eWeek Reviews Gnome 2.8 And KDE 3.3 233
prostoalex writes "eWeek Labs reviewed the latest editions of GNOME and KDE desktop environments, and for all the criteria that eWeek uses for evaluating the software products ranked 'good,' while usability, capability and reliability for both products ranked 'excellent.' The online version is missing the screenshots and ranking tables that the printed version has, but eWeek likes Evolution (for mail), Konqueror (for file management), Samba and Kopete. They dislike GConf (still complex and a hassle to use) on GNOME and KMail on KDE."
what's wrong with Kmail? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:what's wrong with Kmail? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:what's wrong with Kmail? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:what's wrong with Kmail? (Score:2)
Re:what's wrong with Kmail? (Score:5, Interesting)
By reading the article, you would notice that they prefer Evolution for it's ability to connect to MS Exchange and Novell's groupware server. The feature is very important for companies that evaluate a transition to Linux. Since there are currently no viable F/OSS solutions available, they are all stuck with Exchange in most cases.
Evolution is not useful for everyone. Some people actually consider that bloat an advantage, and the application is designed for those people.
I personnally use Mozilla --mail. Don't you just love having choice?
Re:what's wrong with Kmail? (Score:3, Informative)
By reading the article, you would notice that they prefer Evolution for it's ability to connect to MS Exchange and Novell's groupware server. The feature is very important for companies that evaluate a transition to Linux. Since there are currently no viable F/OSS solutions available, they are all stuck with Exchange in most cases.
Luckilly there is some Kontact support for both of those servers in progress. The Exchange support in Evolution ( I don't know about GroupWise ) is still much more mature th
Re:what's wrong with Kmail? (Score:2)
But IMO you can't talk about "MS Exchange" being *integrated* into Evolution. It simply adds another button taking space in the main view and therewith still feels like being engrafted.
Re:what's wrong with Kmail? (Score:4, Interesting)
I wish someone would do a Kmail Windows port. In the meantime I just have to subsist on The Bat! Yes, the punctuation is part of the name. Just look it up on Yahoo!
Re:what's wrong with Kmail? (Score:3, Interesting)
Screenshots (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Screenshots (Score:2)
Re:Screenshots (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Screenshots (Score:2)
Re:Screenshots (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, KDE is very cluttered. They have menu entries for just about every imaginable option. While many power-users love this, others don't. I prefer to have only the most common options available, even if this means I have to perform a few extra clicks for advanced options.
Gnome also has excellent HIG guidelines, which mean that most applications perform in a similar manner.
I used KDE until version 2. That is when it started getting a bit cluttered. When you have mo
Re:Screenshots (Score:4, Informative)
There is no such automatism. Also there exists a KDE HIG with other stuff like margins being hard-coded into Qt/kdelibs. Can you give examples how KDE applications (of the KDE release, third party applications maintainers sometimes have 'funny' ideas), do not behave similar?
> I used KDE until version 2. That is when it started getting a bit cluttered. When you have more than 15 options in the right-click menu for a file, you know there is a bit of a problem. I think it is time for a spring clean.
You should revisit a current version. I have my KDE 3.3 configured to never show more than 10 items, and depending on the selected file type and what's installed there can be even less entries (no Actions/, Preview In/, Open With/).
Re:Screenshots (Score:2)
Re:Screenshots (Score:3, Informative)
I was not complaining about the qualiity of KDE, I was simply saying that I disagree with its direction and think that they need to work on simplifying the UI. Others disagree. This is why I use Gnome and contribute to it on the rare occasions when I have enough spare time to do so.
The orign
irony (Score:3, Insightful)
What I find odd is how many pe
Re:irony (Score:2)
Re:Screenshots (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Screenshots (Score:2)
Re:Screenshots (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've got "MyYahoo" set as my homepage and their tech news stories are particularly disgusting. There was an exploit tool that was to be released under the GPL so the headline was " Open-Source Exploit Tool: 'Point, Click, Root' [eweek.com] ". Mind you the tool attacks Windows and OSX machines, not Linux. But since it was released under the GPL, Open Source==Bad!
FUD! Just like when IDG reported the "double-free" CVS flaw in a story titled: "Search finds new holes in open source tool [infoworld.com]" (Notice, they reported this in July of 2004). After a little looking around [mintruth.com] I noticed that CERT released an advisory Feb. 2003! [cert.org]
Re:Yeah.... (Score:2)
If that's how you feel, change your homepage instead of complaining.
RE: eWeek and Linux (Score:2)
Granted, they've never been an especially "technical and in-depth" source of news. Rather, they seem to target more of the middle management and CI
Well, It Was Open Source, Wasn't It? (Score:2)
e-week has no reason to sugar-coat and bias their reporting in order to hype open source. If you want that, there's Slashdot and its corporate brethern or The Register, etc.
gnome vs kde (Score:2, Interesting)
I like both (Score:3, Interesting)
Another poster remarked that they're both bloated. Well, that's not entirely fair. Both use a very plug-and-play software development scheme, so there's really no need to install/use components that you don't want.
I'll agree that there are probably more layers than you'd ideally want for a desktop (eg: KDE -> Corba -> Underlying KDE stuff -> QT -> Xlib -> X11 client -> X11 protocol -> X server) but it's not horrible and most of the problem is caused by X11's design, which is very much a concept of layers on layers.
Alternatives to X really haven't gotten very far. I am unaware of any distros which use Berlin / Fiasco, for example. I've not even seen any announcements for it for some time, and am unsure if it's even under active development still.
Lighter-weight graphics drivers for X don't seem to have progressed well, either. GGI and KGI aren't nearly as well-developed as I'd have expected at this point. One can only assume that there just aren't many people who feel that particular itch.
The growing use of networking systems such as CORBA is also not helping much. CORBA is fairly bulky, and if you're running the processes on the same machine, then you really don't need the capacity to run objects on remote systems. I don't even know if those CORBA applications for GNOME or KDE even support a distributed environment of this kind. It's certainly not obvious as to how you'd go about creating one.
Also, CORBA implementations are not as interchangable as they should be. You can't just pick up an application that has ORBit in mind and use it with MICO, TAO or some other CORBA engine. This does start to get a little heavy, as it means that any software not designed for the CORBA engine your GUI is set up to use is going to have to have its own CORBA engine installed. That's plain ugly. It's also a design problem of CORBA, and NOT a problem with the design of Gnome or KDE.
Personally, I think the whole concept of the "desktop environment" is archaic. It stems from the time of the "paperless office", which never materialized. I think we should be looking to see what people actually want to do on their computer, because it's very clear that 80s/90s thinking was wrong on this point.
If the desktop metaphor is the wrong one to use, in the first place, then no implementation of that metaphor - however good it may be - will ever satisfy users. Since the metaphor is also almost wholly owned by certain corporations hostile to FOSS in the first place, changing the battleground would seem wiser than trying to compete in an area users might not even be wanting.
Re:I like both (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I like both (Score:2)
That's not necessarily the strategy for everyone, but the cost of the extra memory is less than the cost of the extra effort of figuring out the lighter weight but harder to use desktops. Sure I can figure them out (I have in the past), but the effort just isn't rewarded when you can throw memory at the pr
Re:I like both (Score:2, Interesting)
3 words (Score:2)
Re:I like both (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I like both (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, well it would be bloated when you insert mythical layers. KDE doesn't use Corba and Xlib doesn't layer on top of an X11 client; the KDE application *is* the X11 client. And calling the X11 protocol a "layer" is a bit of a stretch.
Amended diagram: KDE -> Kparts/Klibs -> Qt -> Xlib -> Xserver.
Re:I like both (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I like both (Score:2)
Re:I like both (Score:2)
Re:I like both (Score:2)
Complaints about gconf (Score:5, Insightful)
Declaring it difficult to use, compared to the alternative (your text editor of choice) seems a strong enough claim that it should have been backed up by more description.
-Mark
Isn't this the sort of thing.. (Score:3, Insightful)
And I belive ALL feedback is important, even if you have to work to translate it into something useful.
99% of all users wont care about libraries or how they are supposed to use something. They've got babies, family, car payments and jobs to worry about.
Re:Isn't this the sort of thing.. (Score:2)
Nope. Lots of feedback is noise.
If you have an actual criticism about gconf, or anything else for that matter, expressing it well is a good start to getting it resolved.
There are things about gconf to criticize, and those criticisms don't seem to be ignored. It's just that the popular sorts of criticisms (OMG it's the registry!! Gnome hax0rs are teh eevil!!) are so tired and inaccurate as to be a c
Re:Isn't this the sort of thing.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Feedback is feedback, if you want things to be spoon fed, I'm sorry, you woke up on the wrong side of the world.
But being hostle about the kind of feedback your actually getting really takes the cake. No-one said users had to be developers in order to be heard. If we in the OSS community can't bridge that gap then it is our failure, not theirs.
Re:Isn't this the sort of thing.. (Score:3, Insightful)
You're really not paying any attention here are you? How can anyone listen to what isn't being said? Saying "product X was disappointing" is not the same as "doing Y will make it better." Read my post again. I say that actually telling what that Y is would be helpful. There is no intelligent way to argue that specificity is not helpful, I think you have demonstrated that.
-Mark
Re:Isn't this the sort of thing.. (Score:2)
Maybe I've just got too many
Re:Complaints about gconf (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet whenever someone complains about an option being removed from the main config dialogs, the standard response is, "use GConf." So what is it? Are we supposed to use GConf or not?
Re:Complaints about gconf (Score:2)
You don't like OpenBSD?
Re:Complaints about gconf (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Complaints about gconf (Score:2)
That said, I don't think it's the right way. Why make setting simple options easy and setting advanced options hard, when you can make both easy? Just tuck away the advanced ones behind some advanced options button and you're set.
Perhaps it's just that the GNOME people are unwil
Re:Complaints about gconf (Score:2)
It's the same with about:config in Firefox: if you need it to set some option, you know it's there, but there are also extensions that will do that for you with a prettier GUI.
For Gnome it's just a matter of installing something like GTweakUI [sourceforge.net] instead of resorting to gconf-editor.
Re:Complaints about gconf (Score:3, Interesting)
Gconf - just try exporting settings! To a great degree it is a single user, single computer app in a multiuser networked world. To an extent it shows the MS windows mindset has gone into developing it, where MS windows at least has the excuse of being orginally built on DOS and constrained that way.
To this day it really looks like someone said "don't know much about unix, but how about we put a windows style
Re:Complaints about gconf (Score:2)
> single computer app in a multiuser networked world.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by this--it's very easy to cp, tar, rsync, etc, the
Gconf is multi-user. Check
Relative performance? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Relative performance? (Score:2, Interesting)
Running Gnome, KDE, XFCE, and WinXP (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll never understand the religious wars about these issues. It's technology, folks -- use whatever works for you.
Freedom is predicated on the availability of diverse choice; we need different philosophies and approaches.
For day-to-day work, I use KDE, though I prefer Thunderbird to KMail (or Evolution, which is overkill for my purposes). I've run Gnome quite a bit, too; my Opteron system has both Gnome and KDE installed, and I spend about 90% of my time in the latter. I can live with either one, though I prefer the customization available in KDE.
Gnome and KDE both have high overhead (disk space and processor use) as compared to XFCE, which is the GUI for my dusl 600MHz Pentium 3 and 300MHz Sun Ultra 10.
My Pentium 4 box dual-boots between Gentoo/KDE and Windows XP. I find XP limited in many (many) respects, but some things (games) just work better under Windows.
Competition is a good thing.
Re:Running Gnome, KDE, XFCE, and WinXP (Score:3, Interesting)
In the real world diverse choices at one level (KDE vs. Gnome, let's say) result in reduced choice at another (I chose KDE but now need to run Eclipse etc.).
The trend is therefore precisely the opposite of what the parent poster pretends - rationalization will happen in response to the compatibility imperative and marginal products (XFCE etc.) will decline rat
Konstruct (Score:3, Interesting)
Three cheers to the KDE team
KMail and HTML (Score:5, Informative)
KMail (and therefore Kontact) does provide "sanitized" HTML mail support. The KMail docs claim that sanitized is the default, but it is an easy change regardless. The check box is located in: Configure KMail -> Security -> "Allow messages to load external references from the Internet". It seems they didn't look too hard for the option that is default anyway.
As far as the warnings before rendering HTML messages, this is just a question of how paranoid you'd like to be (or, how important the integrity of you system is). HTML parsers/renderers are very complex software, and therefore they may have bugs. Look to the recent JPEG exploits for bad bugs in seemingly innocent software. If there were a bug found in the HTML renderer used by your mailreader, reading email messages might present a threat to the security and integrity of your computer.
Like the documentation in KMail says "Displaying the HTML part makes the message look better, but at the same time increases the risk of security holes being exploited"
KMail is, indeed, frustrating (Score:2)
Sadly, the version, released with KDE-3.3, continues the poor tradition of features over bug-fixes. I understand, that adding features is usually more fun, than fixing bugs -- especially, someone else's, and a volunteer project will always be skewed towards the former, but other projects (inside KDE even) manage to impose discipline somehow...
Why one or the other, again? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why one or the other, again? (Score:2)
Simple: while running Gnome apps along with XFCE4 (being gtk2 programs) is OK, throwing in KDE with its QT and kdelibs overhead causes memory use to increase significantly. Yeah, I know, memory is not that expensive now, but still I'd rather use it for something else than just to load additional libraries.
Raf
Win XP Powertoys (Score:3, Funny)
Only Kmail has folder purging (Score:3, Interesting)
I read a lot of mailing lists - some such as Debian-User with several hundred messages a day. I filter each mailing list into its own folder, and then set purge dates on the folder to delete messages.
I tried evolution, thunderbird, balsa and a few others - none of them have this function. Why doesn't this lack of ability to clear unwanted mailing list messages worry anyone else?
Re:Only Kmail has folder purging (Score:2)
# delete files that were last accessed >30days ago
find . -type f -atime +30 -exec rm {} \;
Re:Only Kmail has folder purging (Score:3, Insightful)
Because this is UNIX? I use scripts for tasks like this one. Works no matter which mail client you use (as long as it uses some standard format for storage). Do one thing, and do it well. KISS.
The Title :-( (Score:2, Interesting)
They wish! Both GNOME and KDE are a whole lot better than Windows, just by the looks! I'm not even talking about the underlying OS, ability to run on older hardware (both GNOME 2.8 and KDE 3.3 run like charms on a P333 with 128 MB RAM), and customizability.
It's rather Aqua that has to be afraid; Windows has long lost out and can hardly fall any further.
128MB of bull (Score:3, Interesting)
You can make blackbox or ice dance with 128mb, but a late model gnome or kde desktop with only 128mb ram is about one step above usele
Re:128MB of bull (Score:2)
GNOME's really grabbing my interest (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been using debian with KDE for nearly 2 years on my PC at home but GNOME seems to be getting really cool. I really like the automount thingy they have and the interface seems simpler which is great since that my main machine now is an iBook.
I think when I get home (in about a year), I'll give ubuntu [ubuntulinux.org] a spin.
Thought this looked familiar ... (Score:2)
Alright, not to be another gentoo zealot (Score:2)
This is really just a nit
So essentially you are looking for XFCE. (Score:5, Informative)
XFCE is a powerful but lightweight UI for both older systems and 'power-user' implementations.
Both Gnome and KDE lead the way for moder UI implementations on *nixes and as such require modern hardware to go with them (in general).
Having said that, I've just installed KDE on a second user 1.7GHz Celeron M laptop with a piddling (by modern standards) 128MB ram and it positively flies! - No complaints here.
Re:So essentially you are looking for XFCE. (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:So essentially you are looking for XFCE. (Score:2)
Re:no for both (Score:5, Informative)
For light desktops that aren't just pure IceWM or *box window management your best options are XFCE (which uses GTK+, but is still surprsingly light and fast), and E17 (if and when it eventually arrives) which uses pretty much all its own technology (of which there is a lot, and its all quite impressive).
Realistically E17 is stacking up to the "other" desktop given how much functionality the E Foundation Libraries offer. I'm not trying to dis IceWM or Fluxbox here, but realistically those are mostly Window Managers, while the new E is looking to have more of the "core libraries" approach of GNOME and KDE, providing its own widget toolkit and what have you. We're still to see whether people will actually pick it up and develop with it...
Finally you've got WindowMaker, which is a very nice window manager and integrates in with GNUStep to provide your widget toolkits and other core libraries. The downside here is that while Window Maker is great, the amount of developer uptake for GNUStep has been fairly limited, so you won't exactly see a lot of GNUStep apps.
There are some good options though, so don't go complaining too much.
Jedidiah.
Re:no for both (Score:4, Interesting)
Gnome and KDE are more than just desktops, they include functionality for the OS, auto-mounting drives, smart interaction of programs with data sharing. They try to simpifily the whole interaction experience. You shouldnt have to work to get a task done. It should be a click away. This is why they include lots of applications, its easier when applications work with the desktop.
One thing KDE/GNOME has over MS Windows, no front priority windows (pop ups). Nothing pisses me off more than applications that have its status window pop up and take focus when I'm typing.
Typing code, and all the sudden you have some Dialog box in your face.
Gaim is really bad about this on windows, even with the option to turn off popup messages, the split second it pops on the screen takes focus.
I remember desktops before the taskbar, I'm not giving it up.
Gnustep apps (Score:2)
Re:Gnustep apps (Score:2)
Most everythign I've heard about the GNUStep API has generally been positive, and yes, it's pretty similar to MacOS X (though certainly porting from Mac to GNUStep is not really a viable option). I'm not sure why the uptake is so poor - I guess it never really managed to grab people's attention - though persona
Re:no for both (Score:2)
Re:no for both (Score:3, Funny)
Screen on a console surely. Why bother with all that nasty Xlib library overhead?
And then there's always just the console and ALT-F1 through ALT-F12 (what you don't use 12 virtual consoles?)
But really, who wants all that clunky overhead of actually loading a shell? Far too bloated I say.
Jedidiah.
Re:no for both (Score:2)
There is a lot you can do from the console (just about everything actually), but console ONLY is a bit too minimal for my taste. I've toyed around with the idea a few times, but I find using a lightweight window manager to be more efficient than virtual consoles, personally. Plus I've never been a fan of browsing the web with lynx/links/links2.
Desktop environemnts are larger by nature. (Score:2)
Having all those integrated features, libraries, tools, etc that define a project as an 'environment' come at a price. ( features which most of us that actualy do something productive on a daily basis with their systems DO want )
Remember too, that most default KDE installs also includes a large collection of applications.. That can be stripped down to just the bare minimum of support libraries, so its not quite as bloated as most people think
Re:KMail (Score:2, Informative)
Re:KMail (Score:2, Interesting)
just my $0.02
Re:KMail (Score:3, Insightful)
I have HTML rendering disabled on kmail.
HTML-based Email (Score:2)
#1. The size of an HTML email versus plaintext is irrelevent now. You want to crusade? Crusade against spam.
#2. Get rid of Outlook, which is the first tool in any virus writer's toolbelt, and most of the other objections go away.
#3. Yes, HTML sucks on listservers. That's a real problem for about 0.017% of the general population.
Put it to bed.
--Richard
Re:HTML-based Email (Score:2)
Re:BIG RED LETTERS (Score:2)
Re:KMail (Score:3, Insightful)
Most people just don't care enough to turn it off. Going through my email trash, about 95% of HTML email doesn't use any formatting at all, so the use of HTML is wasted.
Re:KMail (Score:2)
Re:KMail (Score:2)
Re:KMail (Score:3, Informative)
(a) It blocks while running filters! This is a royal pain if you want to use it with spamassassin, since it means the entire interface freezes for several seconds every time you download an email. This is especially painful if non-local tests are enabled in SA. If you have kmail set to download new mail periodically, it will randomly freeze up at the worst possible moment (for instance, while you're trying to compose a new email..).
(b) It blocks while checking GPG signat
Re:KMail (Score:2, Funny)
>over time these things will be fixed/improved.
Expecially if you write down your wishlists at bugs.kde.org
Re:Gnome == Insanity Box (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Gnome == Insanity Box (Score:2)
Re:Gnome == Insanity Box (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Gnome == Insanity Box (Score:2, Offtopic)
Well, something odd is definitely going on. Those directories are created in
Jedidiah.
Re:Gnome == Insanity Box (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Project GoneME (Score:2, Interesting)
The beautiful thing with Linux is that you can swap your X Window interface as easy as changing web browsers. More alternatives are definitely welcome.
KDE is nice and polished but I like Gnome's character...It's not so Windows like. I run the FVWM window manager on my MythTV box.
White blouse? (Score:2)
Maybe you meant a white lab coat? Or perhaps your mind was on schoolgirls after all? I know mine always is!
Uh, I mean...
Re:White blouse? (Score:2)
Yes, of course.
(Like [revol.fr] this [www.mjb.fr].)
My bad :-|