Has GNOME Become LAME?

auferstehung writes "Nicholas Petreley (should that be KNicholas KPetreley) of LinuxWorld and VarLinux.org has taken his gloves off in the latest article in his KDE vs Gnome series. An unabashed KDE supporter, Petreley uses some choice fighting words in re-acronymizing GNOME as the Language Agnostic Morphable Environment (LAME) Franken-GUI. Despite the sensationalistic flamage throughout the article, several of his GNOME criticisms (Gconf, file selector, features) echo those already voiced within the GNOME community itself. A happy GNOME user myself, please someone...tell me it isn't so."

I've tried to use GNOME but always go back to KDE

[systemapex]

From a pure user experience, I like GNOME's simplicity. But that simplicity, for whatever reason does not extend to its usability. I keep returning to KDE, though I sometimes find it tries to do too much and spreads its quality thin. GNOME simply does not do enough. There are just some things that bug me too much about GNOME that should be fixed immediately because it's just an embarassment to the project - the default file selector for gtk apps would be a good place to start.

Re:Gnome's very problem

[Anonymous Coward]

+ References to obscure, technical sounding fields of study
+ Some vaguely accurate software engineering speak
+ No substatantiation whatsoever for any claims made

First class trolling, sir!

Why I use Gnome

[JamesGreenhalgh]

When I upgraded to SuSE 8.1, I decided to give KDE another whirl since it had hit version 3. Pretty good, does a lot of stuff, appears to do it well aside from a couple of basic apps which would crash every time they were closed (not KDEs fault as such).

Why did I switch back to Gnome 2?

Speed. The two systems I was using KDE on were a dual p2-400 and a celeron 800. On both, there was an enourmous speed increase switching to Gnome - especially with lots of open apps. They definitely still have work to do, I like Metacity because it's nice+light+simple, but the configuration leaves a little to be desired. GTK2 based apps appear to run a lot slower than GTK1, but even then they're still much quicker than the QT based KDE.

Fortunately, with "big players" backing KDE and Gnome seperately, I don't see either going away - a good thing, although I do wish they'd agree on how drag+drop should work ;-)

Re:Why I use Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

You may want to give KDE 3.1 a whirl. I was a GNOME user up until KDE 3.1 for the very same reasons as you, but KDE 3.1 provides a much necessary speed boost. I have a higher end system (P4 512MB RAM) but KDE 3.1 performs better now than GNOME 2.0 does for me.

Sawfish

[steveha]

My understanding is that they removed Sawfish because it is difficult to maintain. The original developer of Sawfish has moved on to other things, and he isn't working on it at all. Sawfish is lacking some major features (multihead support, accessability), and large parts of Sawfish are written in LISP. I guess the GNOME developers don't like working with the code base.

Metacity is simpler than Sawfish, and the theory is that it will be simpler to keep it bug-free.

I've switched to Metacity; I'm content with it.

The guys who get paid to work on GNOME are not doing anything with Sawfish. If its fans are dedicated enough, however, they could keep it going.

steveha

Re:Why do some many prefer Gnome then ?

[twener]

> why is it that so many prefer Gnome over KDE ?

There are always some who don't share opinion or taste of the majority. For example have a look at the Gentoo Linux usage statistics [gentoo.org]. Adding all KDE installations compared to Gnome installations more seem to prefer KDE than Gnome. That's the tendency this statistic has in common with most web polls (which I in general wouldn't overestimate as being representative).

Re:It's nice to see

[bonch]

Bad analogy. Wheels are essential. That's like a mouse cursor or a basic window in GUI terms.

But KDE and Gnome also copy dialogs, start menus, taskbars, basic design conventions, and much more.

You can either copy forever in a futile attempt at winning the Windows crowd (yeah, let's give them half-assed clones of what they already have), or innovate and create something people will actually want to use.

You say Microsoft has good ideas that are poorly implemented. KDE and GNOME are just copying what's been done in that department, under the guise of making it more "customizable" (wow, I can move the taskbar and start menu around now).

Please, won't somebody create something new? The "killer app" I think Linux needs is a new GUI system designed from the ground up for desktop use. Don't give me "well, write it yourself," because I don't have the skill level, but more importantly, it's a ridiculous attitude to have to start with. Besides, if you want a graphic designer, I'm your man. Linux apps are always sorely lacking in the aesthetics department.

Re:Yes

[DopeRider]

If you can consistently reproduce crashing, why don't you report the bug?.

Re:The only once inside the GNOME-community

[Anonymous Coward]

The real problems accure in multiuser environments. If two persons what's to change different settings for one application in a text file, the other persions changes might be overwritten.

In a database-kind-of-system, it is easyer to handle data on entity level, than in a pure text file. ..and

If your application wants to get configurations done in three other applications, it don't needs to know how to read three different file formats to do that. /mudFlap

Re:It's nice to see

[Trurl's Machine]

Gnome and KDE are incorporating wonderful and exciting features... that are copies of stuff Microsoft was doing 4 years ago.

...that are copies of Stuff Apple and NeXT were doing 8 years ago :-)

Re:It's nice to see

[kubla2000]

Bungi, you're such a troll.

Explain to me how the DOS cli wasn't a "copy" of the Unix cli? The trail for "originality" stretches back a long way.

And what's with the martyr like "-1 Pro Microsoft"? Stop trolling, start posting something insightful and you might get some respect.

I can't believe I've taken the troll bait... enough.

Re:It's nice to see

[BlackHawk-666]

Microsoft are not well known for innovation. They are well known for buying companies that are innovative or for fairly good implementations of someone elses innovation. Some examples might help here:

DoubleSpace/Stacker

DOS/CPM

Windows/X11/MacOs/Next

Excel/Visicalc/Lotus

Word/Word Perfect

IIS/Apache

IE/Netscape/Mosaic

There's tons more examples available for the interested. Also, Microsoft are well known for bad early releases (1.0-2.0) but getting it right the third time - hey, let's have some more examples:

Dos 3.0

IE 3.0

Word 6.0

Windows 3.0

See the pattern - all pretty suckful on first release (also all copies of someone elses IP) and yet all matured by version 3.0.

Re:Did something really go "wrong"?

[GauteL]

"The last release of KDE had some pretty cool stuff in it - I was eager to get my hands on it and play with it. In contrast, most of what I've heard about Gnome 2.2 has been about what it doesn't have in it anymore. It apparently won't even be featured in the next Knoppix release, since it's broken so badly."

While I'm not that opposed to the rest of your post, this one is assuming way too much. GNOME 2.x has been about cleansing and purifying. You assume that removing things makes it broken. I on the other hand applaud what have been done, since it makes GNOME easier, simpler and more elegant. The people complaining are very loud. The people that like this do not bother screaming about it. In addition the project is trying to attract newbies, which would not care about the ability to switch window manager in the GUI (which KDE thankfully does not do either).

Knoppix has always been about KDE (the whole name implies it). That they did not like GNOME 2.x does not surprise me the least.

I also disagree that KDE feels more unified, I personally think it is the opposite, but every one has their own taste.

The file dialog is not good, and is being fixed, but there is a lot of applications out there that just use GTK+ and not the rest of GNOME. Two totally different file dialogs for The GIMP and Gedit would not be very good, so it has been decided that the file-dialog will need to be fixed at the GTK+-level.

The rest of the GNOME-project is not going to stand still and wait for it to be included in GTK+, so it is highly possible that the next GNOME-version (2.4) will still be based on GTK+ 2.2 (with the old file dialog).

Re:No, it isn't so.

[IamTheRealMike]

There is a comprehensive Gnome HIG but does anyone obey it?

Er, yes. All the core GNOME apps do, and many other non-core and even non-GNOME apps (like gaim and the gimp) are bringing themselves in line. You won't see this unless you use a lot of unstable software (like I do) because being very new, most apps that follow the HIG haven't been released yet.

Just examine different programs' menus, e.g. "About" "About..." and other trailing ellipsis and different capitalization styles.

Bugs bugs bugs bugs bugs, please report them in bugzilla, not on Slashdot.

Does the framework support/enforce common look?

To some extent yes, but for some other things no. The HIG reached version 1 after GNOME2.0 came out. Updating GTK, Glade and so on to make it very easy to make HIG compliant GUIs is still in progress.

See this page [gnome.org] for a review pointing out how different toolbars look, how different are button distances to borders and so on.

Oh yes, that page. Written by oGALAXYo, who persistantly trolls the GNOME community but has yet to actually submit bugfixes as far as I'm aware. The toolbar "issue" (in reality a 1 pixel line that until it was pointed out most people had never even noticed) is caused by there being different toolbar widgets in GTK and BonoboUI - the new toolbar in GTK2.4 resolves all the problems people had with the original one, and such problems will disappear when addressed at the toolkit level. If you're going to pick at how GTK+ only apps look different to apps that use the GNOME tools, then I might as well point out that Qt only apps look radically different to KDE apps - up until recently they didn't even share themes.

KDE 3.1 and apps have a lot more unified GUI than Gnome 2.2 and apps.

At the moment perhaps, but that's because KDE basically hasn't had a complete usability overhaul like GNOME has, GNOME are still shaking out the bugs, and getting the new controls etc into the proper levels of the dependancy cake as Havoc puts it takes time. You don't completely revamp an entire desktop overnight and not have rough edges that need polishing.

Re:I find both of them "lame"

[IamTheRealMike]

However, some of Petrely's remarks are just silly. For example, he thinks that KDE being "more feature rich" is a good thing. Sorry, but that's not true. Having lots of features and buttons and widgets may work for some users, others may prefer something simpler, and yet others may want a different set of complex features.

Agreed. He also seems to confuse "lots of stuff" with "features". Having 3 media players or whatever they're up to now is not feature rich, it's bloat. OK, OK, so I'm being picky, but I've yet to find features that I really miss from KDE. Sure, I liked the idea of having a mini-webserver in my panel, but I never actually used it.

And Gtk+ and Qt both make very inefficient use of the X11 APIs, giving X11 an undeserved reputation for being slow.

Ignoring the fact that both GTK and Qt have pluggable backends, which entails a very slight loss of tight integration, the real reasons that GTK2 is slower than GTK1.2 are

1) It is double buffered. This slows GTK down, but makes it feel faster and smoother to the user. Net win.

2) It uses anti-aliasing. XRender is still not finished, nor well optimized. Profiling the new gnome-terminal widget for instance showed that most of the time was spent inside the X server. That will speed up over time.

3) If you do opaque resizes of apps, you'll find the content area doesn't stick to the borders. That's due to a problem with the internal scheduler, not due to lack of speed on the part of GTK.

Re:Did something really go "wrong"?

[mickwd]

"Knoppix has always been about KDE (the whole name implies it)."

Actually, the name comes from the guy who produces it, Klaus Knopper [knopper.net].

But then again, maybe he changed his name by deed poll ;)

Re:But it makes up in one huge way....

[BlackHawk-666]

$1500 buys you 1 day of programming time at my company. I don't think I could write the entire QT toolkit in 1 day, so it's probably worth paying the licence fee.If your clients are having problems raising this sort of cash then they are going to have worse problems paying you a decent wage. I'd suggest getting better clients ;-)

Re:But it makes up in one huge way....

[sydb]

I read the post more like this: "I needed the ability to write closed source apps, I reviewed the options, KDE didn't allow this, so I picked Gnome."

He's not asking Trolltech to do anything, he doesn't need them to; Gnome gives him what he needs.

Copy-and-paste job

[arturogatti]

This was copied-and-pasted from here [zdnet.com]. It was originally a reply to an article posted on ZDNet in October of 2000.

Re:Copy-and-paste job

[hysterion]

This was copied-and-pasted from here [zdnet.com]. It was originally a reply to an article posted on ZDNet in October of 2000.

Man! Astroturfer caught in full swing. Superb catch :-)

Re:The only once inside the GNOME-community

[Sandstorm]

My objection is that frequently it's used to replace keyword/value pairs with... er, values in tags, and is readability-impaired - not because a human being can't decypher what something says, but because you have to decypher that something first.

If you don't understand what I mean, consider the following example:

Old, obsolete, non-standard format:

FullScreen=true

Exciting, new, XML format:

<FullScreen>true</FullScreen>

How about something like this?

<Settings FullScreen="true" />

A snippet from an actual config file would probably look something like this:

<ScreenSettings

FullScreen="true"
Width="800"
Height="600"
/>

I think that would be both human readable and valid XML.

Re:They both have problems

[Redline]

In gnome 1 I was able to put applets for gaim and xmms in my sidebar. They are unobtrusive there and available on all my desktops. It was wonderful. KDE doesn't have these.

Both GAIM (in nightly snapshots [sourceforge.net]) and XMMS [hellion.org.uk] now have "dock plugins" that place themselves in the dock area. (KDE calls it "system tray", and GNOME calls it "notification area") The dock applet API is a freedesktop.org standard [freedesktop.org] that both desktops are using. So KDE docklets work in GNOME 2.2 and GNOME docklets work in KDE 3.1.

Re:I find both of them "lame"

[Anonymous Coward]

Konqueror only uses 7 distinct X11 subwindows?
Plain wrong. Just do 'xwininfo -tree'.

GNOME and KDE for Microsoft Windows users

[Anonymous Coward]

Now GNOME and KDE are also available for MS Windows users.
The porting is done using Cygwin ( http://cygwin.com/xfree/ [cygwin.com] , the XWindows for MS Win32 )
Project are :-
1) CyGNOME at http://cygnome.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
2) KDE-Cygwin at http://kde-cygwin.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

Posting from Miguel de Icaza

[twener]

See this posting [gnome.org] from Miguel de Icaza which Havoc Pennington hopes will not appear [gnome.org] on Slashdot:

Miguel de Icaza: Reading today's Slashdot comments, you can see that our desktop is falling behind stability-wise and feature wise to KDE. [..] I probably mentioned this before, but when I went to Mexico in December to the facility where we launched gnome, they had all switched to KDE3.

Re:Trendy XMl is bad

[maw]

(if not (> x 2) (+ 4 y))

Well, it's obvious you never got used to it, for a few reasons.

One is that this is bogus syntax to begin with. Another is that, even if it were legit syntax, no lisp programmer would (fail to) indent like that.

You're not a troll, but you are an idiot.