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So, just because GNOME doesn't suit your way of working with a computer, you can't recommend it to anyone?

To counter the problems, whose solution would require Gnome to change radically:

All the Linux distributions I know do ship a plugin called nautilus-open-terminal. It lets me open a terminal into a directory I am currently looking at, by clicking "open in terminal" from a context menu. Currently it doesn't have a very handy keyboard shortcut.

Gnome's file manager doesn't have to be used in spatial mode, and many distributions actually use the browser mode as default. In addition, at least I like to use the spatial mode. It isn't crippled, just different.

I didn't say it was no good to anyone, i just said i can't recommend it.

I don't mind things being different i just don't see any benefits from it being different. If something is seemingly lacking to the point of being deficient in it's functionality then perhaps crippled is an acceptable word to use.

I recently tried the new KDE 4 "start button" and though it was different it worked well.

I know lots of people use Gnome but i for one can't fathom why

Although you better wait until KDE 4.1 because 4 is a framework more than anything,

A Start Button sounds more like Windows, Cassandra in Linux Mint 3.0 (which I'm using now and defaults to Gnome) and all the SUSE versions.

At least Mint provides multitasking through the Control Panels. But for full flexibility,

Try Arch or Slackware Linux if you have the patience and money to purchase any books on these distros.

Same goes with OpenBSD etc. which by the way supports GNOME to KDE, at least as far as I am aware of the free software license agreement of OpenBSD.
Although Richard Stallman will disagree with me. Just read last weeks spat between him and Theo de Raadt.
A bit off topic this is but you could possibly only support KDE through Linux Emulation on OpenBSD, which is another OS. Bit like GNUStep supporting Windows under KVM, or GNUStep being developed for Windows, that is de Raat's point. As Stallman approves of GNUStep.

Did my English skills suddenly become that bad or is your English very bad, because I have not idea what you're talking about.

I use Gnome because I can't stand KDE. Gnome shows me only what needs to be there to get the job done. KDE shows me every option under the sun, and I hate that. Gnome is there managing my windows for me and KDE is constantly jumping up and down in my face reminding me that it is there.

Gnome looks clean and KDE looks cluttered. KDE 4 looks a little better, so I'll give that a try at some point.

I don't like KDE's file manager either. Nautilus suits me better.

To each their own.

I agree. KDE now is just a mess of options and so many apps installed even in the smallest KDE install, it's mind boggling and insane, so much clutter.

They need to modularize KDE like they do Gnome; you can have a very bare bones install and start from there.

IMHO it's the distributor's responsibility to configure KDE in a sane way. I use KDE 3 on openSUSE 10.3 an I prefer it over GNOME, even though I'm mainly a Mac user and OSX & GNOME are supposedly designed in the same spirit.
Maybe I had different thoughts about KDE if I only knew KDE from another (unpolished) distribution.

If the only thing anyone can find fault with KDE is its looks, and you will find words such as cluttered or "not polished" being thrown around, then I would say that it is doing quite well.

KDE is simply a very mature set of technologies. Each network transparency is unmatched as is its speed or the richness, depth and variety of applications.

But hey, keep saying things such as it's too cluttered if it helps you internalize the choices that you have already made.

Remove that post. Bloody personal recommendations my ass.....
Has nothing to do with anything, if yuo want to get free clicks and stuff. please post on myspace or some other turd site... to do so in a serious site as osnews is just an insult.

Yes, indeed.

I posted the incorrect link. The correct link was this.
http://www.ciao.co.uk/Member__donley_5964893

Spatial mode is terrible. This is maybe the only thing I hate about Gnome. It makes your desktop a real mess and you have to close each new window individually...

http://www.gnome.org/learn/users-guide/latest/nautilus-spatial-mode...

Then use browser mode!

I don't use it, either so, I just use Gnome Configuration Editor(gconf2) and under "apps->nautilus->preferences", I check the "always use browser" option to turn off spatial browsing.

If I'm correct, some distros (Ubuntu, for example) do this by default.

In the end, this all boils down to preferences. I used to be a die-hard KDE person myself and I went to Gnome. I guess, to some, that would make me backwards.

"""

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Indeed. I'm not sure what the inflammatory opening paragraph of the article really had to do with the rest of the article. But only believers in the "One True upper($fill_in_the_blank)" could be overly concerned about Gnome vs KDE.

I tend to subscribe to the 35-35-30 rule. Competition is at its best with two strong contenders at ~35% each, with a mix of other players making up the remaining 30%. You can adjust the numbers to taste; there is nothing magical about 35-35-30.

Two contenders making up 70% of the market means it's *choice* but not *chaos*. The two players have strong incentive to compete with each other... but also to interoperate well. And you never know when a new titan is going to emerge from that churning cauldron of other players.

I'd like to see the same in the OS market.

Seems like political excuses in my opinion. Sun sponsors GNOME and they have invested a lot of cash and developer time on various aspects of GNOME, so I am not surprised they ship GNOME and not KDE. I don't think it has anything to do with the KDE API, it just seems like they prefer GNOME.

No, every bit of software that is integrated is evaluated on a large set of criteria. API stability, licensing, developer responsiveness, etc. are all considerations.

While at this point Sun may continue to choose GNOME due to their past investment, their initial choice of GNOME over KDE was for different reasons.

At least the KDE 3.x series has a stable API. That's the reason why KDE 3.5.8 is still stuck with ARTS. GNOME OTOH replaced their old sound system (whatever that was) with GStreamer.

At least the KDE 3.x series has a stable API. That's the reason why KDE 3.5.8 is still stuck with ARTS. GNOME OTOH replaced their old sound system (whatever that was) with GStreamer.

GStreamer is _not_ a sound server. GNOME still uses the Enlightened sound server, although I hope not for long.

Because esd is just so much better....



No they didn't. Certain apps uses Gstreamer but so can certain KDE apps (like Amarok and Kaffeine).
The GNOME system sounds still uses esd.

No they didn't. Certain apps uses Gstreamer but so can certain KDE apps (like Amarok and Kaffeine).

That's because GStreamer isn't a sound server like Arts or ESD. Gnome is moving to PulseAudio which is a much better sound server than either ARTS or ESD.

http://www.pulseaudio.org/

That's just not true. KDE guarantees source and binary compatibility throughout major releases. This means that anything that worked with KDE 3.1, for example, continues to work throughout new releases in the KDE3 series.

Similarly there are guarantees for KDE4 in place, so that once KDE4 is released, it should be forwards compatible. Some parts are exempt for the 4.0 release though I think, plasma for instance. But in general Gnome and KDE both provide the same guarantees.

quote from http://www4.osnews.com/permalink?273661

The main problem with C++ ABI is the GNU folks. They keep changing their C++ ABI. Sun has had a very stable C++ ABI for years now. This creates the gross incompatibility situation discussed here.



This part isn't true. Trolltech supports Sun Studio (SUNWPro C++ compiler) fully on Solaris.

Adopting gcc over Sun Studio isn't an option as the gnu folks refuse to integrate certain patches that would fix many of the performance problems that some of their generated code has on SPARC, etc.



Yes, this is another reason.



This is one truth. GNOME has a far more mature accessibility environment and Sun, as a public US company, has a necessary commitment to section 508 compliance.

Regarding the C++ reliability - it'll be interesting once LLVM's CLANG front end is finished; with the backed support of Apple it'll mean that ABI stability will be a must - hopefully then for C++ ABI stability, the competition another compiler brings, it'll force GNU to get its act together.

At the end of the day, if harmony can be found between them, then hopefully LLVM will be mature enough for GCC to be yanked from Solaris and replaced with an opensource compiler which realises playing nice with each other (including proprietary compilers) is a good thing(tm).

Yes, Sun ships GNOME because they can then add proprietary closed source applications to an open source operating system without paying someone licensing fees. Isn't that just wonderful?

Using GNOME means more closed source! So, if Sun (and you) truly believe in open source and are not just using it because they can be greedy off the backs of volunteer developers, they would include a purely open source desktop like KDE.

Personally, I want MORE open source, not less.

That's a load of crap. If KDE were the only game in town they they would just pay the licensing fee. They are not broke after all, they have money. The reasoning though is why poay for something that you could already get fro free. Considering there are other incentives to use Gnome/GTK+ I don't see your point. You also have to remember that issues with Qt licensing stem from whenever the KDE project was first created. Qt restricts a users freedom to sell his product if he can't afford the licensing fees. Sun in this case is most likely looking out for themselves and trying to save some cash, but that is not to say that their developers don't appreciate the fact that they don't have to pay a licensing fee to write commercial apps.

I would also say that you could probably find more closed source qt apps than you would gtk, but that is a bold statement that might not actually be true. I have never seen a closed source gtk apps in the wild, but have seen seen a couple of qt applications here and there that are closed source.

Actually, look at Maemo for a load of closed source applications using Gtk in the wild. As well, look at the gtk based chinese mobile phones. Thats what happens when you use the LGPL - you get more closed source applications. If I wanted that, I would stay with Windows or Mac. I want more free software.

>Personally, I want MORE open source, not less.

I want more Free Software too.

But that's not necessary the answer of the question "GPL or LGPL?"

It can be good to use the GPL for single libraries like described here: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html

But i think a GUI toolkit is a classic example for the LGPL case. A GUI toolkit is as essential as a simple c-library because today most programs will come with a GUI.

What would happen if the glibc would be GPL? All non-free software companies would have used a different c-library and all distribution would ship this library at least as addition to the glibc. So this wouldn't increase the number of free software packages on you system but the number of non-free packages. At the same time the non-free software developer wouldn't put their efforts into the glibc but in their own c-library. This would mean less developers for the free software c-library.

At the end you would only lose. Less developers for the glibc and one additional non-free package. So it was and still is good that glibc is LGPL and the same is IMHO true for a GUI toolkit because today it is as important as a c-library.

If Qt would have been LGPL from the beginning today we would probably have one supirior toolkit and less problems (all the Gtk+ <-> Qt compatibilty/usability issues). But so Qt has split the community and the development power. First because it was non-free and than because it devides between free software developers and non-free software developers.

Edited 2007-12-26 18:01

> If Qt would have been LGPL from the beginning today we > would probably have one supirior toolkit and less
> problems (all the Gtk+ <-> Qt compatibilty/usability
> issues). But so Qt has split the community and the
> development power. First because it was non-free and
> than because it devides between free software
> developers and non-free software developers.

If Qt were LGPL from the beginning, there would be no more professional development of Qt, and there would be no GNOME as well.

The point of the Lesser GPL license is to provide a compromise for certain applications or libraries that don't otherwise offer a compelling enough advantage over non-free/non-GPL alternatives. It is discouraged by the FSF unless otherwise necessary.

Gtk relies on LGPL for acceptance because the very implication is that basically nobody would pay a license fee to use it. Qt can utilize the GPL (as well as a variety of other recognized OSS licenses) because if offers enough value that Trolltech still earns millions in license fees for commercial usage. That simple fact speaks volumes.

I don't think SUN initially went with GNOME instead of KDE for stabilitys sake, nor for technical superiority. I think it's a GPL vs LGPL for the base libraries thing.

I generally think this is why GNOME has more corporate backing than KDE. They don't want to say to their customers: "Want to use our supplied platform to write non GPL apps? Contact this third party and pay them for a license."

(Yes, I know. You can run GNOME apps under KDE but it's not the same thing. Corporations don't want to support two stacks if they don't have to.)

(Btw, I'm not saying GPL is bad or good for the platform libs. I'm just stating why I think the situation looks as it does.)

Seriously, you believe that a company like SUN that had kept a language like JAVA Closed-Source for years would even spend a thought on GPL/OSS vs. LGPL? I believe that all those reasons are a red herring.

Just look at it from a marketing/technical point of view and the reasons for SUN's desktop choice become very, very clear.

Qt offers a cross plattform framework with a nice API that caters for almost exactly the same developers as JAVA does. It extends C++ with a lot of capabilities that make it a viable and sound competitor to JAVA. KDE is built 100% on Qt.
Now if you were SUN and you'd like to provide a desktop plattform that advertizes JAVA as the development plattform of choice: What would you choose: A desktop that is completely and successfully built on top of a library like Qt that offers many of the advantages JAVA does?
Or would you choose a desktop that is built on top of C and a toolkit that makes any modern developer cry for JAVA? Certainly choosing the latter would make you sleep much better at night.

Of course you'd never admit that openly, so instead you'd come up with a lot of reasons that get gladly accepted by license- and C- zealots.

Your Java/LGPL vs GPL statement is untrue. SUN isn't the only company who has chosen Gnome over KDE based on Trolltech's licensing scheme. RedHat, Novell, Ubuntu (though they had other reasons besides just licensing) have chosen GTK+ because of the ability for developers to write commercial applications without having to pay a third party. Just because Sun has had proprietary applications of their own doesn't mean that they aren't interested in how licensing affects their customers. At this point you are either naive or a fanboy. I tend to think the latter.

Qt is a nice toolkit. Ars is running a story on some of the great things coming in 4.4(http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071226-first-look-qt-4-4-0-w...).
However the fact remains that the dual license approach of the toolkit and prior issues with licensing, which kick started gnome in the first place, are affecting how corporations view KDE adoption. These companies aren't actually thinking about customers and trying to avoid the heartache of paying a third party licensing fee for commercial development for their customers, they are trying to avoid paying the fees themselves. Companies like Novell, Sun, and Redhat, build services into their offerings that they may want to charge for, some like RedHat release all their code, but maybe Sun doesn't want to do that and if that is their choice why pay for a license to commercialize your application, when you can get it for free.

I tend to think that all this corporate mentality has actually hurt GTK+. The toolkit has changed very little and only recently has started implementing a more current feature set. The corporate mentality makes changing things very hard because one thing a business minded company wants is for things to progress slowly, no change would probably work better for them. Qt has the luxury of being able to make drastic changes to their toolkit because they are competing with other toolkits. Trolltech is trying to sell a product and features are what attract customers.

The idea that Qt is unattractive to corporations is suspect. From Google to Skype to Adobe to NASA, there are tons of people who are building very serious software on Qt.

http://trolltech.com/customers

Why do they pay for something when they could get gtk+ for free? Think about it.

None of the organizations you've mentioned have ever pointed to Qt licensing as an issue. Even Red Hat acknowledged Qt licensing was satisfactory and started supporting KDE long ago.

Unless you were privileged enough to be seated in the boardrooms at the time these decisions were made, how are you able to state this so authoritatively?

The Java argument for Sun is perfectly valid speculation. Qt competes on many levels with Java. Nobody would rationally expect Sun to invest money in supporting Qt.

Novell is pursuing mono as a cross-platform development framework. Seems to me that would also be at odds with supporting Qt-oriented development, although they were forced to do an about face regardless.

Red Hat adopted Gnome from the beginning because of their stance against the original Qt licensing, long since addressed. But they invested in it, employ a number of developers, and one can't overlook their investment in classpath, which much like Sun, is somewhat conflicting with the Qt approach to cross-platform development. But even cynical minds have to notice that Fedora has slowly started to embrace KDE, and where Fedora goes, Red Hat often follows. Ironic, that.

It's pedantic to claim that Gnome has been adopted by these organizations because of licensing, particularly without any clear points to back that up. I'd speculate rather, that these organizations selected Gnome due to the success of Trolltech's model, since it conflicts with their own agendas.

But hey, speculation, I won't claim it as a fact.

If anything's a red herring it's your statement above. Open source and free software are concepts that took a lot of time to be even partially accepted by the IT industry. Saying that "Sun kept Java closed for years" is grossly misleading at best. They didn't "keep" it closed, it was the way things were done and are still done all over the industry. It takes time and a change of vision to embrace them.

Eventually, Sun opened Java, but for a very specific reason: to give it a fighting chance against .NET. Microsoft has had it in for Java for a long time. They tried to hinder it by releasing their own slightly incompatible JVM. When that didn't work out so well, they cloned the concepts and came up with .NET, hoping to push it on all the Windows machines.

As previous experiences have shown, a niche vendor like Sun that relies first and foremost on hardware sales (see Apple's adventures) will have a hard time when disputing a piece of software with Microsoft. Such a vendor has to maintain a quite delicate balance between their hardware and software offers, and that makes them move vulnerable than Microsoft, whose hardware support is independent and diversified in the form of the many PC and PC-component vendors and manufacturers.

Opening Java meant saving it by placing it in the hands of the one and only fenomenon that has proved so far successful against Microsoft's tactics: FOSS. It was a last resort, and it took Sun, one of the last surviving UNIX titans (UNIX being the original closed platform), a lot of time to decide to do this. They came to recognize FOSS as their friend and savior in this particular case.



I see, you are implying that Java is the best toolkit there is, that Qt comes close and GTK+ doesn't. Which is rubbish.

If you'll recall, they first tried a Java desktop, and it didn't work out so well. Not for lack of quality in the desktop itself, but because it was an isolated desktop. You need a certain set of apps to make a full desktop environment. Sun had to choose between developing their own from scratch and thus reinventing wheels already implemented fully by FOSS projects; and just picking an existing DE.

It's obvious they eventually went with the second choice, just like Apple did in a similar situation. But when it was time to pick they had to compare them based on a developer's perspective, since they would need to combine their own pieces of software with it. So the licensing and ABI factors are very important and not a red herring at all. It's a no brainer that a commercial vendor building on top of a DE would want to be free of licensing contraints even when making commercial apps, and they wanted a stable ABI. GTK+ was the obvious choice for them.

> Seriously, you believe that a company like SUN that
> had kept a language like JAVA Closed-Source for years
> would even spend a thought on GPL/OSS vs. LGPL?

Errr... yes. If you are going to invest in a platform, one of the things you care about is the license. And correct me if I'm wrong, the license situation of QT was much worse back then (late 90s).

<Lots of other trollish comments snipped>

What?

First of all, how do you justify investing in a platform that you think is inferior, in turn making it better, just because you don't want to invest in the better one.

Second, GTKMM et al also gives you an attractive platform for C++ development. Which is better? Who knows. I don't think it matters much.

Third, I wasn't talking about SUN exclusively.

Fourth, I didn't say it was the only reason SUN went with GNOME. But i bet it weighted quite heavily.

Fifth, and yes, I admit it. I think Java and C# is an evolutionary step to C++ and think they are going to be used more in the future. (Though I've written tons of more C and C++ code myself over the last 12 years I've been coding.)

Edited 2007-12-26 17:11

Boxers!

I prefer roomy "apartments" ... I hate those tight thingies that kills your samosas

I prefer boxer briefs. Best of both worlds.

cOMMANDO BABY!

>Is there any impartial benchmark about GTK+ vs QT4?

To me, the main question is "what DE is quicker"?
I use Gnome all the time, but i'm the first to say it feels sluggish compared to KDE or even Windows's EXPLORER...
Does anyone agree?<

I am not aware of any impartial benchmark that could give a definitive answer as to which is faster, GTK+ vs QT4.

I will say that on modern hardware I personally don't notice much of a performance difference (core 2 duo, 1.5gig etc..).

However on a slightly older machine of mine (athlon64 2800+ 1gig etc..) I will say that It really does seem that KDE is more snappy and is less likely to bog down under load.

Ultimately I do prefer KDE over Gnome simply because I have used it more and am used to it.

The simplicity of Gnome really seems to get in my way more then it helps me. But I am also not your average office user either.

Edited 2007-12-26 14:27

I agree with you. The desktop used by a distribution is less important than HOW they use it. be it Gnome, KDE or any other. As long as the desktop gets out of my way by behaving like I expect it to, lets me easily set the wallpaper, and set the taskbar to the top of the screen (A personal quirk), I could care less what it is as long as My apps work.

"I like GNOME more and more with each release."

More and more users around me seem to feel the same way. Some of them, having been KDE users for years, like to try Gnome more and more, and some of them have completely changed their daily use desktops from KDE to Gnome.

In my opinion there's an interesting approach in Gnome, as far as I know: Simple changes of desktop look and feel can be done easily, more complex, complicated or basal settings need a more advanced way to be changed. On the other hand, in KDE nearly everything is changable very easy (too easy?).

But I have to admit that I do not use KDE or Gnome on a daily or "only" basis, because I simply don't have a need for a desktop environment, I prefer a fast and usable window manager, i. e. WindowMaker for me. But I usually use different KDE and Gnome based applications (Qt and Gtk+ ones), so "keeping the look consistent" does not matter to me anyway, so maybe I'm the wrong person to ask which one of Gnome or KDE is "better". :-)

"But that's like me saying I like strawberry ice cream instead of chocolate (or vanilla, or rocky road, etc.)"

A valid comparison.

"There's so many choices with Linux that you don't have to settle for something that's not right for you."

I think this kind of functional diversity is one of the biggest strengths of UNIX / Linux: You are not forced to use something you don't like. Good point.

Care to elaborate? A comment such as "they both suck, these are better" with no qualification renders the opinion rather meaningless, yes?

This is a typical response to any article such as this. $window_manager is superior to $window_manager or $desktop_environment. It boils down to individual tastes, really. What may suck for some works great for others.

"CDE and Window Maker are superior to either."

I think you cannot compare them to Gnome or KDE.

CDE, for the first point, is "stuck in past", allthough it runs on many different UNIX OSes and is still in use. On x86 UNIX or Linux systems, XFCE 3 is a nice approach to the classical CDE look and feel, while XFCE 4 is a good example for a lightweight and highly functional desktop system. CDE definitely has some (!) advantages over KDE or Gnome, this is possible and is very dependant on individual experiences and feelings.

WindowMaker, for the second point, is not a desktop environment, it is a window manager. From my individual point of view, it is the best window manager I've ever used. Desktop organisation, mouse and keyboard support, look and feel and of course speed (!) are most impressive. That's why I'm using it for more than 5 years now on a daily basis. And you can use both KDE or Gnome based applications with it, along with any other application that uses "non mainstream" toolkits (such as Tck/Tk or Xaw).

I'd like to know what your arguments are.