“Contrary to what was expected from recent Novell announcements, Novell executives are apparently slicing deeply into the Linux heart of the company. Jobs and resources are actually being slashed in several areas previously dubbed by Novell management as “key component parts of Novell’s Linux developments”: staffers working on Mono, Hula, Evolution and Desktop Strategy are getting the sack. SUSE customers around the world will be shocked and puzzled by this management decision.”
Why is Novell Chopping Its SUSE Workstation, Desktop Line?
169 Comments
2005-11-05 5:24 pm
Anonymous
Based on a propietary toolkit with expensive licenses that simple not feed in, better architecture or not, is not that relevant, not for that GNOME is behind, GTK’s architecture is good to, not better that Qt fro the moment but is good and free, I don’t see the KDE architecture as an advantage,
Bullshit. Qt is gpl as long as your code is the same. I’ve done very little coding with either of these toolkits, but the examples I’ve tried for gtk was *horribly* messy.
b) KDE is fully object oriented.
What would that be an advantage? GNOME can do C++ to you know, even Java, develoepers who use low level prefer C over C++ and there GNOME shines too, I don’t see that point as an advantage.
It’s because of code re-useablility silly. Have you never wondered why the kdeapplications like all the stuff in “kdenetwork” as well as amarok is such small downloads if you take the capablilities they contain into account? Or how kontact, kmail and other different applications are capable of such tight integration?
So does GNOME, like GStreamer, Evolution data Center, Scripting, etc.
So, how do I get
[/i]Yet you did mention any of them, is well know that GNOME aplications are quiet better and popular than with KDE, but since KDE include a bload of unnecesary software as its base then that could be true.[/i]
Lol. What gnome applications? 
Firefox? Nope. Openoffice? Nope. The gimp? Nope. Sylpheed or gvim then? Nope, nope. In other words you must be refering to the steamin pos that makes up evolution, and a handfull of other, rarely used and in several cases pretty borken applications like evince.
Same with GNOME, GNOME is even more consistent than KDE, they have ruleas and HIG, KDE has nothing of it.
Clever. Using your weakness as an argument to claim superiority, I give you that. Unfortunately for you, it’s getting old, and not getting any truer with time.. Gnome has a HIG because it needs it.. qt deals automatically with quite a lot of what the programmer has to fiddle with manually in gtk.
the screenshot ain’t othing but eye candy, an enterprice desktop should be aimed to productivity not to look nice, and GNOME wins on goth sides anyway.
So pathetic.. in case you get confronted with symptoms of problems, dismiss them…
That movie was made but the number one anti-GNOME troll is that your case?
Oh, anyone illustrating problems with gnome are trolls..? I should have known. Anyone you are unable to meet fact to fact, is simply a troll. How convenient…
I never had that problem, but with KDE in the other hand I been never been able to print correctly.
Sorry to hear that. However, I’m afraid that says more about you than kde.
[i]I didn’t see any good advantage of KDE over GNOME in your comments.[i]
You tell me about good substitutes for apps like kdevelop, amarok, kmail, kpdf, kopete, k3b that doesn’t totally suck. And don’t bother with anjuta, rhythmbox, evolution, evince or gaim. They are either not really gnome applications, or they completely suck in some respect, like printing from evince being completely broken unless you print the entire document or gaim, wich sucks so bad as an irc-client that I fail to find words to describe it.
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I really feel for Novell. I think they have a real opportunity to do some good, for themselves, shareholders and the community. Let’s hope that their short terms needs do not impact their longterm prospects.
Listen to the people. I have not met a single soul that would prefer Gnome over KDE. That’s not to say Gnome users do not exist. They do. But Novell appeared to put more resources into Gnome. That alone sent me to Kubuntu. I was not alone. I was thinking of returning to Novell with their SuSE 10.0 but this news has discouraged me.
I don’t want to start a flamewar.. But all the linux Desktops I’ve seen are running Gnome. In the past 8 months, I’ve seen at least a dozen gnome setups (excluding my 2 boxes, and my sisters) but not one KDE setup.
The thing for Novell going with GNOME is clear. They have two VP’s Nat and Miguel and god knows how much they lied to their CEO or responsible to get that through. It doesn’t matter whether they go with GNOME, it still doesn’t change the fact that KDE is the better desktop. Just because a few companies chose wrong doesn’t mean everyone else has to do the same. In the past 8 months there might be more GNOME setups. But in the past 6 years KDE regulary won one desktop award after the other. So the user preference is clearly differently than the company preference. But then:
MONO, Evolution
Are one of the biggest KEY COMPONENTS that makes it worth using GNOME and Evolution is being left in a bad shape at the moment and a lot of stuff isn’t really working anymore (broken index files, crashes on startup and and and) With this announcement I might believe this has been implemented on purpose because of fedup employees. I don’t know how the GNOME development will progress and if there is a future for it, now that key people left or dropped. It’s not like you find people capable to deal with these big things at every street corner…
Not a single KDE setup? That doesn’t make you wonder how representive your statistics is?
All the desktop’s I’ve seen people use were KDE, we have mutually exclusive results here.
Anyway in my opinion Gnome is used in so many distributions because those aim to sell their product towards companies which want to avoid the Qt license. Companies often have software written for them, it’s far safer for them to go with a toolkit which will have no cost should they decide to redistribute that software without the intent of releasing source code. Also the distributor can write commercial software which matches the desktop then without having to buy an expensive license.
To make my point consider the following. Distributions which are geared towards home users moreso than companies used KDE as the main desktop, these include Linspire, Xandros and Lycoris (before it was acquired). Distributions which sit on the fence so to speak have a good KDE desktop as well as somewhat neglected but usable Gnome desktop, these include Mandriva and SUSE. Finally distributions which are geared towards corporate and government customers use Gnome such as Red Hat, Sun and Novell (Novell Desktop).
There are exceptions of course, some people like Gnome more than KDE for home use and some people preffer KDE over Gnome for corporate use, but I think this adequately shows major trends in the use of Linux’s desktop environments.
“Listen to the people. I have not met a single soul that would prefer Gnome over KDE.”
Then you must be a hermit. In North America atleast, Gnome is far more popular than KDE. In Europe the opposite seems to be true.
“In North America atleast, Gnome is far more popular than KDE. In Europe the opposite seems to be true.”
Quite possible, because there’s mainly known and used Red Hat which is distributing Gnome, so people take what’s given to them, while there are Suse/Mandriva in Europe shipping by default with KDE.
That must also be why Linux adoption never really took off in North America compared to Europe.
How did you now it didn’t took off?
Troll.
It’s all relative, and by relative I mean compared to the whole OS market. It’s common perception that Linux has a higher market share in Europe than in North America.
So i would ask, what is driving Linux adoption on the side of the end user? It’s probably not some kernel driver, not some GNU tool and also not an obscure library. It’s the user visible part he’s interacting with, the graphical desktop at whole. Which is commonly KDE or Gnome. Where users in North America saw Gnome, users in Europe saw KDE.
KDE appealed to a lot more users than Gnome, so it thrived comparatively better, and with it Linux (in form of the Linux distro) in general.
Of course it would be hard to proof this and it is a sure statement to provoke flamewars, but I dare to say this claim is well possible, while I want to completely rule out external influences like the phases of the moon. You can come up with your own conclusions.
Say it with me, now:
correlation is not cause
Repeat until nausea ensues.
“while there are Suse/Mandriva in Europe shipping by default with KDE.
[…]
That must also be why Linux adoption never really took off in North America compared to Europe.”
Right, Mandriva (formerly Mandrake) had to file for bankruptcy a little while ago and SUSE’s market share has declined from 25% in 2002 to 20% now[0].
Red Hat on the other hand has seen increasing growth over the years and is now aggressively moving into Europe, India, and China.
[0] http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2005/11/01/novel…
Actually Mandrake filed for controlled administration in 2003, not “a while ago”, and recovered from that in the first half of 2004. Also, financial issues were caused not by their Linux distribution but by their e-learning sector.
I live in America and Ubuntu (not Kubuntu) is very popular.
I live in America, and Ubuntu is not very popular at all. Almost no one has heard of it, and hardly anyone is using it. Just about everyone is using Windows or OSX.
Go out on the street and ask the first 100 people you meet if they have heard of Ubuntu. Then ask them if they have heard of Windows. The answers will tell you that Ubuntu or any Linux desktop is not “very popular”.
I have both Ubuntu and SUSE, but the HPD count on DistroWatch is not any measure of popularity except in a very narrow population.
Finally, someone from the same planet as me. Hello
While those user who frequent OSNews and Slashdot may be more likely to use Gnome; Linux Journal and Linux Magazine estimate KDE usage at 2 to 1 over Gnome. Even Redhat’s QA numbers show more users of KDE… and that is on a Gnome centric distribution. The reality of the situation is that KDE is somewhere between 2 and 3 TIMES more popular than Gnome.
Bobby
The reality of the situation is that KDE is somewhere between 2 and 3 TIMES more popular than Gnome.
The last time I cheked Ubuntu was the king, but of course it is abvious that KDE users want to believe in some random polls voted for KDE trolls, it is all normal.
I’m a new KDE fan. It’s all about kpdf, I’m serious kpdf is incredible…
Really though, kde 3.4 makes up for 3.2 and 3.3… I really hope they keep this level of quality.
“I’m a new KDE fan. It’s all about kpdf, I’m serious kpdf is incredible… ”
KPDF uses poppler from freedesktop.org which is shared by Evince currently in GNOME. You might want to try that
“I’m a new KDE fan. It’s all about kpdf, I’m serious kpdf is incredible… ”
So whats that got to do with it. As far as corporate adoption of the Linux desktop goes, the suits will be happy that that Acrobat Reader 7.0 is available. Anyway Evince for Gnome is supposed to be excellent too.
Ubuntu is king of Distrowatch hits on the distro. That doesn’t mean that more people are using it.
First, I prefer Gnome over KDE and most of the people in my LUG do as well ( http://www.pcolalug.org ). But that isn’t what this is about…
Not exactly anyway. It sounds as if the author of the linked article is more upset by the move to a Gnome based system. HEAVENS NO!!! Come on, it’s not going to mean that you can’t use KDE with SuSE. Kubuntu is a perfect example of that. So, I officially throw out the FUD flag and say let’s press on.
It’s sad that folks are losing their jobs, but Novell is simply trying to make a move to copy what Redhat has so successfully done…make more money. I can’t blame them. I think it’s a good move because businesses are going to be the big spenders because they want support. Let the community develop the base distro with OpenSUSE and then pick out what works best and provide support for it, a la Fedora/RHES.
That really doesn’t matter. They’re not looking to sop up the existing market, they want to expand the market (that’s where the money is, if it exists). The people who aren’t on Linux now don’t know what KDE and Gnome are, and they’re not gonna care for quite a while after they start using one.
“As a consequence of their layoffs, Novell is also laying off one KDE core developer employed by SUSE. But other areas will suffer even more. The entire Evolution development team (mostly based in India) seems to be dissolved, with only one maintainer left to keep the product breathing (after all, there are existing Novell customers); Hula development is said to be cut completely; Mono development is also seriously affected; what the future holds for the NLD product remains to be seen.
The GUI requirements needed to satisfy a non-command line interface for the remaining Novell server product line will apparently be GNOME only.”
Very mixed signals coming from Novell.
Not sure: apparently they bank on KDE on the desktop OpenSUSE line (so they have layed off all the Evolution, HULA, Mono teams) and will be GNOME-only for their servers NLD product (Evolution, HULA doesn’t matter on the server and Mono is unproven so..).
The confusing part is that they bank on KDE on the client and on GNOME of the server, which is weird..
Apart from this I’m not sure that the layoff are that inconsistent, ok they layed off *one* KDE core developper but one doesn’t make a trend.
and will be GNOME-only for their servers NLD product (Evolution, HULA doesn’t matter on the server and Mono is unproven so..).
It’s simply not possible to do that. Their existing server line and tools are all written for KDE, such as YaST. It would take them years to rearchitect it. Also, it looks as if most of the Gnome people and certainly Evolution people, as well as Mono, have gone. They’re not exactly going to have much to run on this desktop.
Don’t pay any attention to the eWeek article. It was quoted from a former Director of Marketing for Ximian, and it’s full of crap. This guy has no idea what’s going on in Novell’s core products. You also notice he made no statement about a switch to Gnome – it was simply implied in the article. I’m afraid that guy is full of it.
The confusing part is that they bank on KDE on the client and on GNOME of the server, which is weird..
You would have though it was the other way around, but hey, this is Novell!
Its all ment to be. American compagnies trying to buy out the europian and asian ICT sectors. Copy and paste the technology and eliminate the influence and rule the internet just as planned.
Bye SuSE, I did love you though …
A few articles at the bottom of OSN there is a title that novell paid imendio to integrate beagle into GNOME. I think this will cause a lot of complaints and further rants in the future – knowing the userbase and the audience. This will end in a disaster really soon as soon as MONO makes it as requirement into GNOME.
Beagle clearly depends on MONO and the more C# and MONO stuff being worked on the more GNOME depends on it. And I see the faces of people today who don’t feel happy about this. Even real experts who keep maintaining their systems on their own will feel fed up if they require Python, MONO, JAVA and other funny things only to build GNOME or to have these subprocesses run in the background.
Now if this is the future of Desktop then amen. I don’t know what games are being playd at Novell but they surely have some planks nailed on their heads.
Tha’ts why I dropped used KDE; they whine to much, from the developers to the users, to much whine, to much trolling, to much paranoia, KDE used to be fun, now is ruined by all the trolls and the inmaturiry of its trash talkers developers, good by KDE.
Your sentences don’t make any sense to me.
Being that his english isn’t very good, I’ll translate. He’s trying to say this:
“I can’t find a better way to complain about trolling than to troll myself.”
I think he is right, KDE users whine to much, they only complaine and bash GNOME, KDE used to be better than that.
And the opposite can easily be said. The fact is that any KDE thread here is filled with GNOME trolls and any GNOME thread is filled with KDE trolls. Arguing about whose trolls are the worst is rather pointless.
But then again, you’re just showing my point with your “KDE users whine to [sic] much” trolling. Also, looking at your posting history I see nothing but anti-KDE/Qt troll posts.
I haven’t, show me where Im trolling and I’ll probe you wrong.
you forgot to login, Mitarai
so, the Anonymous on the first page it was you, hm?
and you replied to yourself saying “i think he’s right”
oh, please, GET A LIFE
Because iI in another PC now, geez, these paranoia.
I was actualy talking to the person I replied to, but I must say I found your original post to be blatant flame-bait.
In any case, I really REALLY don’t want you to “probe me wrong” 😉 (I know you meant “prove”, but the it sounded more like what happens during alien obductions.)
Right now I have no excitement about using KDE 3.x, maybe with KDE 4, who knows. but meanwhile, I’ll stick to GNOME or maybe I’ll be using XFCE, ain’t free Software awesome?
Linux isn’t ready for the desktop.
That’s why the *major* vendors, RedHat and Novell (both of which are responsible to shareholders instead of financed by a well-meaning millionare as Ubuntu is) have essentially replaced their commercial desktop distribution with noncommercial versions (Fedora, OpenSuse). This transition *was made* on RedHat’s part and *is being made* on Suse’s part because desktop Linux is not currently–and has no realistic prospect of becoming–commercially viable.
I’m sure this will be hard for the zealots among you to swallow, but it’s the ugly truth.
sad but true.
OSX may have a very small chance, but thats about it.
-Nex6
> OSX may have a very small chance, but thats about it.
I doubt this since most GNOME developers that I know use OSX as their primary desktop and work on GNOME whenever they feel so. It’s not necessary for them to provide a working desktop for linux since they already figured out that there is nothing big to win with GNOME and thus the majority of them settled with OSX. So, if they stop working on GNOME you can be sure they sooner or later start trashing OSX to suck as much as GNOME does.
Ha, pure lies and paranoia of a troll.
Both you two are so far off base it’s not even funny. You can’t compare commercial viability with technical readiness. And technically, Linux IS ready for the desktop. I know, I use it as my primary desktop at home, and have for over a year. So quit spouting FUD, and go use Windows if you’re so unhappy with KDE or Gnome.
Linux isn’t ready for the desktop.
Now, stop the trolling *right there*.
Should I say Windows is not ready for desktop because it doesn’t fill my needs (Unix- platform, tightly integrated remote filesystem support in KDE, missing awesome apps like Quanta+, *great* development tools which are open source, badly designed gui (really Microsoft, copy OS X for real already, your UI simply fcking sucks) ? That crap simply doesn’t work on my *desktop*. So it must suck like hell, right?
Linux either does the job for your needs, or it does not. Same stands for every other operating system in the world. Saying “this isn’t ready for X” is plainly stupid trolling.
So maybe I should troll too:
Windows is not ready for anything. Let’s face it. And don’t you windows zealots throw your stupid zealotry answers on me. Because You’re wrong, because *i* say so. OS X beats both craps anyway.
It’s not that Linux “isn’t ready” for the desktop. It’s just that there’s no market for it. Novell is just accepting the cold reality that the server is where it’s at and the best that they can hope for is others to continue the desktop work, write some gui tools for sys admins, and hope that something better comes along in 5-10 years.
Now to put a positive spin on this, I believe this gives alternative desktops (not Gnome or KDE) a chance to come out of the shadows. The mozilla python bindings are coming right along. I think there’s an opportunity there for a more net-centric desktop. Komodo (www.komodoware.com) is doing some interesting things based on Mono and a new toolkit loosely based off of PDF.
Many non-fanboys who have used Linux for years realized that linux on the desktop was fighting an uphill battle on the desktop, and that’s fine because we don’t care. Many people would rather just use OSX for a unix desktop or windows for the desktop and keep linux on the server where it really shines.
“Linux isn’t ready for the desktop.”
Yeah Right, and I’m using something that isn’t ready for the desktop? Linux is my main desktop system, I even don’t have Windows installed on my system for long long time. And you come to tell me that I’m missing something Winodws have? Come on Windows users on the desktop and much more on the server side are missing lots of stuff Linux and *BSD have long time ago. So is windows that isn’t ready for the desktop. Is so easy to have all the boxes in the world preinstalled with some stupid OS and now everybody uses it but, because the see is complete? or because they don’t know about nothing else? Windows is just a joke that got preinstalled on everyones pc.
Linux may be ready for *your* desktop, but not for everybody else’s. Until companies can sell Linux as a viable home-user solution and make their money back, they won’t consider it to be ready for “the desktop.” The very things that make you love Linux – free, open-source software that has a world-wide community supporting and developing it – are those things that should keep it from dying anytime soon.
In the meantime, it is still not a mainstream product. Your typical user expects to be able to go to their local computer store and be able to buy the latest game for their kids without somebody telling them that they can’t run it on Linux. My mother does not want to have to go on a developer’s mailing list to ask for help on her web browser and get told to “RTFA” (she wouldn’t know what that meant, and if she found out, she’d be pretty damned pissed.)
People who think their choice of operating system is a reflection of their personality are not exactly considered mainstream. Linux isn’t just about an OS, it’s about a culture. There’s no need to feel defensive about it.
Like the guy who wrote the article, SUSE was “my distro” for several years and I was rooting for it for a long, long time. Earlier this year I started to get a bad feeling about what was coming down the pike at Novell and switched to Debian. Even though I don’t use SUSE anymore, I am really really sorry to hear this news, if it is true.
I’m also pretty darn angry at the extent to which Novell and a bunch of venture capitalists seem to have hashed things up. Some of us wondered a couple of years ago why SUSE had to be torn out of its happy European roots – where it was easily the king of distros – and transplanted to a dodgy US company with a poor track record. I guess a bunch of cynical bankers is the reason.
Now, if this news is true, it looks as if some of the shareholders are taking over Novell on the qt and are running it for whatever cash they can extract. They couldn’t care less about Linux, I suspect. They just want the money. It’s like watching a baboon take a hammer to a beautiful diamond.
I’m also pretty darn angry at the extent to which Novell and a bunch of venture capitalists seem to have hashed things up. Some of us wondered a couple of years ago why SUSE had to be torn out of its happy European roots – where it was easily the king of distros – and transplanted to a dodgy US company with a poor track record. I guess a bunch of cynical bankers is the reason.
—————
Simple answer…money was offered, and money was accepted. SUSE is not a religion, it’s a collection of software. If the owners felt the need to sell it, then this was their decision. Why do people feel so emotional about stupid software? Use something else. For gods sakes, it’s just Linux. Go on to the next version. No big deal. Plenty of choices left. Maybe you will find versions that are much better.
Simple answer…money was offered, and money was accepted. SUSE is not a religion, it’s a collection of software. If the owners felt the need to sell it, then this was their decision.
It was a very fatal mistake. Suse could have kept their focus, expanded, probably taken some of Novell’s market share and bought them out by now.
The article in question doesn’t present a completely accurate picture of what’s going on at N. The Hula team hasn’t been “completely cut” by any means; I believe they may have lost a developer, I don’t think mono lost many either.
I don’t know where the Bangalore thing came from, so I don’t know whether or not it’s true – if it is, it’s very sad; Evo is a great product. It’s also a shame one of the key Moz XForms developers has gone too. But, we’re still talking small numbers, compared to the 600-or-so who apparently lost their jobs.
Right, and now that you mention it, maybe the values for SUSE ain’t true either. Maybe the article on linuxtoday is a well set propaganda machinery trying to kill off KDE and SUSE in favor for GNOME. Who know’s the world is full of dirt and full of freaks.
Man you are the biggest troll I ever read, did you at least raed the article? it was writed by a KDE developer you moron.
Before calling someone a troll why don’t you f–king go and read this ?
http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2005-11-04-018-26-OP-SS-…
Maybe that guy was just upset for losing his job, it’s understandable in these hard days.
Linux Today is not responsible for the content of the message below.
Marcus Meissner – Subject: Misleading report ( Nov 4, 2005, 20:20:45 )
Just a reassurance from a Novell/SUSE employee.
The reporter is misinformed and his post wrong.
Novell will still deliver Desktop products, both
enterprise (NLD) and retail (openSUSE / SUSE Linux).
Ciao, Marcus
Evolution is a big thing for Linux in the enterprise enviroment..
Evolution must survive whitout novell!
I really love novell as an consultant working with the netware platform from 3.x to 5.x
But Novell should have gone with BSD and not fall
with the “trend” of Linux.
Then Novell could have replaced netware with a rock solid version of BSD..
You are 100% right.
But Novell should have gone with BSD and not fall
with the “trend” of Linux.
Then Novell could have replaced netware with a rock solid version of BSD..
And that would change what? Solidity of some kernel is not relevant here at all…
Given the advances of Fedora and Ubuntu, SuSe just dosn’t have the same sort of quality and reliability any more. I think Novell has realized this and is diverting resources to more Linux generic applications, or their own software stacks.
Actually SUSE is probably more reliable than it has ever been. What it has come to lack is cachet/style. It had that before Novell got their hands on it, but not so much now when it is just another distro with a rather bland website that fails to convey anything special about itself. And the failure to build a user/developer community around SUSE has really come back to bite Novell/SUSE on the arse.
In any case, the real question is whether Novell can make a go of itself as a business or whether it is an economic basketcase and these are the first moves in a long slide down the tubes.
The usual reason a business slashes a product line is because it is losing money on it. Since no one has ever made money selling desktop Linux,there’s little reason to believe Novell could be more fortunate.
In the end, the question is not “Is Linux ready for the desktop?” The question is this: “Is Anyone Ready To Pay For Linux on the Desktop?”
That is so sad for suse.
I like their distribution. And I felt bad then novell bought suse, but everyone seems to be happy about it.
i feel sorry for kde users but now is official
Gnome will be the true linux desktop.
LSB is with GNOME
IBM is with GNOME
HP is with GNOME
Novell is with GNOME
RedHat is with GNOME
Ubuntu is with GNOME
”
LSB is with GNOME
IBM is with GNOME
HP is with GNOME
Novell is with GNOME
RedHat is with GNOME
Ubuntu is with GNOME”
Sun, Adobe, the list goes on and on.
And 90% of the world’s desktops run windows. Mediocrity is good at getting backers.
But note that outside of ubuntu, none of gnome backers feel its ready for the desktop. With friends like that who needs OSX and Vista ?
Edited 2005-11-05 00:21
”
LSB is with GNOME
IBM is with GNOME
HP is with GNOME
Novell is with GNOME
RedHat is with GNOME
Ubuntu is with GNOME”
Sun, Adobe, the list goes on and on.
Even if they were, (which they aren’t), unfortunately they’ve all still advanced as far as an asthmatic ant with some very heavy shopping.
segedunum bashing GNOME, how new.
> LSB is with GNOME
no.
> IBM is with GNOME
Most of IBM’s primary softwaresolutions are build up ontop of QT, they are signed contract partners of trolltech, as well as adobe and some other industry leaders.
> SUN is with GNOME
> HP is with GNOME
HP officially supported GNOME but dropped out because the desktop didn’t offered what HP wanted and the desktop wasn’t scalable enough. The same happened with SUN (see their announce some days ago)
> Novell is with GNOME
> RedHat is with GNOME
Novell still continues shipping GNOME as well as KDE and they keep on working on openSUSE as they did before. It’s just a transition that Red Hat made some years ago too, by dropping their GNOME support and creating Fedora.
> Ubuntu is with GNOME
Kubuntu is with KDE so where is the problem ?
Distros that matter don’t use Gnome.
Make your list.
Edited 2005-11-05 17:41
Mepis
“Distros that matter don’t use Gnome.”
You mean like Red Hat which accounts for more than 70% of the global commerical Linux sales?
Lets see, KDE hmmm….
Linspire – Has never made a profit
Mandriva – Had to file for bankruptcy
SUSE – In the last 3 years, has lost 5% commerical Linux marketshare.
You mean like Red Hat which accounts for more than 70% of the global commerical Linux sales?
Lets see, KDE hmmm….
It hasn’t made Gnome any more popular, which incidentally, is why everyone is arguing about it with Novell ;-).
That guy must have watched Chicken Little today. The sky isn’t falling. Novell hasn’t fired everyone working on Mono like this guy says. Suse isn’t going away. It’s filled with inaccuracies, see some of the comments there for corrections.
Quote from this comment:
http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2005-11-04-018-26-OP-SS-…
“Just a reassurance from a Novell/SUSE employee. The reporter is misinformed and his post wrong. Novell will still deliver Desktop products, both enterprise (NLD) and retail (openSUSE / SUSE Linux).”
Companies don’t choose GNOME because of an alleged technical superiority, the LGPL is simply friendly to their needs. End of discussion.
However, KDE has never been dependant on big or small companies (aside from Trolltech). Nothing has changed.
So what makes you people think it’s going anywhere? Honestly. It’s already common knowledge a lot more distributions default to GNOME rather than KDE. Yet if you look around for user polls etc. KDE is generally ranked as #1. Not that GNOME isn’t sometimes too.
Companies betting on a desktop environment purely because of licencing issues could prove disastorous in the future.
Novell as public corporations must protect the investment of the shareholders, that is their primary responsibility. They lost significant amount of money and they needed to cut on their expenses. The author makes a big deal about the cuts but if you look at the Linux areas they cut they are no really strategic nor significant:
1. Mono – in the Linux world there is significant resistance to Mono as a clone to MS technologies. MS will always keep Mono developres chasing their product.
2. Evolution – this application is quite mature. How much is left to do that cannot be done by RedHat, Mandriva and Ubuntu.
3. KDE – There are plenty of other developers from the other distros working on KDE. They can still incorporate the work of KDE developers into SUSE.
The author quite explicitly states that he is a KDE person. in my opinios that is the area he seems to be most worried about. Even though I use KDE most of the time, I also use GNOME and I find it perfectly competent. Reading about KDE 4 and what is being discussed about Gnome3 it appears the latest will leapfrog teh former into a new approach to desktop GUI as opposed to KDE’s approach, which is a bit too close to Windows XP. The spectacular success of Ubuntu shows that there is plenty of acceptance for Gnome (and before I get flamed, I use KDE 95% of the time)
Why?
The article is basically: “Why are they slashing Linux jobs too? Don’t they know Linux = insta profit?”. Quite foolish to be surprised at seeing jobs being slashed in all parts of a company, especially a part that’s hardly profitable and which is getting money thrown at (almost literally) by Novell.
was doing fine on it’s own, really it doesn’t need novell to screw it up, which seems to be happening.
BTW, it was doing fine by being a KDE desktop, heck until recently they didn’t barely kept up with GNOME.
I think SUSE made a couple of mistake, first, the noying FTP installation, the fact that it didn’t come with a single cd like Ubuntu/Kubuntu, etc.
I really never tried SUSE, but I think it was the santuary of a KDE user.
What is sad, is that people believe this. As a novell employee who IS ON THE HULA DEVELOPMENT TEAM, I can tell you that this author is mistaken. We lost 1 member of the hula dev team to get another.
This author is very disgruntled because Novell laid off a KDE developer so they can focus more on gnome development. Surprise surprise, if you google for “Kurt Pfeifle” you will notice that he is a kde evangelist.
It is a sad day when Open Source Developers resort to namecalling and FUD because they aren’t happy. It is a sad day indeed.
Shame on him, he was lying.
Go you figure.
Kurt wrote his name, we all know that he’s a kde developer (in fact, he wrote it in the article!). What’s your name, Mr. Anonymous? Why should I believe to Anonymous (IP: 12.222.183.—) and not to Kurt?
The question is? where did Kurt got that information from?
He didn’t mention any sources or provide any link and that is FUD.
What made you think that Kurt lived under a glass bell? Maybe he talked with other fellow kde developers, who happens to be Novell employees? Maybe he’s right? Maybe he said a bunch of lies? At least he put his name.
wow, he put his name, that makes him less jerk, sure.
‘Surprise surprise, if you google for “Kurt Pfeifle” you will notice that he is a kde evangelist’
—–
You are commenting without having read Kurt’s article. If you had, you’d know he is a “KDE contributor” without need for googling. Because he says so. Very revealing about your attitude indeed.
I tell you a secret: I did some googling too. I googled for “Anonymous” and found “asshole”. While googling for “asshole” gave hits on “Anonyomous”. Draw your conclusions.
Welcome to The Club 😛
This author is very disgruntled because Novell laid off a KDE developer so they can focus more on gnome development. Surprise surprise, if you google for “Kurt Pfeifle” you will notice that he is a kde evangelist.
I fail to see the advantage he draws from saying that Gnome projects got cut too. Wouldn’t it make more sense to blow the KDE cuts out of proportion and question whether it was an intelligent decision to let a bankrupt Linux company (Ximian) more or less take over a profitable one (SuSE) in the first place?
Also, you did more namecalling in your short reply (posted from an anonymous account making claims that can’t be verified) than the author in the whole article (where he btw. clearly states who he is).
As a novell employee who IS ON THE HULA DEVELOPMENT TEAM, I can tell you that this author is mistaken.
Well, you’re posting anonymously so there’s no way to verify that. All we can gather at the moment is that a lot of people, including many people who’ve been obliviously hacking away on open source software that makes zero return for Novell, have gone. That most certainly includes Hula.
This author is very disgruntled because Novell laid off a KDE developer so they can focus more on gnome development.
Says who? I hardly call laying off one KDE developer focusing on Gnome, but of course, you’ll know all about the ex-Ximian people who come out of the woddwork when these things happen to put their own spin on things ;-).
It is a sad day when Open Source Developers resort to namecalling and FUD because they aren’t happy. It is a sad day indeed.
Well I really appreciate you people for being the bigger men here *finger firmly down throat*.
This guy Hovsepian is no mug, and he’s no clueless twit like Messman was – let’s face it, Messman has been fired effectively.
What will be interesting is how he’s laying off people. Unfortunately, laying people off is a fact of life, but how you go about doing it really decides the future of your company. Unfortunately for Hovsepian there is simply no rhyme or reason to the current cuts. It’s a random slash. If the people who actually run the business have been fired, and others go with them in sympathy, you can wave goodbye to Novell as a business.
I really don’t understand the Gnome server interface thing though. They’re going to have to change all their core products, contributions to YaST will effectively stop, and they’re going to have to create whole new tools. Considering that they’re going to have to maintain low-level software like GTK and other tools themselves, which costs money, it doesn’t sound like a sound strategy to me. This isn’t a Gnome or KDE fanboy thing – this affects their core products. Basically the stuff that brings in any revenue for the company. If they lose it, they’re gone. If they lose their existing customers as a result of jumping any ships midstream then they’re history. All they have are existing Netware customers who won’t hang around forever to see the train-wreck they’re being asked to subscription license to. If they don’t like what they see they’ll go Microsoft. Who wants that, but who could blame them?
Trust me, if you get layoffs and cuts wrong in a company you might as well not carry on. All too often managers simply do not realise the significance.
From #hula on irc.freenode.net. I found this conversation amusing:
SEJeff Can anyone elaborate on this? http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2005-11-04-018-26-OP-SS-…
SEJeff From that article “Hula development is said to be cut completely”
campd it’s wrong
campd hula is alive and well
* gaute_ has quit (Read error: 110 (Connection timed out))
* campd has changed the topic to: Hula is Alive and Kicking | Using AJAX with Backend clients: http://www.hula-project.org/AJAX_Interface | Installing Mono: http://www.hula-project.org/Installation_Mono
* campd has changed the topic to: Hula is Alive and Kicking | Bring Novell Gossip Elsewhere | Using AJAX with Backend clients: http://www.hula-project.org/AJAX_Interface | Installing Mono: http://www.hula-project.org/Installation_Mono
SEJeff Are you guys going to say anything to the author of that article?
SEJeff like wtf?
campd no
SEJeff He must work for redhat
campd ’cause it’s not worth our time
campd no, he just wrote an article based on unfounded rumor
campd it happens all the time
Novell agrees with me and says he was wrong:
http://linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/2005110500426NWSSNV
Its official, Kurt you are a jerk.
Trust me, things are that bad. Novell is a company with a lot of overheads that is making no money whatsoever. It’s just about breaking even with a declining product base. Personally, I hope it is that bad in many ways because they simply cannot go on as they are. This isn’t a game.
“if you have five fingers on your hand, then less than a handful of engineers were laid off at the Nurmberg facility.”
No sorry. No business with any scrap of credibility lays off just five or less people. That’s a complete lie in itself, and if you lie about layoffs your business is finished as he only seems to mention Nuremburg. These guys really are as clueless as they appear to be.
Kurt appears to have got his information first-hand from people who’ve been layed off or in the company, as has this guy:
http://www.chipx86.com/blog/archives/000130.html
I know who I’m going to listen to for the moment.
I know who I’m going to listen to for the moment.
The one that makes you feel better of course, not the truth.
The one that makes you feel better of course, not the truth.
Well, that depends on which one it is ;-). At the moment I don’t think anyone can feel better. There’s a lot of misinformation at the moment, and from what you can gather neither KDE or Gnome at Novell is feeling any good. No Evolution? Does that mean they’re not using it? What about the desktop migration? What are they going to use? Changing default desktops? Eh?
Oh, and I wouldn’t believe this either:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1882118,00.asp
Mancusi-Ungaro is, or was, Director of Marketing at Ximian:
http://www.linuxforum.dk/2004/program/fredag/greg_mancusi.shtml
We heard lots of similar things when Suse was first taken over:
Novell is making one large strategic change. The GNOME interface is going to become the default interface on both the SLES (SuSE Linux Enterprise Server) and Novell Linux Desktop line.
You notice he doesn’t make that statement himself, a well worn tactic. You can always say you were misquoted and it was journalistic speculation ;-). There is no SLES anymore. SLES 9 was the last of the Suse line, and it is KDE based. OES is the first of the Novell line, and it is KDE based. The way many talked you would think that Gnome was the default on the NLD. I don’t see what difference that is going to make. Looks like some people are mouthing off for their own advantage again.
Not that it makes any difference of course. KDE, Gnome, no desktop, Netware, Linux, Netware running in Linux – Novell are still a totally rudderless company. Their managers really are that idiotic, and they have no handle over what goes on.
Should be interesting to sit back and see what happens over the next couple of months or so so I’d save your keyboard and observe Novell do their usual cock up act. Enjoy.
Btw, that blod was in another context, I read it in the morning.
Troll
Btw, that blog was in another context, I read it in the morning.
Troll
Btw, that blog was in another context
No it wasn’t.
I read it in the morning.
Good for you.
Evolution – I seriously think this is the only email client that feels cheaper than Outlook Express. This became a solution deadend when Thunderbird entered its early, early beta.
Hula – This project was dead the second the Mozilla foundation said it will do a calendaring project. On one side, you have Firefox and Thunderbird. On the otherside, you have Evolution. Any questions?
Mono – Why the hell are Linux people wasting resources even developing this? Is it legal? Who knows. Is it safe for an enterprise to deploy? Who knows. When Java starts completely dominating the marketplace
(including the Windows marketshare) Microsoft will naturally have to port .Net to Linux and Unix or suffer complete loss. Linux people don’t have to waste their time doing this for Microsoft for free. If you look around, it’s apparent that noone is stupid enough to develop any real .Net applications. All you see are PHP-like web sites and small internal applications. Instead everyone is choosing Java for the heavy retail based applications because they know they will be able to port to another platform. Now why would a large company, such as Adobe, create a new application and base it on .Net and lock themselves out of the Linux and MacOS X space? If people really wanted to be productive, they should have helped the GCJ and PHP project.
The way I see it, this was the best thing Novell/SuSE could have done. Now if they really want to get serious, they need to slowly drop YAST support and move towards a real solution.
Are you Kurt’s brother?
My opinions
Evolution – rocks, TB, well at least until no Evolution for Windows. TB just lacks too much. I work a lot with PR agencies and I can tell you that I don’t have the heart to enforce TB over Outlook. Just as TB has some features, Outlook has some other too (mostly corporate which lack in TB. Calendaring is the least of the TB problems for corporate use). And believe me, when Evo comes I won’t have a bad feeling anymore.
Comparing the Hula and Sunbird? Do you actualy compare car and a plane too? Hula is web interface, Sunbird is standalone software.
Mono – Why the hell are Linux people wasting resources even developing this? Is it legal? Who knows. Is it safe for an enterprise to deploy? Who knows. When Java starts completely dominating the marketplace (including the Windows marketshare) Microsoft will naturally have to port .Net to Linux and Unix or suffer complete loss. Linux people don’t have to waste their time doing this for Microsoft for free. If you look around, it’s apparent that noone is stupid enough to develop any real .Net applications. All you see are PHP-like web sites and small internal applications. Instead everyone is choosing Java for the heavy retail based applications because they know they will be able to port to another platform. Now why would a large company, such as Adobe, create a new application and base it on .Net and lock themselves out of the Linux and MacOS X space? If people really wanted to be productive, they should have helped the GCJ and PHP project.
Well, all what you’ve said before this was rubbish, but this is a pure example of stupidity.
1. Mono is atractive to developers that haven’t considered coding for Linux. If they do it with Mono they actualy create crossplatform (and with the almost zero effort). This type of coders wouldn’t even care about Linux. But since people are greedy and opportunity is there? A lot of projects being developed on .Net are creating Mono ports. Mono probably (and as much unfortunate as it is, personally I don’t like that fact) is the biggest push Linux had. MS keeps dominance with Office and IE. MS dominance and lockdown will keep up until developers have to choose which platform they will be writting software for. In 99% they will probably choose commercialy (as in 95 or other?). But what if they write for both? And without any learning curve?
2. Why would Adobe? Well, because Mono exists and it is cross portable. They would just achieve more platforms supported.
3. What do PHP and GCJ have to do with that? Personally, as soon as I see Java being used in some software I avoid that software (and a lot of people beside me). Well, I can’t imagine desktop being written in PHP. What about Python? C? C++? Kernel? XOrg? GTK? Gnome? KDE? …
But at the end. I agree about Novell and best thing that could be done.
I prefer Gnome not because I think “KDE sucks” – I think QT sucks. I (and my employer) thinks that QT is a horrible toolkit – not least due to it’s legal and licensing issues – but mainly because it’s god damn ugly.
KDE /seems/ bloated because it looks bloated. Theming doesn’t really fix that. It looks horrible. Thats why I don’t use it.
GNOME is /clean/, it’s professional, it’s minimal. Thats what Windows Server is like. Thats what a company wants on it’s desktop.
This conclusion, however, begs the question “Why don’t more people use XFCE”
This conclusion, however, begs the question “Why don’t more people use XFCE”
Because currently it is not user friendly enough. It is, however, headed in right direction – stay tuned for 4.4, and then who knows what’s gonna happen 😉
I (and my employer) thinks that QT is a horrible toolkit – not least due to it’s legal and licensing issues – but mainly because it’s god damn ugly.
I’d line yourself up another job then, because you’re going to need it.
So, I guess they’re gonna fall back on their highly-successful NetWare business?
What have they touched that hasn’t turned to shit?
I was suspicious of the SUSE acquisition, and now it looks like my fears have come true.
Hopefully, they will sell off the unit before they run it into the ground like they did with all their other products (eg., WordPerfect, NetWare).
I think that Novell finally realized that the Open Source world has not so much to offer in the business world. Yes Linux is everywhere in the industry but is it really profitable for Linux vendors like Novell?
I doubt. They now doubt. Alot of people doubt. Maybe you can make some money with support and hardware (if you’re also a hardware vendor) but you will never make more money than the money you will spend on it over a long (read: long) period of time. You have to do it for the love of it, not for the profit. In business, it’s not something you can consider. Only individuals can do that.
Anyway, I think this is the beginning of the end. Novell is one big player after all…..
I think that Novell finally realized that the Open Source world has not so much to offer in the business world. Yes Linux is everywhere in the industry but is it really profitable for Linux vendors like Novell?
It can be profitable. It’s just Novell are a crap company and have no clue where to apply themselves.
I agree that this is the beginning of the end. Unless they get some focus, like what Red Hat have, they can forget it.The warning signs came when a lot of Suse and Novell peple left in the last few months.
Forget Novell, Google will do what no one has been able to do until now.
You need to stop drinking the Google Kool-Aid.
Oh well, i still have my xp & win 98 boxes
fedora core might work for me for a while.
Does this make sense for anyone? Novell makes GNOME the default desktop for its business desktop and is at the same time as the Novell PR guy confirmed withdrawing the developers from Evolution, the GNOME desktop’s central software. “this is a stable, mature product” – may I laugh? I keep reading how buggy it still is. “It also has a lot of community support” – I never considered Evolution a mainly community developed software and don’t think that there is a strong non-paid community working on it today.
This thread has contained a lot of pathetic whingeing whining and zealotry.
1. Lets get the facts straight with what is happening at Novell before screaming the sky is falling. No one seems to be really sure at the moment.
2. Lets stop the pointless KDE and GNOME zealotry.
I use GNOME, I just happen to have a personal preference for it. I started out on Linux with KDE 1 and I moved to GNOME 1, I have had a long period with XFce 3 as my primary desktop and a period with a combination of XFwm 4, XFsession, Rox and the GNOME panel when the early GNOME 2 releases were not that great. I am currently using GNOME 2.6, so I am far from bleeding edge but it works for me.
I think KDE is a very fine desktop and the the combination of competition and cooperation (via freedesktop.org) serves the community well. I am happy that a variety of desktop environments and window managers is available for Linux. Freedom works.
That was me I forgot to login
If you read this thread from start to end, I think you’ll see why enterprises and VCs are so reluctant to choose Linux and other OSS. Rabid fanboyism and shit-slinging between each other doesn’t help your case.
We got community!
Novell shouldn’t have bought Suse, or Ximian. They should have made agreements with them.
This really is no shock that a company has to sack employees, it happens all the time.
But to the employees who are getting the sack. Be innovative and you might land yourselves positions in interesting companies.
I bet those that were layoff would still have a job if they were working for Microsoft.
or end up dead!
You can smell it on the internet, go on look for your self:
What is KDE talking about? Making KDE4 a total new platform, with new look and feel. But his is like navel-staring The desktop it self isn’t that important, its the applications that count. Focussing on the desktop isn’t the way forward.
Now look at Gnome/gtk. Are they going to redifine the desktop again? no, they have layed out what direction to take years ago and for the upcoming releases they are not talking about new looks and feel, they have passed that station long ago, wit the HIG. No they are optimizing core libraries, they have build new foundations that are getting integrated in the excisting desktop and none GTK+ application. they are doing a great job, Cairo, GTK+2, Gstreamer, libpoppler, dbus/hal, gecko engine, evolution-data-server are the building blocks and they are getting used all over the place and little by little every Gnome application that counts is starting to integrate these building blocks. What does it mean. It means that the application are starting to get more and more attention and functionality, and you can feel it, GAIM in the next incarnation will be a messenger to watch out for, with SIP and Webcam support and so closing a gap in the desktop. Rhythmbox is coming out of hibration and is implementing all those new core functionality (network sharing music). And for eyecandy, I allready love the standard desktop (with Clearlooks)
Even for the looks, Gnome related developers have started projects to make it uniform for everybody. Gnome isn’t about navel-staring but to give Linux the building stones for a complete and integrated desktop.
It is not about assimilating (KDE), but about sharing for everybody.
I use Gentoo-Linux on my computer with gnome/gtk-only desktops, except for OpenOffice and Firefox (which are perfectly accepted and supported by the Gnome-camp) there are no none gtk-application on my desktop, Work related I’ve to work sometimes on Windows XP and MacOS, especially Mac OS drives me crazy, I find our G5 slow and clumsy, the in and out popping windows are very distracting.
> What is KDE talking about? Making KDE4 a total new platform, with new look and feel.
So is Microsoft. So is GNOME thinking about it (Project Topaz). Maybe not for tomorrow but the day after tomorrow.
The bottom line. Linux as a desktop is a dicey proposition at best. Not saying that it is not a solid solution, but the market has clearly dictated that Linux as a desktop is a losing proposition for commercial companies.
Well, I’d say that this shows that _selling_ linux on the desktop might be a dicey proposition. I know of a number of comercial companies that are happy _using_ linux on the desktop and even delivering solutions based on linux desktops. However all of these companies use a linux distro they can download, distribute and upgrade for free and handle their linux support either in-house or through a local third-party company not connected with the distribution. So linux and linux desktops seem to be making and/or saving companies money, just not the linux distributers.
What i get from the article ( http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1882118,00.asp )
is that “Novell is making one large strategic change. The GNOME interface is going to become the default interface on both the SLES (SuSE Linux Enterprise Server) and Novell Linux Desktop line.”
which makes sense considering their effort on improving GNOME´s interface:
http://tango-project.org/Tango_Desktop_Project
http://www.betterdesktop.org/welcome/
http://primates.ximian.com/~glesage/wiki/doku.php?id=
As you can see on the “people” page at tango-project, novell has hired many gnome artists, Garret Lesage, Tigert, Jimmac.
Also they´re porting evolution to windows :
http://tml-blog.blogspot.com/2005/07/evolution-to-win32-porting-sta…
And developing great apps:
http://gnome.org/projects/evolution/
http://beaglewiki.org/Main_Page
http://www.gnome.org/projects/f-spot/
http://banshee-project.org/index.php/Main_Page
Let´s not forget about other technologies like XGL etc.
My point is they´re doing all this enhacementes to gnome it really makes sense to focus on it.
I apologize for grammatical errors.
> “Novell is making one large strategic change. The GNOME
> interface is going to become the default interface on
> both the SLES (SuSE Linux Enterprise Server) and Novell
> Linux Desktop line.”
Right but there’s also written that Evolution, MONO, Hula and a few other GNOME related projects got dropped. I wonder how the one fits the other. Again Novell shows how clueless they are.
“Novell is making one large strategic change. The GNOME interface is going to become the default interface on both the SLES (SuSE Linux Enterprise Server) and Novell Linux Desktop line.”
As I’ve pointed out, that statement was made by an ex-Ximian/Novell marketing guy (not that they’ve ever produced any articles like this in the past ;-)) who’s department, software and technology has been pretty much wiped out.
My point is they´re doing all this enhacementes to gnome it really makes sense to focus on it.
I apologize for grammatical errors.
They’re not focusing on anything. When the dust settles you’ll find these people have all gone. Evolution, Mono, Hula – all of them. All that’s left are the people who can keep things ticking over should they need them, support etc., and it’s not even certain they’ll stay. Goodness knows where Novell head from here or what’s left.
> As you can see on the “people” page at tango-project,
> novell has hired many gnome artists, Garret Lesage, Tigert, Jimmac.
And this week Novell fired at least one of them.
was the biggest mistake Novell did. Taking other companies onto a sinking ship.
Instead of positionning itself as a Server company, Novell has very little in most markets and is quickly becoming irrelevant very fast. Novell software is very rare these days other than it’s rebranded Linux stuff.
Buying Ximian was a mistake. Doesn’t do squat for them in the server field.
Investing in Mono was also a mistake. Won’t get them the lost server market they GAVE to Microsoft.
Evolution? It’s not even made for the main market (aka Microsoft Windows).
Want a first class KDE desktop? Have a look here:
http://www.kubuntu.org/announcements/kde-commitment.php
Ubuntu Conference Affirms Commitment to Kubuntu and KDE
The Ubuntu Below Zero conference is in full momentum this week and Kubuntu has been prominent throughout. In his opening remarks at the start of the conference Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth announced that he was now using Kubuntu on his desktop machine and said he wanted Kubuntu to move to a first class distribution within the Ubuntu community. The large number of Kubuntu users at the conference was evidence as the need for this. Free CDs for Kubuntu through shipit should be available for the next release if the planned Live CD Installer removes the need for a separate install CD.
Kubuntu developer Jonathan Riddell said how pleased he was at the success of Kubuntu, “KDE is a great platform to base our distribution off and we will continue to work closely with KDE developers to make the best operating system available”.
Commercial support is available for Kubuntu through Canonical and many of the companies listed on the Ubuntu Marketplace.
I am happy to read that the Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth is now using KDE on his Desktop and I think everyone else should be using it as well. Thanks Mark for supporting the KDE movement and the Desktop for Linux.
I don’t see why this has turned into a KDE vs Gnome debate.
Why pay for Linux when it’s free?? I switched from SuSE to PCLinuxOS at the beginning of this year after a SuSE update hosed up my install. The free distro’s are more cutting edge. SuSE was to locked down and at that point didn’t have the community around it like they are trying to with OpenSuSE. I’ve contributed to the PCLinuxOS guys to help them out and will continue to do so.
I don’t see why this has turned into a KDE vs Gnome debate.
Because cerain people seek to put their own positive spin on a pretty dire situation.
“A source within Novell speculated that these rumors about Novell moving away from the Linux desktop and open-source programs spring from KDE advocates.
“I can understand being upset. For these guys, on both sides, these are their babies. But saying that Novell is killing its Linux desktop because they picked GNOME over KDE is going way too far,” he said. ”
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS8616686406.html
an anonymous George from gnomedesktop.org told:
As I’ve tried to explain to KDE zealots for months, KDE is a dead duck at Novell. There was simply no way that Novell was going to continue to support two desktop code bases… no way at all. It would be madness… KDE only lived as long as it did because of the legacy of SUSE… it was only a matter of time before that legacy (and any KDE-related employees who didn’t want to switch) were ousted.
KDE is already the desktop used primarily by one-man-band distros and it was already dying on the vine… this move just finishes the job. So VIVA GNOME! and we can all finally look forward to a single desktop codebase and the growth it will bring in desktop use. It won’t kill off minority desktops and those who want to experiment, of course, but it will ensure that mainstream developers have a totally clear target to aim at.
It’s been a long time coming (and no doubt KDEers will disagree), but this is very good news… expect more GNOME-related annoucements from other big distros soon.
What a plain idiotic comment made by an anonymous person. I know a few employees working for Novell Europe who told me that the entire Europe section uses KDE as their primarily desktop. The person once had to show up in the states due some projects and told me that the employees there were all using GNOME because Nat and Miguel kept a thumb on that and forced everyone to use it. He has shown up there with his laptop and KDE running and immediately most employees he worked with has shown up asking him what great desktop he was using. He demonstrated KDE to them and it didn’t took long until the first people came up asking him to help them installing KDE on their systems. He was there for around one week and ended up with quite a few dozen KDE installations and happy users there.
At the end, it’s just Novell where Miguel and Nat are working on (having their office or so) where people are forced to use GNOME, the other Novell locations were all using (primarily) KDE.
KDE is no dead horse and never was. It’s actually a quite cool Desktop environment, with great architecture and perfectly well designed. It offered much more stuff at the times where GNOME still made small steps getting it’s leg out of the mud hole. And still KDE is the primary Desktop chosen by the majority of Linux and Open Source enthusiasts. KDE offers great applications for corporate as well as private needs. It offers tools that can easily stand every competition with counterparts found on Windows or OSX – yet KDE itself as Desktop is far ahead of GNOME – not just that the tools existing for KDE are also far ahead to what was slammed together for GNOME.
Now you pro GNOMERS are going to defend GNOME but as soon as some shit like Nautilus, Spatial or MONO comes on the daily menu, you all show up and bash the hell out of it – how much it sucks, that MONO is Microsoft technology and and and.
You only come up here to give KDE a big shit as usually, but in reality the majority of you people don’t feel satisfied with GNOME either. It’s just for the sake of it to act as you act in the public. Pure bullshit and idiocity – like that moron who keeps moderating all the valid and correct comments down. A poor pathetic loser without life.
KDE itself as Desktop is far ahead of GNOME
Care to explaint exactly in what areas is better KDE than GNOME or what have KDE that you can’t do with GNOME focused to the enterprice?
> Care to explaint exactly in what areas is better KDE
> than GNOME or what have KDE that you can’t do with
> GNOME focused to the enterprice?
Where have ya been ? I probably do this in every GNOME article that has shown up here on OSN for the past years.
a) KDE has the better architecture.
b) KDE is fully object oriented.
c) KDE primarily depends on one language and this language is used throughly in KDE.
d) Most components in KDE can be reused in other applications due to OOP design.
e) KDE offers great applications where you can’t find any counterparts for.
f) KDE applications are mostly consistent, they share the same objects and thus the apps looke coherent. Try throwing an eye on this screenshot:
http://img234.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshot34ji.jpg
Do you see the mess around GNOME toolbars, one is bigger than the other, the other has a drag handle, others show text under the icons, others not, some have a toolbar editor and other apps don’t. It’s a total mess and an aesthetical disaster.
g) GNOME has big issues getting simple tasks done correctly.
Evince for example which I am forced to use isn’t able to deal with PDF files correctly (showing white pages), you can’t print 2 or 4 pages on one physical sheet regardless if the gnome-print dialog supports it. Permanent crashes of Evince, crashes and corrupt font showing.
Nautilus is incapable to copy files accurate enough from any place to another place without losing bytes, without copying null byte files and many more.
Evolution (now that Novell has thrown out people) since 2.4.0 regulary trashing my index files, crashes on startup, duplicate entries in the lists for mails. CVS now depends on HAL.
Gnome-Print is not able to print GIF files correctly, nor is it able to deal with postgress saved files (font corruption, corrupt PS files saved).
A lot of the applications existing for GNOME are not really usable for anything. Stuff like Planner for project planning is by far more a joke (and a toy) than a serious project planning applications. Have you ever thrown an eye on Task Juggler for KDE for example to see the big difference ?
For example DIA is by far to buggy to be usable for anything. DIA crashes during usage, it crashes at any reasons, the diagrams look unpleasing and bulky (once my professor asked me whether I painted the diagram with Photoshop and I told him it was DIA), it also saves files corrupt, or loads corrupt data, the entire app is unpleasing to use.
GNOME developers are creative people, no doubt, but so are the KDE developers. GNOME come up with many nice ideas but they usually fail as soon as the implementation phase comes.
These are just some rough examples. If you dig in older GNOME threads on OSN you find a lot more. Simply go and read. I am tired and sick repeating the same stuff over and over again. People clearly have some serious understanding problems if they keep up asking whats wrong with GNOME. If they can’t figure out on their own whats up. People who keep using Open Source or Linux in particular are technically skilled enough to distinguish these things otherwise they wouldn’t keep dealing with it.
Here a funny movie of GNOME and how much the things don’t work. This is no manipulated or cheated GNOME. It’s GNOME as is from CVS and a stable version. Sure CVS shouldn’t be considered stable, but in this case it is since it’s based on branched modules (2.12).
http://zerv.internetcafe.nl/~nexu/lol/gnome-the-movie.avi
a) KDE has the better architecture.
b) KDE is fully object oriented.
c) KDE primarily depends on one language and this language is used throughly in KDE.
d) Most components in KDE can be reused in other applications due to OOP design.
e) KDE offers great applications where you can’t find any counterparts for.
f) KDE applications are mostly consistent, they share the same objects and thus the apps looke coherent. Try throwing an eye on this screenshot:
a) KDE has the better architecture.
Based on a propietary toolkit with expensive licenses that simple not feed in, better architecture or not, is not that relevant, not for that GNOME is behind, GTK’s architecture is good to, not better that Qt fro the moment but is good and free, I don’t see the KDE architecture as an advantage,
b) KDE is fully object oriented.
What would that be an advantage? GNOME can do C++ to you know, even Java, develoepers who use low level prefer C over C++ and there GNOME shines too, I don’t see that point as an advantage.
c) KDE primarily depends on one language and this language is used throughly in KDE.
So does GNOME, GNOME is entirely based on C just like KDE is based on C++.
d) Most components in KDE can be reused in other applications due to OOP design.
So does GNOME, like GStreamer, Evolution data Center, Scripting, etc.
e) KDE offers great applications where you can’t find any counterparts for.
Yet you did mention any of them, is well know that GNOME aplications are quiet better and popular than with KDE, but since KDE include a bload of unnecesary software as its base then that could be true.
f) KDE applications are mostly consistent, they share the same objects and thus the apps looke coherent. Try throwing an eye on this screenshot:
Same with GNOME, GNOME is even more consistent than KDE, they have rules and HIG, KDE has nothing of it.
the screenshot ain’t othing but eye candy, an enterprice desktop should be aimed to productivity not to look nice, and GNOME wins on both sides anyway.
Is well know that KDE looks bloated and inconsistent
Here a funny movie of GNOME and how much the things don’t work. This is no manipulated or cheated GNOME. It’s GNOME as is from CVS and a stable version. Sure CVS shouldn’t be considered stable, but in this case it is since it’s based on branched modules (2.12).