Without tip-toeing around the matter, Linus Torvalds made his preference in the GNOME vs. KDE matter quite clear on the GNOME-usability list: “I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE. This ‘users are idiots, and are confused by functionality’ mentality of Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it. I don’t use Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long since reached the point where it simply doesn’t do what I need it to do. Please, just tell people to use KDE.” Also, “Gnome seems to be developed by interface nazis, where consistently the excuse for not doing something is not ‘it’s too complicated to do’, but ‘it would confuse users’.” Update: More of the discussion here.
Linus use OS Suse?
Gnome in Suse is.. no good
but exist others distros very nice with Gnome. I prefer Ubuntu.
Look the Ranking – Ubuntu is the first:
<a href=”http://distrowatch.com/“>Distrowatch
the only option I really want from Gnome is some checkbox to switch OK & Cancel. ONLY THAT! You can hide every other option form me but give me this!
I use linux since 1999, and i confess my favorite window manager is a windowmaker… but i agree, the gnome is very bad… as also kde contain bugs as you wish…. In my opinion linux doesn´t grew for final users just because it don´t have yet a interface for this users….. Kde and gnome it´s for me the same thing, but kde is better…. no doubt…..
I’m on Linus’ side!
(though I think GNOME has a rather exceptional DE)
Post 575 WHOHOO!
um…
Gnome got dropped from Slackware linux because it was, well, it sort of meddled in different bits of the system and stuff.
It simply installs into /opt/kde and yeah, thats about it, plus ~/.kde
Gnome must be a lot harder to build/maintain for distro packages (I think this is part of the reason it got dropped from Slackware)
I gave GNOME and KDE a real-life perforance test a while ago.
I installed them both from Slackware 10.0 onto my old Pentium running at 100 MHz with 80 MB of RAM.
Gnome:
it, well, started up. There were a couple of registry errors (WTF? I thought registries belonged with MS Windows)
Stuff like the gnome terminal would take like 18 seconds to load up.
Um… OK if you are half asleep, but not if you are fully awake
KDE: (KDE 3.2)
it started up..
Most apps started very much faster than stuff in gnome (but still slow of course, taking the hardware into mind)
I could actually browse the internet in Konqueror and browse through directories full of 128×128 icons, having them previewed in the file icons. (albeit a bit slow, but still way faster than gnome)
And of course with KDE you get the awesome file-open/save dialouges, etc.
I’m currently using KDE 3.5.0 (compiled with GCC 4.0.2. I’m using a 2.6.11-ck cernel as well) on my dual pentium pro 200mhz computer that has 512MB of ram and three 10,000 rpm SCSI hard drives in RAID 0.
The only bottleneck here is probably the slow CPU speed, but KDE is perfectly usable.
It just seems to get faster with every release.
Hopefully by KDE4 I will be able to run it comfortably on my 475MHz laptop with 64MB ram…
a bit of a dream, but yeah, maybe, just maybe, it will come true since QT4 has improved memory usage, etc
Forrest.
>It just seems to get faster with every release.
>Hopefully by KDE4 I will be able to run it comfortably >on my 475MHz laptop with 64MB ram…
>
>a bit of a dream, but yeah, maybe, just maybe, it will >come true since QT4 has improved memory usage, etc
You sure are optimistic
>You sure are optimistic
I’m currently running KDE 3.2 on it..
It’s just a wee bit slow due to accessing swap on the hdd when using massive heavy apps like Mozilla
No, really – I use it for browsing the net and programming when I’m on holiday 😀
I think KDE 3.5 would run faster.
Cheers
Forrest
“Gnome got dropped from Slackware linux because it was, well, it sort of meddled in different bits of the system and stuff.”
Uh no. It got dropped because Patrick didnt have the time to maintain it properly. Therefore he dropped it and directed people who want to use gnome on slackware to gware and freerock.
waht???????
The mentality which drives the Gnome project is the same mentality which drives the so called Trusted Computing Platform Alliance.
One of the KDE developers brought up the Portland project. It’s really too late for Gnome or KDE in the grand scheme of things. They had their chance and the numbers just aren’t that favorable towards them 6 years after Year of the Linux Desktop was declared.
The best thing these guys could do is to join forces – yes I know it would be hard – and stop fscking around with all this duplication of effort. KDE should ditch Qt (the bad license will never work) and the Gnome folks could learn how to do APIs.
Gnome and KDE are all dead in the water no matter what Torvalds says.
Microsoft just laughs at this idiocy. The Linux desktop would be at about 10% of the market by now if it wasn’t for the short-sightedness, childish behavior, and all around bickering among the different camps.
Oh well, OSX intel is almost here. We’ve already got a real desktop for Unix.
Do you think KDE/Gnome developers or users care about what some Anonymous Troller says? I’m talking about the market share thingy. Users nor developers don’t care if the market share isn’t above 10% or so as far as they can use it whatever they want to use it.
And hell yeah, KDE is all dead, at least that’s what all-the-time-coming new developers and users think. Please, get me some facts that they’re dead or go trolling somewhere else.
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
Leonardo da Vinci
the problem is always the newbies… its just a matter of math.. newbies are in more numbers so.. kde and gnome are newbie wannaownj00z… yeah.. right.. they develop new desktop technology… but leonardo da vinci has spoken.. and i dont think that kde and gnome qualify…
unixification is the key.. not linusification.. kdefication or gnomefication… those things are just tools to be used.. and then trown in the toilet when finished playing with them…
If Linus Torvalds prefers Kde over Gnome, fine! But doesn’t he have better things to do, instead of starting a pointless flame war?
Saying things like “Please, just tell people to use KDE.” is ridiculous, and doesn’t help the image of Open Source comunity.
I think Kde or Gnome are great desktop managers, but i prefer Gnome, because it adapts to my needs without all the “eye candy” the kde have, that overloads my pc. But another person might think the opposite.
Bottom line: use what suites your “user needs”.
I think the KDE is more user friendly than GNOME, and looks like a windows too. And users can easley migrate to Linux using KDE.
KDE will be exhibit at SCALE 4x. For a free expo pass register with the promo code “FREE”.
List of Speakers:
http://www.socallinuxexpo.org/speakers.php
List of Exhibitors:
http://www.socallinuxexpo.org/exhibitions.php
Registration:
http://www.socallinuxexpo.org/order/order.html
…after everyone have said what needed to be said (and some have said some things that they should regret), I still feel that, IMHO, if you still want to with the GNOME “feel”, try XFCE. I believe it’s almost unanimous that everyone likes XFCE much better than GNOME, and to a certain extent, it’s considered a “Light GNOME”. So, in short, use what you like best. Personally, I use Openbox with a KDE base. I wouldn’t recommend GNOME to most people, but for those that still insist on it, I’ll point them to XFCE (and those that tried it out agreed with me that it is in many aspects a much “cleaner” DE than GNOME). 🙂