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KDE or Gnome?


twn_onizuka
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Guys, could we ditch the Linus debate before it gets drawn out, we did that a long time ago in another thread. I believe that the O/P was looking for our opinions.

I don't think this topic will ever be resolved, its just two different ideologies ....

My opinion is that I find KDE more linux'y in the way its developed and structured hence my reference to BSD. This doesn't make one better than the other and BSD certainly has many technical advantages over linux certainly the TCP/IP stack etc. but in practical terms I find Linux works fine for my needs!

 

I think the relevance is that the kernel is developed in a somewhat haphazard way frm the POV of BSD'ers and in practical terms although BSD has less in the way of apps than linux it has enough!

From a desktop perspective if I can check my mail and write in OO, watch video and listen to music and use a browser that's most of my everyday needs...

 

However I choose to mess about with stuff and I guess that's why a lot of us use linux ?

I find the historical development of linux fascinating having been watching and sometimes contributing a long time and my opinion is that the freedom offered by KDE is more linux'y than the rigid HID stuff of Gnome...

 

I think there are direct comparisons between the kernel development of linux and the development of KDE core and direct comparisons between Gnome and rigid complaince and the development of BSD cores.

Obviously its hard to mention the kernel devel without a certain you know who... :wink:

 

On the plus side the fact is there is a huge difference in the development style between the two major players and this again I see as linux'y because although FreeBSD might have different code and maintainers than *BSD the development philosophy stays the same....

 

Linux is by nature split between BSD init and SysV init for example...

having choice between distro's is more fundamental to linux than BSD (IMHO) or Solaris (which is largely why it became the default WM in Solaris ) because Solaris devel is also structured like BSD...

 

Linux is to me more dynamic, we try things and see if we like em and that is a philosophy going right back to the kernel. AND GPL....

 

Why did Oracle make linux the devel and primary platform?

To be honest X86 arch is pretty poor compared with a UsparcIII or top end Solaris box in terms of raw IO on large databases but they have the flexibility in linux ... *BSD would also probably handle high numbers of simultaneous connections better than either Solaris or Linux but again with restrictions....

 

If you look at Gnome its nature is restricted, in development and in choices to the user. Not everyone wants/needs endless choices so restriction isn't bad but different but going back full circle..

 

This is why I find the comments of linus meaninful and why they shape my opinion... it would be misleading to say choose KDE because I think without mentioning why and this is one of the reasons/phiosophies of why I use KDE.

You have to choose (well you can use both) do you want flexibility and bells and whistles or efficiency?

 

My perspective is I'd rather have the printer-dialog with HID faults than no printer-dialog ... and i think this single example illustrates the different philosophies very well.

 

In the end I cannot recommend one over the other... it simply depends who for and what they want to do and how they want to work.... however it is all about expectation and my expectation from linux is its got its faults but it works ... and so long as it works I prefer choice over homogenaitiy ...

 

Equally there is the vista knocking thread/article saying how the new mediaplayer in vista is unusable largely due to the standardisation of the interface being aplied to a media player..

 

As an example take amarok which can be made to work in a xmms mode or juk mode... now non of these probably conform to HID standards but I personally don't care. I just want a media player working for me!

I think that is why the linus thread has relevance .. its because that is the philosophy behind linux whereas the Gnome way would be not to have functions on the media player that don't conform to HID standards.

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Guys, could we ditch the Linus debate before it gets drawn out, we did that a long time ago in another thread. I believe that the O/P was looking for our opinions.

If you read our most recent posts we were discussing KDE and GNOME's ideologies, it was simply the Linus comment that began the discussion. We were quite on topic ;)

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I think there is a valid point you're missing through. It's true that for an application to be directly integrated into the Gnome project, it has to follow Gnome's HIG (Human Interface Guidelines). I'm perfectly okay with that, because in my opinion, it makes applications a lot cleaner and easier to use.

 

But, Gnome is based on GTK+. Anyone can build an application for Gnome and follow the HIG or not. A lot of people build applications that, while they're not actually included in the Gnome project itself, are made with Gnome in mind, and simply follow the HIG because they like the way it makes applications look too. But they don't have to.

 

So basically, if an application is integrated into the Gnome project, it follows the HIG. But anyone can make an application intended for Gnome and not follow the HIG if they want to.

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I think there is a valid point you're missing through. It's true that for an application to be directly integrated into the Gnome project, it has to follow Gnome's HIG (Human Interface Guidelines). I'm perfectly okay with that, because in my opinion, it makes applications a lot cleaner and easier to use.

 

But, Gnome is based on GTK+. Anyone can build an application for Gnome and follow the HIG or not. A lot of people build applications that, while they're not actually included in the Gnome project itself, are made with Gnome in mind, and simply follow the HIG because they like the way it makes applications look too. But they don't have to.

 

So basically, if an application is integrated into the Gnome project, it follows the HIG. But anyone can make an application intended for Gnome and not follow the HIG if they want to.

True and I use a lot of them myself....

but this is a bit self-defeating?

What I mean is iof the philosophy is HIG or the highway then choosing Gnome for the HIG aspects and then using other apps kinda shows there is something missing?

Again though its just philosophy not science that divides Gnome and KDE...

In realistic terms they are both more than adequate and what they provide is different ways of doing the same thing.

In a way this is why the original question is not really answerable because its all about personal choice, even to the point of me using gtk+ apps in KDE ... so it is something that my choice or your's might be completely missing a fundamental point that user X has?

 

The real reason I switched to KDE is so stupid ... it was because at the time kmail was the best mail client (for me) back in Mandrake 8.something (maybe even 7.something) ... and I figured to load the DCOP server and background stuff I mightest well use konqueror and the rest of KDE... incrementally it doesn't give much memory hit and KDE was slow back then... and starting just kmail took ages under Gnome not for the kmail itself but all the KDE libs which sucked up almost as much resources as running the whole desktop ...I was also running sawfish back then and enlightenment

 

So now we have Evolution and many more excellent mail clients my choiuce of kmail is still adequate.

KDE is much faster and Gnome has got more bloated so that reason has dissapeared but my main reason is just because its comfortable and Im used to the KDE way of working.

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What I mean is iof the philosophy is HIG or the highway then choosing Gnome for the HIG aspects and then using other apps kinda shows there is something missing?

 

Using Gnome and then using a non-HIG application doesn't show that there's anything missing. It just means that someone created a program that you like, and they happened to decide not to follow the HIG.

 

For instance, if someone made a game or a chat client that you really liked and wanted to use, and they decided not to follow the HIG, that wouldn't mean there was anything missing from Gnome. It would just mean that someone made a new program that you wanted to use that doesn't follow the HIG.

 

Bloat can be a bit relative. For instance, on Mandriva, doing a regular install using Gnome instead of KDE takes up more space than using KDE instead of Gnome. However, on Fedora Core, if I remember correctly, doing a regular install with KDE instead of Gnome takes up more space than using Gnome instead of KDE. So Gnome is more bloated in Mandriva, but less bloated in Fedora Core.

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KDE is much faster and Gnome has got more bloated so that reason has dissapeared...

KDE is no faster than GNOME, and GNOME still consumes less memory than KDE (as little a difference as it may be) - in my own personal tests, anyways. But in the end, both GNOME and KDE run faster that Windows on any system that can be considered "recent".

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So what is or where is the point???

 

I carefully read and understand this discussion very well, including Gowator's and the other's standpoint. So KDE and Gnome are different which automatically qualifies them as having different properties and features. Agreed?

 

But what's the point?

Isn't the difference between Gnome and KDE really just a matter of taste or personal opinion, and aren't both truthfully excellent? Aren't there may more windowmakers asside from KDE and Gnome? Aren't Gnome and KDE apps compatible? Don't we Linuxers have a world of choice other OS-users have not even thought about in their wildest dreams?

 

So what or where is the point for normal users? Lets be happy we can choose, and be grateful and thankful for the countless developers doing a damn good job!

 

Btw: Any of you folks attending the linuxtag in Wiesbaden next week?

 

Cheers,

Helmut

Edited by Helmut
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Isn't the difference between Gnome and KDE really just a matter of taste or personal opinion, and aren't both truthfully excellent? Aren't there may more windowmakers asside from KDE and Gnome? Aren't Gnome and KDE apps compatible? Don't we Linuxers have a world of choice other OS-users have not even thought about in their wildest dreams?
Yes. Yes. Yes. And yes again. :)
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One thing you can be sure of in the Open Source community is that the dead horse will be beaten over, and over, and over, and over...

 

 

Why? Because new users come in from some other place (Windows?) and want things to work exactly that way, so they start up a thread about "why isn't it this way?" - not realizing that the topic they post has been discussed so many times there's nothing new to be said. but, all the veterans start jumping in, and extensive, repetitive "discussion" ensues. that's just how it is - i'm not knocking this thread or the OP, that's just what happens ;)

 

it's a sympton of the choices we are given as open source users. if there was no colloboration, no feedback, and things were just set in front of you and said "here it is, take it or leave it" there wouldn't be any discussion (see the MS world) - but since we are given a choice, we tend to make as much use of that as possible. choice is both the greatest strength and the biggest pain in the arse in the open source world ;)

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KDE is much faster and Gnome has got more bloated so that reason has dissapeared...

KDE is no faster than GNOME, and GNOME still consumes less memory than KDE (as little a difference as it may be) - in my own personal tests, anyways. But in the end, both GNOME and KDE run faster that Windows on any system that can be considered "recent".

KDE isn't fast in a UI sense anyway....

But resource wise they acrchtectures are different, just 1 KDE app opens the DCOP server and you always have sound etc. but as the number of pure KDE apps increases resource usage only goes up slightly because most of the resources are already loaded, at least the heavier parts.

Just running a pure desktop with no apps Gnome is probably less resource hungry but as the number of running apps increases I think there is apoint KDE uses less ... this is probably not a fixed point depending on the actual apps and also pretty features enabled so I guess it is hard to define which is more resource hungry because it depends what you are doing and what tools you are using.

The one thing which KDE is bad at is loading up a single app, like using kmail in Gnome, you can do it but you are loading most of the desktop in the background just to load KMail.

 

One thing you can be sure of in the Open Source community is that the dead horse will be beaten over, and over, and over, and over...

LOL true but both KDE and Gnome benefit from each other and keep improving so this horse isn't quite a dead one and lively discussions are the joy of the opensource world. As tyme said we at leaast have alternatives to discuss....

 

if someone made a game or a chat client that you really liked and wanted to use, and they decided not to follow the HIG, that wouldn't mean there was anything missing from Gnome

True, but its all a matter of what is 'complete'....

 

You can question if its a DM's job to provide anythng but a DM... but both Gnome and KDE have gone for 'a package' so we are looking at 'extra features'

Personally I like the fact KDE and Gnome both provide config tools for the underlying OS. IMHO much better this is done by the DM than the individual distro's especially since neither Gnome nor KDE are linux specific anyway. At the same time its good to preserve other ways of configuring something...

From the POV of a distro packager having a Gnome printer-config is a plus if you want your distro to be usuable by the majority and don't want your own distro-specific tools...but in the end a GUI will never offer the same flexibility as the underlying CLI config tools because it will always lag behind as new features are added...

 

IMHO making a standard config from Gnome/KDE is better than each distro making add-ons by themselves because then you end up with one distro can config x,y,z via its own tools and another x,w,q .. and distro packagers then end up spending thier time maintaining tools which at some point are bypassed by a KDE or Gnome dialog ... and usually end up doing something that breaks the common tools hece ending up in a trap maintaining tools which are no longer strictly needed but cannot be removed because they are referenced by something else. and need to be maintained because the underlying program they configure has changed too. .

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