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.'"
2nd Paragraph. (Score:4, Insightful)
In the second paragraph, the blogger says:
s/journalists/bloggers/ and you've got this story.
Both will stay relevant (Score:4, Insightful)
Gnome and kde are designed for different types of people, in gnome everything is typically simple and straight forward, but lacks the ability to be configured the exact way you like and is less powerfl.
KDE on the other hand, gives a lot more flexibility and power over the way you have things, but the trade off is complexity.
Both will continue to be relevant to their different markets for the foreseeable future. Even if development halted right now.(not that it would)
Re:Both will stay relevant (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't your typical Simple Gnome vs Flexible KDE debate.
For lack of a better analogy, this is like comparing Apple's transition to OSX with Windows' NT-2K-XP-Vista transitions.
Windows has been mostly successful at maintaining backwards compatibility, but it is starting to resemble a millstone hung from the neck. It's holding them back and getting in the way.
Meanwhile, Apple broke backwards compatibility and now are not encumbered by obsolete paradigms.
Re:being reduced to an imitator rather than innova (Score:5, Insightful)
Strange. I seem to recall the GNOME project being started because of KDE using the Qt toolkit, and then trying to catch up with KIOSlaves, DCOP, KParts and other superior technologies in the KDE camp.
Re:Gnome alienating users (Score:5, Insightful)
That, sadly, is true. I've been a big fan of Gnome since ~version 1.0, but have lost count of instances where the developers have arbitrarily decided that the way I like to get something done is no longer cool or trendy, so they break it.
Having said that, I do try occasionally to give KDE a fair go. But I have never managed to last more than a couple of weeks. I just find the interface unnecessarily cluttered, and it makes me cranky. Or crankier than normal, anyway.
At least neither of them are bad enough to drive me into the arms of Microsoft...
Re:2nd Paragraph. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I know the article is on development methods, but it still suffers from this. There is no reason why both are not fitted to survive: both approaches have produced good software so far.
Incidentally, the fact that Windows is the most widely used OS, suggests that backward compatibility matters.
Re:gnome better than kde (Score:2, Insightful)
Reason I don't like Gnome, is because GTK simply isn't good. I mean, it can't even show a window inside a window to get MDI or floating toolbars. There are almost no complex programs with a good GUI in Linux (programs like photoshop, paint shop pro, 3ds max, ms office 2007, ...), because GTK doesn't support doing floating and dockable toolbars or multiple open files in a good way. Blender is one of the few programs with a complex well done interface in Linux, but they did the entire GUI in OpenGL I think, not using a library like GTK.
I don't know why, but this is related to the philosophy of Gnome and GTK and since I don't like that philosophy, I don't like Gnome either.
KDE 4.2 (Score:5, Insightful)
Since 4.2, KDE4 has become quite usable. I already prefer it over KDE 3.5.
The real edge of KDE over Gnome has always been the tech, though. kioslaves vs. gnomevfs is one example, KParts another. Add Qt 4.5 to this, and it becomes obvious that KDE is vastly superior under the hood. But, this is not what users are interested in. I do think that KDE4 learned a lesson or two from Gnome about this. I just hope they don't start removing all options because they think the "user may be confused" (just like with the infamous printing dialog Linus Torvalds was so frustrated about).
Re:2nd Paragraph. (Score:5, Insightful)
>Incidentally, the fact that Windows is the most widely used OS, suggests that backward compatibility matters.
No, lock-in, monopoly and inertia what matters.
If you have those, you can force anything on your customers.
Re:Both will stay relevant (Score:3, Insightful)
I realise that this is /., and you're discouraged from RTFA, but I think failing to read the first line of the summary is impressive even for here:
"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."
The point of the article is to discuss whether the design approach of gnome (gradually building and polishing its legacy code) or KDE (a complete rewrite) is more effective in the longterm.
Re:2nd Paragraph. (Score:4, Insightful)
And what exactly do you think "lock-in" is, if not a dependency on backwards-compatibility?
Re:2nd Paragraph. (Score:1, Insightful)
better equals faster (Score:5, Insightful)
To give an example, Gnome's file browser takes 5 seconds on my home PC (Athlon, 2GHz, 3GB) to list a 161 entry directory. A virtualised W2K instance on the same box takes less than 1 second to list the same directory - even though it's running in a VM and has to go through SAMBA on the host to access the directory. When doing this, I took precautions to ensure no entries were cached on either instance.
Whether that's due to a mis-configuration on my part (tho' the Ubuntu installation is simply "out of the box", no tweaks) or because the browser is badly written and poorly designed, I don't know.
What I do know is that this effect is not limited to the file broswer and is a severe demotivator for using Linux - or recommending it to others.
Lose the bloat, remove 50% of the features, optimise the code, THEN talk about which desktop is best.
Re:2nd Paragraph. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Meanwhile, MS Has Recovered From Vista... (Score:4, Insightful)
the troll has 1 relevant thing to say here:
instead of getting your shit together.
Now, I don't care so much about gnome v kde, but I do wish there was more consistency for all Linux GUIs. If everyone had a common standard to work to (eg the Windows Style Guidelines [amazon.com]) then the Linux desktop would become a better place to work. MS did wonders for themselves with this, and until recently kept with it - unfortunately, now they've replaced the menu bar with a round button thing, no-one can find the print option anymore - which only goes to show how important and powerful the guidelines were.
Linux has the opportunity to be great (we all know that, even the MS trolls), but isn't necessarily following up on its potential. Gnome v KDE is probably the biggest factor stopping this from happening.
Re:2nd Paragraph. (Score:4, Insightful)
Monopoly? There are plenty of OSes around, they may not work as good in general as Windows does, but that don't make monopoly the reason stick with Windows. The reason is it's the best for their purpose.
Is that so?
Is it the reason why we have to put some companies through lawsuits for them to give us back the money for the forced Windows OS on every PC, even though I don't need it?
So everyone that don't want the OS forced on the PC they buy at retail actually goes through this effort?
News to me.
Inertia? Yes, if it's not broken why fix it? Also what would be the better alternative for most people? You seriously suggest most people would feel more happy with say Ubuntu than Windows? I think some of them have even tried, and thought not ...
I must have dreamed all these days lost helping people with their Windows. 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.
Those that switched I think I put them through Mandrake, then Ubuntu. Those that didn't switch, ended up either not using their PC anymore, or buying another one (which still don't work right).
All of this was a dream.
Applications and what you can do with your computer matters much more than having a superior solution. Without applications it's useless.
Which is exactly why some people like me switched years ago to Linux.
A long time since I answered to this kind of troll though, but I was in the modd, good times...
Re:2nd Paragraph. (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't underestimate backwards compatibility. In a business environment, it's going to be one of the top things on the list. A business (especially a large one) can't simply switch because something else comes along. The cost to change and the (temporary) loss of productivity are too great.
Re:Both will stay relevant (Score:5, Insightful)
two words: virtual machine.
leopard doesn't have compatibility with "classic" mac OS anymore, neither did tiger for intel boxes, but previous versions on powerPC did. basicaly it would load an entire copy of macOS 9 on a virtual machine and run classic apps there.
microsoft bought virtual PC probably out of envy for the success of VMWare. i say this because nobody there seems to have the vision neccessary to put it to good use. just develop something new, fast, secure and _INCOMPATIBLE_. port virtual PC for it and release as a bundle: new windows, virtual PC and a complete copy of XP to run as "classic windows". give people option to also use VMWare or virtual box as virtualisation environment (to keep people from crying foul) and get done with it.
Re:2nd Paragraph. (Score:3, Insightful)
Hummm. No not really.
You may want to use the term inertia but it really is backward compatibility that gave Windows it's advantage.
When Windows 3.11 started making big gains it was because you could run your dos applications in it. And you could run more than one. There was almost zero windows software that really mattered. Probably the first Windows only program that a large number of people was probably office and Netscape+Trumpet Winsock.
What is the major complaint with Vista really? It is that a lot of older software isn't running well on it. It lacks the easy backward compatibility that XP offers. That combined with the lack of any features that really improve the average users life is why people hate it. Pain with little gain.
Just like the X86 ISA the biggest strength is now and always has been backward compatibility. Backward compatibility==large software base.
It's a stupid controversy anyway (Score:1, Insightful)
As long as Linux never becomes OSX (Where you have the choice of OSX's UI or nothing) or Windows (Where you have the choice of Windows UI or run the risk of completely crashing your machine), why worry? Some people will use Gnome, some KDE, some other systems - but generally the apps that run on one will run on the other, so this "Gnome vs KDE" thing is kind of silly...
Re:gnome better than kde (Score:2, Insightful)
GTK simply isn't good
Exactly. Gnome is fundamentally broken because GTK is antiquated. I for one applaud KDE for having the balls to break everything for the sake of advancement. If a few other key components of the Linux desktop would do the same (x.org comes to mind, do away with the client/server paradigm,among many other things...), Desktop Linux might actually be somewhere in 3-4 years.
Re:2nd Paragraph. (Score:1, Insightful)
The average friends and family does not have an average IT guy to do their tech support. Luckily, for them, there are OS choices that do not require an IT guy for tech suport: Windows and OSX.
Reduced security problems versus Windows I will give you, but not versus OSX. Test after test has not shown Linux to be any faster than Windows on the same hardware and I believe them over your anecdotal evangelism.
And my experience with my T61 is with Linux 'supported' hardware that worked perfectly well with Vista. I don't feel badly for a person who upgraded and XP install to Vista without first checking to see if their hardware was supported, that is the users' fault, not Microsoft's. New PCs sold with Vista pre-installed were fully supported and not in the Linux fully suported way, the hardware actually worked the way it was supposed to every time.
Re:2nd Paragraph. (Score:5, Insightful)
What? That makes absolutely no sense. Lock-in means that you bundle two normally separated products to exclusively function with eachother.
Actually lock-in is any method which prevents users from moving to competitors by making such a move difficult or painful. It doesn't have to involve "separated products". I think you're getting lock-in confused with antitrust abuse.
Re:gnome better than kde (Score:5, Insightful)
No one gives a shit about network transparency. It is a totally meaningless buzzword engineers like to tout but doesn't mean anything in the real world. X is mostly network transparent, X clients aren't. You have to be very careful to avoid unnecessary round-trips which introduces latency and makes your application dog slow. The Windows shell is decidedly not network transparent, but RemoteDesktop and VNC still works with it.
To understand why people are complaining about X, try resizing a window quickly. Do the same operation on windows. It doesn't matter what computer you are using, on X you get flicker. Try opening a bunch of apps on one workspace, then move away and to that workspace. Notice how each window is redrawn one by one, first the frame and then the window contents. That is also an effect of X's client-server architecture. If you use some other OS than Linux so you have something to compare with, it is easy to understand why people complain on X.
Re:2nd Paragraph. (Score:3, Insightful)
You have it somewhat backwards. Lock-in causes backwards compatibility, not the other way around.
The weird thing is that Microsoft is as much trapped by it's own monopoly as anybody else. They cannot be incompatible, people will just continue using the stuff they already bought, or perhaps they would lose to some competitor using Wine or something and thus being more compatible. The very thing that traps everybody else into being unable to compete with Microsoft also traps themselves into being unable to compete with themselves.
Tip (Score:2, Insightful)