Attempting To Reframe "KDE Vs. GNOME" 455
jammag writes "Setting aside the now tired debate about whether KDE or GNOME is the 'better' Linux desktop, Bruce Byfield compares their disparate development approaches and asks, not which desktop is subjectively better, but which developmental approach is likely to be most successful in the next few years. 'In the short term, GNOME's gradualism seems sensible. But, in the long-term, it could very well mean continuing to be dragged down by support for legacy sub-systems. It means being reduced to an imitator rather than innovator.' In contrast, 'you could say that KDE has done what's necessary and ripped the bandage off the scab. In the short term, the result has been a lot of screaming, but, in the long term, it has done what was necessary to thrive.'"
Both have evolved too in leaps and bounds (Score:5, Informative)
From the article you get the impression that KDE use radical changes whereas Gnome strive in little steps...
How in accurate. Both evolve in little steps and both occasionally make radical changes.
Gnome had a major remake for 2.0 which reduced the older clotted layout.
KDE had a major remake for 4.0 which vectorized most of the gui.
Otherwise, changes are small. For both.
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Re:2nd Paragraph. (Score:3, Informative)
It is not an either/or choice - you can use any desktop environment with any apps (which means you have components of other environments runnins).
I use XFCE, with Gnome several applets in the panels as well as XFCE ones. I use some Gnome apps (Gedit, Epiphany), some plain Gtk ones (Firefox, Deluge, various configuration GUIs, Thunar) and some KDE ones (Akregator, Amarok, Konqueror, Kwrite, Kmail).
I am thinking of switching from Kmail to Claws, and I am not altogether happy with any file manager and would like a clipboard panel applet for XFCE that is anything like as good as Klipper. Other than that it all works very well for me. YMMV.
Re:I want to use programs from both.... (Score:3, Informative)
You can do this just fine on Debian/Ubuntu. Choose a decent distro if you want decent installation options.
Re:Both have evolved too in leaps and bounds (Score:4, Informative)
KDE has already done it with KDE 2.0 (which IIRC was before GNOME 2.0) which was a complete overhaul from what KDE 1.x was. Doing this in the 20th century was easy, but with the current user base and dependencies, it takes a lot of guts to shelf away backwards compatibility. I was first frustrated with what they did, but the more I look at it, this seems the better choice for them in the long run.
Re:Both will stay relevant (Score:3, Informative)
No; there is much in Gnome that simply cannot be configured, even by experts. Unless you count ripping out complete subsystems and replacing them with non-Gnome components as "configuration", I guess.
And there is a lot more that technically can be configured, but only by editing undocumented gconf settings -- and since they're undocumented, they are subject to change at any time. So you might upgrade to a point release and suddenly your configuration is broken.
Sorry, but while Gnome has many virtues, configurability is not one of them. Those desiring a configurable desktop should look to Kde, or (if they want a Gtk+-based desktop) to Xfce. Or they can roll their own desktop environment by taking a standalone window manager and choosing the utilities they like best.
Re:better equals faster (Score:3, Informative)
Is Gnome providing more stastics, previews, etc? That would make a huge difference in the time it takes to show a directory.
Also, have you tried KDE instead, to see how it stacks up?
Re:Warning - Honest opinion below (Score:5, Informative)
Appearance Settings > Desktop Activity Type > "Folder View" (4.2 or later) Very hackish... so hackish there's even an option to do so.
Re:Written by a KDE user. (Score:5, Informative)
He even calls D-bus "inspired by DCOP" but ignores the fact that D-bus is not part of gnome, but gnome has instead switched to a universal standard that is not desktop-specific, and was already used by non-gnome applications on the system, including low-level components such as udev and hal. I'd wish KDE would do the same, no one needs a 2nd seperate message bus system on his machine.
...which is why, probably, KDE4 uses DBus. But don't let the facts get in the way of a good rant.
Re:ripped the apps too (Score:3, Informative)
Re:gnome better than kde (Score:5, Informative)
The first thing which was really annoying is, that the "Dolphin" file manager eats about 200mb of ram almost instantly.
Hi. Many things have changed since KDE 4.1. Over here (running KDE 4.2.1), Dolphin has a virtual size of ~71MB and a resident working set of ~20MB. You might want to look into upgrading.
$ ps -eo vsize,rss,comm | grep dolphin | grep -v grep
71652 20868 dolphin
$ dolphin --version
Qt: 4.5.0
KDE: 4.2.1 (KDE 4.2.1)
Dolphin: 1.2.1
Ah. Something that I just thought of... is your version of KDE an optimized build? (I'm not sure that this would make *very* much difference at all, but...) Over in my full debug version of KDE SVN trunk, Dolphin has a virtual size of ~128MB and a resident size of ~28MB.
$ ps -eo vsize,rss,comm | grep dolphin | grep -v grep
128268 28532 dolphin
$ dolphin --version
Qt: 4.5.0
KDE: 4.2.68 (KDE 4.2.68 (KDE 4.3 >= 20090327))
Dolphin: 1.2.80
Re:2nd Paragraph. (Score:3, Informative)
for the forced Windows OS on every PC, even though I don't need it?
Vendors who entered into exclusivity agreement with Microsoft did so of their own accord, they were not forced by anything other than market conditions.
I must have dreamed all these days lost helping people with their Windows.
I've helped people use all sorts of electronic devices. Many many people do not have any aptitude at all for such things regardless of how simple they are.
I also dreamed when I told them all I was not fixing their Windows anymore, but I can put Linux on their PC for them.
This is the biggest lie Linux supporters tell. If Linux needs no fixing, why does the USB controller on my T61 just stop working randomly with Ubuntu, but it never does with XP? How about my screen failing to light up about 10% of the time when it wakes from sleep? Or the wireless adapter failing to accept an IP from my router on another 10% of the wakes?
Re:Warning - Honest opinion below (Score:3, Informative)
Also, the way the desktop is done is via a plugin (hence the need of a "Type") , so potentially you can write your own desktop addition that puts icons upside down, for example. Some have already done so (openSUSE, creating an additional desktop type without the toolbox on the upper right corner).
Re:Gnome alienating users (Score:3, Informative)
I really feel for the poor KDE developers with the slating that 4.0 got. It came out with the statement that it wasn't ready for end user use, but was for developers to get an early start on. When you downloaded it, the page said it wasn't stable and to use 3.5. The Kubunutu distribution (and others) stayed with KDE3.5. If you wanted to get the KDE4 version of Kubunutu you had to go to a separate page where it said this build was less stable and more intended for developers and people who wanted to experiment.
What happened? People downloaded it in droves and started complaining en masse online about how it wasn't ready. Poor, poor KDE developers.
I think it will pay off well though in the long run. KDE4.2 is already a good system and it clearly has the basis for much more in the near future. For developers, from the little playing around I've done, it's absolutely great and QT promises easier portability. I've alternated between Gnome and KDE over the few years, but I think I'll be sticking with KDE for a while this time.
Re:KDE 4.2 (Score:3, Informative)
You're fine to install apps from either in the other. I try to avoid it because I'm obsessively purist about minimising memory and hard drive usage, but I can't argue the case on rational grounds. The way it works is this: Both KDE and Gnome have a whole slew of libraries that apps written for them depend on. If you have Gnome installed then you already have all the Gnome libraries and if you already have KDE then you have all the KDE libraries installed (slight simplification but never mind). Now if you install a KDE app on Gnome of vice versa, then your package manager (you may think of this as the front end such as Synaptic or Adept, although they are actually the same system underneath), will bring down all the extra libraries that the app needs. So your nice clean KDE install suddenly inherits a lot of libgnome files or whatever.
Re:better equals faster (Score:3, Informative)
Try disabling Assistive Technologies and reboot. Seems to be enabled by default for some Ubuntu versions. It will defintely kill the Nautilus experience, as one guy put it.
See this page [launchpad.net].
Re:2nd Paragraph. (Score:2, Informative)
If Linux needs no fixing, why does the USB controller on my T61 just stop working randomly with Ubuntu, but it never does with XP? How about my screen failing to light up about 10% of the time when it wakes from sleep? Or the wireless adapter failing to accept an IP from my router on another 10% of the wakes?
Most of these problems are caused by the Microsoft ACPI compiler which is designed to produce corrupt output that only works correctly with Microsoft software. You can tell if you're running a crippled BIOS by looking for the string "MSFT" near the top of the kernel log.