“My team and other teams within Novell continue to develop and use Gtk as their toolkit (recently open sourced Simias/iFolder for instance) and all of the Mono GUI development tools. The only use of Qt that am aware of today is SUSE’s recently open sourced YAST” said Ximian’s Miguel de Icaza replying on Heise’s recent article on standardization of Novell on Qt.Elsewhre, Novell announced at Brainshare last week a move away from the NetWare brand name to Open Enterprise Server for their flagship product. This product will incorporate technologies from SuSE Linux and the venerable NetWare platform, as reported at NWFusion.
Miguel de Icaza On Novell and Toolkits; Novell Drops NetWare Name
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“I did not say that they are KDE supporters. But I am pretty sure they would not be happy if SUSE changes the default desktop to GNOME in their next release because usually people like what they are used to and usually people don’t want to invest time to learn something new especially if it offers no significant advantages. “
Of course those that are used to KDE will be pissed off.
But real desktop market is in MS hands. And if SuSE would change to GNOME and gain even 10% of this market, most users won’t complain that they leaved KDE. And vice versa.
“How would you interpret that? If they would be really interested in a desktop linux version, they would develop it themselves and sell it to their customers. “
They develop themesevles GNOME and use it RedHat Enterprise Linux WS. See http://www.redhat.com/software/rhel/ws/
And they sell it to their customers. Is it any way different than SuSE. Don’t think so.
<it>no significant advantages? why do you think did I change from KDE to GNOME? out of fun?<it>
So you changed from KDE to GNOME? Good for you. I know some people that changed from GNOME to KDE recently because they think KDE is more usable on the desktop. What does this proof?
<it>KDE is a neat hacker-desktop but it is not user friendly at all.</it>
This is just bullshit some GNOME people spread all the time. Can you give some REAL examples why KDE is not usable at all? Why does KDE win about every “best desktop environement” poll? Because the majority of people is too stupid to recognize that there desktop is “not usable at all”?
<it>but if i’m correct we were talking about normal users or better yet: windows users. i just can’t see windows users having much fun using KDE, they will be horribly frustrated because they won’t find what they are looking for.</it>
Funny. All the desktop distros that aim at the typical Windows desktop user use KDE as their standard GUI: Suse, Mandrake, Lindows, Lycoris etc. There is no SINGLE distro based on GNOME that aims at the typical Windows user. Can you tell me what’s the reason for this if Windows users don’t like KDE at all. And I am sure that Windows user will really love GNOME’s reversed button order.
<it>the market Novell targets is not the uber-l33t-poweruser market, it’s mostly companys changing from windows to linux so the users will most likly have no experience with linux at all. in this case, GNOME is so much better!</it>
Yeah and the people at SUSE, Mandrake, Lindows, Lycoris and EVERY other distro aimed at the typical Windows user are all just stupid idiots because they all use KDE. Give me a break.
GNOME have some strong points, so does KDE. GNOME’s framework is not total crap like some KDE users say and KDE is by far not totally unusable like GNOME users say. KDE 3.2 is very usable and most of the issues that are critisized on KDE (controlcenter, menues, toolbars) are already addressed.
Of course those that are used to KDE will be pissed off.
But real desktop market is in MS hands. And if SuSE would change to GNOME and gain even 10% of this market, most users won’t complain that they leaved KDE. And vice versa.
And why should SUSE gain even 10% of that market if they chose GNOME instead of KDE?
“And why should SUSE gain even 10% of that market if they chose GNOME instead of KDE?”
Who said SuSE should gain this? Not me. Did you noticed vice versa there? What I mean is that normal desktop users don’t know about GNOME or KDE. Geeks do.
It is possible to gain market share with GNOME and KDE.
Now that the Zealots don’t want to respond to the issue directly, they start diverting the discussion. The question still before this forum is:
“Is Novell adopting QT for its desktop development activities?”
A babelfish translation of a german article claims that a Novell employee said that they have adopted QT for all their development projects.
One Novell employee (Nat) says: They have not made a company wide decision to adopt any technology. They use the best technology for the job “QT, GTK, VCL etc”.
Another Novell employee (Miguel) says: They have not made a policy about a particular toolkit but that they have been using GTK for most of their in-house development so far except for Yast2.
Novells website ( http://www.novell.com ) lists the Novell, Linux, SUSE, Ximian, Mono, and GNOME logos. (No KDE logo is anywhere to be found there).
Novell is currently sponsoring GNOME desktop integration bounties for GTK/GNOME apps. Is there one for KDE too?
Novell’s acquisition press release for the Ximian acquisition specifically mentions the GNOME desktop but that for SUSE only talks about enterprise server capability.
Given all the above, we have three groups of people.
Group 1: They hate Novell for focusing on GNOME and not KDE even though they don’t have shares in the company and it is open-source software. These guys are very bitter zealots, avoid them.
Group 2: Those that no matter how clear the evidence of Novell’s activities are, they would twist any truth to fit their desire that Novell somehow loves KDE more than GNOME. These are thesame guys that give more credit to translated german article than direct communication from Novells employees. These are zealots as well, avoid them.
Group 3: Those that don’t mind what ever Novell does, and make a choice of their desktop based on how they like it, and don’t project their wishes on the public. These guys don’t give a rat’s about what Novell does. They are only seeking the truth. They have no problem taking the word of Novells employees over than of a translated article. Most GNOME supporters here belong to this group. Learn their example and avoid flaming.
at http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/archive/2004/Mar-29.html Miguel writes:
My team and other teams within Novell continue to develop and use Gtk as their toolkit (recently open sourced Simias/iFolder for instance) and all of the Mono GUI development tools.
The heise article did not say that they do port existing apps to Qt and Miguel does not say here that new projects are not using Qt. And toolkit of choice does not mean that every app will be developped with it.
Miguel also says:
The only use of Qt that am aware of today is SUSE’s recently open sourced YAST.
which is definitely wrong because SUSE developpers are working on KDE related stuff, e.g. OpenOffice KDE integration.
Nat Friedman says on
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=102104&threshold=-1&commentsort…
Novell supports GNOME and KDE, Qt and Gtk which indicates that the article is wrong but which also indicates that your assumption is wrong that GNOME and gtk are not the preferred platform even so they have a GNOME logo on their website and sponsored the GNOME bounty hunt.
Also Nat Friedman says:
We see freedesktop.org as one of the most important and central elements of the Linux desktop for the next several years. The desktop today is made up of a number of components, including OpenOffice, Mozilla, Evolution, and of course GNOME and KDE. Over time we hope to work with freedesktop.org to unify the key interfaces and functionality of these components, to improve integration for users and provide a common open
source desktop platform.
This does not sound like “GNOME” will be Novells desktop of choice either. It sounds like Novell is going to distribute both desktops or at least greater parts of both desktops in the future.
Novell supports GNOME and KDE, Qt and Gtk which indicates that the article is wrong but which also indicates that your assumption is wrong that GNOME and gtk are the preferred platform even so they have a GNOME logo on their website and sponsored the GNOME bounty hunt.
thanks /dev/null, a very well done summary of the pure facts.
ok now let me go over this… again
>> So you changed from KDE to GNOME? Good for you. I know
>> some people that changed from GNOME to KDE recently
>> because they think KDE is more usable on the desktop.
>> What does this proof?
nothing, i know.
>> This is just bullshit some GNOME people spread all the
>> time. Can you give some REAL examples why KDE is not
>> usable at all?
whenever I sit down in front of a KDE box the first thing I think is: boy, this looks messy and cluttered! Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to think that, I would love if KDE had a well-polished interface.
Examples? Well, for example, look at Konqueror. This is a *very* powerful app, no doubt. But most people won’t use most of the features so why are they confronted with all those extremly colorful icons? fixing this shouldn’t be too hard but it got even worse from 2.x to 3.x. And i can tell you why: KDE is done by geeks, for geeks. This is the only problem. KDE is pure feature-overkill and while I think this is the main problem, it is a HUGE one.
Look at GNOME’s preferences dialoges and then compare to KDE. what do you notice? try it out. ‘more options’ is not always better. And pulling nearly all preferences dialogues from the apps to the control panel is problematic, too. There are many options that should be et desktop-wide and not application-per-application. also, KDE would benefit from the instant-apply that can be found in GNOME.
One last point: icons/themes… KDE’s icons (mostly the stock icons) are often meaningless or way to hard to associate with what they are meant to be. don’t believe me? look at konqueror’s various “Configure…” icons in the “Settings” submenu. Also there are still icons that seem to be old “hicolor” icons – KDE core should be pure-Crystal by now. The themes issue got smaller with 3.2 but it’s still there: while Plastic is a very usable and nice theme (1000x better then Keramik which was not even remotely easy to the eyes) the default theme could be even simpler. And wait – isn’t Keramik still the default?
Defaults… While i understand that you are able to configure KDE as you need it, the defaults should be a good compromise for most users – which seems not to be the case in KDE. I’m saying this because I seldomly encounter a not-heavy-modded KDE box. While we are at it: throw away most of the wallpapers, most of them are sub-standart.
I hope a few KDE developers consider a few of these things for a future release. If I was one of the KDE lead developers I would pust for a “polish-only” 3.3 release from which KDE could benefit A LOT and after taht go for new features and QT4 or whatever.
>> And I am sure that Windows user will really love GNOME’s
>> reversed button order.
big deal… altually, i *did* love it and still think it is the most natural way.
>> Yeah and the people at SUSE, Mandrake, Lindows, Lycoris
>> and EVERY other distro aimed at the typical Windows user
>> are all just stupid idiots because they all use KDE.
well you said that. actually, i can understand that those distributions didn’t ship GNOME 2.0 and 2.2 as the default. But we’re at 2.6 now which means the BIG issue with GNOME is gone: the baaaad file-selector!
now look, perhaps distributions can rethink what they ship as the default? perhaps they will?
>> GNOME have some strong points, so does KDE. GNOME’s
>> framework is not total crap like some KDE users say
>> and KDE is by far not totally unusable like GNOME
>> users say. KDE 3.2 is very usable and most of the issues
>> that are critisized on KDE (controlcenter, menues,
>> toolbars) are already addressed.
that’s very nice. thought the issues I have with KDE are still valid for 3.2.1 (as descibed above) but I really hope that those will be adressed soon, too. Nevertheless I hope it’s clear now that I don’t hate KDE?
This does not sound like “GNOME” will be Novells desktop of choice either. It sounds like Novell is going to distribute both desktops or at least greater parts of both desktops in the future.
Dude, that’s exactly the point. Novell’s plans have been _common knowledge_ already for a week or two now. Most of us do not care or are being reasonable about it. It’s the KDE fanboys who want even *more* than that, even to the point of delusion (which is just about the saddest thing I’ve seen yet).
“If the new CS grads have trouble dealing with more than one concept at a time, they need to go back to school. Sometimes, different concepts are appropriate for different tasks, and this is one of those times. ”
Of course. But at the same time, the fact remains that Qt re-invents the standard wheel every day. We have the STL. It works! It’s a standard!
New CS grads can deal with whatever they wish, hopefully. But at the same time, why does Qt seem to go out of its way to make learning harder? (And, yes, I know Qt came out relatively early on in C++’s lifetime. Doesn’t make it any less crufty.)
“Really? The PyQt bindings are excellent. Now, binding Qt to other languages is harder, but with libSMOKE, it becomes a whole lot easier.”
As you so eloquently pointed out earlier, there’s more to the world than Python and C++. Take a look at the GTK+ bindings page, and then at Qt’s. There’s absolutely no comparison. I don’t care how much easier it is – the fact remains, GTK+ has the bindings, and Qt does not.
The idea that we should throw away GTK+ because it’s not Qt is idiotic, because there are places where it _is_ more advanced than Qt. You didn’t say that, and I don’t think you would, but others have.
-Erwos
I did not know that KDE was an in-house project at Novell.
How do you like the fact that Nat and Miguel will have a say it what happens to it? That is if we assume you are right of course.
Or were you just misquoting Miguel?
So you have conceded to agree with what Nat said? So all that bull about Nat not being authoritative has been cast into the garbage bin now where it belongs.
So in the final analysis if you agree with what Nat said, does it mean that the Heise article was wrong and all the anti-Nat and anti-Miguel trolling was uterly unfounded and childish?
Of course. But at the same time, the fact remains that Qt re-invents the standard wheel every day. We have the STL. It works! It’s a standard!
The Qt containers are not a reinvention of the STL containers. The Qt containers are dynamic, support polymorphism well, and are reference-oriented. The STL containers are static, don’t support polymorphism well, and value oriented. The STL has many uses, but GUIs aren’t one of them.
New CS grads can deal with whatever they wish, hopefully. But at the same time, why does Qt seem to go out of its way to make learning harder?
Qt is easy to learn, but you do have to learn it. The differences aren’t arbitrary, but are there because the design of the STL is inappropriate for Qt. The STL was designed with a single-minded drive for absolute performance. In doing so, it makes many compromises. These compromises are simply not appropriate for a GUI. Take for example, iteration protocols. To be able to get pointer-like performance out of its iterators, the STL iterators are not polymorphic. The Qt iterators, on the other hand, are polymorphic. This makes them slower, but that doesn’t matter since GUI containers rarely have more than a few hundred elements, but also makes them much more flexible and pleasent to use. Also, moc provides a lot of facilities, like dynamic properties and reflection, that simply aren’t cleanly expressible in C++, but are absolutely critical for a good GUI toolkit. It would be better if these features were standards parts of C++, but they aren’t. Most users of Qt believe that TT did the right thing by choosing to extend the language rather than living with its limitations.
As you so eloquently pointed out earlier, there’s more to the world than Python and C++. Take a look at the GTK+ bindings page, and then at Qt’s. There’s absolutely no comparison. I don’t care how much easier it is – the fact remains, GTK+ has the bindings, and Qt does not.
If bindings are really important to you, then by all means use GTK+. However, GTK+ was designed from the beginning to support bindings well, while the same tools for Qt have just come out recently. I think in the future you’ll see more bindings appear for Qt and other C++ libraries, as tools such as GCCXML make it almost as easy to do C++ bindings as C ones.
The idea that we should throw away GTK+ because it’s not Qt is idiotic, because there are places where it _is_ more advanced than Qt. You didn’t say that, and I don’t think you would, but others have.
I definitely think GTK+ should stay around. I think its not as good a toolkit as Qt, but it is leading the field in some areas, bindings as you noted, and also internationalization and accessibility. My point was that Qt’s not using the STL is a strength, not a weakness.
How do you like the fact that Nat and Miguel will have a say it what happens to it?
Where did you get this from?
So you have conceded to agree with what Nat said? So all that bull about Nat not being authoritative has been cast into the garbage bin now where it belongs.
From http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/view/396#comment:
Nat is the Linux desktop lead at Novell, reporting to Chris Stone.
If that?s so I have to wonder why Nat doesn?t appear on Novell?s own management overview page. Note that that page reveals that Markus Rex as General Manager of Novell?s SUSE LINUX business unit (quoting) ?is also responsible for Novell?s Linux desktop activities.? In the bios by David Patrick, credited for being General Manager Novell Resource Management Services and Ximian Group, is written, that this business unit (quoting again) ?is responsible for developing enterprise technology asset management services for Novell customers, including Novell?s ZENworks, Ximian?s Linux-based Red Carpet Enterprise products, while the Ximian Group oversees Ximian Desktop, and Mono, the .Net developer platform for Linux.? I can?t find any biography by Nat or Miguel at novell.com. My logical conclusion would be that while both might have management positions within the Novell Resource Management Services and Ximian Group, they are not at all in the position of being able to speak about Novell or Novell?s Linux business (which is being handled by SUSE LINUX according to the information on Novell?s website) as a whole.
Actually, I don’t know if Miguel and Nat are in a position to make decisions about the future Novell standard desktop or not. But I was not the one, anyway, that questioned if Migual and Nat are really responsible for Novell’s Linux desktop strategy or not. That have been other people. But reading the above comments and the one I just quoted, I have to admit, I am not that sure what their responsibilities really are. I also wonder that they have stated that the heise article is wrong, but they did not state that GNOME will become Novells Linux desktop of choice and they also did not state that gtk will become the toolkit of choice. They actually did not really state much that contradicts the heise article.
Also taking into account that IBM uses qt for embedded development and that Novell wants do do more embedded development, it seems not unreasonable that Novell will adopt qt, at least for embedded programming, but maybe for a wider varity of products.
So, to give you the final analysis you wanted to have: after reading all the comments here and the one on http://www.kdedevelopers.org I am not convinced that Miguel and Nat have the position inside Novell to decide what will be the future Novell desktop (but again I never questioned their position, that have been other people). I am also not convinced that the heise article is completely wrong. Miguel and Nat say so, but they do not really give evidence, they just say that Novell also uses gtk and mono, which was clear anyway. And finally I would not call my opinion about Miguel and Nat trolling. There are people you like more for various reasons and there are people you like less. And like I said before, I respect Miguel and Nat as coders.
For completeness sake:
http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/view/396#comment
“…your complaint. Miguel and Nat spoke the truth. Miguel was simply saying he wasn’t aware of any Novell internal projects that used Qt. Sure SUSE contributes and sponsors KDE development, but he was refering to Novell specific projects such as Evolution, iFolder/Simias integration, integration with groupwise from gaim/Evolution. If you watched the RealMedia presentations from Brainshare you saw KDE on a server demos and you saw GNOME integrating on the desktop. This is because the Ximian business unit has been focusing on integrating the GNOME Desktop with Novell’s entire product line. And that is what they continue to work on to this day. If QT is going to be the prefered platform for development in Novell then what in the heck are all the GNOME hackers in the Ximian business unit (and outside it) and in India working on right now, hmmm?
Nat is the Linux desktop lead at Novell, reporting to Chris Stone. If you watched the brainshare videos, or if you follow anything that Ximian has been working on in the last few months since their acquisition, you’d know that the entire focus of the Ximian Business Unit of Novell is to integrate the Linux Desktop with Novell’s entire product line. The Brainshare videos were an awesome demonstration of that.
All Miguel and Nat were trying to do is clear the air after a really really awful German article tried to spread FUD about Qt which lead people to claim that Gtk development was being replaced by Qt in Novell. Anyway, I personally think we should all just chill out and watch what this very interesting company does in the upcoming months. There are of course a lot of potential conflicts but they don’t really have to be. KDE/GNOME, Java/Mono don’t HAVE to be wars, they can compliment each other nicely. And that is what Novell has claimed they will do. Let’s just watch and see how it pans out. No need to point fingers.”
So in the end we are not sure what Novell intends to do or not do. So what Nat and Miguel said must have had an impact on your understanding of the Heise article. Has it made the article more credible or less so?
All I know is that I’ll take Nat and Miguel’s word over any Heise article anyday unless I get first-hand confirmation from someone else at Novell who is higher placed than them. The argument of their posision in Novell is not even relevant.
Where did you get this from?
From your other post above
>>Miguel also says:
>>The only use of Qt that am aware of today is
>>SUSE’s recently open sourced YAST.
>>which is definitely wrong because SUSE developpers are >>working on KDE related stuff, e.g. OpenOffice KDE integration.
Miguel was talking about in-house projects yet you choose to call him a liar. If he is lying then it implies that KDE is developed in-house at Novell, which means Nat and Miguel will be involved somehow. How do you like that?
Also Nat Friedman says:
We see freedesktop.org as one of the most important and central elements of the Linux desktop for the next several years. The desktop today is made up of a number of components, including OpenOffice, Mozilla, Evolution, and of course GNOME and KDE. Over time we hope to work with freedesktop.org to unify the key interfaces and functionality of these components, to improve integration for users and provide a common open
source desktop platform.
This does not sound like “GNOME” will be Novells desktop of choice either. It sounds like Novell is going to distribute both desktops or at least greater parts of both desktops in the future.
You just said above that Nat was not authoritative to make statements about Novell’s desktop efforts, yet you are using his statements to argue that GNOME will not be Novells desktop choice. Tell us, is Nat credible or not, or is he only credible when what he says supports your views and wishes?
Miguel and Nat say so, but they do not really give evidence, they just say that Novell also uses gtk and mono, which was clear anyway.
What evidence did they Heise article give that you rather take their word than that of a Novell employee? Do you now see that your reasoning is not at all logical?
GNOME will become Novells Linux desktop of choice
Who has stated that GNOME will become Novells desktop of choice? There are indications that they are serious about GNOME such as the GNOME logo on their home page, GNOME bounties, the Ximian acquision, the use of gtk for current projects.
When the original Heise article was published, everyone went on about how it was the nicest thing since sliced bread but no GNOME supporter make a single bad comment about it. Now when the article is annuled, everyone rails against Miguel and Nat. When their arguments are knocked down hard, they then claim that Novell is not going to standardize on GNOME anyway.
75% of this thread has been insults at Nat, Miguel, GNOME, GTK, Novell etc. This is too bad for a community that makes nice software such as KDE and the sooner “KDE supporters” start distancing themselves from zealots, the better.
This is a good start:
http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/view/397