It’s been a few years since we ran such a poll. Let’s see what most people prefer these days.Note: The poll is now closed, thank you for voting.
Important note as a reply to some comments: Who ever claims that osnews is pro-gnome is a flat out idiot (no one at osnews.com uses gnome in the first place, not even myself anymore). The reason we closed the poll 7 hours after it opened was because we had to go to sleep and could not monitor it anymore, because this outsourced poll engine CAN be tampered with by script kiddies (we were hit 5 times in the past by script kiddies, so we HAVE to be EXTRA careful). The poll had to be open for as long we were around and I personally stayed awake for more than I should have just to give more time to this poll (I slept at 1 AM local time, long after my husband went to bed). But instead getting a “thank you”, I get crap from all these people over here and elsewhere that draw their OWN lame conclusions as to why we do the things we do and how, without even asking first. They think they know better. And besides, after 3,000 votes it’s a good indication of what people like and what not like. Serious scientific polls usually don’t even use more than 1000 subjects, we are happy having more than 3,000 in 7 hours for this fun poll. Other news web sites don’t even get more than 500 votes in weeks!
Hello? I visit OSNews daily and did not get the chance to vote, how can that be!?!
“Germans get very nationalistic about KDE.”
They do? Is that the reason why I voted for Gnome? How is mentioning the fact that KDE is more popular in Europe, whereas Gnome is more popular in the US nationalistic?
“That’s kind of scary.”
Bohh….
“Too bad that Qt has a viral license and that’s why Novell, Sun, Ubuntu, and RedHat have all decided to use Gnome.”
Wow, what a cheap troll.
1. Those companies haven’t decided to use Gnome.
2. Viral? Aha, that must be the reason why said companies don’t use the linux kernel that is published under the same license…
“Gnome has won the desktop environment war.”
1. There is no war. Whoever thinks there is a war is either 13, or needs to grow up fast.
2. Gnome hasn’t won and Gnome shouldn’t win. Gnome is improving and I very much enjoy it, KDE is also improving and I’m also enjoying it, which leaves me with two great Desktop Enviroments to choose from. Great.
Finally, this poll is totally senseless. Polls like this only lead to flamefests and I have to agree with others who noted that closing the poll just the second people from Europe start voting isn’t the most intelligent thing to do.
Hello? I visit OSNews daily and did not get the chance to vote, how can that be!?!
You’re European, so you probably would have voted the wrong option. Luckily, Eugenia thought about this and decided to close the poll before it was too late.
Suggestion for Eugenia: next time, do a poll with only one choice (“Gnome”), so there won’t be any problem with timezones.
Cheers.
Yes, that’s it.
An only 6 hours during poll during European night times?
> The poll was open for many hours, including for Europe’s morning. Besides, I don’t think that it makes much of a difference if other continents are awake or not, users are users.
Of course it makes a difference! I can tell you without polls that GNOME is way more popular in US and KDE is way more popular in Europe.
I am from Bavaria, so calling me German is an insult:-) Seriously, that I prefer KDE to GNOME has nothing to do that I am from Germany. I mainly prefer KDE because of its superior underlying framework. I just think that C++ is a better OO language then C:-))
“I am from Bavaria, so calling me German is an insult:-)”
Just to clarify this a bit.
It’s an insult for us Germans from the north.
SCNR
No poll when I go to bed, and it’s closed when I wake up? Bah. Duh. Boooh!
Well, there is no comparison to Fluxbox anyway. Gnome and KDE are great efforts, but unfortunately slow and bloated.
It’s like taking the jumbo jet to the store for crocery shopping.
I find KDE far superior to Gnome. It has far better features, more configurability, more integration and a bright future due to its well established framework. I don’t like a graphical environment in which whenever I need something out of the ordinary I need to open a bash terminal anyway. That’s why I can’t stand Gnome.
XFCE with ROX-Filer, until enlightenment dr17 anyway.
“I don’t like a graphical environment in which whenever I need something out of the ordinary I need to open a bash terminal anyway. That’s why I can’t stand Gnome.”
Huh?
Examples would be nice.
Just working with files in Gnome is a pain. Konqueror and Krusader makes it as easy as it can be, even across local networks or through SSH thanks to KIO-Slaves. Nautilus is no match for any of them, it’s slow, lacks features, and in my experience not reliable enough.
Ehm, nautlius can use ssh too, you know.
Anyway, you tried to proof one claim you made without examples with an other claim you made without examples, which isn’t very convincing to say the least.
Wow, I went to bed before this was posted, now some 7-8 hours later it’s closed.. how about letting such polls live for at least 24 hours?
This as been posted today and it is already closed!!!!
Here in Europe it is 11 AM and I can’t participate!!!
HA! HA!
Can you tell me what you are trying to do whith this poll??
But how about using apples X11 server on OSX? Easily the best IMO
Hello? I visit OSNews daily and did not get the chance to vote, how can that be!?!
You’re European, so you probably would have voted the wrong option. Luckily, Eugenia thought about this and decided to close the poll before it was too late.
Suggestion for Eugenia: next time, do a poll with only one choice (“Gnome”), so there won’t be any problem with timezones.
Cheers.
Well… Anyone who has been coming at this site for at least three months or so – not necessarily in a daily basis – knows Eugenia´s opinion and “editorial touches” fairly well, so this shouldn´t be comes out exactly as a surprise.
See Aaron Seigo´s blog already mentioned before to see his opinion about this.
Every poll ran in any other Linux sites shows not only that KDE is the favorite DE in Linux but also by a wide margin. Year after year it is regarded as the favorite Linux Desktop Environment.
Anyway, I´ll also join the crowd that visits OSNews daily and that hadn´t a chance to vote.
Fair enough. In Konqueror, I can split the window as many times as I like, I can use tabs, I can filter by file type with a click, I can open an embedded terminal and drag and drop files between the window and the terminal. When I’m comfortable with the layout, I can also create profiles for that so I don’t have to set it up again next time. When I need to access something frequently, I can add an entry in the Konqueror open dialog, far more powerful that the new GTK one and make that entry visible for other KDE apps, and it’s been that way for years now.
Having a powerful file manager is a must in a desktop environment IMHO. Gnome does not have one up to the task, and its philosophy of simplicity is carried across all the environment. As in the Konqueror example, KDE on the other hand gives me power and features. I know there are people who prefer the Gnome aproach, I’m just not one of them since it does not provide me with nothing that Fluxbox and a couple of terminals cannot do.
> Problem is that I need to go to sleep and I can’t
> monitor the poll anymore for script kiddies (which
> is important for this kind of poll, as we got hit in
> the past). The poll was open for many hours, including
> for Europe’s morning.
Hello, I am also European. I understand quite well your problem, but I think the real one is a *daily* reader could not even participate to it. I’ve checked OSNews yesterday at 20h, and this morning at 9h. It’s quite disturbing to find in the morning:
– a new poll
– to which it is not possible to participate because it is already closed
Now, to be honnest, I would not have participate to the poll.
But I understand quite well the reactions on the shortness of the poll.
Now that’s an argument.
I know that you can also do at least some of the things with nautilus, but probably not all you mentioned.
Anyway, that I didn’t miss them shows that I don’t really need them I think and nautilus (especially its simplicity) is really good enough for me, or even superior.
It’s old-fashioned, colors are dull, and it really doesn’t rock, sorry.
This is actually a good quality of a DE That will help getting focus on your data and your application. A good GUI should be there for the user when he needs it, in all other occations it should stay out of the face of the user.
In this respect Gnome is much better than KDE or windows XP.
Anyway, that I didn’t miss them shows that I don’t really need them
Well, no
The fact that you don’t miss them is because you didn’t get get addicted to them (yet 
. As a former Gnome user, I slowly began to learn all these little tricks in KDE’s file manager (split views, embedded terminal, …) to the point that now I really couldn’t use Nautilus anymore, because my way of working with files (and web browsing too) has dramatically changed.
1 – The poll was only half a day, then european people had no time to vote
2 – the poll was annouced on planet.gnome http://pubcrawler.org/2005/06/02/x11-desktop-poll-at-osnews/
This cannot conclude about habits of people and the DE they use. Users are not all the same… their habits and prefered software vary from culture to culture. For example I believe here in Germany most users uses KDE (Because suse was a kde centric distribution).I also know, french people also prefer kde to gnome (because of mandrake I’m thinkm thought I’m not really sure.). And I really like XFce but I dont believe they have 12 % voters (too much!).
Why not make a page whith statistic about language linux users are speaking, DE they are using, themes they are using, and so on ? Polls should stay for at least one week. That would be nice, and very usefull (think at software developper). Perhabs it’s possible to do somethink like “distrowatch” did.
But on the other side, that could be bad for DE people don’t use as much (no software developped for them).
Please remember that KDE and GNOME are way too different and have different focus. I’m a GNOME guy and I use it because of it’s simple UI. It may me dumbed down, but it is simpler than KDE and easier to use – not that KDE is difficult to use. KDE may have a better technology and may have 10x more features than GNOME, but I just don’t care. all I want a simple UI. If I want to do something nasty, I’ll use the console; if i have to recommend a Desktop Environment, I’ll recomment both and tell them to use what they like, but for me is GNOME all the way.
I really wish that someone made a simpler, dumbed down version of KDE.
Ehm, nautlius can use ssh too, you know.
Sure it can, and so can all other real Gnome apps. The problem is that there is so few of them. Many apps thought of as Gnome applications by many people is in fact gtk apps or just mimic the look of Gnome but lacks gnome-vfs features.
In KDE almost every application built for that environment have full capabilites with respect to kio-slaves.
This is of course only to a minor extent a problem of Gnome, but a problem of lazy developers, or is it that much harder to for a developer to make use of these Gnome features than it is for a KDE developer to use kio-slaves?
If so, the problem would be Gnome related.
“Well, no
The fact that you don’t miss them is because you didn’t get get addicted to them (yet 
”
Not really. I’ve mainly used KDE for a long time and am still using it, but at the moment I’m mostly using Gnome. So I’m quite aware of the features you mentioned, but I never really used them in KDE either, or I didn’t really like them.
For example, I don’t really need split views all that often (and btw. split views wouldn’t make sense in spatial nautilus anyway), but if I needed them I’d just use one of the gtk-filemanagers that offer them.
Further, drag and drop between nautilus and the terminal should also work without a problem, though the terminal isn’t embedded.
Adding directories to the file chooser dialog also isn’t a problem and filtering by filetype with one click is also possible in nautilus.
Oh, and I never got tabed file management anyway.
I know and I totally agree with you that KDE (for whatever reason) has an edge over Gnome when it comes to infrastructure or use of infarstructure such as kio-slaves and kparts.
Then you have to try out GNUStep! It looks even more dull and grayish, so by your definition it should beet GNOME by a large margin in productivity:-) (No ofence to GNUStep, I think the underlying framework is wonderful, I just thing it is not visually pleasing).
To Eugenia: announcing the Poll at Planet GNOME but nowhere else makes the whole poll even more rediculous. The one thing I really dislike about GNOME is this kind of “marketing” by GNOME zealots. I wouldn’t be surprised if the real reason to close the poll was that KDE started to get lots of votes. (Don’t get me wrong, I don’t care if people use KDE or GNOME, it is there own decision and I think it is great that there is so much choice when it comes to desktop environments under Linux).
the poll is that rapidly closed. so I guess the results reflects the opinions of the america’s only !
Not to mention that the things gnome claims to do (like the vfs stuff) in many cases doesn’t work very well or is particulary stable. I tend to work a lot against files connected via ftp or fish.. Let me just say that Gnome doesn’t cut it.
Gnome High contrast theme with Glider window borders. Can’t be beat. Simple and easy to use with a pleasent look. I think Gnome is going in a great direction but the people responsible for gstreamer and the recent plugings release need to be hung out to dry. Not happy over that one but at least there are alternatives.
Come on make it alittle more diverse. Fluxbox? Openbox? Blackbox? Enlightenment? Enlightenment17? Icewm? Fvwm?
http://enlightenment.freedesktop.org
very snappy ( Cel400 + matrox G200 + RAM 128 ), cute effects, why not use enlightenment as default GNOME WM ?
By now Kubuntu is not compareable with Ubuntu . Ubuntu is much more polished . And the crashes you did suffer with Kubuntu are not only KDE faults . Most of them are Kubuntu’s problems . I prefer KDE over GNOME but I have to say there are some distros like Fedora , /K/Ubuntu which for me are more GNOME-ish and other distros like Slackware , SUSE , Mandriva which look more KDE-ish for me . For my tastes both GNOME and KDE are useable but with different distros . Don’t forget IceWM . It’s the best light DE for me . Works very well on older machines .
very snappy ( Cel400 + matrox G200 + RAM 128 ), cute effects, why not use enlightenment as default GNOME WM ?
Because it’s still in a prerelease state…
I’m posting this from inside it, and it is wonderful; but you wouldn’t want everyone using it. Especially given the GNOME trend of making everything “easy to use” (dumbing down; a rose by any other name…); they wouldn’t know what had hit them!
ATM I can think of several serious issues I’ve found with E17, that I put up with (mostly multimonitor related), but you’d never use it as the foundation for a major project like GNOME – at least not until it becomes somewhat more stable.
KDE: It’s very flexible.
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=24527
OR
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=23535
Gnome and KDE no way! CDE,XFCE 3 and Olvwm is the way to go ohhhyeah!!
Could voting be reopend, I’m just awake and have not yet had the chance to vote.
…that this poll wasn’t closed so fast to let Gnome win it. <g>
The list is indeed quite small.
The most annoying problem with all these DE is that they include some funky file managers. Who on earth would like to use Nautilus or the KDE one. They both are uber slow and so buggy.
I just don’t understand GNOME and KDE developers on that point.
Because I wanted to learn more about KDE/Gnome ratio these days, the rest already have less than even the third option, XFce.
Then you’re not going to learn anything. The poll isn’t open long enough for one thing, and is only open to people who do nothing but read OSNews. You’ve then got people being a bit like the French thinking “Well we didn’t get the result we wanted the last time so we’ll ignore it”.
The Desktop Consortium’s survey is about as good as you’re going get as online polls go.
I can say for a user of Linux, s/he obviously likes the whole geekiness aspect of full control at your fingertips. KDE offers such control.
For home users (such as myself) I prefer Gnome. It’s not an argument, just a matter of user level. You have to be more tech savy to run KDE because the amount of options would overwhelm a normal Windows user (who by the way hardly even touches the Control Pannel unless the phone tech tells them to.)
I used to be a Dell telephone technition a while back, so my source for this comment is my past experience. From this I can say I used KDE back in those days because I likes playing around with my GUI. Now I just wanna get stuff done. I wanna check my email, surf the web, watch a few movies or listen to music without having to shuffle through menus or bubbly icons that hurt my eyes (admit it you KDE guys, the pretty colors do kind of get old). I’m not dogging KDE. It’s a great learning tool, and a great base for a DE (I love what Lycoris has done with it) But for a more refined professional approach to the desktop, Gnome is the way to go. IE: They both have their pro’s and cons, that is why I did not vote.
works fine for me.
I slowly began to learn all these little tricks in KDE’s file manager (split views, embedded terminal, …) to the point that now I really couldn’t use Nautilus anymore, because my way of working with files (and web browsing too) has dramatically changed.
Interestingly, it’s exactly the opposite for me. Spatial Nautilus dramatically changed my way of working with files, for this reason alone I couldn’t be happy with KDE (or XFCE) anymore. Generally I’d like my desktop to be more object oriented than application oriented. Luckily I really like GNOME, because otherwise I wouldn’t have any alternative right now.
I check OSnews once a day and I didnt get to vote
Plus u exclude all the smaller window managers.
What’s the point??? DUH!!
I could list at least 10 other ones…
BTW, I like to think of KDE as Kids Desktop Environment. It’s colorful, has big icons and looks just like windows so kids can learn easily….
Now go ahead and moderate me down yeah…
First post: Posted on 2005-06-02 00:22:37
Most recent post: Posted on 2005-06-02 12:10:10
That means the poll was open less than 12 hours!!!!
A healthy “KDE vs GNOME vs everything else” poll every now and then, why not?
I appreciate KDE and its developers a lot, and find it superior to Gnome too. Only one thing I would absolutely borrow from Gnome: a stand alone light-weight file manager, indipendent from the internet browser. Ok, tabs, file type filtering with a click, embedded terminals, profiles are really great, but using konqueror for intensive file managing tasks still makes Konqueror rather sluggish and unresponsive (increased startup times if one loads more than one instance).. I whish one day KDE developers decided to split Konqueror in two parts, or at least, if they want to keep things as they currently are (it must be admitted that many people seem to like konqui as it is, maybe their pc is more poweful than mine), someone could hack a lighter “Kfm” out of Konqui, to be preloaded instead of the mighty parent at the session startup.
That is what makes me now use Windowmaker instead (which has no native file manager at all.. sob sob!)
[No criticsm anyway, only a whish!!]
Quote:
“The most annoying problem with all these DE is that they include some funky file managers. Who on earth would like to use Nautilus or the KDE one. They both are uber slow and so buggy. ”
How credible are you if you comment on a program as if you were a daily user, but don’t know the name of the program?
In fact, both Nautilus and Konqueror are fast and are not “so” buggy.
What is “so” anyway?
Does it crash every second? Once a day?
Does it not have the features you like?
why would you want tabs on a file manager?
so can the kde guys burn cds from their file manager, I can in Gnome….
I probably bitched about spatial as much or more than anybody, once I used it a while it was super fantastic and now I install nautilus on other window managers so I can use it!
Oh and can I run the kde panel on a different window manager like I can in gnome. Can I switch window managers in KDE and they still work well Like I can in Gnome. Oh and my favorite, which is picky but still cool can you right click a icon and resize it. It is great having different size icons, the trash can I make small while the ones I use most are largest so my eye is immediately drawn to the items I use most…
too coool…okay so I am a lamer
Oh, and I assume the poll got closed because of vote loading… So I certainly understand…. not happy, but understand!
Maybe the reason it was closed early was that the real purpose was to show again that kde was the most used, this motivated by the recent “fallout” between the editor and the gnome camp. And since this did not turned out as planned, the poll was quickly closed…
These polls will never be accurate anyway. I see results differing a lot depending on the site. linuxquestions.org shows kde being most used, neowin.net shows gnome etc. etc. In total, kde is probably most used by the people visiting the types of sites such polls are most often held, but it is hard to tell.
People should not be so focused on “their” environment being the best. Stating env X is far superior to env Y when talking about these two is just silly. They are both great achievements and have their strengths and weaknesses. If so many can use both and be satisfied, something has to be done right.
I really hope we won’t see a clear “winner” anytime soon. Having them both provides a little healthy competition and the ability to do a little experimentation and development in different areas which both can learn and benefit from.
What is needed is cooperation on certain underlying technologies, so they won’t be like two separate os’es in practice. A freedesktop that all environments can develop around.
Luckily I really like GNOME, because otherwise I wouldn’t have any alternative right now.
Well, It won’t last long my friend
read here: http://nat.org/2005/may/#New-Linux-desktop-software
Also, Thunar provides browser-style navigation, which I think is a lot more usable than the spatial mode that Nautilus uses.
Jeff seemed pretty excited about this; I got the feeling Ubuntu would be switching to Thunar pretty shortly! If Red Hat and Sun follow, our hand will be forced.
I whish one day KDE developers decided to split Konqueror in two parts
Konqueror IS ALREADY splitted in two parts. In fact, Konqueror itself is just a “container”. You can load a html part inside it, or a file manager part, or both, or even another application (i.e. a pdf reader).
That’s right. It’s a PITA. It’s like “you can choose any color you want, as long as it’s black”.
C++ might be good. But the license sucks. So 10 * 0 = 0.
Hello Eugenia,
thank you for your explanation why you have a GTK/Gnome sidebar on osnews.com and not a KDE one. I can understand this.
I’m the maintainer of KDE-Apps.org and can provide you a XML feed or a HTML part of the newest KDE apps to list them on OSNews.com. So users can see that OSNews.com is a true independend website. What do you think?
BTW. Thank you for this great site.
Greetings
Frank
First, I said “the KDE one” because we all know Konqueror is bolted to KDE.
And yes, I *tried* to use them alot. Both are slow. Even with all the options turned off (ie: content-generated thumbnails), both are slow.
Both are buggy. Nautilus will always do something you don’t expect. I tried all possible configs (list view, icon view): no luck. Sometimes it just wants to render stuff in a weird way. Konqueror has a different problem. Sometimes it just doesn’t use my configs and I don’t know why. It kinda ignores them. Annoying.
It’s really hard to feel comfortable with these two. And both seems to have poor gui code. Looks like both send alot of useless repaint request to keep their window up2date. It’s funny to see that once all files are displayed, it will flicker alot because there are tons of queued repaint requests being processed. You can blame X for that issue as well.
These things wouldnt ever happen on MS Windows. Thanks to the awesome Win32 API
every KDE user is ALWAYS so sure that KDE is the best and that EVERYONE uses KDE and that two desktops are a waste and any poll that doesnt show that is obviously rigged and a total waste of time… SO i think part of the reason I do not care for KDE is due to the attitude of the people that use it… “Hello, like everyone uses KDE so since it is popular I will too” “yea, like only loooosers use gnome” “I havent ever tried it but I KNOW KDE is the best and that is what I will go around saying”
whew, i crack me up
BLACKBOX FOREVER!
Yep.
IceWM, Blackbox (so Fluxbox), E16, ect > KDE, GNOME, XFCE.
Why? GTK+ and QT suck :] I can’t understand why people keep using them. I even prefer living with the ugly Motif. It’s ugly but at least it works good and it’s fast.
I prefer KDE/Plastik. It’s better suited for development. Look at http://kdevelop.org/graphics/screenshots/3.0/full_ide.png
and you’ll see what I mean. There are no redundant spacings everywhere as in GNOME/XFCE. I also use IceWM on my Debian unstable.
DISCLAIMER
– All this is only my opinion, I’m not trying to step on anyone’s toes.
My desktop machine is fast and capable. I want to run a DE that will take advantage of that. I don’t see a problem with running a system that looks nice, and provides a rich set of functionality. Personally I think KDE and Keramik looks great, and when I’m in Linux (I dual boot SuSE and XP) that’s what I use.
I’ve used both GNOME and KDE on Mandrake, Connitiva, GEntoo, RedHat and most recently Unbuntu. I had to conclude that I was spending far too much time tweaking, fixing, configuring and compiling to get any real work (or play!) done.
They’re both just plain wrong! So wrong, in fact, that I’m back on XP now – at least until my Mac Mini arrives.
windowmaker + GNUstep for me when I am not on my Mac
I’ve been a Linux user for well, about 13 years now? -from the early 0.9x kernel series- and after having used everything (kde, gnome, debian, mdk, etc..) I stick with kde, not only it has a cleaner UI in my opinion -I don’t like the way gnome ui works- but it’s also stabler. Anyway I don’t think there’s a war, nor anything like that going on, it’s just that some zealots like to make a little fuss. As for gnome, I think they’re retreating, and suffering from several bad decisions in their early development, that has taken them to the point they’re now, retreating in user use. I think that maybe for gnome 3 they can recover themselves and get back on the right way, but today? Gnome is a no go for me
“the poll is that rapidly closed. so I guess the results reflects the opinions of the america’s only !”
Yeah , I think this was right . And another thing – in USA GNOME is prefered DE and in Europe KDE is the prefered one . These are my thoughts . Don’t get me wrong . GNOME is american project , created in America . KDE is created in Europe . So I think GNOME suits to americans’ way of thinking and KDE is a reflection of the europian way of thinking . IMHO people at the 2 sides of the Atlantic think at least slightly different . That’s why in Europe KDE is prefered DE . It just expresses the europian way of life, thoughts etc . The same could be said for America and GNOME .
All the above : IMHO . Peace .
I’ve been a Linux user for well, about 13 years now? -from the early 0.9x kernel series- and after having used everything (kde, gnome, debian, mdk, etc..)
hehe never say something like that here or on slashdot
people will make fun of you and tell you that kde/gnome = DE and debian/mdk = DIST 
but since i said it already, no one will do
I think all you people just have too much free time on your hands. Why do people ever care what desktops other people use, other than general curiosity? Why do some people (there aren’t that many really, they’re just the most verbal ones) promote the desktop environment they use in an almost religious fashion? Why not stop all this hostily and just use whatever tools suit you.
(no, of course I’m not going to spam what I use here)
At dektoplinux.com they had 61% for KDE and 21% for GNOME in their 2004 poll.
However this survey also included distribution preferencies and some other stuff. All in all quite interesting.
look at it: http://desktoplinux.com/articles/AT2127420238.html
debian was on top! BOOM! yea later it slipped after so many debian off shoots cam along and of course it was also showing it age I am sure…
and I smell something fishy over at KDE as well
Yesterday Gnome was winning by quite a large margin (Americas) and overnight KDE almost caught up. I assumed this to mean Europe did get some votes in.
I don’t think it has to do with philosophy it has to do with straight out patroitism. Europeans want to make thier mark. Lets not pretend I’m imagining things cause China’s Red Flag linux is called that for a reason. There is a bit of pride associated w a distro for many people. And a bit of animosity as well. Do you think Europe is in a hurry to invest in RedHat? I doubt it. They were all going SuSe till they got bought by Novell now the German gov is going Debian.
all the KDE people have way too much time on their hands and do nothing but surf the net to promote their popular KDE
plus i mean america is the innovators, just like gnome is…
boring old KDE
oh, and once again – Can I burn a cd from the KDE filemanager? Right click and resize icons? need i go on… wish I could-gnome needs to ratchet up the innovation again, which I think it will again soon…
Gnome does new cool stuff, KDE takes whatever new cool stuff that people actually like and implemnts it while playing it safe and not going out on a limb… If all we had was KDE we STILL would not have tabs on our browser and so forth….
GNOME=innovation whether good/bad
KDE=good plain pretty popular
GNOME = use it
KDE = configure/look at it
simple as that
BTW. e17 rox :]
Silly theme/color issues aside (both can be made to look and feel almost any way you want), I think there’s a number of more practical reasons KDE is superior. The VFS implementation is far more complete and integrated. The UI is customizable to the point that and admin can preload profiles for users that mimic whatever environment they came from with a pretty high degree of fidelity. The locking down of desktop features (so-called “kiosk mode”) is very granular and complete. Code reuse is VERY high, which provides consistency and belies more careful attention to software design in KDE. The KDE community also seems to have a more concrete vision and direction — and development today seems to only be getting faster (while in GNOME, it seems to be slowing). Corporate support is also leaning towards KDE (default environment for SuSe, Mandriva and seen RedHat; most commercial desktop apps targeting one or the other are targetting KDE).
Recent versions of KDE also seem to take up less memory and be more responsive than the recent GNOME releases.
A good example is compare the file open dialog of the two environments. GNOME offers a row of large buttons on top to delete and rename files and create folders. A drop-down to select a parent directory, a panel with directories on the left, and a panel of files on the right, and a text box for the filename at the bottom. Then look at KDE’s, there’s the same navigation controls you have from the file-manager, a path history, a button to create a folder, a drop down for various views (which can be sorted), a drop down for bookmarks, a pane on the left with configurable bookmarks for directories (configurable for all applications, or per-application; for example, you can add the directory “Downloads from the Web” to the panel and say it only appears in the dialog when opened by the browser), and the open-file dialog accepts URIs (inlcuding SSH, SMB, WebDAV, there’s even a ‘locate’ plugin that allows you to type “locate:myfile.txt” into the location box and all instances of “myfile.txt” on your system will be found).
No, KDE is advancing much quicker than GNOME and is much more complete and consistent.
I guess you don’t know much about europe, do you?. Keep in mind that Europe is not ONE country (like USA) but a continent, and I, as a spanish, dont feel a “nationalistic attraction” to, for example, german software. (Just an example, country names are interchangeable).
Anyway, i prefer KDE because its by far the best, in my opinion, but i dont mind if its made in the USA or in Madagascar.
And I couldnt vote, because at 6:00 AM i dont normally visit OSnews. (I do at 9:00 AM, but the poll was already closed by then).
GNOME = use it
KDE = configure/look at it
simple as that
BTW. e17 rox :]
Hmm, there’s a contradiction here
According to what you say, you seem to prefer GNOME over KDE before you can actually use it… not just configure/look at it.
But you’re always saying that E17 rox. Well E17 is technically awesome i agree, but its not meant to be “used” yet. Everything is eye candy but half working. Even if you waste alot of time configuring it, it won’t do the job. Anyway, it’s still at a early stage…and already, i agree with you, E17 will outperform GNOME/KDE
who used tabs first
oh and then it got popular to have tabs so all of a suddent KDE had them… hmmmm
How do I burn a cd in KDE, I know in gnome I dont even have to open anything else… how cool is that
I tried to point out not everyone in Europe thinks that way. But if you can not see favoritism on many occations then you’re just not paying attention. I better not get into this anymore than I already have since I have to leave for work. Later.
that is all I have to say about that.
nothing else . Once somebody wrote : “Right now the penguin is shouting the loudest” . The same could be said for GNOME now .
oh, and once again – Can I burn a cd from the KDE filemanager?
Yes, using the “burn” kio_slave:
http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~jrht100/burn/index.html
If you have K3b installed, you can also burn file/folders by right-clicking on them and selecting the appropriate context menu item.
Both KDE and Gnome are great DEs. I prefer KDE, but I sometimes use Gnome as well. I think it’s great that there’s a healthy competition between them, as it pushes each project to improve. That way, we all benefit.
WOW, i didnt know that – now that I admitted that I dont know KDE as well as KDE users can the KDE users step forward to state that they dont know Gnome well enough to slam it either….
of course I could change the post to…
Can you right click and resize icons in KDE?
yea, this is a flame thread and not much else so why not have fun with it…
I think they are both about as integrated and bloated as they possibly can be, I (truthfully) prefer the old style one app that does one thing and does it well! I want everything modular so I can pick the pieces I want or dont want and both Gnome and KDE seem to be getting away from this….
I mean XP does about everything you want it to for you… I dont like that, I feel like it bugs the crap out of me. stay out of my way I will click you when I need you, when I click you do not ask me anything, do not start doing anything, when I click close or delete dont keep asking me questions dang it – i am trying to get stuff done! Sadly, I feel like more and more KDE and GNOME are both moving into the “do everything” realm. Dont you hate it when you try to use app XYZ and yet it crashes because of some buggy feature that you do not even use keeps making it crash…
sorry i am rambling-ignore me as usual
KDE has that feature NOW, after gnome innovated and came up with the idea and kde realized it was a popular choice so KDE then implemented it
(sorry this argument just hit me)
I like having two desktops competing too but why KDE must be so Windowish?
Can you right click and resize icons in KDE?
No it doesn’t. Can you save to a remote computer via SSH directly in the file dialog in Gnome?
I will admit that I have a love/hate relationship with the new Gnome save/open file dialog (even though I prefer KDE, I use some GTK apps such as Gimp). It’s not bad as an original creation, but I still like the KDE dialog (which is a rip-off/improvement of the Windows one).
As far as bloat is concerned, I feel that KDE 3.4 is actually faster than previous versions! This (improving performance) has been consistent for the past few versions of KDE. Can’t say about Gnome, it feels a bit slower sometimes but that may be that there’s something wrong with my setup.
I use both GNOME and KDE.
I use both because I love konqueror, best Linux file manager IMO. And I like GNOME and its look and feel is very nice, also IMO. But unfortunately they both have their problems. This is where open source kicks ass. They are improving at an incredible rate which will fix all the problems I have with the system very soon.
I’d love to see more C or C++ tools, widgets, apps, etc. They just feel more responsive when compared with python, perl, java, etc.
i dont know that i have tried….
I know that i save remotely to a windows box….
(trying to dodge the jab)
This poll came and went before I ever had a chance to see it. (It’s 10:07 am where I am, and it’s my first chance to get online – on break at work.)
If I had a vote, I’d probably vote other for IceWM, since it’s faster than KDE or Gnome on my old machine. (I may give Xfce another look one of these days, though.) However, since the poll appeared to be slanted toward the “big two” (KDE and Gnome) and didn’t care about those running something else (as Eugenia stated earlier), my second choice would have been KDE, since I like it’s look better than Gnome. However, I prefer GTK applications (AbiWord, JPilot, etc.) for the most part.
Eugenia said she wanted to learn what people were using, but apparently only if they rand KDE or Gnome. It also seems that six hours isn’t enough time to learn much of anything in that regard.
Moderate away. . .
walt_huntsman [at] myrealbox [dot] com
do you honestly think anyone reads a flame war and that it in any way hurts/helps either DE…please
what, I CAN right click and resize icons… neat feature i think
This poll was supposed to be like an American election. Don’t even show all the third party candidates or give an option for the desktop I run that has both KDE and GNOME running at the same time.
Its meant to start a flame war, a two sided argument between political parties that reenforces groupthink and lack in intelligent discussion.
But I bet it generates a lot of page hits.
Certainly not scientific or of any statistical significance whatsoever.
geez I would think that if osnews cannot do anything right then you’ll would simply leave and quite posting how terrible it is…
QT
so KDE
GTK
so GNOME
so finally, when I’m not running Windows XP/2003 (that is far superior than anything else for desktop (my opinion)), I try to use native, Motif and GNUstep stuff.
Using Gnome and/or KDE is a waste of time. It proves that you’re addicted/owned by a religion not by common sense.
Both are such garbage…
Well, It won’t last long my friend
read here: http://nat.org/2005/may/#New-Linux-desktop-software
Well no, I actually have no worries that this prototype thingy will ever replace Nautilus. Not sure what Nat has been smoking.
I have a lot of respect for Ximian, but I wouldn’t want them to design my desktop. As long as Red Hat has sane ideas, life is good. 
I wouldn’t mind the Nautilus browser using that Thunar interface though. Everything is better than the explorer-like web browser interface. Column-view might be a good idea for it, too. I’m not at all against browser-like tools, but there should also always be a direct representation of a folder, without going through another application. Use a browser when you want to, not because you have to.
i use to think that gtk were so much fastter to start up than QT apps and it may be true but I found out most QT apps check the network and so forth before starting and that introduces a little lag… But the most recent version of KDE i tried was awful quick…
I just think the worst thing you can do is run full blown gnome and try to pull up a QT app or vice versa, at least it use to be dog slow either way…
i think my vote goes to icewm
>I’m the maintainer of KDE-Apps.org and can provide
>you a XML feed or a HTML part of the
>newest KDE apps to list them on OSNews.com.
Thanks for the offer but we don’t use feeds from external sources. We only provide links/feeds to our own sites. It is not about being indepentant (as I said earlier, no one from osnews uses gnome, not even myself anymore), it’s just that we HAPPEN to have gnomefiles.org (created at a time that we felt that the site was needed by its community, so we jumped in the business) and so we HAVE to promote that SITE in one way or another (it’s already there, we have to do something with it). Besides, we don’t have vertical space to put one more sidebar in a way that will still look balanced.
what about mezzo just being a window or a “app” if you will, and you could have multiple instances of it…
or maybe integrate all desktop “features” into every active window? sort of a – i can go anywhere from here without having to click thru something else? a program menu that drops down at the corner of every window a filemanger liting that drops down at the other corner of every window… and so on…
you dont have to navigate anything, everything is accesible from anywhere… whew that might be difficult to implemnt..
I disagree. I use both Windows and Linux/KDE, and in my humble opinion KDE is a far superior desktop than Windows. Nothing religious about it, simple personal preferences.
But then again, you were just trolling, weren’t you…
I didn’t have the chanse to vote, I would voted for GNOME anyway.
Great pool, far more realistic than others where are only for Geeks (more geeks that the ones reading OSNEWS)
Thank you.
Can you save to a remote computer via SSH directly in the file dialog in Gnome?
Actually, you can. Try Ctrl+L.