UserLinux Will Support KDE 326
kollum writes "Bruce Perens has revealed that UserLinux will now support KDE commercially. It seems there is a demand for a KDE plan afterall."
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UserLinux Will Support KDE
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One way to make your old car run better is to look up the price of a new model.
Makes good business sense... (Score:5, Interesting)
"I already have a customer asking for Perens LLC to provide commercial support for KDE on the UserLinux platform. And we will do so, even though KDE is not the chosen GUI of the UserLinux project. This is an
option for any UserLinux service provider."
So, in other words, if your customers want it, you should provide it. Makes sense to me.
Choice is good... (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean people clammer about window manager themes almost as much as the window managers themselves...
Think of the solitary driving force, it's choice... Even as far to the point where if you don't like a certain aspect of a piece of software you can look at the source and change it...
So, to exclude any piece of software would, at heart, be hypocritical, given the open source method.
Just my two cents as a staunch Gnome user...
Re:Perens LLC, not UserLinux (Score:5, Interesting)
"it's just too hard to support both..."
also throws some cold water on the other ridiculous rationales he uses from time to time, depending upon if the mood suits him:
"Qt can't support a coveted cottage industry of proprietary developers..."
yah, well, except for the current 'cottage industry' that overwhelmingly has chosen Qt for commercial development...
so Bruce's is left with one rationale for his decision to exclude KDE from the default of UL:
"I've already made the choice
That's uncalled for (Score:4, Interesting)
Not to mention (near and dear to my heart) the fact that he's an active HAM radio guy.
Ah well, it wouldn't be
To many toolkits! (Score:5, Interesting)
I think what Linux on the Desktop needs is something just like X, but with server-side widget-drawing and window management code. The client-server design is what makes X great, and should be kept. But with a default widget set, there'd be one place to change fonts, window decorations, colors, etc. And there'd be less repetition.
It wouldn't be inflexible. A good X replacemnt would have an X-server client so that X programs could run as part of it. So it would still be easy to use your own toolkit if you really wanted to. And the server would have a plugin system to allow a wide range of widget and window styles.
At the moment, I run KDE. I suppose X's architecture is better than Windows's putting everything in kernel-space, but it still pains me. I can't wait until I can easily run something like PicoGUI or Fresco on my desktop.
Re:Perens LLC (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Perens LLC, not UserLinux (Score:1, Interesting)
Most normal users don't just not know enough about the underlying framework to talk about it, they aren't remotely interested in talking about it and are never likely to be.
The point actually seems to be that you're annoyed when they do talk about the things that matter to them.
Re:Perens LLC, not UserLinux (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually no. I am not annoyed with that. I am annoyed with people who don't know anything but try to talk and convince others by bringing up a lot of nonsense.
Say stuff like this:
- GNOME is LGPL, KDE uses a propritary QT license.
This thing has been chewed over and over so even the last and most retarded person living in a dark cave should have understood it by now.
- GNOME is better integrated and has nicer ICONS.
While we all know that there is NO integration at all in GNOME because their framework doesn't offer full integration. Everything stands on it's own and a lot of stuff is re-invention from scratch. By the way I do come from the GNOME world and developed quite some stuff on and with it. I am only sick about the nonsense people spread. While I do favorite GNOME myself I on the otherhand don't fool myself with lies or bullshit by assuming that GNOME is so what supperior while I do know from technical standpoints that it lacks behind KDE in many many ways.
- Nautilus is faster than Konqueror.
Not to mention all the problems around GNOME like not having a unified bookmarks solution, no objects (e.g. there was a bounty to change the Panel Calendar in GNOME, now the Calendar in Panel has a hack that looks into Evolution database for schedules and stuff like that) but the object Calendar hasn't been changed so other apps won't benefit from it.
Stuff like this and these are just a part from the entire mountain of other problems that is easy to discover. Yet people claim that GNOME and KDE are closeup but reality is that they are NOT close up, maybe from looks with fancy icons but not technically. KDE is improving in huge and large steps while GNOME is sticking around in tiny things but no real progress.
KDE should be developed into an enterprise desktop (Score:4, Interesting)
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While I prefer Mozilla as my browser, Konqueror is a good compliment to it as it will render Microsoft specific pages better than Mozilla. Galeon and Epiphany render the same as Mozilla.
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I need to get to my office files via FTP and KDE is not only more intuitive, but I can't even get Nautilus to get to all my files because of the non-standard set up of the server.
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Don't get me wrong, I think Gnome is good and I can even see some people prefering it. In fact, there are some things about Nautilus that I really like. However, KDE better suits my needs right now.
Do the KDE foot shot. (Score:1, Interesting)
That's one of the reasons I've lost a lot of respect for the QT/KDE community. The problem's not with the code so much as it is with the community and their handling of issues. From the original QT license issue, to the Harmony, and straight to the Red Hat integration effort, and now this. I read some serious character assasination of Bruce Perens by people I know who write KDE software *cough*Quanta*cough*. Quite frankly the KDE community needs to get the loose cannons off the mike, and get some PR person to front for them before another incident comes up (and you can bet money, more incidents will come up) and they drive more people away.
Re:Reality 1. Bruce 0. (Score:2, Interesting)
However, now a customer has asked for it, he is willing to consider it.
It is always useful to look at peoples actions to understand their attitudes.
Bruce's prejudice towards KDE does not bode well for future co-operation with KDE users/developers.
A bit sad (Score:3, Interesting)
But it's sad to see that they couldn't focus on what I assume they liked the best.
Now we probably end up with another KDE support fiasco a la Red Hat. It would be much better if people who liked and was good at KDE created pure KDE distros and people who prefered Gnome did Gnome distros.
It's usually better to download and complie KDE yourself on a Gnome oreinted distro ( I guess the same is true for Gnome on KDE oriented distros)
And KDE 3.2 is out on Monday (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Makes good business sense... (Score:1, Interesting)
Um, there *is* no distinction there. Since QT is GPL licensed, it is free, Free, and FREE. Its freedom can never be taken away from it. It is free yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and behold, it shall be free forever more, hallelujah, amen.
Please explain where the problem lies.
QT license issues (Score:3, Interesting)
Gnome uses GTK+ which is LGPL. Both FSS and proprietary software writers can use it without paying anybody.
KDE uses QT which is dual-licensed GPL and "pay us if you sell an application":
- FSS developers MUST release their software as GPL.
- Proprietary developers MUST pay.
As a software developer, you are better with Gnome or Microsoft than with QT. If all you release is GPL, then it does not matter. If all you ever want to use is GPL, then it does not matter. But if you want to see Adobe Photoshop on Linux, expect your stupid QT license issues to matter, because Photoshop will not be sold with QT.
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I spent the last week switching between Gnome (RedHat) and KDE (Slackware and a little SuSE) about hourly. I like KDE slightly better AS A USER, but I would not write commercial software for it.
It's not about choosing gnome (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Perens LLC, not UserLinux (Score:3, Interesting)
So I can't find a link to the original announcement, but according to this link [userlinux.com], I see no mention of his support company. Yes, I know he was talking about LLC in this last message, but I'm talking about at the start.
Firstly, (in the link) there is no real mention of a difficulty in supporting Qt. The difficulty and *expense* lies in supporting two frameworks, and that difficulty and expense is in reference to any support provider, not Perens' in particular: "For developers and support staff, maintaining expertise in both of two GUIs is an expensive proposition" and "The difference between one and two GUIs may spell profitability or bankruptcy for some of our service providers".
So, still, no preference for GNOME/GTK over KDE/Qt. The decision at this point is that, to reduce economic strains for any support provider, UserLinux will only have one GUI.
The decision then has to come down to something else, and that decision was made on licensing: Qt is GPL, GTK is LGPL. The LGPL is better for commercial users of UserLinux. As "in order to get any Free Software into businesses, our Free system must promote the creation of a large collection of proprietary solutions that do not exist today" it's better in *this* instance to pick the LGPL library. Hence, we make a defacto decision to use GNOME.
Now, in reference to "keeping up with the distro". I look at Mandrake, and see that KDE has been "tweaked" for Mandrake. I assume GNOME is the same. Red Hat, the same. I guess most (if not all) distros don't just take the default desktop and ship with that. They value add, either through extra components, through themes, through different menus, whatever. UL's GNOME support being just one meta-package is to be expected: UserLinux doesn't really exist yet! However, when it does, you can be sure that it'll be tweaked, with a little extra config app over here, and pretty buttons over there.
From what I can remember, when RedHat started using their BlueCurve themes (I think that's the name), of the few positive comments about it most of them were along the lines of "well, you gotta hand it to them: its not easy to get KDE and GNOME to have such similar and consistent themes". That's what I mean when I say keeping up with the distro: apparently theming and everything else is difficult to keep consistent across desktop environments, and any time changes are made to the "distribution" (as in from a top level "marketing" point of view) those changes will now only need to be reflected in one desktop environment.
Finally, fair enough: the KDE developers providing the effort "required" answers the problem that I just discussed, but would they also provide all of the support that the customer facing support providers could not? No, and again we come back to supporting the GUIs at a user level, and attempting to reduce the cost of running *any* support company.
Re:Can't believe the outrage (Score:4, Interesting)
it's not very representational if they don't at lease offer the choice one of the most widely used desktop environments.
I personally think it will be much more likely to be adopted if KDE is included. I base this off of a personal test I performed. when I switched my wife from windows to linux, I let her try several different DE's to see if she could find one she liked. she ended up choosing KDE because it was the most intuitive for a former windows user. This isn't to say that KDE isn't without it's flaws- far from it. it has lots of little problems that irritate the hell out of me.
It all comes down to what their main goal is- if they're trying to steal windows marketshare, they need to (sad to say it) emulate windows as much as possible. I'd bet, given the *choice* between kde and gnome, you're average geek might choose gnome... this this isn't about the average geek. it's a out secretaries and librarians, sales reps and architects. Try explaining "middle click" on a 2 button mouse to your grandfather- I had a hard enough time getting people to learn what "right-click" meant. They're gonna choose the path of lease resistance, and if kde is an *OPTION*, they may choose it simply because it looks and feels more like windows
As you said, Choice is good. But I think "Choice of a ______-only" anything is not a very good choice and will hence go the way of the dodo. It's sorta like getting spending $300 on an Ipod that could only play RealAudio files. userlinux needs every advantage they can get to compete with redhat, windows, and every other distro out there. I think kde *support* would be a great help. I'm not saying to make it the default, just keep include it.
The reason they'd not be including KDE is because of it's use of QT, so I doubt they'll be including QT, meaning kde-based apps won't run. This pretty much destroys your last comments chance of ever happening
This whole thing is a convoluted mess and I'll be the first to admit I don't fully understand WTF is going on. I am curious what the chances are of bruce being able to talk trolltech into releasing an lgpl license of QT, but I get the feeling it's very unlikely.
I'm all for learning so if anyone can help us understand the whole issue, let us know. That being said, back to my gnome workstation.
Re:kde vs. gnome (Score:1, Interesting)
KDE/QT is where a lot of programming novices hang out (not to the exclusion of some really good programmers). QT is very professional, fairly solid, nice to work with, featureful, slow, and bloated. KDE reflects that.
GNOME/Gtk generally has more experienced programmers and programming masochists. Gtk is getting better but sometimes reflects that masochist attitude (like the completely ass file selector that was available for ages). Gtk(mm) 2 is not bad though and continues to get better. It's somewhat rough around the edges. GNOME reflects that.
So both GNOME and KDE have good and bad applications but they feel very different because of where they came from and who designed the GUI toolkit.
Re:Makes good business sense... (Score:3, Interesting)
Forget about the business people, Bruce. They are talking trash. Such as the great supporter IBM that also kindly provides us with software patent law in Europe. -- a real nice friend.
I am intrested in code, not in words!!
Re:Ho hum (Score:3, Interesting)
Damn right. All distributions should be based on Gentoo, precompiled to binaries if necessary and packaged as LiveCDs. Then we could focus on getting every package correctly integrated with every appropriate package, and since every distro would be based on the same meta-distro we would be saving a lot of time not having to reinvent the wheel.
(... calmly waits to get thwapped.)