From GNOME to KDE and Back Again

Slashdot's own Roblimo has an interesting introspective on what makes us so prone to liking one window manager over another. More than likely it's just the inherent laziness of most users that precludes change. "I used KDE as my primary desktop from 1996 through 2006, when I installed the GNOME version of Ubuntu and found that I liked it better than the KDE desktop I'd faced every morning for so many years. Last January, I got a new Dell Latitude D630 laptop and decided to install Kubuntu on it, but within a few weeks, I went back to GNOME. Does this mean GNOME is now a better desktop than KDE, or just that I have become so accustomed to GNOME that it's hard for me to give it up?"

KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

I installed Kubuntu as well and went back to Mandriva, Kubuntu has a long way to go.

Don't think i matters all that much.

[IANAAC]

Since both sets of libraries are available, you can easily run programs from both environments.

I have mostly used Gnome, but since I got the EeePC, I've been using KDE, but I've set it up so it both looks and acts like Gnome. I'm pretty sure you can also do the same in the other direction.

The actual desktop environment really doesn't matter so much as do the applications.

what i have

[FudRucker]

i keep kde for other users mostly (family & friends) i like to use dwm, fvwm2 and openbox, i switch between the three light weight window managers almost on a daily basis, i do have a custom built ~/.fvwm/.fvwm2rc that makes fvwm minimal and functional by trimming the cruft off of it, for those fvwm2 fans you might like it:http://pastebin.com/m13b1df9b/ [pastebin.com]

No, he's right.

[malevolentjelly]

Gnome is better.

However, it was not always as such. Back when KDE received all the development attention from the major distros, it was better. Now that GNOME is the de facto default in most cases, it's better. Basically, depending on whichever gets more attention, one will be more modern than the other.

The other issue is that Gnome has really solid User Interface Guidelines. KDE's basic HIG is just "see how many buttons you can add to that menu".

Say desktops are like lawn gnomes. In this case, gnome is a gnome. KDE is a tree stump. You must whittle it down in order to make it resemble something attractive or functional. If you love to whittle, you'll love KDE. If you want something that works well out of the box and is inherently easy on the eyes and hands, use GNOME.

So, those who are still using KDE are possibly:
A) Northern European (this is true for some reason)
B) Have been using linux since the 90's and don't feel like changing ANYTHING
C) Using Linspire or Xandros or PC-BSD or some other "easy" distro
D) Like the letter "K"

Or so I figure.

Re:Icons on top...

[19thNervousBreakdown]

No, it's to give you two areas where you effectively only have to worry about accuracy in the X axis. Having it only at the bottom only gives you one. Twice as much space, for practically no cost.

question about GNOME ...

[shimage]

So ... I preferred KDE back when I figured I'd give GNOME a second chance ... about 5 years ago? Something like that. I couldn't figure out how to make GNOME behave like KDE. I'm stupid like that.

I had this recollection of GNOME being about choice? Like how they said you could use any one of something like 8 window managers? That appealed to me, but the last time I tried it, they seemed to think that if you didn't think their HIG made sense, you ought to be "power-user" enough to figure out how to override their settings without documentation. Like I said, I'm stupid, so I couldn't figure it out.

So then, on to my question. I am assuming here that they've gotten this stuff figured out. So what do I do to enable focus-follows mouse, and to make the cursor disappear when I start typing (yes, I do realize that my second request is not available under KDE, and I fake it with unclutter)? There are some other things that I'd probably want to configure, but they don't come readily to mind (it's been 5 years).

One thing I do like about GNOME is that they have a built-in emacs key-binding option, which I can't figure out how to get in KDE ... I've tried changing the shortcuts, but this usually just ends up breaking them. Remember, I'm stupid, so the only way I can get shit like this to work is if there's a built-in option.

On the other hand, I run Gentoo (I'm stupid), and I hate compiling stuff I rarely use, so I pretty much need to stick with the DE that has the applications I want to use, and ... well, I need a lot more KDE stuff than GNOME stuff, so I'm not actually willing to switch to GNOME anyway.

Wow... just, wow..

[Moridineas]

I find very few statements from the "Windows and Mac: Not to my taste at all" section that I can agree with at all. I mean, obviously the taste part is fine, after all a lot of operating system/application choice is merely personal taste. (vi/emacs anyone?), however the overall section seems ... inane?

I will say that it's interesting how even with longtime users like Roblimo, the "linux experience" is really becoming the ubuntu/gnome experience and the kubuntu/kde experience. From this review, it sounds like the base operating system could be FreeBSD, solaris, whatever, and Roblimo wouldn't have a clue. I think this is probably a very good thing, but also speaks to the changing skillsets of linux users.

A few statements:

even humble things like the closest application I could come on a Mac to my beloved Bluefish editor cost money, even though they were no better than -- and in many cases not as good as -- the free software to which I had grown accustomed. ... There are ways to fiddle some Linux apps into working on Mac OS, much as Wine can make some Windows apps run in Linux, but this is a lot of trouble.

Ok, here's what I had to do to install bluefish (which I've never heard of / used before).

open a Terminal window (I use csh) and type "sudo port install bluefish"

That was it. I'm sure fink has a package as well. While X apps are slightly different under osx, I don't think comparing the experience or process to Wine is at all correct.

And here's the funny thing: Windows feels a lot more Linuxlike to me than Mac OS. In many ways it seems as if it's a slightly clumsy knockoff of KDE.

Yeah, you think WINDOWS is ripping off KDE? I'm not going to argue that windows is the king of originality, but I think it came about the other way around...

Ditto the way you store and find individual files, for which Windows uses the same "folders and subfolders" metaphor as both KDE and GNOME, and Windows gives me a Linux-style horizontal list of open programs across the bottom of my screen, which Mac OS does not.

Confused again. Mac doesn't use folders and subfolders? That's news to me. Horizontal list of open programs--that's called the dock. Ok, so it includes launcher buttons as well, but virtually the same thing.

Backing up my data in Windows is lots harder than backing up a /home or /username directory in Linux, because Windows seems to scatter data all over the place.

This is true, though for the past what...7-8 years (since 2k/xp) all of your files+personal registory should live under c:\documents and settings\username -- effectively the same as a /home directory. When you have roaming profiles on a windows network, your user directory gets copied back and forth.

Windows is supposed to be less virus-prone than it was a few years ago, but the only way to keep malware off of Windows (that I know of) is to not connect it to the Internet

This was MAYBE true once upon a time. I primarily use my OSX laptop now, but I've never gotten a virus on my PC (don't run software usually) and have never had a malware/adware infection either. Of course I've used firefox/mozilla for years. At my office I've certainly seen my share of adware/etc infections, almost always from people clicking things in email or webpages (and no infections in quite awhile) they shouldn't--which I would hope roblimo doesn't do!!

and one from the next section...

Except for one thing: as far as he knows, he doesn't connect to the Internet or use email software. He connects to AOL, which to him is the Internet. Including email.

AOL is indeed the Internet. When you connect to AOL, you're on the internet, and you can ping, use firefox, etc to your heart's content.

Interesting quotes from the article

[Swift Kick]

While reading the article, I noticed a few funny things:

"And here's the funny thing: Windows feels a lot more Linuxlike to me than Mac OS. In many ways it seems as if it's a slightly clumsy knockoff of KDE. But it also has a lot more in common with GNOME than Mac OS does."

He should really have said that KDE is a great knock-off of Windows, and that Gnome has a lot in common with it. After all, they both 'borrowed' heavily from Windows, not the other way around.

"Backing up my data in Windows is lots harder than backing up a /home or /username directory in Linux, because Windows seems to scatter data all over the place. Why this is I do not know, but no doubt someone at Microsoft could tell me why this inconvenience is a good thing, not a bad one, just as I'm sure they could tell me why all kinds of annoying pop-up balloons that interfere with my work (instead of letting me concentrate on what I'm doing) make my life easier instead of harder.

Get over it, Roblimo. Windows does have a /home/ equivalent, namely the My Documents folder. Almost every single application will by default use that directory as the default location for any files you use, so if you do want to back up your data, just backup that directory. Even your precious Sony Vegas works like that.

Anyway, not a bad article, but then again, there was nothing remarkable about it. I wonder if I could get a paying gig writing fluff like Roblimo, but I guess I need to publish a couple fluff books first...

 

Re:KDE and Gnome

[cbart387]

I'm a programmer user and use GNOME. Most of my programming is CLI and emacs or micro emacs. GNOME's simplicity appeals to me because it does what I need without configuring it too much. A friend of mine, who is also a programmer, likes KDE because of the configurable nature. To each his one...

Option C

[Cytlid]

I'll keep my fluxbox, thanks. Then again, I run Slackware as well. Long ago when I was obsessed with UT2004, I wanted a minimal and fast window manager. I loaded fluxbox and never went back. Every time I try KDE or Gnome on the same hardware, it seems too slow.

So yea, the lazy part was correct.

Re:That's the beauty of open source...

[Debug0x2a]

Generally I feel more comfortable with gnome, but I find that alot of new converts prefer KDE because it seems to them to be closer to the windows GUI. I personally have been using xfce on Ubuntu 7.10 because I'm not a huge fan of the flashy extras, and I may even just see about going to fluxbox.

Re:It is a problem of Kubuntu.

[fyoder]

I installed kubuntu and found it to be a complete mess, totally unusuable. Then I installed ubuntu, then the kde desktop. The splash screen when it starts says 'kubuntu', but it sure as hell isn't the mess I got when I started by installing kubuntu. I think what I've got should be called ubuntuk, ubuntu + kde, or gubuntuk since it has both gnome and kde. I should figure out how to replace the splash screen with a custom one.

Re:fluxbox is nice...

[setchell.dave]

damn straight. dwm and wmii are excellent. The ease of key commands calling scripts that interact with the plan9 style backend == "brilliant". You can type E and via very simple scripting will start emacs and take you to it or if it's already running just take you to it. Nonetheless if you want tiling and dual monitors: i'm really loving xmonad. Took a moment to put my noggin around haskell though. Also, I did like running 2 wmii's one on each screen. But to the point. I do like some of the features of the larger window managers. I just very much wish they tiled, if desired, nativly.

Re:KDE

[MightyMartian]

I think my biggest problem with KDE is that it's everything I hate about Windows; cluttered, nonsensical and in a way, just plain ugly.

Re:That's the beauty of open source...

[Daengbo]

Well Bob,

I may have a shorter fuse than you since I've been reading KDE vs. Gnome flamewars since Gnome first appeared. At least all the "KDE's not really free (even when GPL'd)" trolls have died down.

Enough of the articles spin out of control into Gnone vs. KDE or Ubuntu vs. Kubuntu that we don't need a special article for it.

Re:Laziness

[mrbluze]

Most decisions of this sort are driven by laziness.

Actually, I don't think it's laziness in this case. Getting the most done with least effort is efficiency. Designing a GUI (window manager) is like designing roads. Safe roads are uncluttered, give warnings in advance, have a predictable path, separate traffic (tasks) in a meaningful way and tolerate human error. Safe roads are easy to design cars for. Safe roads mean you won't panic if your wife or teenage kid decide to take the car for a spin one day without you being there giving instructions. Good roads also lead to places you want to go to.

A good window manager is all of the above. Especially the last point. I like, for example, how Nautilus can make network connections appear somewhat like the rest of the file system and lead you there without much guesswork. But I wish it was more fault tolerant and didn't keep asking me to log again in every time it times out. KDE has proven to be very flexible and powerful but when a novice uses my KDE desktop I find I have to come back and reposition things and fix what they broke. A bit too flexible, I guess.

It's not totally 'taste', there is room for science in this and human interface study is valid.

Re:Real brain-twister

[harry666t]

I use Thunar (from XFCE) with E16, E17 is still too unstable for me. Rox filer is also very good, and the Rox desktop environment just... Rocks (but it has very frequent problems with stability, and even more with dependencies, due to poor (or rather: none at all) integration of zeroinstall with debian package management). Neither of the two seems more integrated with E or Fluxbox, at least to me, but that depends on your definition of "integration"... And they're lightweight.

BTW, which version of E are you running? If E16, do you use a run dialog, similar to KDE's Alt+F2? I've found that KDE's run dialog works the best for me, but damn, it is not a separate program, and I won't be running this resource hog on my poor old machine just because of that one thing =/

Re:That's the beauty of open source...

[Naughty Bob]

Fair enough. I think both Gnome and KDE have their share of good and bad points, and I can see why different types of user would better suit either one. Though I go for Gnome, I envy the slick default looks of KDE 4, and distrust the new-found motives of Gnome founder Anakin de Icaza.

But the beauty of Linux is that I, and a bunch of like-minded fellows can compile or even write my own version, with none of the perceived compromises.

KDE user

[AaronW]

I started with KDE back in 1999 since we were using Sun workstations and CDE was unusable. I managed to compile KDE 1.2 and added a Solaris sound driver to ARTS and have been using it ever since. I have tried Gnome on a number of occasions, but I always go back to KDE since it always feels like my hands are tied behind my back with Gnome. Yes, KDE is cluttered (much better in 4.0), but I often use a lot of that "clutter". There are a lot more menu options, but I've frequently found them useful.

Some things in Gnome I absolutely detest, like their file dialogs. The KDE file dialogs are a lot more friendly and powerful, and I've found that the integration seems better. They're also consistent across applications and not limited to just local files, but http, ftp, fish, etc.

When it comes to things like burning CDs or DVDs, I have yet to find anything that comes close to k3b, or for music, Amarok.

I still use Thunderbird for email due to some issues Kmail has with IMAP, but I'll switch in an instant once those are fixed. For the web, I have found that Firefox has slowly adopted a number of features I've been using for a long time in Konqueror. Both Firefox and Thunderbird have some nasty issues still when your home directory is mounted via NFS. I.e. if I have Firefox open on one computer, I cannot open it a second time on another computer in the lab without killing it on the first.

I've fallen in love with some of the features in Konsole, like searching the history, which it's had almost forever.

I've also found DCOP to be extremely useful since I can script things or even control applications remotely. I.e. I needed to change some parameters on a remotely running ktorrent and was easily able to do that via dcop without having any access to the desktop.

For file browsing I have also found Konqueror to be quite powerful, since I can use it rather seamlessly whether I'm browsing files locally, via FTP, fish, on my camera, etc. And if I click on different files, the part for displaying or editing that file is integrated. If I click on a PDF file, kpdf displays it. If I click on a text file, kate is integrated.

Also, each time I tried dealing with the configuration of Gnome to tweak things I was always disappointed in the lack of options.

KDE has also been fairly consistent with the menus.

And lastly, I've found that the embedding of different applications to be quite powerful. For example, I am writing this in Akregator, but all it has to do is add a tab with a KHTML part.

I may try Gnome again one of these days, but each time I do I'm left wanting for a lot of the features and options I take advantage of in KDE.

It's like Gnome goes for simplicity and in the process discards functionality and caters to the most common needs, whereas KDE is much more of a swiss army knife of tools that can be combined together and tweaked to the hearts content.

I might add that I've used the straight KDE distribution (for Solaris) and SuSE distributions.

I won't say KDE is the prettiest environment out there, but I rather have functional over pretty, and some of the other themes for it are rather nice.

Re:GNOME and screen real estate

[UnknownSoldier]

Are in this order?

Cancel = Back (Left), OK = Forward (Right)

Slightly off-topic: When the hell is /. going to update the reverse layout of the "older news"
    YesterdayDate | DayBeforeYesterday

It should be:
    PrevDate | SelectedDate | NextDate

And there sould be at least button of whitespace between Preview and Submit.

Noob UI designers...

Re:It is a problem of Kubuntu.

[Robert The Coward]

No they are not. I have used several distros and I have to say that Kubuntu is one of the worse setup of kde I have every used and that includes Redhat 5 with kde RPM's from mandrack.

Slight nod to Gnome here, but I use KDE apps also

[The_Dougster]

First off, I have run a Gentoo system for around five years, and before that Debian, so I guess I look at it from a different perspective than a lot of Linux users. For some reason I like how Gentoo's Gnome Desktop emerges. It seems fairly nice, reasonably well configured, and certainly has an unmistakable linuxy kind of "look and feel" to it. It emulates other environments in some respects, but has some fairly unique characteristics of its own style. Furthermore, you can typically select a canned theme that appeals to you, pick a background, and just use it.

On the other hand, I generally build the QT and KDE libs once I have the Gnome Desktop running, and then selectively install KDE apps like the KDB debugger, which I like, QCad, etc. Gnome seems to be to be based on a whole bunch of odd little libraries, while KDE depends on a few very large ones. So typically adding KDE apps themselves are fairly quick compiles once the libs are all installed, but Gnome systems seem to be best built all at once so all the apps can configure themselves to best use all the libs that are going to be needed by everything else and hence have optimal features built in for the particular system.

Some of the KDE applications are much more advanced than their Gnome counterparts, so being able to have both is cool. I think I like how KDE handles files and folders slightly better than how Nautilus does it, but I like the Gnome panels and overall look and feel a bit better. The default Gnome desktop applications are typically somewhat minimalistic, but they seem to function as simple substitutes for most commonly needed tasks well enough unless a preferred package of some sort has been installed to do that task by the user. KDE seems to instead attempt to install somewhat more sophisticated desktop apps which tend to be less unified overall.

So I suppose what I'm saying here is that I prefer the somewhat simplistic style of Gnome as a base for my system but I like to add more complex apps like from KDE and elsewhere in an ad hoc fashion. I find that it tends to make a more heterogeneous mix of Linux applications which somehow adds to my enjoyment of using my Linux system. I believe that a complete KDE desktop system is better suited to a small tight system which requires maximum functionality in a compact package, like for PDA's and embedded systems particularly, which especially benefit from having a few large super-libs to share among them rather than Gnome's legion of flyweights.

In Gentoo at least, Gnome *appears* to compile faster because it is flying through zillions of minuscule packages, while KDE seems to take forever and a day to compile QT and KDElibs. It's anybody's guess as to whether this is actually true though and probably depends on what options you build Gnome with.

I could probably go on like this for pages. Nuff said . . .

Re:Don't think i matters all that much.

[ka24]

That damned HIG has been responsible for ruining more GNOME functionality (galeon!) than any single document ever vomited from the hands of a development team. It's the one thing I truly cannot stand about GNOME. Mind you, I'm a user since the very early days, and it has made great progress over the years, but I despise anyone or anything that assumes I don't need customization or preferences. NO, your stupid registry editor doesn't make it better.

Re:That's the beauty of open source...

[Fred_A]

Those are the standard Emacs shortcuts and are often supported by text manipulation programs or text editing fields. I seem to remember that there is a toggle somewhere to enable them in Gnome. Presumably in the preferences somewhere or possibly in that large XML file that holds the "advanced preferences stupid users shouldn't mess with" (editable with that tool the name of which I have forgotten).

GNOME is Unmaintained

[Compenguin]

The problem with GNOME is that it is unmaintained. Sure modules have "maintainers." But it seems the maintainers can't be bothered to review patches on core (aka "boring") components; all they want to do is write "exciting" new code. Consider the following there are 3322 unreviewed patches on GNOME bugzilla [gnome.org]. A significant fraction of them are over 100 days old and to gnome desktop or platform components (vs related software that uses Gnome bugzilla).

Gnome-panel has 67 unreviewed patches, 9 are over 100 days old. Where are the so-called maintainers???

Some of my favorites are:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=384783 [gnome.org] - 39 days
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=504594 [gnome.org] - 93 days
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=499374 [gnome.org] - 119 days
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=409262 [gnome.org] - 398 days

Love the article

[bensch128]

The best quote is "And here's the funny thing: Windows feels a lot more Linuxlike to me than Mac OS. In many ways it seems as if it's a slightly clumsy knockoff of KDE."

That's hilarious considering that KDE is loosely designed to be like windows but more powerful.

I use kubuntu all of the time at home now and am eagerly looking forward to hoary for it's updates.
Don't ever take away my options!!!

Cheers
Ben