Torvalds Says 'Use KDE'

An anonymous reader writes "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'.""

KDE vs. Gnome. Ready...FIGHT!

[TripMaster Monkey (862126)]

Let me get the ball rolling here...

All the Gnome users I've ever known fall into one of three distinct classifictions:

1. They don't know about KDE as an alternative.
   
2. They hold up their Gnome use as a macho Linux status symbol (when asked why they don't use KDE, they shrug and say, "Bah....I do all my work from the shell anyway...).
   
3. They suffer from a deep-seated need to punish themselvs for some reason.

Discuss.

Re:KDE vs. Gnome. Ready...FIGHT!

[Geopoliticus (126152)]

I must be number 3... and I do all of my work from the shell anyway. :)

My Opinion

[Tighe_L (642122)]

I can sum it up quickly: While KDE has much better applications, and has a nice Kontrol Panel, QT is bloated and slow. Gnome's applications are underdeveloped and lack the features that KDE's applications have, GTK2 is quite fast. Personally I use Gentoo and set my use flags to comple GTK2 support and remove QT support, and for user interface I use fluxbox and aterm. This is quite fast and works well for me. I assume that Linus is refering to newbee's to and kind of _nix. I personally will not be using KDE, I don't care what Linus says, who made him Jesus? I am sure that Jesus would use a command prompt. Hello? 10 Commandments??

Well at least he didn't say...

[YodaToo (776221)]

..."Use Windows."

Re:Well at least he didn't say...

[Shakrai (717556)]

..."Use Windows."

No, but it's more important what he didn't say then what he did. I for one, can't help but notice how he left out the GNU in "GNU/KDE". Oh wait....

*duck*

Re:Well at least he didn't say...

[Shakrai (717556)]

I suppose that clever satire is more work than just making some stupid unthinking GNU/joke. Hahahahahaha! I put "GNU/" in front of a word! I'm so funny and cool!

Did you get up on the wrong side of bed this morning or something?

I was trying to create a light moment at the expense of people who are actually serious about the "GNU/Whatever" naming scheme. It seemed more productive then the GNOME v. KDE flamefest that was about to kick off.

But, congrats, I got a flamebait mod. I guess you got what you were looking for. One can only onder if the mod was using a GNU system. Would that mean I got GNU/Flamebait'ed?

(Ok, I'll stop now ;)

The other alternative

[Midnight Thunder (17205)]

Well this could be the other argument: "Gnome is for idiots, KDE is too, for that matter any windowing system is designed with idiots in mind. They are just dumbed down. My choice is CLI, there are so many programs written for it and it is not intuitive at all, just like a system interface should be."

Havoc's Response

[chennes (263526)]

Gnome developer Havoc Pennington's response [gnome.org] points out that "reducing complexity" was not, in fact, the reason the particular dialog in question doesn't have all the options Linux wanted:

"Just for the record, since I made this decision I can tell you that 'might confuse people' was not the reason. More evidence for my point that 'might confuse people' is the reason made up by others, not the reason given by the decision makers."

Which is not to say that Linus is wrong (in the e-mail he writes that "If this was a one-off, I'd buy it. But I've heard it too damn many times. And only ever from Gnome.") -- I'm not a big fan of Gnome's lack of features (at least as compared to KDE), but it's not like anyone on Slashdot really conforms to the "average computer user" concept. And Linus surely doesn't either. Maybe Gnome is better for Mom and Grandpa. I'll stick with KDE, myself.

Re:Havoc's Response

[Stalyn (662)]

In order to turn off the ugly minimizing animation that comes with metacity you actually have edit the code and cut out the relevant part*. People have submitted patches to make this an option but all have been refused. Linus is right. Gnome developers don't care about their users. I still use Gnome cause I like the look and feel but if you want to change certain parts you basically have to either edit the code or use their system registry editor. In a twisted sense, Gnome is for power users.

*There might be an option to turn this off in the system registry but it also turns off other features. For example a window now turns into a wireframe when you drag it.

Torvalds farts

[by Anonymous Coward]

slashdot reports.

Great but....

[Rotten (8785)]

I do all my stuff in the console anyway....wich shell does linus recommend?

Re:Great but....

[adamjaskie (310474)]

"Emacs"

He said shell, not operating system... Besides, Emacs would be a far better OS if it shipped with a halfway-decent text editor.

Re:Great but....

[mekkab (133181)]

Besides, Emacs would be a far better OS if it shipped with a halfway-decent text editor.

Like vi?

"Don't make me think!"

[MarkEst1973 (769601)]

Don't Make Me Think! [amazon.com] by Steve Krug is an awesome book that all software developers should read.

The goal is simplicity in all things. Someone shouldn't have to think about what is going on, it should be obvious.

The most interesting thing about that book is that the author applies the same principles he espouses for websites to the book. The book is very easily digestible. So, if it works for the web and it works for the book... what else can it apply to? If you follow this train of thought to its logical conclusion you'll realize it applies to lots and lots of things: your code, desktops, phone VRUs, brochures, etc.

Linus is a smart guy and I respect him, but the goal is simple.

Re:"Don't make me think!"

[arkanes (521690)]

Theres a fine line between "make it simple" and "make it stupid". It's a hard line to walk, and I think Torvalds is right that Gnome has moved too far to the stupid region (disclaimer: I'm a Gnome user). Simple interfaces are fine as long as the functionality is simple, or there is no need for customization. Phones are in fact an excellent example - we've come a long way from needing to wind your phone up and whistle to clear the lines, but as we add functionality to phones the interfaces have either become more complex (cell phones) or lagged behind the features (most desktop phones). There is nothing wrong with customization, and I like the power of KDE in that respect. The much-maligned Gnome file dialog is a great example of the problems in Gnome. The old one was really, really, really horribly bad. The new one is simply barely adequate. The interface designers at Gnome really read too much into thier title - they want to change the way you interface with the computer (see spatial browsing for a classic example of the reasoning) instead of assisting you to interface on your own terms.

From TFA...

[The Amazing Fish Boy (863897)]

"Please, just tell people to use KDE.

"Use vi, too. And vote Democrat. Oh, and cats are better than dogs. You know what else? Abortion should be legal. So should euthenasia. And as for toast? Butter side up!"

Torvalds no longer represents Linux as a whole.

[Scoria (264473)]

From his message:

it has long since reached the point where it simply doesn't do what I need it to do.

Everybody is entitled to his or her opinion, but Linux has grown beyond the scope of "just" Linus Torvalds. The freedom of choice that we enjoy as users of the operating system is among its finest attributes.

Is it possible that Gnome and KDE are simply designed for different audiences? Newbies and other users may enjoy the more straightforward approach that the Gnome developers strive for. Slightly more advanced users such as Linus may prefer a different UI. (I kid, I kid!)

He's right, you know

[Tom (822)]

In 1998, I was a very active participant on the Gnome UI mailing list. In fact, the very first Gnome User Interface Guideline was in part based on my proposed one (google for "Rogue GNOME style guide" if you care about the details).

Two things shocked me back then, and from Linus comments it appears that neither of them have changed.

One is that Gnome has a ton of great contributors - and just as many who are not as great. Unfortunately, in areas where the matter is more discussion and consensus based and you can't prove your point by just coding it, the vocal trolls crowd out the valuable contributors.

Two is that within those who contributed the the UI discussion there was a surprising lack not only of experience in the HCI field (ok, I had just started out there myself) but also a strong resistance to pick up the vast literature available or trust in actual end-user studies.

The last was what caused me to quit. How can you design a user interface without talking to the users? You can't. Anyone working in HCI knows that. Assumptions == Disaster

Once again: Linus is not God!

[grasshoppa (657393)]

So stop taking what he says as gospel. Yes, he is incredibly intelligent. And yes, he has a very good grasp about what's going on most of the time.

However, this is the same guy that got upset at the Samba guy for reversing bitkeeper.

I'm not arguing with his statement, btw. I've always liked KDE better than gnome. What I am saying is let the poor man have his opinion without starting a flame war.

KDE devs speaks up for GNOME!

[Balinares (316703)]

I was pleasantly surprised to see KDE developpers rally to GNOME's cause [kdedevelopers.org], or at least, advocate the use of GNOME for those for whom it works, regardless of their own opinion. Both DEs are there to stay and the sooner people accept this, the sooner we can build a strong integration layer and move on toward world domination. (Which is why the GNOME people really should get rid of Ximian and its DE fundamentalists if they want to make any progress, by the way -- at least until Ximian gets out of their corporate-love funk and re-learn the OSS virtues of collaboration...)

Not really a cogent argument

[DrXym (126579)]

A clean and simple desktop isn't just for "idiots". Personally I like a desktop which puts 95% of the functionality that most users are ever likely to need in front of them and hides the rest. If I as a power user (which I am) absolutely positively need to do something not in the UI I can simply drop to the command line or even write my own power tools for the job.

KDE is too keen to put every single bloody option whether advanced or not straight in your face, rendering it a pain to find the simple settings. Not only that but the defaults are horrible including the single-click-to-launch paradigm. I spent a good while looking to change that behaviour, foolishly thinking it might set be somewhere desktop prefs which it isn't - it's in the mouse settings. On top of that, you only have to look at Konq or KMail and you'll see six or seven menu items in a row starting with Configure.

The one thing you can hand to KDE is that it is consistent, but it sorely needs to be streamlined. It's not hard to see why enterprise versions of Linux use GNOME - it's so much simpler and cleaner. I truly expect that supporting 100 KDE users would be significantly more work work than 100 GNOME users.

Nat Friedman's follow-up

[wild_berry (448019)]

Nat Friedman's follow-up to Linus' post is grown-up and sensible (http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2005-Dec ember/msg00025.html [gnome.org]):

On Mon, 2005-12-12 at 17:46 -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE.

Everyone on this list knows the Linux desktop is in a "pick your poison" state right now.

Anyone who's used Linux for a year has experienced this, whatever choices they've made of desktop environment, settings, etc.

We can snipe at each other all day long. (Linus, every time I copy large files between devices on my Linux system my mouse pointer skips. It works fine on my Mac). That's not productive.

Usability is important. Usability encompasses multiple things: functionality, robustness, performance, sensible user interface design. We all need to do a better job of this (insert usability testing/betterdesktop.org plug here).

Yes, some GNOME developers are self-appointed control freak antifeature nazis who've stripped functionality in pursuit of some theoretical "non geek" user who does not exist, thereby crippling their software.

And probably some KDE developers are feature sluts who never saw a checkbox they didn't love, exposing users to all kinds of broken features.

Follow either of these ideas to their logical extremes and we won't have a useful desktop for a large user base.

We need Linux to grow up if we're going to make Linux on the desktop a success. Let's have a grown-up discussion. If I worked for Microsoft I'd be very happy to see you throwing pejoratives around like that on this list.

So, yes, usability is important and Linus being able to bind his mouse buttons to whatever he wants is important, I guess. But it's probably not what's stopping Linux from dominating the desktop market. What's holding Linux back on the desktop? Applications, device support. Time, also. The printing dialog? I don't know.

(By the way, on my GNOME machine at home, there is code running that parses the options from the PPD file and makes a GUI out of them. Maybe this ships in SUSE but not in whatever distro Till is using?)

Nat

Corporate use of KDE versus GNOME.

[CyricZ (887944)]

With regards to KDE versus GNOME, the best thing to do is let nature take its course. What I mean by that is let people use which one they prefer. From past experience, those who use KDE end up being more productive. And increased productivity often times leads to increased financial success.

I recently did some consulting for a firm which allowed their developers and administrative staff to use GNOME or KDE. It was each employee's choice which to use. When review time came around, a study was done into which desktop was used by the most productive users.

By far the most productive users, both developers and secretaries/financial officers/etc., were those who used KDE and related software, such as KOffice. The developers who used KDE were the ones who wrote the code with the fewest number of bugs, and the secretaries who used KDE were the ones who were able to produce letters and documents with the fewest drafts.

There was one notable exception, however. One developer who reported using GNOME was amongst the top three (I believe it was) developers. Further investigation revealed that while he was using GNOME, it was only as a program launcher. He was using KDevelop, Konqueror and other KDE software while working.

Overall, they weren't sure if it was a matter of productive people choosing KDE, or KDE allowing people to be more productive. I instinctively feel it was some of both.

The best thing to do is let people use what they want. In the end, their choice will either help or hinder their productivity. Those who are no productive will lose their jobs, and slide into irrelevancy, leaving only the productive. From my past experiences, it would appear that GNOME has become the least productive of the two desktops.

Hell. He's right.

[Slartibartfast (3395)]

I like Gnome. A lot. I like not having to be tied into the KDE window manager. I like all sorts of its nifty functionality.

Except, as noted, when said functionality goes away.

This has been happening for *years*. With every new incarnation of Gnome, I wonder what feature is either gone, or disabled by default. Now, granted, disabled-by-default isn't a bad thing, per-se. If you're a savvy user, it's expected that you'll be able to figure out how to enable it. But sometimes, it ain't that easy -- especially when the menu options aren't all that intuitive.

I mean, what the hell's up with their whole funky "system paradigm" in Nautilus? "Intuitive," my ass. How about a simple hierarchy like most every GUI OS sine the Mac, fer Pete's sake?

Argh. It ain't enough to make me switch to KDE -- I *like* Enlightenment, dammit -- but I certainly see where Linus is coming from, and agree wholeheartedly.

I'm sorry, Miguel, Havoc, etc., but in your attempt to figure out how to appeal to the lowest common denominator, you're pushing away "real" users -- the ones who started using Gnome in the first place, 'cause it didn't try to wrap them up in KDE-cotton.

Linus is right and thats why I use Gnome

[grumbel (592662)]

Linus is absolutly right about Gnome being dominated by 'interface nazis', but thats also exactly the reason why I like Gnome. As oposed to most other OpenSource software Gnome isn't build by stacking layers of layers of hacks on top each other, but instead Gnome developers often take a step back and redo stuff the right way, not just the way people got used to. Sure thats always causing a lot of flameswars and discussion, but its also a necessary thing if you want to end up with something that is actually a good interface and not just one which you have getting used to. So, yep, switching from Gnome1.4 to Gnome2, from Sawfish to Metacity, from old filedialog to new and soon from Galeon to Epiphany was quite painfull at times, but at the end of the day, I got almost all features back that I need and a whole lot of useless stuff cleaned up.

Of course it might be nice if some of the new stuff would be introduces a bit more gently and probally more backward compatible, at least for the time when the new stuff isn't 100% ready for prime time, but the stuff that gets done is almost always worth doing. Oh well, and I would like if they would finally drop Nautilus and use something that isn't just broken-by-design, but maybe that will happen one day anyway...

Those that want all the bells and whistles and configurability should simply use KDE, which really looks and feels for most part like a standard Windows interface on steroids, for me however all that configurabilty is simply useless most of the time, I prefer something that 'works at default' and doesn't offload the creation of a usable interface to the user.

Re:Dude, FVWM

[RobotRunAmok (595286)]

They really ought to know enough Perl to read and write files and manipulate numbers, and know a little programming. Having to figure out text configuration files would be a good exercise, as whiny as it may make them....

Linux on The Desktop: Death by Evangelism.

Re:Dude, FVWM

[SCHecklerX (229973)]

The problem, of course, is that many apps these days require the gnome libs to run. Look at firefox as an example. Pretty much any GTK2 app will want gnome-settings-daemon running. I personally use Windowmaker with ROX, but I still have to have the gnome daemons running to ensure that fonts and such are rendering properly. This combined with rox now using a window for its pinboard (this is apparently the new standard way to do things ... KDE does it too) instead of the root window is annoying. Now I can't have a screen saver or movie running on the root while I work, nor can I easily pin up a windowmaker menu, since releasing the button now makes the menu disappear (I know, don't use a pinboard).

I'd be happy if all of the 'framework' crap just went away and developers would just use standard communication methods between programs. XDnD and XDS are plenty for me, and don't require a friggin' background process.

Re:Linus, Thank You for Sharing

[molnarcs (675885)]

You are an expert in operating system kernels. Please keep to what you do best. Users will vote with their own desktop. There is no need for you to teach people what GUI and desktop to use.

Yeah, well, he didn't make an announcment or a press release you know... He voiced his opinion on a mailing list - and I think Linus is pretty good at that :)

Incidentally, I had exactly the same experience. I migrate users to free software, and we offer two choices: FreeBSD backend, Kubuntu desktop. Why? The same reasons he cites. In the past two years, we heard a lot of "usability" noise from GNOME devs, and imho they are all bogus. Why? Because people throw around words like "usability" too easily, leading to circular or unsubstantial arguments, while real usability studies are not conducted at all. I haven't read a serious usability study for a long time. (maybe this will change with openusability and all). And no, I don't consider a study conducted with people who are absolute computer illiterate (not knowing that the right mouse button is good for something) representative. They are a very specific subset of users, they are NOT the majority, and making design decisions based on experiments conducted on this very small subset of the userbase is WRONG. That is Linus' point. Is he politically correct? Of course not (" 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.")

My girlfriend is absolutely computer illiterate: she thinks (well, thought) that Office is the OS that runs on his laptop. Being lazy and all she often sits down to my computer (instead of opening her laptop) to browse the net. Sometimes she doesn't even notice that instead of firefox, she is using konqueror. There is a small set of functionality that users expect at specific areas of your screen: first buttons should be back and forward, they expect an input field for URLs at the top, maybe a google search bar... and that's it. If they are there, they are not really "confused" because there are additional buttons (kget, print, even cervisia) to the right side. They don't even notice it. It is the same with the file dialog: were users really bothered by the input field? I very much doubt that - and just like Linus, I was not aware of ctrl + L until someone told me here on ./. And in the past years, I hear one bogus "usability" claim from these so called "usability experts" after another (spatial nautilus anyone?) No evidence, no empirical study, just "we say so as usability experts" with some outlandish theory to back it up... so yeah, I think he is right on spot (and yeah, yeah, we know, diplomacy is not his forte).

Re:Linus, Thank You for Sharing

[jone1941 (516270)]

http://betterdesktop.org/ [betterdesktop.org] - an ongoing and very recent usibility study.

Gnome isn't perfect neither is KDE. I personally find that I don't like the default settings for either desktop. The thing that turns me off of KDE as a whole is that even knowing already what I'm going to want to change it takes me forever to step through the mess that is kcontrol and to remove the mess that is every application under the sun from kicker. As a desktop I prefer Gnome, it does everything I need it to do without causing me much pain to get it to the point that I like. However, I still install KDE simply for konsole and kate the two apps I could not live without.

Re:Linus, Thank You for Sharing

[T-Ranger (10520)]

My girlfriend is absolutely computer illiterate: she thinks (well, thought) that Office is the OS that runs on his laptop.

Talk about usability issues!

Re:Linus, Thank You for Sharing

[WindBourne (631190)]

First, just because somebody is an expert in one thing does not mean that they do not excell in something else.

Second, Linus expressed an opinion on the GNOME list. Linus writes in on both GNOME and KDE. There are 2 types of people that post to BOTH lists;

1. The first cares about OSS and does lots of work
2. The 2'nd is a troll, normally paid from a very large competitor.

Finally, that Linus posted to GNOME in a discussion. He was not teaching. He was holding a discussion with other developers. His postings almost certainly have been taken out of context here on /..

Re:Good reason to use GNOME, then

[igb (28052)]

Dumb people want dumb interfaces. Smart people want smart interfaces.

Is that true? I've got 20 years of Unix use behind me, and I've used the whole gamut from Suntools through NeWS through a variety of X options (olwm, olvwm, twm, fvwm) and then Gnome (on Linux and Solaris) and KDE (on Linux). I don't think I ever used Motif for more than a day or so, and I never used Nextstep.

I've recently switched to a Mac, and I find the UI rather fine. Indeed, I've started using Mail.app, having never found a GUI mailer I liked (I used MH for about fifteen years, then five years of Mutt).

My seven year old also likes Macs. She's found switching the dock to the left and changing her wallpaper easy, and she's very fond of Dashboard.

I think it's quite possible to have a GUI that suits all needs.

ian

Re:Ah, the age-old battle

[IAmTheDave (746256)]

Are you a geek, who wants a productive interface? KDE is the way to go - actually, I prefer Windowmaker myself. OTOH, are you an end user who wants a simplified UI? Gnome is the way to go.

See, I disagree. As a bit of a power user - or at least not your average end user - most of what I do beyond normal desktop applications, surfing, and word processing involves a terminal window.

I suffer from mild OCD, and to me simplicity means calm, it means an enhanced ability to concentrate, and it means a better experience overall. KDE, to me, seems so incredibly cluttered and overreaching/overbearing that I shy away from it at every possible moment.

So again, this goes back to simply a matter of preference. Some like KDE, some like Gnome, some like E, but here's my problem. For Linus to get involved in this is just wrong. He can say he uses KDE, that's fine, but to put down Gnome as detrimental to society is base, ill-informed, and callus. If people don't like Gnome, fine, let them be. But this "disease" of which he speaks affects my mom and grandparents, and yeah, they sure as hell can find their way around a Gnome base installation better and faster than they can around KDE base installation.

So instead of Linus putting down Gnome, he should have simply stated what he used and left it at that. He practically started the entire "choice" movement, and to not encourage such choice is just not right... IMO of course.

Re:Ah, the age-old battle

[arkanes (521690)]

I'm a geek who likes productivity and I use Gnome. It's nicer looking, and cleaner. Which is not to say that it's lack of customization doesn't piss me off, and I've tried moving to KDE a few times, but KDEs look & feel is just... icky. Lack of consistent artwork, busy interfaces, lots of popuppy balloony things (the animated tooltips on the Kicker drive me insane - I want the tooltips, but I want small simple ones, not enormous ones with special effects). When someone manages to ship Gnome with the power of KDE, or KDE with the consistency and cleanliness of Gnome, please call me. I still use a few KDE applications - Amarok is way better than Rythmbox, and I switch between KDevelop and Anjuta depending on what I'm doing.

"Dumbed down interfaces"

[theurge14 (820596)]

Ah, but see, what you're seeing on the Mac is actually elegant simplicity. There's power lurking there.

Sure the playlist selector in iTunes only has one button to add a new playlist, but hold down the Shift key while your mouse is in the playlist area and the button turns into an add new Smart playlist button. Or in the Browse area, click on the column header to Genre, Artist or Album and you zoom back to the top of the list.

These sort of rewards await those who explore. But for the faint of heart, the simple interface still functions.

Re:Heh

[lpangelrob (714473)]

Sweet. Karma, carte blanche.

-Linus Torvalds
(Honestly. Ignore the sig.)

Re:Heh

[Delphiki (646425)]

However, people respect Torvalds and respect his opinion. He's not your average person.

What on earth has he done that would make people respect his opinion on GUIs? That's like respecting Stephen Hawking's ideas on interior decorating because he's such a great physicist.

Re:Heh

[MatD (895409)]

Actually, that's a bad analogy. Stephen's use of ramps at his house to frame the positive and negative space, as well as the bold lines imposed by his use of lower counter tops really makes a statements along the lines of L.I. Kahn.

Re:Heh

[mysticgoat (582871)]

Ha ha-- mod parent into -5 oblivion for being too funny for words, please.

I respect Torvalds' opinion because

1. I'm pretty sure that over the years Torvalds has become somewhat proficient in the use of GUIs, which is sufficient experience to come to an informed opinion about what's good or bad about their use;
2. I'm pretty sure that Torvalds knows how to think through the long term implications of design philosophies, such as whether to put rubber blades on the swiss army knife so users won't cut themselves;
3. I'm quite certain that somewhere along the way, Torvalds has learned to avoid stirring up unnecessary controversies since he seems to limit himself to only one or two a year;
4. Yet despite that last point, he said this not only once, but twice, in a forum where it really counts.

But to be balanced about it, I don't think much of Torvalds taste in automobiles and my GF thinks he chooses dorky clothes. Yet despite these criticisms, I do think that I will now favor KDE over Gnome. Because Linus is my hero and he is a champion of FOSS and all that's holy in the binary realms.

Re:In defense of Gnome

[RootsLINUX (854452)]

You can use Konquerer as your file manager while in Gnome. I use it for my Debian machine running fluxbox. The reason why I prefer Gnome over KDE these days is because KDE installs all this useless crap that I don't want on my machine. Seriously, some of their micro-apps are just pointless and a waste of space. Best example: "keyes". Who wants to run a program where two eyeballs are constantly following my mouse around the screen? Seriously...

Re:In defense of Gnome

[fymidos (512362)]

>KDE installs all this useless crap that I don't want on my machine.

Most of these apps, (keyes,kteatime,amor etc) are in the package kdetoys, which you can safely remove from your installation.

Re:In defense of Gnome

[delete (514365)]

The parent makes an interesting about the importance of how well a desktop is maintained on a given distribution. While one may say that either Gnome or KDE is a better, the end-user experience for many users is largely dependent on the integration and packaging done by a particular distribution. As an extreme example, consider the largely unusable KDE packages that Redhat shipped two years ago. Personally I've found that a "polished" and well-integrated version of a given desktop (e.g. Ubuntu on Gnome, KDE on SuSE) is always superior to a poorly maintained desktop, no matter how HCI-compliant or feature-packed that desktop may be.

For many people, the choice of whether to use KDE or Gnome will be automatically dictated by the distribution that they happen to choose. After all, most people aren't particularly concerned with pseudo-religious debates concerning Gtk v Qt or C v C++, especially since we seem to have so many zealots in the real world these days.

Re:Bye bye, freedom of choice!

[dorkygeek (898295)]

No, he did not want to switch users to KDE. His sentence was solely of rhetoric nature, to show Gnome developers how useless Gnome got during the last releases. Instead of shutting down Gnome, he'd like the development path to take a turn, toward a more configurable desktop.

Re:Torvalds is 'out there'

[Sketch (2817)]

Linus is posting exactly the same as he always had: He says what he thinks, and doesn't pull any punches when doing so. If you think this is "new" behaviour for Linus, you haven't been around long enough. You might want to read this little exchange from 1992:

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/ap pa.html [oreilly.com]

Re:Torvalds is 'out there'

[jandrese (485)]

Cripes guys, I must not be reading his statement the same way you are. To me, Linus said "Eh, I don't much like Gnome, they oversimplified it, when people ask I tell them I prefer KDE now", to everyone else it's some sort of prophetic revelation from God or something.

Re:Torvalds is 'out there'

[slavemowgli (585321)]

As far as Linus is concerned (I won't comment on the KDE vs. Gnome thing)... well, I'm not sure which Linus you have looked at, but the idea that "early humility" changed to "hubris" over the course of a "three year period" is pretty bizarre. Linus has always had strong opinions on stuff, and he's never been afraid to voice them (remember his discussion with Tanenbaum about the merits of monolithic kernels in general and Linux in particular? That was in early 1992, almost 14 years ago.

Really, the only thing that has changed is how people perceive Linus. He used to be just another guy; nowadays, he's a celebrity of sorts, and he's going through all the same phases that all celebrities go through: first, there is a horde of fanboys who religiously follow everything he says, but at a certain point, it becomes en vogue to religiously bash him and everything he says instead. This is the transition you're observing (and, for that matter, that you seem to be part of), but it's important to realise that it has nothing to with Linus or his opinions as such. (I predict that later on, things will slowly return to normal after bashing him is not the "hot new thing" anymore; and then, he will be idolised again, until the whole cycle repeats itself.)

If you actually read what Linus says - not just on this topic, but in general -, you'll notice one thing: he himself doesn't care. What he *does* care about is technical superiority and the like, but not politics; as such, he never has been afraid to speak his opinion, and he isn't right now, either, and - maybe most important! - he doesn't expect people to take it as anything except for the opinion of one guy.

You should do the same thing. If Gnome works for you and your wife - fine! More power to you. And if Gnome does not work for Linus - fine! More power to him! It's OK to have a discussion about the technical merits (and if you read what Linus said, you'll find that he actually bases his opinions on technical merit pretty much all the time, and certainly in this issue, too), but the kind of celebrity-bashing you're exhibiting here is just as bad as the celebrity-adoring that you mourn in others. Make up your own mind based on what you need; and discuss technical merits, but leave it at that, and respect the fact that others don't agree with you.

Re:Check out Jeff Waugh's reply

[10Ghz (453478)]

Personally, I think Linus ought to know better by now than put out a self-centered post like that. There are more users in the world than just geeks.

He had an opinion on the subject-matter, and he stated it. You are free to disagree with his opinion, but does that mean that he shouldn't voice his opinion? And I don't really see what the fuzz is about. There are quite a few people around the net who are irritated by the removal of features in Gnome. Apparently Linus is one of them. There are also lots of people who prefer KDE, and apparently Linus is one of them.

Aside from being an moral-booster for the KDE-guys, I fail to see the drama in this case. Linus doesn't like GNOME. And he told why he doesn't like GNOME, and his reasons are valid. He's not ordering people to use KDE. He simply said that he recommends KDE over GNOME, and he stated his reasons for doing so. Does this mean that the GNOME-guys are going to pack their bags and start using KDE instead? No. GNOME doesn't need Linus's endorsement to survive.

Like I said, I fail to see the drama here. Is Linus being "self-centered" when he said that "I prefer KDE over GNOME"? That's his personal opinion, and they are all in a way "self-centered", and there's nothing wrong with that. Surely he's entitled to his opinion?

Re:Inevitable

[molnarcs (675885)]

I was wondering how long it would take for this discussion to come up on Slashdot. It's noteworthy really only because Linus comes across as a 13 year old arsehole

Diplomacy is not Linus' forte - and it never was, and we know that. Just so it happens that his opinion does not coincide with folks who invested a lot of emotion in supporting GNOME... and now, suddenly, he "comes across as a 13 year old". Sure.

On the other hand, Havoc later admitted that some missing functionality was NOT a usability decision. But whenever it comes down to defending some very questionable choices, I always hear these bogus "usability" arguments: it is less confusing this way, less bloated, $insert_bogus_usability_argument_here. And that is precisely Linus' gripe. Kurt Pfeife (I hear now: but he is obviously biased because he is a KDE guy - but shut up and listen to the argument) summed it up well:

"Frederic told that the options from the PPD file are intentionally mot listed in the printing dialog, the usability team of GNOME was against listing these options. They clutter the dialog and can be more confusing than useful to the user. This is not a wise decision."

Because it means there is no usability at all for many features: you can not *use* them, they are not there at all, they are forbidden to the user by some higher usability being.

Usubility for a given feature starts to become debate-able only where the feature is already present, where something can be done *at all*. Before, there is the land of un-usability.

What type of printers do you think users in many enterprise environ- ments are used to? It is the 60 pages per minute model, that can do duplex and stapling and punching and cover-sheets-on-cardbox-paper and watermark and foo and bar and morestuff..

. I was one of the guys who pushed for adding all features (which the underlying CUPS provided) into the user interface of KDEPrint.

And I know for a fact that KDE's power in printing matters (given to it by CUPS) was the one feature that determined a pro-KDE decision in Linux desktop rollouts in Europe.

I also know that the printing dialog of KDE can be improved a *lot* from where it is now. However, this is much more difficult than just removing most features and declare their un-usability to be the new religion of usability.

We'll work on that for KDE 4, but without removing any feature (we will rather be adding some more, because the wonderful CUPS 1.2 gives them to us for free).

Cheers, Kurt

Computers are about empowering users. Now there is a difficulty here - you want to enable your users to do more, and do it easily. And that is what makes UI design an art: how can you provide more without confusing the user? GNOME's answer is simple (again, this is Linus' point): take functionality away, or don't provide it at all. A very easy way to cut the gordian knot, but it is not the right way imho. The right way is to do proper research (not on a very limited set of computer illiterate users, who don't know that the right mouse button is there for a reason - results won't be representative at all) - and organize your functionality. That is what the last two paragraphs are about, that is Linus' point, whether you like it or not, whether you agree with it or not. Calling him names or ridiculing him is kinda ironic: you accuse him as coming across as a 13 year old, yet this is what you do in your own post. You don't reflect on the points raised by Linus. You probably didn't even read the entire thread (otherwise you'll see that Havoc's post comes off as a kind of confession - yeah it was not a usability question at all, and that is where Linus' criticism is mainly targeted at). And apparently you are +5 insightful. Way to go folks!

Re:Inevitable

[BenjyD (316700)]

Using "FUCKING IDIOT" [osdl.org] in caps on a mailing list is fairly childish behaviour, I think. There is a reasoned debate to be had there with the devs (not to be confused with the GNOME fanboy users) - how to add the complex options given limited developer time and a desire to make things usable without significant mental energy. Just shouting and insulting the developers is not the right approach and somebody needs to tell Linus that.

Re:Gnome wins

[Dominic_Mazzoni (125164)]

Linus is making the biggest mistake all geeks make (myself included, but I learn, he might).

People don't want you to give them lots of features that get in their way.

They want you to give them something intuitive that does the basic things they need done first.

As a lead developer of Audacity, I have to disagree. Yes, users want a simplified interface that doesn't get in their way. They want the most basic things to be as easy as possible. But once they've done those basic things, they want to do something else. They want more functionality. For any given user, that added functionality is pretty simple - but every user is different. There's not a single feature in Audacity that we could remove that wouldn't upset thousands of users - and not just power users - ordinary users who really just need that one feature!

Making an interface simple is good. Removing functionality isn't.