching between 5 or 6 gnome apps, 2 or 3 kde apps, and 2 or 3 Windows apps at the same time (exagerated case).
Still, kde should really let the gnome artists give them some advice.
> Why can’t the KDE designers just get the artists who
> worked on the gnome UI to do KDE.
because they work under contract of Ximian ?
> I find that the fonts are much nicer in gnome. I like the
> look of Gnome better as well. Nautilus may be buggier than
> Konqueror, but, damm is Konquerer ever ugly, and no
> theme can fix it.
well, kde uses the same fonts as gnome (they only chosed other default ones) and the fontengine they use is also the same Pango depends on freetype whatever and the same is being used by QT. for the theme issues, is this the reason why on art.gnome.org people present more KDE ported themes than vice versa ?
> Also, I don’t understand why we have to use a browser for
> the file manager.
well you may laugh konqueror if you refer to it is neither of them, neither a filemanager, neither a webbrowser it’s basically a cage around kparts where you can embedd everything into konqueror. see konqueror as some sort of empty window without anything inside. kparts makes it alive so why not use a filemanager as webbrowser where is the point ? it’s actually nice.
> it seems KDE picks the ugly way.
what a bullshit.
> If I want to attach a terminal command to the panel in
> gnome, all I do is pick an icon and enter the command in
> the preferences.
… exactly and now go and change that launcher again and you are stuck with deleting and creating a new one.
> In kde there is a little “run command” dialog box on the
> panel. Is that ever ugly. There seems to be no other way
> for me to add a command that isn’t in the menu. For a
> desktop that has so many (too many?) options in other
> ways, that does seem a bit of an oversight.
jesus, really your reply is anything else than serious. so much offensive shit. i mean if you would at least make value or point some serious issues but all you write is biassed shit.
> That said, I do think that red hat neglects kde to its
> peril. The applications in gnome ARE good, but the k-apps
> are getting better.
well somehow i find the k-apps far better than the ones offered on gnome. at least they work together, look unified, have a nice layout of widgets and you can embedd everything into something else. even kivio is far better than dia on gnome, where it crashes as soon as you enter some values. (this reminds me on broken rational rose on windows 98 where you enter 3 letters for a use case and see a crash
.
> Still, kde should really let the gnome artists give them
> some advice.
and how does that advise looks like ? ‘hey kde we managed to piss half of our gnome users off because we know what they wan’t now let us continue destroying kde’ … well that’s also a way to get rid of kde.. gnome can’t become better so the better one has to become as worse as gnome is today.
sorry to gnomers, this wasn’t meant to be a rant but offensive writings sometimes deserves offensive replies.
>> Why can’t the KDE designers just get the artists who
>> worked on the gnome UI to do KDE.
>because they work under contract of Ximian ?
So maybe they can get some other artists.
> I find that the fonts are much nicer in gnome. I like the
> look of Gnome better as well. Nautilus may be buggier than
> Konqueror, but, damm is Konquerer ever ugly, and no
> theme can fix it.
“well, kde uses the same fonts as gnome (they only chosed other default ones) and the fontengine they use is also the same Pango depends on freetype whatever and the same is being used by QT. for the theme issues, is this the reason why on art.gnome.org people present more KDE ported themes than vice versa ?”
But the fonts still look better in gnome. On red hat phoebe the fonts in every application work. In kde it looks like every app uses different font-rendering, and in Mozilla especially, they are not pretty.
> Also, I don’t understand why we have to use a browser for
> the file manager.
“well you may laugh konqueror if you refer to it is neither of them, neither a filemanager, neither a webbrowser it’s basically a cage around kparts where you can embedd everything into konqueror. see konqueror as some sort of empty window without anything inside. kparts makes it alive so why not use a filemanager as webbrowser where is the point ? it’s actually nice.”
I’m a new user to Linux so I didn’t know that. It’s just that I’m familiar with windows, and I never liked having to use Microsoft Explorer to manage file, and when I percieve the same thing being done in linux it irritates.
> it seems KDE picks the ugly way.
“what a bullshit.”
> If I want to attach a terminal command to the panel in
> gnome, all I do is pick an icon and enter the command in
> the preferences.
“… exactly and now go and change that launcher again and you are stuck with deleting and creating a new one.”
The point is that I don’t want to change the launcher. If I have to start a term window and type my ssh login every time I connect, I’d much rather click on an icon and leave that icon on the panel or in a drawer.
> In kde there is a little “run command” dialog box on the
> panel. Is that ever ugly. There seems to be no other way
> for me to add a command that isn’t in the menu. For a
> desktop that has so many (too many?) options in other
> ways, that does seem a bit of an oversight.
“jesus, really your reply is anything else than serious. so much offensive shit. i mean if you would at least make value or point some serious issues but all you write is biassed shit.”
I am describing my experiences and what I don’t like about kde. I don’t understand why you percieve it as offensive, and why you insist on taking a religious stance and become immediatetly abusive. And perhaps my experience has made me biased. That does not mean that I write shit. I merely write about the issues I have with kde.
And as for making a point, I fail to see what point your own comments have made.
> That said, I do think that red hat neglects kde to its
> peril. The applications in gnome ARE good, but the k-apps
> are getting better.
“well somehow i find the k-apps far better than the ones offered on gnome. at least they work together, look unified, have a nice layout of widgets and you can embedd everything into something else. even kivio is far better than dia on gnome, where it crashes as soon as you enter some values. (this reminds me on broken rational rose on windows 98 where you enter 3 letters for a use case and see a crash
.”
> Still, kde should really let the gnome artists give them
> some advice.
“and how does that advise looks like ? ‘hey kde we managed to piss half of our gnome users off because we know what they wan’t now let us continue destroying kde’ … well that’s also a way to get rid of kde.. gnome can’t become better so the better one has to become as worse as gnome is today.”
“sorry to gnomers, this wasn’t meant to be a rant but offensive writings sometimes deserves offensive replies.”
Explain to me how I was offensive?
If you wouldn’t talk like this to someone who is next to you, why do you write this way to someone who is far away?
If you DO talk this way to someone who is next to you, you will find very few people willing to talk to you.
If you are a young teenage boy (and you certainly write like one) if someone you are talking to is wrong, you will NEVER convince them, or any observers, that you are right by insulting them. All you will ever convince people of is that it was a mistake to talk to you.
And even if someone else is wrong, you might find that later you will still need them. And after you have insulted them, why should they help you.
> So maybe they can get some other artists.
they have. maybe you gonna try kde 3.1 which was released some days ago their whole graphics are new.
> But the fonts still look better in gnome. On red hat
> phoebe the fonts in every application work. In kde it
> looks like every app uses different font-rendering, and
> in Mozilla especially, they are not pretty.
no this isn’t really true some feedback here:
every application no matter if it is kde or gnome are based upon toolkits. that is the buttons you see, the scrollbars you see etc. these toolkits are the bottom core of either kde or gnome applications. kde and gnome uses both different toolkits but both toolkits are responsible for fontrendering and managing. thus is any applicaiton using either of both tookits are aware of most recent font rendering capabilities. now you mentioned mozilla. mozilla is an standalone application independant to either gnome or kde which recently switched to freetype on it’s own after a long battle between the developers. your assumption that any singular kde app uses different font rendering is therefore a wrong statement. they all use the same roots of font rendering embedded in the toolkit. same to say for gnome.
> Also, I don’t understand why we have to use a browser for
> the file manager.
> I’m a new user to Linux so I didn’t know that. It’s just
> that I’m familiar with windows, and I never liked having
> to use Microsoft Explorer to manage file, and when I
> percieve the same thing being done in linux it irritates.
no problem, i don’t value people of being new or old. i personally like that feature in KDE it’s well thought and personally i think that KDE as a whole is really mature in some situations more advanced than Windows for example. There is nothing wrong copying the good things from Windows since these things have been prooven to work perfectly. I understand that it may irritate you but IMO is better to have a native webbrowser and filemanager than using a filemanager from a different toolkit (environment) and a webbrowser that on the otherhand is totally differently too. summed up a mixture of applications which have different roots of development and different roots of where they grown up.
> I am describing my experiences and what I don’t like about
> kde. I don’t understand why you percieve it as offensive,
> and why you insist on taking a religious stance and become
> immediatetly abusive. And perhaps my experience has made
> me biased. That does not mean that I write shit. I merely
> write about the issues I have with kde.
sorry, but we here in the community hear all sort of stuff every day specially comments made by people who are technicaly not skilled. i mean how easy is it for someone comming up and say ‘boah this one looks pretty nice but the other one looks totally ugly’ while the ugly one is technological far supperior over the other one.
> And as for making a point, I fail to see what point your
> own comments have made.
as if you made a point.
> If you wouldn’t talk like this to someone who is next to
> you, why do you write this way to someone who is far away?
> If you DO talk this way to someone who is next to you, you
> will find very few people willing to talk to you.
i have absolutely no problems saying the same to you if you where here in the same way.
> If you are a young teenage boy (and you certainly write
> like one) if someone you are talking to is wrong, you will
> NEVER convince them, or any observers, that you are right
> by insulting them. All you will ever convince people of is > that it was a mistake to talk to you. And even if someone
> else is wrong, you might find that later you will still
> need them. And after you have insulted them, why should
> they help you.
why do i need help ? at least i don’t go on public places and write out of my ass. it happens i must admit but that’s rarely. whenever i come up complaining about some stuff i make at least serious technological value. well you said that i offended you. well you actually have offended a whole developer and users community who uses KDE. a bunch of thousand people
i don’t even know why people actually WRITE on public places while they know nothing about what they write about.
don’t worry i am a gnome user.
“sorry, but we here in the community hear all sort of stuff every day specially comments made by people who are technicaly not skilled. i mean how easy is it for someone comming up and say ‘boah this one looks pretty nice but the other one looks totally ugly’ while the ugly one is technological far supperior over the other one. ”
It may be technically superior, but that doesn’t mean it looks good on the screen.
“as if you made a point. ”
Yes I did. I made the point that a command dialog box on the panel does not look good.
“why do i need help ? ”
It sounds like you’ve never worked for a living.
“at least i don’t go on public places and write out of my ass. it happens i must admit but that’s rarely. whenever i come up complaining about some stuff i make at least serious technological value.”
This is a public forum. Why does everything have to have “serious technological value”? Maybe sometimes opinions are also expressed. That does not mean that one should get abusive and ranting in response.
” well you said that i offended you. well you actually have offended a whole developer and users community who uses KDE.”
Why are they offended. When I say I don’t like a particular aspect of a tool, and give my reasons for it, why take it personnally? I use Windows every day. If someone says they don’t like some part of it, I don’t get offfended. I use AutoCAD. If someone says they don’t like the way the menus are layed out, why would I get offended? I use a GE mcirowave oven. If someone says they don’t like the layout of the control panel, why would I get offended? If I say I don’t like the way that KDE attaches a command line dialog to the panel, why are you offended?
When you say I write “offensive shit”,or “I write out of my ass”, or “biassed shit”, I get a little ticked off.
” a bunch of thousand people
i don’t even know why people actually WRITE on public places while they know nothing about what they write about. ”
Maybe so they can learn something as well.
“don’t worry i am a gnome user.”
That is nothing to be proud of, nor is it something to be ashamed of.
From the way you wrote, I would have thought that you personnally had written and designed the kde panel. But you just use. Do you get abusive when people say they don’t like your can-opener?
GNOME on the otherhand is split up itself into two groups. Those that like the changes as is now and those that are unhappy with various changes (including me).
Sorry, oGALAXYo, but I can’t understand how people can be unhappy with the new movements on GNOME.
GNOME 1.4 was no competition to KDE, and if GNOME had followed that path it would be not only out of the radar, but also out of existance; probably we would discuss what Sun and RedHat would use as a DE.
GNOME 2 was an extremely needed change of path; the powershift inside the project, the new libraries and the emergence of the UI designers inside the project gave a new life. OTOH GNOME 2 is being usable not only on Linux; I use it regularly on FreeBSD (working on a FreeBSD company has its advantages) and it’s as fast as in Linux.
The users… well, I’m certain the number of dissatisfied is lower than the number of new users attracted with the new GNOME 2 life.
(OK, the unhappy can always fork GNOME, remember that it’s Free Software.)
Nicholas Petreley obviously didn’t understood it, because he’s a troll with a site to troll, the only LinuxWorld good thing is Joe Barr.
The /. post you URLed, oGALAXYo, was lame. Gee, everybody talking about freedesktop.org and collaboration and common standards and the poster was “surprised”! Bad, real bad.
> Sorry, oGALAXYo, but I can’t understand how people can be
> unhappy with the new movements on GNOME. GNOME 1.4 was no
> competition to KDE, and if GNOME had followed that path it
> would be not only out of the radar, but also out of
> existance; probably we would discuss what Sun and RedHat
> would use as a DE. GNOME 2 was an extremely needed change
> of path; the powershift inside the project, the new
> libraries and the emergence of the UI designers inside the
> project gave a new life.
definately i fully agree to this. it’s not that gnome is not nice or full of overall mistakes. no that’s definately not the case and i would be wrong saying this in any case. i luckely didn’t. but some of the things they have decided for are quite stupid and scared people away. they made exactly 3 things that are obviously totally wrong. gconf, button order and customisation.
> (OK, the unhappy can always fork GNOME, remember that it’s
> Free Software.)
no, doing this is plain wrong. forking gnome is the most wrong thing one can do, instead going to fork gnome it would make more sense convincing the people deciding nasty stuff on it to change their road. the slashdot article as bad as some people may think was actually a good thing. gnome needs developers ? good, gnome needs new users ? good. then please don’t scare them away. i am not responsible for all the scared off people who finally decided to swith to kde. no matter what people may think about me as person or not but at the end they are responsible for doing weird things. let’s assume that slashdot may be the wrong place to discuss seriously about gnome. but where do you think is this serious place ? the people writing on slashdot are actually the users and developers of gnome. how many times i heard in the gnome channel that “we don’t read slashdot” and then as soon as something is being written there they all look there and comment on stuff others write. seem that they are really interested in these feedback. i mean it would be good for them to actually listen to what people write no matter if it’s slashdot or not. are their writings containing less values than writings done by others ? or are the only writings that gnome developers like to read those written by NEW people recently switched from WINDOWS ?
> Nicholas Petreley obviously didn’t understood it, because
> he’s a troll with a site to troll, the only LinuxWorld
> good thing is Joe Barr.
well i am not in the position to judge about other peoples opinion to be trolls or not. i somehow am different i take evryones comment as is and try to get some values out of it. have you read slashdot how many pro-gnome people replied there defending gnome. also replying on things just for the sake of replying without even realizing what they have replied ? sorry, but this is not the right way. the right way is to accept the fact that people wander off to kde and that is an alarming sign that there is seriously something wrong with the road that gnome has taken. i know by saying this i may sound really offensive and this is not fair because i may hurt a bunch of persons who worked their ass off on gnome. i don’t like to sound offensive or not thankful for it but i am doing a tightrope walk here by trying to make them understand what’s up.
@oGALAXYo: all your comments here so far reek of intellectual dishonesty (unless there are actually two individuals named oGALAXYo here in which case I apologize to both). You must be one hell of a psychology project, otherwise I’ve never seen anybody as fake and double faced. Forgive me, but I can’t stay quiet any longer. You must be the most angry and disgruntled GNOME user, who lurks around all forums where the word GNOME is mentioned and sows discord and half-baked justifications for baseless criticisms. You are always the first person to jump on anyone that dares complain about KDE, yet you claim to be a GNOME user. You are the only person I’ve seen that swears his head off about the superiority of KDE but claims to be a GNOME user. You may be justified in your anger towards GNOME or its developers. You may even be right about the superiority of KDE but your attitude does not fool anyone. There is more to it.
What do you want to say ?
Couple of points:
NO ONE goes to the extreme of some people, like modifying themes and so forth.
>>>>>>
People choose their car color. My mom rearranges her furniture every other week. Why shouldn’t people change something as important as their theme? I don’t hail from Apple-land, where the overriding mantra is “The Company Dictates How Everything Should Look.” I’m pissed the iPod only comes in white. In the real world, not everyone likes the look of particular car. I’m a big fan of the sleek XK8, and think the Diablo is boxy. I know several Italo-philes who would kill me for saying that. I really don’t think any computer company should be arrogant enough to believe that their products are any different.
2) I’d argue that if you’re going to make things easy, it’s possible to go too far. GNOME 2.2 has done just that. I installed RedHat 8.1-beta the other day, and I had mixed feelings. One one hand, it was truely easy. Everything was very easy (everything autodetected, all configuration tools *very* simple). On the other hand, I felt like I was using Windows. For a serious user, Windows just isn’t configurable enough. My KDE installation has pretty much every configuration option tweeked exactly like I like it. My workflow is an awesome sight. In GNOME 2.x, I can’t achieve that level of configurability. Don’t think I didn’t try. I used it for a full month while my KDE laptop was in for servicing.
“they made exactly 3 things that are obviously totally wrong. gconf, button order and customisation. ”
GConf: what the f*ck is wrong with it? are you trying to pick a fight over a non-existant issue?
Button Order: yes, it does piss one off when the buttons are ordered differently, however, it is not the end of the world. After a couple of hours using it, I got used to it.
customisation: care to go into detail? Again, Less is more. something the tweakers, modifiers and ankle biting n00b’s can’t get your head around. Either you have a bloated unproductive environment with 10000tonnes of bells and whistles like KDE or you have GNOME where they strike the right balance between customisation and simplicity.
Quote:
“GConf is indeed not like the Windows Registry because THE Windows Registry was done correctly”
If you view the windows registry as having been done “correctly” you are very likely to be displeased with gconf. No other development in windows drove me as much away from using windows as the progressive usage of the windows registry. The number of corruption issues that I have had with the windows registry was simply staggering- as a rule of thumb I found that virtually no program ever really deleted its registry entries upon deletion- during the time in which used windows I frequently installed and unistalled software looking for the best combination of applications for the things which I do with my coputer. The windows registry is a nightmare. The GNOME registry(gconf) is still in it’s infancy. I do not believe that it is currently the greatest thing in the world, but it has improved remarkably over the past 8 months and will continue to do so. I look forward to future developments.
And moreover I find that the gconf GUI tool, even in it’s beta state, is already quite usable and works fine for me-and is in my experience primarily only related to the windows registry by name, and only secondarly related in terms of functionality- at no point do both ‘registries’ work the same-my experience with it is totally different that in windows. I imagine that development will lead to the GNOME registry being more robust and easier to manage with multi-user systems, but then again I refuse to damn things when they are just getting started- perhaps I am simply more patient.
your contributions to GNOME are appreciated, even your biting critiques of things- but I hope you can avoid becoming embittered with disappointment- perhaps a dose of pragmatism would help cure jaded disillusionment born of misplaced idealism…..
Windows Registry = Binary Based
GConf = XML Based
That is just the storage mechanism.
That only matters if the storage gets corrupted. Sinec XML can get just as corrupted as a binary file, I don’t see much of a difference.
And don’t tell me “XML is human readable”. A several-hubdred-K XML file with a complex DTD that has binary data base64-encoded in the middle of it, like GConf’s is NOT human readable, except for some weird human.
So, if GConf is better, it must be for some other reason.
Ok, lets put it this way, Gconf is a friggin text file. When was the last time you knew of when the how /etc has gone tits-up?
Have you tried configuring using GConf Editor? atleast with GConf you don’t have thousands of obscure tags like {ksafhdkjoasgfjosahnjgosagjosarngjoaesrngioaenpoifaw} that is supposidly meant to mean something in the Windows registry.
everyone, including microsoft, knows it sucks.
it doesn’t suck because it’s not xml, though.
it sucks because it is a horrible design all around.
1) You seem to have missed my previous reply to you related to GConf !
2) Why should I use GConf-Editor for what reason are people forcing me to use GConf-Editor or gconf-tool to set flags while I was used to do it via normal humanreadable Control Center or Preferences in the apps ?
3) There are no advantages in GConf to be hyped so high. All this stuff I hear and read from various people saying ‘Oh an System Administrator can lock keys for all his 50 users’ and then ignoring the fact that this is only theoretical and never has been proven to work reliable or never has been proven that someone actually has done it.
4) The comments about different backends are a horror nightmare if you ask me. How many times we heard GConf can use different bazillions of backends while there is just one, the default one that seriously works more or less, the DB3/4 backend that comes also with GConf never worked and is horrible broken. Another rumoured backend for LDAP has never shown the light. Needless to say that many backends will make things become more difficult sinc when you want to share your configurations and have different backends then you are hoplessly lost. Say at home you use XML and at work LDAP.
5) The issues with Schemas that many programmers where complaining about. E.g. not installed correctly. Or when apps start they crash because of Schemas not being installed correctly and so on.
6) Then we need to question if we really need such an overhelming technological experiment. The good old way storing preferences in textfiles where far better. Look at the configuration mess we actually have. The author of that article on linuxworld.com pointed it out correctly. .gconf, .gconfd, .gnome, .gnome-private, .gnome2, .gnome2-private. If this isn’t a mess then dunno.
Please go and read my previous reply to you about GConf here on this Thread that you may have missed.
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=2944&limit=no#78492
Dunno, I don’t like either of them neither Windows-Registry nor another System that works similary. People already went off of GNOME because of exactly this. And if they really like to get GNOME somehow fixed and attractive again for their users they will likely going to REMOVE it again in favour to the old common cool way of storing configurations. Simply to tar up, simply to edit via VIM, simply stored in one directory. Easy maintainance. It was told to me long ago that I am able to edit .gconf keys with my prefered editor too but nowadays the xml structures changed and all values and stuff get written into one LONG line.
Please go install gnopernicus on GNOME and then start and configure it normally. Then call up GConf-Editor and look at all the directories it has created. This app alone creates more subdirectories and single keys than whole GNOME on it’s own.
You deal with all sorts of key, capital letter written entries, Mixed letter writen ones, lower case letter written ones. I find myself more busy configuring my GNOME system to suit my needs than I did with GNOME 1.4 or KDE 3.1 (who has all it’s preferences listed in Control-Center’ now I need to go through another extra System to tweak other stuff.
And Matthew, I have had large pieces of /etc go bonkers 🙂
There is a project to make a better configuration editor is in the works by a guy nicked as dbrody from the gnomesupport forums. I honestly think that over half the anger of the gconf stuff is the fact that the editor mirrored the travesity that is the windows registry editor.
It is a GOOD thing to have all the configuration options in one place. Application developers however can still create stupid .<whatever> dirs instead of created subdirs in the .gnome2 structure or whatever but hopefully that will go away slowly soon as developers catch the clue.
BTW, part of the reason the MS registry is a pain in the ass is the fact it is in a binary db format. Plain text configs may seem antique and hard to secure but they are a lot easier to restore and fix especially on a heavily hosed system.
These speak for themselves: The first link gives you a clue about the identity of AC.
http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=771&postdays=0&posto…
http://dot.kde.org/1039281841/1039433529/1039458555/
http://dot.kde.org/1026495633/1026605760/1026609253/
http://dot.kde.org/1030073479/1030312967/1030323989/
Minkwe, you do know that “AC” means Anonymous Coward, don’t you?
A couple of things that I think would be really good for Gnome.
1. Get a freeze on GTK for a long while. Work to make it perfect and leave it like that for 5 years. Discourage hacks and use the longer timeframe to really polish it up. These moving API targets really hurt GNOME. As a general rule, everything that could be a dependancy should not change too frequently.
2. Adopt Gecko as the official HTML engine and embed it in GTK/GNOME. Thus every app that need HTML would link against it. Developers should not be afraid to mke decisions for their users, otherwise they should not be developing. No, choice is not an excuse here.
3. Quickly adopt a multimedia framework (Gstreamer), and server (Media Application Server), to service GNOME and build multimedia environment around these. A driver framework for multimedia devices like sound cards and Graphics cards. Maybe this should not be a GNOME issue, but it hurts Linux and GNOME.
4. Adopt DirectFB for the next release. We desperately need some cutting edge display technology here.
My rants. I do not care so much about GNOME delivering apps, the base system must be ready for everything multimedia. The apps I can choose and install myself.
> 2. Adopt Gecko as the official HTML engine and embed it in
> GTK/GNOME. Thus every app that need HTML would link against
> it. Developers should not be afraid to mke decisions for
> their users, otherwise they should not be developing. No,
> choice is not an excuse here.
Seriously, as soon as this happens I totally STOP my personal development and LEAVE gnome. No offense but I like to explain you why this is the worst decision they could do. I read this request many times specially from USERS whithout any development skills in the back or USERS who easily write this without having thought about the pros- and cons.
Gecko itself as library would be a good idea. I recall having said the same in the early development days of Galeon “hey we need the Gecko library” but today I totally changed my opinion. Gecko is too tied to the whole Mozilla project, tied to XUL (their own Widgetset for Buttons, Sliders and other graphical elements), tied to it’s own javascript implementation, tied to it’s own system independant core. Besides the fact that the license doesn’t allow it’s source code distribution on a large number of muslim countries. This is covered by the GPL it allows this sort of restriction. Well now that Gecko comes with XUL, JS it basically means you are forced and need to compile the entire Mozilla (Phoenix) package which makes up 30 MB on it’s own. Mozilla a project driven by another team of developers who are NOT involved into GNOME development at all. Look how long it actually took to get Galeon2 support into Mozilla. Let’s assume that when we really depend GNOME on Mozilla (Gecko) and we hit the GTK3+ development road then the API/ABI is incompatible again and how long do you think will it take until Mozilla hit’s with GTK3+ support ? Specially in the Embedded Gecko part ? Will you take responsibility for that ? Begging a team with other developers, other audience, other ideals and plans to quickly port Mozilla to GTK3+ (not necessarily for GTK3+ maybe also other issues, look how long they have fight to get Pango support inside Mozilla. This was a real serious issue since the Programmers liked to do it the PostScript way). Another sentence to XUL. XUL as said is their default plattformindependant Widgetset. I know it compiles in parts from GTK+ for various things but the Widgets, Dialogs, Menus (specially in the JavaScript mode) are XUL the interface shown during rendering IS XUL, the Scrollbar on the right is XUL. The reason why you can’t 100% natively Theme it regardless the fact that the entire Mozilla interface will totally break for the HIG (Human Interface GUIDE) of GNOME. Dunno, in it’s current state having GNOME depend on such a memory slaughter like Mozilla is the worst decision ever made and as good I know GNOME developers they magically magnetically are open for wrong decisions and this at the end will scare another amount of people off. If one day (and we are waiting 2 years now) Gecko will be available as little library only without the XUL mess around it and without the requirements of the need to compile Mozilla then this idea may be interesting but as long as this is not the case it should the hell stay out of GNOME.