No, this is not a post about which one is better. Not yet, anyway. I just want to mention that today, March 18th, the next version of Gnome is expected to come out, and yesterday, March 17th, I finished my personal test run of KDE 4.whatever.
I like KDE … the new version …. to recommend it and to seriously consider using it just for fun on some computer somewhere. But my main desktop will remain Gnome because, well, it has not annoyed me and it works.
Keep an eye out for the new Gnome. Details here.
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In the “faux journalistic balance” department, I advise anyone I can to stick with KDE 3.5.10 until the 4.x series is usable. in the particular case of (K)Ubuntu, the KDE port doesn’t even support screen layout selection — which is a deal-breaker for my only Intrepid box (I’m posting this from a Hardy machine.)
And bear in mind that I really don’t like Gnome and have been using KDE for since version 0.9-some. YMMV; my annoyances are purely personal.
There are lots of other missing features beside; 4.x simply isn’t ready for prime time.
In the “faux journalistic balance” department, I advise anyone I can to stick with KDE 3.5.10 until the 4.x series is usable. in the particular case of (K)Ubuntu, the KDE port doesn’t even support screen layout selection — which is a deal-breaker for my only Intrepid box (I’m posting this from a Hardy machine.)
And bear in mind that I really don’t like Gnome and have been using KDE for since version 0.9-some. YMMV; my annoyances are purely personal.
There are lots of other missing features beside; 4.x simply isn’t ready for prime time.
I’ve always been of mixed minds about these two. Now, mind you, I’m a developer and my history with X GUI’s goes back to X11R4 and Motif 1.1.
From a development standpoint, each have their pros and cons
Gnome pro: multiple languages can be used.
Gnome pro: look & feel more like Motif
Gnome con: the toolkit APIs changed fairly often in non-compatible ways.
Gnome con 2: if you didn’t think .NET and C# was worth it, then Mono was a huge time-sink and waste of resources.
Gnome con 3: GTK layer duplicated a TON of X11 calls for almost no reason. the great truth of programming: all abstractions leak.
On the other hand, it did *eventually* (took about 6 years) get to the point where a GTK program can run on Windows without an X11 server (Pidgin, formerly gaim), so in the long run it may have paid off to have hidden/duplicated all those pesky low-level X11 functions. Similarly, this now makes php a valid scripting language for desktop use on windows as well, rarely though I need it.
KDE pro: generally stable API
KDE con: only one language (at the time; things may have changed)
KDE con: at the time, most apps for it were very primitive
General Linux Desktop con: the administration tools are, well, incredibly inconsistent. even from subsequent releases for the same distro, I constantly find that some damned useful tool has been replaced by something next to useless, and it takes 3 more releases to find something as useful as what i had before…only to find IT disappear and be replaced by another useless tool.
So really, I don’t care. I’m sick of the constant changes in the desktops’ surface layers without any of them really getting to the heart of their faults, and I’m sick of the inconsistencies of things that I take for granted on Windows platforms, like guaranteed instant plug-n-play of USB hard drives (I still get surprised at distros that don’t do this). At 38 with 50+ hour work-weeks and a desire to, well, read and relax and have a family and watch a movie or two and enjoy my music, I don’t have the time to argue with distro testing and desktop comparing and all of that stuff that at 24 I thought was fascinating in the early years of all of this.
Yes: I was arguing with Linux distros and BSD for x86 and all of this stuff 15 years ago.
After 15 years, we should have been done with all of this by now and just gotten on with it.
This isn’t “vi vs emacs” (go ‘joe’!) anymore. This is two groups fundamentally wasting time making things that are 90% exactly the same and then arguing that the 10% is the end of everything. This is distros constantly changing the toolkits that administrators and developers NEED, ABSOLUTELY NEED to be stable so they can operate on rote, manage by exception, and just get on with their f’in’ jobs. My job is not to figure out linux crap anymore. My job is to wrote code that works. Linux went from being a damn good tool to getting in my way more than Windows ever has, merely because every new distro changes EVERYTHING that I need to get my job done and I don’t have time to relearn it all anymore.
15 years, and some of this stuff is basic and hasn’t changed in a a decade or more (like, say, Apache configuration), yet every release has a brand new tool to do it and every release has every administrator just falling back on command-line and home-grown scripts because it is no longer worth their time to see if the next batch of tools will do what should have been done 15 years ago.
and THAT is why Linux will never “win” the desktop wars.
At least with Apple, Jobs created the “screw backwards compatibility, ’cause the next one will always be better” mindset up front and ran it successfully…well, until the current “5 functions, 1 button” garbage that is the new shuffle.
geeze, that got long. sorry…guess you tapped into some pent-up anger from my struggles to find a simple linux distro for acting as a digital photo frame and video jukebox, which is all i need at home right now…
DC: OK, the screen layout bit is a problem. I had tried it out on my laptop where this is not an issue.
Joe: Gnome con: the toolkit APIs changed fairly often in non-compatible ways.
How much of that is a function of a development philosophy that keeps Linux leaner over the long run even if development-wise it is more annoying? (… than something that ultimately looks like Windows because everything is always backwards compatible, supposedly)
I think the KDE apps have evolved, though I don’t use a lot of them.
(I mean, I pretty much use emacs for everything …..)
I agree with you on Linux admin tools. I think the stability of the command line allows for a lot of variation in the world of GUI. Which is annoying if you use GUI tools.
, like guaranteed instant plug-n-play of USB hard drives
This is where Ubuntu kills Windows. I spent a good part of the day today messing with this, in fact, and I can tell you that if he windows computer wasn’t tied down it would have gone out the window. Had there been a nearby window.
I don’t see that using the command line and the home grown scrips as a “falling back” thing. I see it as a “why to use Linux” thing for admins.
geeze, that got long. sorry…guess you tapped into some pent-up anger from my struggles to find a simple linux distro for acting as a digital photo frame and video jukebox, which is all i need at home right now…
That’s OK, Joe. But I think maybe you should go and compile a Gentoo distro or two to work this all out….
I picked what’s behind curtain number 3: A bare desktop and the window manager of your choice. Sawfish works pretty well. There are plenty of others. I picked Sawfish because it’s easy to set up with hot keys, and if you don’t mind writing a little Lisp you can write your own functions (I do mind, usually, but the built-in function set is largely complete). Using the keyboard for window manipulation is good on a laptop where the mouse is usually suboptimal. Those lousy mouse substitutes just make me cranky. Hot keys turn out to be an advantage on the desktop, too, where switching between keyboard and mouse can be annoying.
An added benefit is that pests won’t bother my computer. With no programs running, it’s just a gray screen with no icons. Nothing to click on, and pests hate the keyboard.
define pests….
I picked what’s behind curtain number 3: A bare desktop and the window manager of your choice. Sawfish works pretty well. There are plenty of others. I picked Sawfish because it’s easy to set up with hot keys, and if you don’t mind writing a little Lisp you can write your own functions (I do mind, usually, but the built-in function set is largely complete). Using the keyboard for window manipulation is good on a laptop where the mouse is usually suboptimal. Those lousy mouse substitutes just make me cranky. Hot keys turn out to be an advantage on the desktop, too, where switching between keyboard and mouse can be annoying.
An added benefit is that pests won’t bother my computer. With no programs running, it’s just a gray screen with no icons. Nothing to click on, and pests hate the keyboard.
That will only keep him out of the comment section if he doesn’t know how to use the chroot trick for a Stage One installation.
Which reminds me father-of-girl to father-of-girl: before shipping mine off to University, I had her do her own Stage One build. She learned enough in the process to maintain it herself (although I did the trickier stuff by remote admin) but the real payoff was the boys who were in awe of a girl who ran Linux. Then they found out she it was Gentoo, and they worshipped her. Then they found out she’d done a Stage One install …
Father mission accomplished. Dang they’re fun.
I apologize for the double post. Yes, I’m an idiot.
Greg, “pests” are office mates who want to use my computer when I’ve wandered away and left the screen unlocked. Everyone here has their own, so anyone wanting to use mine is up to no good. Hence my use of the word “pest” for someone in that role. An unfriendly desktop helps discourage that sort of behavior. Not that making the desktop unfriendly is the primary purpose I use Sawfish rather than Gnome or KDE. It’s just an added benefit.
It’s not security, and I don’t make the mistake of thinking it is. Security is handled with other mechanisms.
Vote for Xubuntu.
KDE is a nice idea. Clean architecture always is. Having all applications reuse as much code as possible is very good for small machines. For example, run Gnome + Firefox + OpenOffice and you have three graphics engines in the RAM. Platform-agnostic applications like FF and OOo must be self-sufficient. But KDE + Konqueror + KOffice has only one, because the appliKations use the services of KDE.
Unfortunately the implementation isn’t nice. Too much eye useless candy that only introduces bugs. KDE 4.1 worked in my Acer One, but KDE 4.2 crashed even X. So now I’m back to XFCE. My desktop machine still runs KDE 3.5, but I’ll install Xubuntu on it, too.
I have full confidence in the open source development community to add some bugs and “features” to the new Gnome to make it annoying.
woah, x11. Man it’s been a long time. That and CDE. Clearly I’ve moved too far away from all things unix.
I dunno, I still like KDE. Maybe I’ll boot up gnome on a machine tonight just to mess around.
Either that or try to get my old sparc5 running, just for kicks.
I have not run gnome in a couple years, so I can’t comment on it. However, the discussion here did convince me to install it on my kubuntu desktop. It’s installing now, so we’ll see how it goes.
Bruce: I’m looking forward to your report!
First off, let me say that I do think gnome is fantastic. It has really come a long way since I last used it. In fact, it seems much zippier than KDE does on the same machine. I also like the compiz effects a lot better in gnome.
I’m still using KDE 3.something. KDE4’s compiz effects are much better, though possibly not as nice as Gnome’s.
In hindsight, this would have been better done on my laptop, as adding gnome to an already existing installation proved problematic on my desktop system. I’d rather have done a clean ubuntu install, I think.
When I installed gnome, it overrode my custom xorg.conf file, and no longer wanted to play with my old configuration. So I ended up writing a new one by hand. I use dual monitors. I did have 2 X screens in the old system, but now I’m forced to use nvidia’s twinview setting, which I don’t like as much. But it works, and looks beautiful.
All in all, I’m fairly impressed and will most likely stay with gnome.
I think I”m using twinview for my dual heads. Works pretty well.
I have been with KDE since 1999
Then came KDE 4.x ¡ no comment !
I switched to GNOME definitively …. without regret
without any comeback…..
Thanks KDE, and goodbye ……
Tisma: But why?