Lots of talk and comments about our recent feature article “The Definitive Desktop Environment Comparison” recently (new OSNews comment # record). But what do the readers of this site think? Which is your favorite DE? Update: The poll is down.Note: Sorry guys, I am taking the poll down. Someone cheated (disabled cookies?) and voted for KDE about 45 times in a matter of 2-3 minutes (while the overall rate of the poll was a few votes per minute). That’s not fair and it does more bad to your favorite project than good.
Here are the results until the moment I deleted the (cheated) poll. KDE was still in the lead at that point, but not by much.
What can honestly beat the speed of GNOME 2 (blackbox and wmaker aren’t “desktop environments”, mere “window managers”) with elegance of Nautilus, the nifty system monitor and disk mounter applets built on top of the sweetest toolkit of them all, GTK.
I can feel a flamewar in the making…
I agree, to a certain extent, with Eugenia. The default KDE install is far too cluttered. Too many gidgets in the toolbars, too many toolbars to begin with, too many icons, etc. However, KDE’s greatest strength is customizability, and I was able to spend a few hours making everything *much* more streamlined. The only clutter left is in the menus, which I can live with. On the flip side, KDE has speed, power, and extreme customizablity. After the initial setup, you just plain spend less time doing things, because the desktop environment is adapted to you, instead of you having to adapt to it.
The NeXTSTEP interface is the One True DE!
For now I vote KDE for sure. That doesn’t mean KDE is my all time favorite. I tend to go in cycles. I do love Gnome 2, and I’m sure I would enjoy OSX if I had a mac… I unfortunately do not. Anyways, as of this moment, it’s KDE all the way.
oh how I pine for you…windowmaker is nice, but a NeXT Cube it is not…
Didn’t Windows XP get the best score on the desktop comparisons? I actually dislike the windows xp look quite a bit. I always find myself either putting on a winow blinds theme or (more often) just setting everything to win2k style. Of course, that is only an aesthetic difference.
Especially KDE 3.1; it’s polished, more stable than previous versions and Gnome, faster & customizable.
I have to be real honest and say I don’t have a favorite any more. I like Win2k’s basic DE because it’s fairly straight forward. I like XP’s because of the nice little things it adds to 2k’s, the grouping of tasks in the start bar being a big one right now. I like BeOS’s because it just feels nice and clean, and of course faster than anything that won’t make your eyes bleed to look at.
I dislike BeOS’s because the Deskbar is never really in a good place, it’s always in the way or an app window is in it’s way. I don’t like XP’s because it’s also a bit “too much”, too much cruft and such. I don’t like Win2k’s because it’s really a rigid feeling place to be, and 2k/XP both use a bit too much screen real estate for my tastes.
I’m hoping Zeta is basically BeOS 5.1d + a lot of XP style polishing of what’s already there. But I’m also afraid that I won’t be able to do key things in it, like Java stuff (I hate that Java is so required for some things, like online banking and what have you) and sharing files that *have* to be .doc’s with other entities. Whee.
I don’t fancy the default KDE setup that much. However, after going through *many* other modern desktop setups that have included the full line of modern Windows versions (from 98, to 2k, to XP), to BeOS, to GNOME, to all of the lightweight X11 window managers such as fluxbox. Nothing I’ve seen comes to “feel” and productivity for me that a properly configured KDE provides for me. The only two things that come remotely close are properly configured GNOME 1.4 setups (I find GNOME 2.x way too limiting), and some of the third party Windows explorer.exe shell replacements such as Hoverdesk. However, the latter always seemed to be missing “something”… probably the level of integration that KDE provides.
Anyways, I think all of these desktop environments have their places. I’ve tried MacOSX a few times, and I liked it, but it seemed to be not great in terms of customizability. It’s not even an option for me since I don’t have a Mac, and am not planning to ditch my huge investment in x86 hardware just that I can run MacOSX
I have used, windows (all version) and both GNOME and KDE,
and i have to say i like KDE the best.
alot of the things Eugenia says are problems, are stuff i like.
I like the file mangr and control panel the way they are.
and KDE withstood the “kids test”
i have a home network with a few PC’s and the only desktop that the “kids” cant really mess up of crash is KDE. so i have there computer 100% KDE 3.1,
KEEP it up KDE!!!!!
-Nex6
giev me teh opengls!!!!!!11!
Ok, I admit it, I voted for Windows 2000.
I’m so ashamed…
Mutiny
GNOME ? is it still being developed ?
Oh by the way the Poll is cheatable simply vote and then reload the page as often you wish.
So, are YOU the one who did that to KDE??
Because KDE had 27 votes and 4 minutes later had 65, while the rate was only a few votes per minute for the whole poll.
Ok, I am taking it down. You people can’t play fair.
While my heart would tell me to vote Gnome (G2), my brain told me I had to vote Windows 2000. MS monopoly or not I honestly find it to be the easiest to use, and most tightly integrated DE there is.
Gnome 2 is IMHO a close second in the usability and integration department – as I find KDE3 to be overkill in many areas. Just my opinion – not trying to start a flame war but I’ll take substance and simplicity over style and over-configurability any day.
I like both KDE and Gnome equally well, for me Gnome seems a little more responsive but KDE is easier to customize. What I don’t like is combining the two as RedHat’s Bluecurve has done. While I like RedHat 8.0 and use it, I miss having the two distinct desktops which I switch back and forth to when either becomes boring.
Well what did you expect from oGALAXYo?
Galaxy sounds like a Mandrake version of Bluecurve to me.
No, I randomly found out. Tried to go back and pressed reload on mistake, repeated this 2-3 times to make sure I don’t tell shit.
I’m interested in a fair vote as everyone else otherwise it makes no real sense.
.
Thanks for flaming me just because I found out that this poll is cheatable. I like to get a clean poll result as anyone else of you.
And to give something back. GNOME is redundant and shouldn’t even considered to be mentioned in a serious Desktop Poll.
I really think you should change the question, it is misleading. You should change it to “What do you think is the best desktop enviroment?”, not our favorite.
KDE is my favorite, but I don’t think it is the best, I just like some aspects of it more than in other DEs. I also like the community, idealistic reasons etc.
I am aware that other DEs are better overall, but the area of the DE which interests me most is better realized in KDE and I value that more than some other areas which other DEs may realize better.
I do not need to believe it is the best for it to be my favorite. Please rephrase your question.
I have to say, the ONE desktop enviroment that truly was easy to use, and was just great was MacOS classic, I’m talking 7.x here. It was extremly simple, did the job, and my dad can actually use it.
If you want to talk more recent, at the moment I’d have to say KDE, but I have recently changed from Gnome. They both have qualities I love, and ones I hate. I cut a lot of the bloat out of KDE. I still use quite A few gnome apps such as Galeon. I like BeOS for its simplicity also, ranking it up there with MacOS 7.x for me for use. But with lack of drivers and support, its not really an option.
Eugenia, I heard there has been cheating on the poll. WHY IN THE WORLD DON’T YOU GET A DECENT OUTSOURCED POLL??! There are plenty of free polls and it si not so ahrd to add some code to your website for it. There are many people who ahve realeased the code for polls of all types.
I voted KDE… Now building 3.1.1 as I post this…
Frankly, I do find Konqueror more ‘stable’ than Mozilla (OK, personal opinion).
In the past, I would vote for E, but E seems to be fading aways (too bad).
I find XFCE is nice, but I like to wait for XFCE4.
Gnome 1.x is GOOD! Rarely give me problem. But compare to KDE 3.1.x is far behind.
Gnome 2.x? I find the it is more easy to crash than 1.x. Not sure why, since I always build everything from source. There could be some problem with the packages that is already installed in my box that coz problem. However, Gnome2 should follow KDE with a better organise source packaging.
I use KDE (not consistantly) since 1.x. With every release, it becomes more and more polish. And I find it quite enjoyable using it. So, when I find Gome2 not as good as Gnome1, I was really disappointed. Maybe I will try Slack9.0 that come with Gnome2.2…
XP? I have really did not use much windows for the last 5 years… So, when I first saw it, I really like the looks! (I know, looks can be deceiving…). However, when I need to take few hours to setup the network, this make me very disappointed. I think there is a mistake in 1 of my installation steps. But I dont really know which one. And the configuration wizard just fall flat. Cant they just follow BSD with rc.inet* to set the IP?
OSX? Saw them… the hardware too eXpensive for me…
>IN THE WORLD DON’T YOU GET A DECENT OUTSOURCED POLL??!
I have tried FOUR so far and checked out 4-5 more which were laughable. Do you know any that are FREE and SECURE at the same time? If yes, give me a suggestion, otherwise stop shouting.
And when I am asking for secure, I need both cookie and PROPER IP locking. But the free ones don’t do that. The best one so far was go2poll.com but even that was cracked by a script kiddie.
Ah, I didn’t get a chance to vote. Though I clearly haven’t used everything out there (though I keep debating whether I should download BeOS 5 rather than wait for one of its spinoffs), I think I’d vote for KDE. I might go with OSX, but I haven’t used it enough to really know it. OS/2? Naw. Never used NeXTStep (a shame). Too bad some peanut head decided to screw it up for all of us, huh?
Hey people… (those who cheat…)
This is simple poll. If your favourite DE lose, that does not mean the end of world. If your favourite DE win, it also does not mean anything much in your live.
Hope the poll will be back soon… Really curious what will be the final result…
It was said in the first post that a desktop environment isn’t just a window manager, while I agree to some extent, I believe a desktop environment can be just a window manager, or even more simple (if there is such a thing). Desktop Environment is simply the Environment of your Desktop, I don’t fee that there should be any requirements place on what a “Desktop Environment” is able to do, because each person is going to want there’s to do something different. I could care less about drag and drop or graphical filemanagment for that matter, does that mean I’m not using Linux as a DESKTOP OS, and that what I’m looking at right now is not my Desktop? No. Anyway, in the department of what I like best I’m gonna go with Waimea + Fancy Launcher (Or Natilus if that sort of thing is really necessary). Waimea is highly configurable, has some cool effects in terms of pseudo-transparency, and is EXTREMELY lightweight, from what I know smaller than blackbox and fluxbox. At one time I was also using a webpage as my desktop environment, if that seems strange well you people just aren’t creative enough. Opera full screen with a page that I had created myself was able to launch all the applications I wanted from quick menus, and using some simple PHP stuff I had a lot of other features aswell. Coolest of all Javascript and CSS make for easy configuration of that environment. Those are just my ideas, so in terms of what I voted, “other.”
Anything over 4 lines of code for Artificial intelligence is bloat.
I know I once again will get flamed for this but: GNOME is only a Desktop not an Environment. An Environment provides seamless integration, consistent applications and a number of application that get’s developed with it. A full round System. The official GNOME announcement was:
GNOME 2.2.1 Desktop & Developer Platform has been released!
It contains basically the libraries and a handful of selected applications but nothing more. At least nothing like an office suite, other apps etc. that Distributions usually ship. A nekkid GNOME Desktop installed as is – is worthless.
It contains basically the libraries and a handful of selected applications but nothing more. At least nothing like an office suite, other apps etc. that Distributions usually ship. A nekkid GNOME Desktop installed as is – is worthless.
GNOME isn’t a distro, so it doesn’t need to come with an office suite etc. that distros usually ship. More importantly, Windows doesn’t ship with an office suite and suchlike, so is it not a DE either?
(BTW: the word is clarification, pronounced with a short A like ‘bat’.)
A little late now that the poll has closed (anyway, this subject is far more interesting than popularity).
I too prefer lean software and agree with Technodev in that most anything can be called desktop environment.
I have used flwm for that reason (now I use blackbox, but might give Waimea a try if it is that small). OTOH, other people (like the rest of my dear family) seem to favour more integrated environments (like oGALAXYo puts it). Formerly, we used XFCE 3, now with a bigger iron it’s KDE for general use.
Nothing against Gnome, it looks very good, but I think KDE is more convenient for non-expert end-users (even more than Windows, btw, which I use at work and has some inconsistencies, IMO).
As a final thought, I’d like to ask Olivier Fourdan (if he happens to read this, of course) whether he has considered using the fltk library? (or why this wouldn’t be a good idea — I heard it’s similar to xforms… pardon me if this is bs).
One possible reason I see is that you must interact with GTK to make apps look the same in XFCE…
I vote GNOME 2, myself. Eugenia, I am sorry that yet another poll was ruined. I guess it just goes to show that there are people in this world that have little else better to do than annoy people they don’t know at all.
And when I am asking for secure, I need both cookie and PROPER IP locking. But the free ones don’t do that. The best one so far was go2poll.com but even that was cracked by a script kiddie.
This isn’t going to help, anyway. What you need is a poll that required a real email address to get the result count.
> Thanks for flaming me just because I found out that this poll is cheatable. I like to get a clean poll result as anyone else of you.
–>Atleast your post didnt get deleted. Mine was during the previous poll, when I found out something wasnt right about it too..
I think its about time we tried looking for some good ‘polling tool/site’ for OSNews. After all, if people try to screw around with the poll everytime, it aint fun anymore.
Btw: had I been able to cast my vote, I would have opted for Other/X11.. (XFCE)
please omit the XFCE part from my previous post. My choice would still have been the same.
I think KDE is more convenient for non-expert end-users (even more than Windows, btw, which I use at work and has some inconsistencies, IMO).
Well It’s exactly the opposite these days. GNOME is more targeted for the non-expert-end-users because of all this stupid simplification and their new target users. KDE luckely didn’t changed their target audience that’s why many people switched (and still switch) from GNOME to KDE because it offers them what they expect. A seamless consistent and integrated Desktop Environment. Sure it has it’s edges and corners but all in all it’s moving in the REAL right direction. That’s why many people belive that GNOME is redundant these days.
When GNOME saw it’s first light it was targeted for the real powerusers and should offer a free alternative to KDE (which on these days depended on QT (which now is GPL)). While GNOME stagnates because people are more busy talking about what new technology they should assimilate next, the KDE people focused on usability and disciplined programmed a really working Desktop Environment which in some areas is better than WindowsXP.
KDE offers so many professional applications where you can’t find any counterparts for GNOME. Please go to http://apps.kde.com/ select configure and only mask KDE 3.0 and 3.1 and then save the settings and then browse the whole Apps list and see (only by looking at all sorts of screenshots) what kind of powerful applications it offers. You search for these apps on GNOME.
What’s cool is that KDE offers a full Desktop Environment with all komponents you need for serious working e.g. Addressbook, Editor, IDE, Office (a real one), eMailer, Filemanager and Webbrowser and much much more. Even Sound works out of the box. A full system with the powers of WindowsXP on Linux. Basically perfect.
Since I came from the GNOME plattform I can easily say that GNOME will never be able to keep up with KDE it got started one year after KDE but has fallen back many more years.
I think that GNOME doesn’t do any good for ‘Desktop on Linux’ because people who comes from Windows and see GNOME for the first time may think ‘Is this all ? This permanently crashing and ugly looking Desktop, no office, no browser, the filemanager stinks, no sound…. jesus how can this compete with Windows’ is responsible that Linux still has a bad reputation as Desktop System. Those who saw KDE on the otherhand probably say ‘Wow amazing, this is like Windows… Not it’s better’ and use it and switch immediately to Linux.
I don’t want to demotivate the GNOME developers now but they should seriously compare what they have and what others (KDE) offer and think again if it really makes sense to push GNOME into everyones mouth specially business. The business people may get a bad impression about Linux and Desktop.
Disagree with Eugenia and her Definitive work…and you get modded down…
I supposed this is the way it works around here.
I think the OS environment experience has about as much to do with the os its letting you interface with as with how useful the interface itself is.
Take for instance Norton Commander, and BlackBox… they both are about the same when it comes to easiness on the eyes. However Blackbox does a whole lot more, mainly because the operating systems people use it on do a whole lot more than ms-dos does. I think environments should be looked at on how well they let you use your machine rather than on wiz-bang features the interface adds. Afterall, your interface is supposed to let you “interact” with your os, not add in missing features.
For me that DE is OS X. Sure its got a lot of stuff it can do, but when it comes down to it – I don’t use all of those interesting things all that much. Instead, I just use for “those really basic things” like, web browsing, email, watching video clips, typing up papers. So typically the only part of the interface I have to deal with in the OS is the dock – and that autohides itself. You really can’t get a much more unintrusive DE in my opinion.
But it’s the “Definitive” poll!!
How can this be a waste of time when it’s DEFINITIVE!!!
Where Eugenia goes wrong, is that there are many different default and customized versions of KDE. Lycoris has it’s own. So does Redhat, Mandrake, ELX, Lindows and many others. You cannot compare KDE in general because of the so many various distro’s, each with their own version. KDE is so easily altered that one distro’s desktop may be entirely different from anothers, and usually is. There is even a win-xp emulating version of KDE. Windoze xp can’t hold a candle to this.
I find any desktop that doesn’t have VERY good support for keybindings to be unworkable. These days I’m using openbox with the epist keygrabber which supports things like emacs-like chain commands, etc. S
My right click menu has simply ‘term’ and ‘exit’. To run say galeon I hold alt, type ‘gal’ and it starts.
I also have a vi-keys like interface for changing windows and moving through different workspaces. I find the more I can keep my hands on the keyboard the faster I can work.
I also have everything set up in a very modular way — I set the geometry for apps which start so that they always start in the same place. Everything is tiled in an almost plan 9 wm like fashion throughout my workspaces, with certain apps being sticky.
>> That’s why many people belive that GNOME is redundant these days.
While I agree with you that KDE is ahead today, I think this duality of desktops create a healthy competition inside Linux. Without Gnome, maybe KDE wouldn’t have come this far in quality — besides, the game is not over yet… what if Gnome blends somehow with Gnustep? (ok, this is far-fetched)
Good hint about apps.kde.com, I’ll go there. Thanks.
>> This permanently crashing and ugly looking Desktop, no office, no browser, the filemanager stinks, no sound….
Don’t know about the crash part, since I don’t use Gnome a lot (most of the time it’s KDE here), but Gnome surely is beautiful. While KDE got serious looks in the last year, Gnome had better artists from the start (like Tigert).
I consider Gnumeric and Evolution to be Gnome apps, as well as Galeon. Nothing to be ashamed of. Nautilus, putting aside the “minor detail” that it is a RAM-devouring monster, looks extremely neat and functional (like Konqueror, too). Sound is more or less solved with ESD, but yes, it could be better.
I consider Gnumeric and Evolution to be Gnome apps, as well as Galeon.
Right, if you prefer apps that have an individual touch and individual function. Get a look here http://www.gnome.org/~chrisime/random/ui/ I can tell you now, no matter how hard they work they will never be able to get as clean UI as KDE has.
Nothing to be ashamed of. Nautilus, putting aside the “minor detail” that it is a RAM-devouring monster, looks extremely neat and functional (like Konqueror, too).
Well yes but you need to look beneath the window you see on the desktop. you need to look at the framework, the tools, libraries that these applications use and then you need to look close to the apps itself, none of the apps that exists for GNOME work the way like KDE apps e.g. exchanging data, exchanging components and so on some GNOME apps do exchange components through bonobo but most of the apps are individual ones. look nearly every GNOME app offer it’s own bookmarks thingy, nothing that shares the bookmarks. on KDE we have one bookmark system which gets used through all the apps because of the object model used in KDE. Look everything in KDE are objects, Bookmark object, Addressbook object, Calendar object, Clock object and so on. Ready made bricks that I can grab and create my own powerful program with. This is still an issue under GNOME. Thumbnails for example. GThumb does it’s own thumbnails, Gimp does it’s own thumbnails and Nautilus does it’s own thumbnails. Re-Invented code… While on KDE there is one thumbnailing object and I take it for my app to use it. These Ready made bricks are responsible that I can easily and fast create new applications. And whenever e.g. The Addressbook object changes I don’t need to care for my app because it get’s automatically changed in my app too since I only use the object.
Sure GNOME has good artists but well I don’t care if my icons look bad or not and I don’t even care if all my apps starts with K or not. What matters is that the apps that I need to work with exists.
uhhhh….so there?
Gnome2 would have been my choice for a number of reasons.. i’m not even quite sure if all of them have to do with gnome itself, but the resulting package of gnome + gtk apps makes it my choice at the moment.
fonts look nicer, a “less is more” attitude that doesn’t forego completeness (comes w/ more than windows, less than KDE..), and overall it comes accross as more polished. case in point, KDE still ships with some old and rather dated icons, styles from 1.0, hundreds of god awful color sets, etc. it seems like its only a happy coincidence that keramic and everaldo’s crystal icons theme go together, because there isn’t really much else to chose from (oh sure, theres a Kmountain of options, but are they any good?)
a big problem i’ve had with kde’s appearance is the reliance on things that look hopelessly pre-rendered and gradients. I actually like the win2k look because at least it seems like explorer isn’t going out of its way to make things pretty.. everything looks like it can be pretty much described with mathematics. the same thing goes with gnome for the most part.. but using KDE makes me feel like my DE is a moving screenshot.. so many little icons and gradients everywhere..
Gnome developers seem to have the courage to say “ok, you don’t need 4 text editors and a word processor, you don’t need 3 seperate font configurations, you don’t need a menu 15+ expandable items long..”
as for others, one of the things that bothered me the most w/ black/fluxbox is that I got stuck in a ‘rut’ of using the same programs for things months and months on end. when i’m just ‘using’ my computer, its fine, but I want to experiment and try new things.. and I found myself simply doing less of this, mostly because i get lazy or forget where my menu file is or how to do something.. I have never liked wmaker (i just think the other choices out there at equal or less bloat are better)
I don’t understand why should some one cheat on a damn poll! Nothing will change for the winner of the poll!
Maybe KDE is just popular?
> KDE still ships with some old and rather dated icons, styles from 1.0
I see exactly zero styles from KDE 1.x. The only two things I can find are the kwm-like kwin client and the KDE “lo-color” (for 8bit and lower displays) icons, which are like KDE 1.2’s (but not like the icons from KDE 1.1)
> hundreds of god awful color sets
Like GNOME, there are only a handful of color sets/themes included by default that I would actually use. That’s true for both
etc. it seems like its only a happy coincidence that keramic and everaldo’s crystal icons theme go together, because there isn’t really much else to chose from (oh sure, theres a
> Kmountain of options but are they any good?)
I don’t personally think many of the “Goptions” that GNOME includes by default are good either. I do however, like that there is a big kmountain of options versus a small amount of goptions. I think the developers are caring more for the users but including more options by default. sigh… i wish things were back to the GNOME 1.x days were I could mess around with GNOME a lot.. I remember when I first used GNOME… it was rpms from “October” (1999) GNOME (1.0.x something) running on my LinuxPPC mac clone… GNOME seemed quite impressive… before that, I had been running KDE (from 1.0 to 1.2), which looked quite professional at that time, but was just not for me… a few months later, I downloaded some unstable GNOME rpms (1.1.x).. and I thought *WOW*.. it had new kinds of panels, new icons, and came with gdk-pixbuf which seemed to make things quicker versus the old imlib2… i also started using sawmill (which became sawfish lateron), instead of Enlightenment. I used GNOME ever since until shortly before GNOME 2.0 came out. I knew that GNOME2 was just not taylored for me and my workflow in the same sense that KDE 1.x and 2.x had not been.. I’ve been a KDE user since. GNOME 2.2 really didn’t do much for me either. What I want to see is GNOME 1.4 ported to gtk2 with some backports from GNOME2 of things like Nautilus and svg support.
There also seems to be better themes/styles/icon sets from the KDE community than the GNOME community right now (opposite from KDE 2.x and it’s absense of good art versus GNOME 1.2 and 1.4). In my opinion, there is quite a bit more good works available from kde-look than from art.gnome. I especially have grown real fond of the noia icon set along with the new version of dotNET (released a few days ago) for widget styling and kbox (lets you use fluxbox styles in KDE) for the window manager decorations.
I’m sorry if this whole post sounds like a huge rant.. It probably is… I should get some sleep right now, it’s 3:30 am
I am a UI designer first and foremost (among other things). It is my job. Therefore, it is of much interest for me.
Does this mean you are/will be designing the Sequel UI?
I’m hoping you will make Sequel a entertainment OS.
Gaming, audio/video editing, etc.
Of course a geek os would be alright too.
If/when the OS is released, please don’t get too upset when we pick apart your UI and complain about what we don’t like.
Complaining is what we do best.
-me
Aw, what a sweet kids around here..
Oh, and oGALAXYo, you’re right.. there are indeed lots of apps over there @ apps.kde.com
What you didn’t mention though is that most of those apps:
1) are unfinished and will usually never be finished as well
2) do not have a nice and/or easy interface
3) are just small toys or helper apps with more code to set the UI stuff than code that actually does something useful
4) are just a clone of their Gtk/Gnome equivalents
5) have no real use at all
Let me give you one example, currently there’s the following selection of ‘newest apps’ at that site:
1) KFanI8K – small helper app, mostly ui code, very little functional code
2) KServiceMenu – small utility, mostly ui code, little functional code
3) BookmarkBridge – small utility
4) SSCDRFE – burning app, worst ui ever – consistent UI eh?
5) Madman – Rythmbox clone, the latter looks way better – oh, and it can ‘play 20 random songs’ c00l!
6) ManifestoStudy – An unfinished ‘marxistick’ text browser
7) Kartouche – KDE translation app, version 0.0.1c – what you say? Didn’t KDE have lots of *finished* apps? (or at least in a usable state)
8) Picwiz – As the description says: “a simple batch picture resizing wizard” – bad gThumb clone
9) KPasswords – password manager – version 0.0.2 – I don’t see any use for this app since it’s really unsafe
10) KMP3Play – very simple MP3 player that uses mpg123 to make it even more simple
11) Kodos – utility for creating regular expressions – regexxer is much better than this clone
Well, as far as I can see, those KDE apps are no better than the Gnome/Gtk ones.
Most are even worse (bad quality, bad ui, little functionality, useless).
Oh and by the way, I’m currently running KDE 3.1
Just so that I can run all of those *great* and *awesome* apps that integrate *really well* into my KDE 3.1 desktop!
*cough*
No, those 3rd party KDE apps aren’t any better than 3rd party Gnome/Gtk apps, far from it.
Personally I rather have a few _useful_ apps, than lots of _useless_ apps.
>>What can honestly beat the speed of GNOME 2 (blackbox and wmaker aren’t “desktop environments”, mere “window managers”) with elegance of Nautilus, the nifty system monitor and disk mounter applets built on top of the sweetest toolkit of them all, GTK.<<
XFce4 + Rox-filer + gKrellm
Et voilà 🙂
http://korbinus.fr.st
In the previous poll, weren’t it there the Gnomers who cheated?
In each case, too bad that some people want to cheat, as everyone can see this does not help in any way.
My vote would go to KDE, with which I am typing this right now. For the ones who like a nice simple theme: why not try the CDE style/colors/window decorations?
For Gnome I wish they make use of what they have. As what I have read here, people are discussing about all kinds of underlying techniques in that Desktop Environment, but I as user don’t care about that. For example: in KDE, KParts may not be the best but I can insert a spreadsheet in a letter. If AbiWord would just implement Bonobo so I could insert a Gnumeric-object in it…
About the mountain of Koptions: there are things where I really like I can configure KDE. For example, I want my menubars at the top of the screen. I admit, I have not used many of the available options, but I never feel they are in the way. As long as I can do what I want, I am happy. I don’t care if you can also do what I do not need, as long as that does not stop me from doing what I do need.
Why? It is like an evolution (not a revolution) of MacOS (pre-X). I love its sensibilities and simplicity. Of course it is by no means perfect, but it better than the majority of the competition. KDE is just too much, XP looks ridiculous, BeOS is nice, a WM is just TOO simplistic and MacOS X looks very intriging, albeit EXPENSIVE. GNOME is the middle ground for me, it runs all the apps I like (Evolution, Galeon, Openoffice) and rarely crashes. Plus, Nautilus, I love. The art direction on it is great, stylish, but functional.
KDE stands for Krayola’s Desktop Envioriment, right?
Not right. KDE stands for “Kool Desktop Environment”.
See: http://www.kde.org/documentation/posting.txt
OpenOffice and Mozilla are neither Gnome nor KDE. Gimp and Gaim are not Gnome but only Gtk, Lyx and Licq are Qt not KDE. Now that having said…
…imagine you installed a Linux system, with the base system and for the rest only Gnome applications. So no OpenOffice, no Mozilla and thus no Galeon. Now I make a list what I want to do with my computer.
– Write a letter: AbiWord
– Draw a picture: –
– Browse the web: –
– Make a spreadsheet: GNumeric
– Type a formula: –
– Read my mail: Evolution
– Make an appointment: Evolution
…now imagine the same system, only with KDE. Also no OpenOffice and also no Mozilla. What do we have then for the same tasks:
– Write a letter: kword
– Draw a picture: –
– Browse the web: Konqueror
– Make a spreadsheet: kspread
– Type a formula: kformula/kword
– Read my mail: kmail
– Make an appointment: kpim
…now imagine a Windows computer. Except OpenOffice and Mozilla, all applications are allowed, because altough Windows does not ship with many applications, but most applications running on Windows are real Windows apps. To make things fair, I place non-free apps between brackets:
– Write a letter: RagTime (MS Word)
– Draw a picture: – (PhotoShop / Paint Shop Pro)
– Browse the web: Internet Explorer (Opera)
– Make a spreadsheet: RagTime (MS Excel)
– Type a formula: – (Ti Interactive / MS Word)
– Read my mail: Outlook Express / FoxMail
– Make an appointment: – (Outlook)
Now count the gaps in both tables… which DE is the most useful one? And which one is the most useless?
If I wasn’t so strict, KDE also runs OpenOffice and Mozilla, just like Windows. The only Gnome app you like is Evolution, but on both KDE and Windows there are alternatives.
“Cheating”? I think that is too strong a word to use. This poll isn’t scientific in anyway at all, so that some people vote a couple of times doesn’t change anything.
Please put the poll back!
No Europeans have voted yet (night, sleeping).
Just check tomorrow how much votes (percentages) probably cheeted and correct (update) the poll.
When you started the poll, you knew some people would be cheating (they always do).
I vote KDE 3.1 or Win 98 (that’s what i’m used too and i can’t full switch yet, ’cause i need Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign. Macromedia Dreamweaver, Flash would be nice too, but Quanta Plus (KDE) could become a real alternative and winner.
I love to read this site and comments, just a pity that my English is too bad to respond a lot.
Back when we thought it had a chance, BeOS was my favourite desktop environment… nice and simple GUI, full-on bash shell in a window.
Now my favourite is Windows XP with cygwin installed. Nice GUI (plus full support for gaming and OpenGL stuff) and a full-on bash shell in a window.
– chrish
In future polls, why not limit votes to one vote/IP?
Should work better than cookies.
I tried a lot of window managers/desktops and like KDE the most. I also like MacOS X GUI.
>>In future polls, why not limit votes to one vote/IP?
>>Should work better than cookies.
uh no.
many here have access to multiple class c blocks.
Today i tryed both and I must say that KDE feels much more responsive than GNOME. To do a simple test click with your right button on the desktop. In KDE the menu will appear instantly while in GNOME you first you see white rectangle and after a little while the letters are drawn.
Switching virtual desktops works much faster in KDE. As for the application start time I don’t see it any faster under GNOME.
@oGALAXYo
For someone who seems to hate Gnome so much why do
you talk about it so much. Why can’t you just leave it
alone? It is not going to be just another KDE that you
can switch to when you get bored. It’s going to be
different (not better or worse). Granted it’s a bit
behind KDE. It did start later and have to write
a toolkit (gkt2) from scratch unlike KDE. But in time
it will have all the applications but it will never
have all the options. If you like it use it, if you
don’t then use whatever the hell you want and stop
bloody moaning. No-one cares. (And youre link is out
of date, a lot of HIG work is being done and will be
done in 2.3).
@Daan
You’re comparison is totally nonsensical. Why would a user
not use gtk apps in Gnome? There really is no visible
difference except that the gtk apps wont use gnome-vfs.
As for mozilla not being a gnome app. The mozilla interface
is not gtk for sure, but the rendering engine can be used
with whatever toolkit you want. Thus we have Galeon. No
reason not to use it in Gnome. And soon we’ll have the
GRE so that you don’t have to install the whole mozilla
package to use the engine.
As for openoffice – I agree that it is no more Gnome
than it is KDE, however I think it’s due for better
integration with Gnome in the future. And Gnome Office
will get there in the end
——
Sorry for the long rant. Anyway I vote Gnome for my own use
and as much as I love it I don’t think it’s fully cooked
yet. It’ll be ready when I can throw it at a newbie and
not have to explain why there is not a full office package
or why the file manger to slow etc… At the same time,
in my experience new user pick up gnome faster than anything
else (I’m not talking window power user here, I’m talking
the average person on the street).
Of the DE’s I currently use XFce, Win XP, KDE, Gnome, Win 2000 and NT. I honestly have to say I find XFce the one I am most comfortable and productive with.
I find the use of pop-menus is far superior to littering your desktop with ikon links or working your way through hierachical menus launched form a button from the bottom left of the screen – linke all of the win 9x derived or influenced desktops above. I know that XFce is not a full desktop environment insomuch as it does not include its own development environment but there it can be considered part of the Gnome project as it is GTK based with a Gnome compatibilty module.
its fast and cuztomizable
how do you know you have the right window manager if you dont install them all?
I think everyone should install every window manager because if you dont have them all how do you know which one is really “good”?
If igonarance is bliss why arent there more happy people?
(screw you windows people im not talking to you nor am I serious)
Definetly Mac OS X, the best unix desktop I found. With Unix i mean that it happens to adhere to some unix philosophies, instead of just plainly copying Windows.
A file manager isn’t a webbrowser, an e-mail client isn’t an organizer, an music player doesn’t play videos,.. That follows a nice unix principle that’s important to me: make an application that does one thing, but does it well. Can you imagine ‘ls’ and ‘links’ being merged? A filemanager isn’t an “application plugin platform”, your desktop environment is supposed to do that.
It is all nicely integrated. From iMovie i can access my photos in iPhoto, and my mp3s from iTunes. No effort at all. I can access my contacts in mail from the address book. I can play a slideshow in iphoto with music that is in an itunes playlist. And you also have the services application menu offcourse. Making a sticky from a mail only requires a selection and 2 clicks. Being able to copy a scheme in omnigraffle with transparency into keynote, works without a problem. I would love to see copying an image from the gimp, and pasting it in kword…
It’s also integrated with the unix core. You can access a samba share in konqueror and nautilus. But when you open a terminal, you can’t access that mounted share! Finder on the other hand, will *really* mount it, and avoiding code duplication at the same time. Or keeping the user information centralised, instead of having the name in /etc/passwd, his kde login-picture in some other file, and his gdm login picture in yet another.
Let’s not forget applescript. Being able to script your applications is a base requirement for any sort of unix desktop. Very easy, and in combination with perl very powerfull.
And cocoa and objective c is so incredibly sweeeeet 🙂
why is it so typical that the kde fanboys, like those kde developer crybabies who whine about bluecurve, are the ones that bash other DE’s and cheat on polls?
that right there is reason enough for me to drop kde and take up gnome. the gnome supporters are so much more adult and don’t attack and whine like kde fanboys and developers.
Why not just modify the poll script to not accept two votes from the same IP (possibly within, say, an hour of each other for dynamic IPs) — It’s not the best solution, but it’s better than straight cookies
> that right there is reason enough for me to drop kde and take up gnome. the gnome supporters are so much more adult and don’t attack and whine like kde fanboys and developers.
Which is why the GNOME’rs cheated on the last poll like this?
We really need a 1 vote/ip poll. A LOT less cheating would go on. I doubt that anyone would really change their IP just to cheat.
KDE could definately use some work, prime example: In Konqueror (i believe in the file view) right click somewhere and expect a menu that is so overloaded it will take up half the screen (1024×768) height or more. A solution for this should be pretty easy: clone finder.
I believe that a web browser is a webbrowser and a file browser should be a file browser.
In their effort to clone Microsoft products the KDE group fell into the swiss army knife paradigm. Trying to be more than what you should. Not even Internet Explorer (and Explorer being they are one) screws up that bad, they don’t cross functionalities between the two modes of operation.
Finder’s default right click menu has two items “New Folder” and “Help”. The former is very useful, and the later is useless (to me at least).
We really need a 1 vote/ip poll. A LOT less cheating would go on. I doubt that anyone would really change their IP just to cheat.
All you need then is from all those using dialin to reboot and dynamically get a new IP and vote again. If somebody really wants to cheat (like o……o) they would do it.
Just because someone decided to cheat in KDE’s favor
doesn’t mean that KDE users are cheaters. It’s just
one person who decided to be an ass – not an army
of overzelous KDEites. Same goes for the last pole
and the person who decided to cheat in Gnome’s Favour.
What about the poll used by slashot? I dont know if you can get that without using the whole “slashcode” thing, but it might be worth looking into.
I’m a Windows person in general and I use WinXP with the Win2K view at home and on my laptop. I have no problems with it, but that’s probably because I learned how to use it. Not that it was difficult to learn, but just that I now have the experience and that I can’t directly compare it with other DEs I’ve used. Windows’ interface fills my needs.
Once in a while I use Linux, and when I use Linux, I use KDE. The last time I used KDE was KDE 3.1 on a Gentoo system and it feeled rather complex (lots of features). But I liked it, although I love a simple system, I just like all those features. It gives more control to the user.
I’m doing an internship at Philips now and I have to work with CDE on a HP-UX environment. CDE is such a simple DE and supports everything I need to do my work (most is command line work anyways), it just works.
And then OS X. I have never used it nor seen it in action. But from all the screenshots I have seen, this seems like an extremely nice system, it seems very simple and consistent to me, and that’s what impresses me that much. I’d sure love to try it one day (or more).
I haven’t or barely used any other DE, so I can’t say much about it. I can’t give any DE my favorite choice, since I like all of them one way or the other. But when I can choose between 2 DEs to do my work on, my preference does go to a simple DE, I love the KISS mentality.
Will you people who cheat on these polls please get a life? And also quit making Eugenia the issue when all she’s trying to do is provide something interesting for us?
I love MacOS X, but it does, in my opinion, have one big flaw. “Finder windows” are really file managers, which is fine in itself, but they are not places where yo can do your work. There is no “desktop” to work in as was the case in Classic. Of course you can minimize the Finder windows to the Dock, so it isn’t a really big deal, but I think it’s probably the biggest reason (aside from there having been too many non-OS X apps until recently) for people not adopting it. Howver, I’ve been saying that 2003 is the “Year Of OS X’ and I still believe that.
I would say something about Be, but it is in transition and it’s hard to talk abot Be with Zeta handing out there – so close, yet so far…:-)
I think the KDE should win the prize for DE that continues to improve the most – and over a pretty short period of time really. This is especially impressive considering its OSS nature. I agree with Raynier – you can continue to customize it until yo get it how you want it.
Eugenia, thanks for trying another poll – I’m sorry there are such morons out there.
It is not my intention to just say Gnome is bullshit and Gnome should disappear. Concurrention is good, both environments will get better.
So now, not to say Gnome is bad, but one should remain positive, here is what would be great to see with Gnome.
– Porting all old applications to Gnome2/gtk2, such as Evolution, Abiword, GNumeric, Gaim/Licq, Lyx…
– Better VFS implementation. Nautilus can browse FTP, Gedit not. This is strange if Gnome has VFS.
– Support for objects – eg. inserting a Gnumeric-document in Abiword.
If Gnome would implement these three things, I think Gnome would be a good alternative to KDE, nothing worse.
Btw. What I have seen and read about OS X, it seems to be great. The application installation, iMail, RendezVous… too bad it only runs on those expensive Macs.
OpenOffice and Mozilla are neither Gnome nor KDE. Gimp and Gaim are not Gnome but only Gtk, Lyx and Licq are Qt not KDE. Now that having said…
…imagine you installed a Linux system
There aren’t any distributions on this planet that would simply include only gnome/kde with none of mozilla, OO, etc. Having said that it’s fair to say you can use both of them in any DE. Also GIMP/Gaim adhere to the user’s current theme …. (the newer version, made using gtk2+), so they are basically gnome2 apps for the end user.
– Write a letter: AbiWord
– Draw a picture: – GIMP
– Browse the web: – Galeon http://galeon.sourceforge.net/
– Make a spreadsheet: GNumeric
– Type a formula: – OpenOffice.org
– Read my mail: Evolution
– Make an appointment: Evolution
I add some my own tasks:
– Listen to music: XMMS (gtk+), rhythmbox (gtk2+)
– P2P: LMule (gtk+)
– Chat: GAIM (the cvs version, very stable, uses gtk2+)
– Image Viewer: GQView (very fast –> gtk+)
– Video: totem (based on xine)
Overall IMHO Gnome2, coupled with OO, Mozilla/phoenix, and a few other apps, feels a lot more complete…. there’s not one QT app. on my PC. However if I was using KDE, there would be several gtk+/gtk2+ apps for me to use…
I prefer the OSX environment. The dockbar is really cool and it beats the toolbars in any OS. Slow or not, I think its the easiest and quickest way to access apps. Apple’s also gone a long way to ensure that all OSX menus have the same look and feel as well as the on screen prompts. The interface overall is complete and clean. Apple’s done a great job.
Debian user: Gnome2 and the “suite” of apps that comprise a full install is rather complete. A lot of people are even wanting to get Evolution to work regardless of the DE. Personally, I stick with a WM like Fluxbox and install the dependencies for the apps I want to use without Gnome or KDE running.
BeOS deserves some merit since they it doesn’t take up much screen real-estate and it looks really clean.
I think “Debian User” makes a good point.. you can pretty much use only KDE/Qt or only GNOME/gtk+/gtk+2 apps.
When I used GNOME 1.4, I barely ever used any KDE or Qt apps. I used Licq back in GNOME 1.2, mainly because I could not get the gtk+ frontend to properly install. I used GAIM (and gnome-icq aka. gnome-icu) later on.
Oh yeah, I used both Konqueror and Opera in GNOME before Mozilla 0.8 came out, which was the first usable version of Mozilla for me.
Now that I’ve switched back to KDE, I barely use any GTK+ or GNOME apps. I use zero gtk2+ apps. The only gtk+ app that I use is xmms, but I might ditch that once I get JuK to install properly.
So, if you are running either KDE or GNOME, you can pretty much avoid using the apps used by the other’s toolkit. Hopefully Qt and GTK can unify their theme and common dialog structures so that people won’t have to.
>why not modify the poll’s code…
Because we outsource the polls, we don’t have access to the source code.
I like to make a general reply to various people here bashing that KDE has incomplete or not continued written applications. Well let me hand back this prejudice and look at your own side right now. I only wished that the people who made such statements at least investigate into the things before replying in such a way.
Rhythmbox for example. It’s totally stagnating.the last entry in ChangeLog point to 03-03-2003 and the last codechange was in the beginning of February. Right now Rhythmbox CVS remained unfinished and unusable in CVS. Older stable versions doesn’t work correctly with the requirements that GNOME 2.2.1 has. The only halfway MP3 player (more or less) doesn’t work. XMMS doesn’t count here because it’s a GTK1.2.x application, doesn’t really embedd into GStreamer or doesn’t use modern audio input/output mechanism anymore. There are various other things. To sum it up the entire GNOME system is unfinished and their provided API may be stable but it’s heavily unfinished and siginificant things such as a simple FileSelector and so on. Look at some apps for a moment e.g. GALEON or Epiphany these applications provide a Toolbar Editor where you can customize the Toolbar and the rest of GNOME does not that’s what I mean about total inconsistency. The apps may be good for the certain task you do but I like to make clear that I usually speak about the bottom framework and I like you people to understand this SIGNIFICANT issue. The majority of people who usually reply to me and count applications don’t really understand my points here and I thought to have expressed them clearly many times.
You people know what Objects are yes ? Here an example: Let’s look at a PENCIL, PAPER, RUBBER for a moment. Now I like to write an application that needs a PENCIL and RUBBER. I take these objects that always look the same and put these objects into my application. The pencil and the rubber I use are always the same. And whenever someone changes the core object of that Pencil or the Rubber or the Paper then in my application the Pencil and Rubber changes as well. Say the Fileselector in KDE. it looks always the same from one app to another, this makes KDE consistent because they all use the Same FileSelector (which is an object) and whenever someone changes the CORE Fileselector object then the fileselector will also change in other applications. Because I use that object in my program.
So you need to see the framework of KDE that way. It’s a toolbox:
– FileSelector Object,
– HTML Object,
– Sound Object,
– Clock Object,
– Callendar Object,
– Addressbook Object,
– Stylesheet Object,
– Graphic and Animation Object
– Toolbar Object
these are examples and now I want to write my own application that should be a Webbrowser for example. I simply take the Fileselector Object, The HTML object and 10 lines of code and I have a full working Webbrowser and I only need to care to write my own app. I don’t need to care for the Fileselector nor the HTML Object anymore so do other programmers they don’t care for these things. Whenever e.g. The Fileselector changes as Object e.g. becomes taller, more options, other look etc. Then this will automatically get inherit into my application and in other KDE applications which makes everything consistent.
This is NOT the case in GNOME. As written earlier, the one app uses Bonobo to make his Toolbar, the other GNOME-Application Window, the other GTK+ Toolbar, the other app uses libegg Toolbar and at the end every application looks differently and as soon something changes you need to work hard to get the same changes in your own app. E.g. GALEON or Epiphany Toolbar editor. It’s only something for GALEON and Epiphany only and not for the wide range of applications. To have other applications use them you need to put the Toolbar Editor in GNOME as library somewhere and get the people to use that Editor within their own application.
You see, the GNOME API is stable as for now because that’s what it supposed to offer you but you also see now that it’s highly incomplete. There are a lot of things missing that you probably never paid attention for because you only have the prejudice of QT looks ugly. While KDE offers all these things, seamless in all it’s applications it’s easy for people to write new applications, good applications and productive applications without duplicating every single shit again. I hope you now understand how much GNOME is back and lacking things that KDE offers today. That’s why I think KDE is far supperior and clean. You need to base your argumentation on these things to value a Desktop Environment and not about 3 apps you use. I can promise you today that KDE soon will offer more applications which are seamless integrated than GNOME will. And even when KDE breaks api and abi one day, the apps will probably be easily portable with only changing 5 lines of code.
For those flaming me, you should seriously use your head and think about what I wrote and stop flaming people for their opinion and their sights of things.
Eugenia’s KDE 3.1 is her butt ugly but mine is as wonderful as my butt:
KDE + Linux give you POWER wich no other DE environment can’t offer. Use it than it make itself stands out from the crowd easily.
Less customize-ability = less flexible = boring = less useable = OSX = XP.
KDE is the best!
Gnome provides the linux community with building stones to build DE’s. These are not libraries that depend on Gnome, Gnome depends on them but it is not visa versa. So Gnome not only gives a DE manager to the community but also takes care that their efford can also be used by other projects that don’t want to denpend on Gnome, by making building stones that not depend on Gnome, but are used by Gnome. This is the true spirit of *nix, making universal versatile tools that can contribute to the whole community.
Ask your self if Gnome is heading the wrong way, why do more and more project use or starting to use libraries (building stones) made by Gnome developers on projects not related to Gnome. GNome is more then ‘the one right way’ it is about being versatile, the true *nix way.
The gnome desktop, by the way, is really nice, you should try it.
You see it is possible to promote a desktop without bashing or even mention the competition, you should try it.
I’d vote MacOS X. I’ve used most of these DEs, and programmed under quite a few. Mac is only a little bit ahead of Win2k for me — less ‘usable’ but nicer learning curve.
Eugenia is a little like Galileo — “Can’t you see that the Linux DEs are so bad? Why don’t you look?” They’re great for Xterms and Emacs; for that they’re more useful than the others. But as a full-featured consumer DE, they’re not there yet. Only zealots can possibly say Gnome/KDE are better than Windows. They’re ripoffs and lower-quality, as far as style goes.
With Gnome/KDE, you have to judge them for being Free Software. That’s where they shine. Not technically, not yet.
Ok let me jump on the application naming wagoon for a moment. Can anyone of you here show me counterparts of these applications for GNOME 2.x (not GTK 1.x, 2.x, GNOME 1.x) that are still being developed on or that offer the same level of maturity than the ones listed ?
You ?
Or you ?
Or maybe you ?
Regardless of the fact if you have a usage of these apps or not, someone has and will use them. Here a list that I quickly grabbed when scanning http://apps.kde.com/ for 10 mins. I think screenshots tell more than words.
http://www.kdevelop.org/graphics/screenshots/3.0/gideon-idealmode-a…
http://freehackers.org/kvim/screenshots.html
http://quanta.sourceforge.net/main2.php?snapfile=snap01
http://uml.sourceforge.net/screen.php
http://edu.kde.org/kig/screenshots.phtml
http://edu.kde.org/kstars/screens.html
http://kpumpe.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html
http://ksimus.berlios.de/screenshot.html
http://www.k3studio.org/screenshots.html
http://www.thekompany.com/projects/kivio/screenshots.php3
http://www.kpovmodeler.org/screenshots.html
http://sled.sourceforge.net/screenshots.php
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/gallery.html
http://kemistry.sourceforge.net/kmolcalc-screenshots.php
http://kemistry.sourceforge.net/kdrawchem-screenshots.php
http://frsl06.physik.uni-freiburg.de/privat/stille/kpl/kpldemo.html
http://www.kflog.org/index.php?lang=en&content=screenshots.php
http://linpacker.tuxfamily.org/features.html
http://www.slackorama.net/cgi-bin/content.pl?juk
http://anthem.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html
http://home.arcor.de/mritscher/kapps/kcorrscreen.html
http://www.uchian.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/kdenlive_screenshots.html
http://www.periapsis.org/bookcase/sshots/main_screen-0.5.png
http://www.mjartan.de/kbrain
http://perso.club-internet.fr/pascal.brachet/kile/snapshots.html
http://kickpim.sourceforge.net/shots/popup.jpg
http://www.bibletime.info/software/screenshots/
http://skylendar.kde.org/skysnap.png
http://krunning.sourceforge.net/screenshots/index.html
I voted for KDE. Once. Stupid cheaters.
WOW! Those are really some awesome applications, half of which I did not know existed! From all my KDE, GNOME XFCE use I can say with full confidence that KDE has the best developer tools and is the easiest to develop for.
KDevelop + Kvim (kpart), Cervisia, Umbrello, is the ultimate set of tools for developmet. Best yet, all these tools are under heavy development!
In addition, if you want to program in Qt only you havea much wider set of tools including the excellent QtDesigner, KDEs framework, and many other tools.
This is why I think KDE will emerge far ahead of its competition on *nix anyway. It has such fatnastic development tools, framework etc and so it is much easier to make changes to it, add new applications, and so on.
I think KDE needs to become better organized, simpler and improve usability, but I’m sure the KDE team can do it with the help of many bug reporters. I also do not want interoperability if it means making th KDE framework harder to use/more complicated or is hard and slows down development. Notification are acompatibility, cut and paste compatibility, drag and drop etc. I don’t need much more interoperability, especially if it would take more thana month to do it.
Mark Finlay: Just because someone decided to cheat in KDE’s favor
doesn’t mean that KDE users are cheaters. It’s just
one person who decided to be an ass – not an army
of overzelous KDEites.
Hm. Looks like in every OSNews poll KDE votes are “inflated”.
Anyway, every OSNews poll will suck unless people have to register to post/vote. Eugenia, don’t lose your time trying to do a decent poll. It’ll never happen.
< I voted for KDE. Once. Stupid cheaters. >
My vote would have gone to Gnome ot Windows 2000. I love both. But due to that dumb cheater, the poll was already locked before I could vote.
Well when I got SuSE 8.0, I tried windowmaker, & IceWM (I think that was the one) looked odd, couldn’t figure them out so I started using KDE. Never looked at anythhing else. So I like KDE.
..if you find a way to beat the cheaters.
> Well let me hand back this prejudice and look at your own side right now
you’re a characture of yourself old boy
Looks like MacOSX led by a good margin. Its a shame that someone cheated. It would really be intersting to get a better picture of the UI preferences of OSNews readers.
MacOS 9 would by my choice, but it isn’t even in the poll. While other parts of Classic MacOS are totally antiquated, the Platinum UI is just great. Simple, clean and out of my way.
I think everyone should install every window manager because if you dont have them all how do you know which one is really “good”?
“Some people say ‘Hey, that’s half of the fun!’; yeah, but I got a girlfriend and things to get done – the Linux OS sucks. I’m sorry, but it does.” (Three Dead Trolls: Every OS sucks)
Well I just didn’t vote…
If I had voted, I’d vote for GNOME2.2! It’s really simple, includes nice tools, … It’s as good as Slackware (simple) and as full with great tools as Red Hat.
Happy both RedHat-in’ and Slackin’
Sorry no, Debian-in’
n0dez
>> Get a look here http://www.gnome.org/ ~chrisime/random/ui/ I can tell you now, no matter how hard they work they will never be able to get as clean UI as KDE has.
Great analysis at the link. I think developers will always have a more critical view of these aspects than end-users. Heck, even “professional” closed-source OSes have these imperfections.
>> Look everything in KDE are objects, Bookmark object, Addressbook object, Calendar object, Clock object and so on.
No doubt KDE is better done. I don’t develop, but if I did I’d choose KDE.
Let’s hope the Gnome guys get together and design a sounder basis for future software. Out of my current lack of knowledge, I’d say fltk is a good candidate to play an equivalent role to Qt (IIRC this should be GTK–, don’t know why it never was adopted).
Granted I don’t know as much as I should about linux and its interfaces, but from I’ve read around here, it seems like Gnome and KDE go beyond the responsibilities of a DE. I’ve seen things tossed around like gnome’s VFS, and KDE’s core foundation. These don’t seem like desktop environments, unless I’m off on the definition of DE. I thought that a desktop environment was supposed to allow you to interact with the operating system and your software.
A core foundation, or a vfs seems like it should be part of the operating system. Not part of the DE. Its my overall impression that in linux, the DE developers are in fact inculding things that should be present in actual os, to make up for holes in the linux operating system.