It is not too surprising that Ubuntu came in first in DesktopLinux.com’s 2007 Desktop Linux Market Survey, or that Firefox was the topmost browser by far. More interesting is that for the first time ever in the site’s annual surveys, GNOME surpassed KDE among desktop environments (45% over 35%), with Xfce a solid third (8%).
And so they should! Virtualbox is a damn fine virtualisation solution. I’ve used it for a few months now and it’s truly wonderful, every bit as good as VMWare for what I need.
May I ask what you need?
I tried to install/start various operating systems with VBox (I tried Win98, Debian, ReactOS, Ubuntu) and I couldn’t get anything running. There always were strange problems and I can’t say what exactly. Most of the times the program just stops and nothing happens anymore.
Maybe it’s a case of PEBKAC with me, but if I can’t get anything running with the GUI then there seem to be some serious problems. VMware works flawlessly.
And no, I didn’t forget to enable important (emulated) hardware.
Edit: I should add that these tests were a few months ago. Maybe it got better?!
Edited 2007-08-22 22:38
Well in Virtualbox 1.4.0 I’m able to get Debian 4.0, Windows XP SP2 and Vista all running flawlessly and with pretty good performance (remember to install guest additions).
I’m running it on a Gentoo amd64 host with a 2.6.22 kernel.
Perhaps it’s time to try again?
VirtualBox works fine for me and has worked fine since 1.3.6. 1.3.8 and 1.4.0 worked and works fine as well.
gentoo here as well – 2.6.22
I also had problems with it, but I suspect the reason is because I’m still running Linux 2.6.17. There was a note in the docs that said something important changed in 2.6.20.
Was Epiphany even a choice in this survey?
I’m a Gnome user (Debian Testing/SID) and I far prefer Epiphany to Firefox.
One of the many disagreements I have with the Ubuntu distribution is the choice to make Firefox the default browser.
Firefox is like the cheap blonde and Epiphany is like the cute brunette with character.
Definitely Ubuntu played a major role (if not THE role) in putting Gnome ahead of KDE. I just can’t wait KDE’s response.
> Definitely Ubuntu played a major role (if not THE role) in putting Gnome ahead of KDE
Please, stop !
Who is the major contributor of Gnome ?
Probably RedHat/Fedora.
> I just can’t wait KDE’s response.
KDE is not a distribution.
Who is the major contributor of Gnome ?
Probably RedHat/Fedora
Nicely put superman. It always cracks me up when newbie Ubuntu fanboys go over the edge. Your response had me chuckling. Fedora is pretty decent. There is an article running on osnews where Linus Torvalds states he mostly uses Fedora. I love it that even the founder of Linux uses Redhat/Fedora! I use a combination of XFCE running Gnome panel and applications to get the best of both desktops.
Edited 2007-08-23 00:36
We all know (at least, most, I guess) how much Red Hat contributes to Gnome. But due to Ubuntu’s popularity on the survey, it skews the numbers of KDE vs Gnome in favor of Gnome. I guess that’s what he said.
I wouldn’t say it skews the numbers. It definitely has a significant impact, but “skew” indicates a kind of error in the result and don’t think it does.
True, I was a bit unsure about the wording myself
There was some discussion about this on the DOT:
http://dot.kde.org/1187823215/
Worth a read, imho.
This year the German newsticker Heise had the survey on it’s frontcover for a while. This might explain the large upsurge of Suse usage (by 8% points from last year).
I don’t know, is the standard desktop of OpenSuse KDE or Gnome? If it is Gnome (like for commercial Suse), then maybe this is a part of the higher Gnome numbers.
I think what we also see here is the “standard desktop” effect. Ubuntu, Fedora, Redhat, Suse, OpenSuse(?), Debian (and I think most Debian derivates), they all have Gnome as standard desktop. From the large Distros it seems that only Mandriva has set KDE as standard. Even Kubuntu, although not exactly hidden, is not as widely known as Ubuntu, especially not amongst Linux-newbies (which decide about growth numbers. Dell offers Ubuntu pre-installed.
As we can see with MS Explorer, many users do not put in the energy to try out several choices, but stay with what is pre-set.
Maybe KDE is not hitting the big bells enough. On the other hand, KDE is not a company, so a following of 10% would easily suffice to keep the project alive and healthy, which in the end is all that counts for me
.
“I don’t know, is the standard desktop of OpenSuse KDE or Gnome? If it is Gnome (like for commercial Suse), then maybe this is a part of the higher Gnome numbers.”
According to this survey, OpenSUSE users prefer KDE dramatically (72% vs 22%) :
http://files.opensuse.org/opensuse/en/4/49/OpenSUSE_102_survey.pdf
(This is why the combination OpenSUSE+GNOME+Evolution+Firefox etc mentioned in the KDE dot article is viewed with so much suspicion, by the way).
I’m not sure what steps were taken in this survey to ensure that minimal cheating occurred, though.
He may use Fedora but he certainly doesn’t use Gnome with it. http://www.osnews.com/story.php/12956/Torvalds-Use-KDE
I recently switched from Gentoo to Kubuntu (fed up of DIY everything) and couldn’t be happier with the distribution. I’m eagerly awaiting KDE4. I’ve been keeping up with svn for a while (mainly for plasma) and so far it has been quite unstable, but it’s making steady progress. I think KDE4 might help to swing these statistics back in the other direction.
I used to be gnome user, but I was never happy with it. Constantly customization everything, theming and re-theming even multiple times a day. In the end I just couldn’t live with it. Say what you will but I just find Gnome/gtk ugly. Tried KDE and never looked back.
I’m not surprised about Xfce though. The only reason it could come as a surprise is because of the relative few distros that ship it as default (when compared to GNOME/KDE). Xfce is a great environment, and I’d probably still be using it if I could stand gtk.
I think he meant that because Ubuntu is the top most distro at the moment it would stand to reason that there would be more gnome users because of it. I don’t think they said anything about who contributes more to its development. And you are right KDE is not a distro.
Sorry superman, but put in context, I’ll have to side with Budd on this one.
He didn’t say that Ubuntu was the major contributor of Gnome. He said that Ubuntu played a major role in Gnome coming out ahead of KDE. As far as the poll is concerned, which is the topic of the article, that is probably true. Even though the Ubuntu column included all of the variants, I suspect the majority were using Ubuntu, and most likely, Gnome. Taking his comment out of context so you could slam him and plug Fedora at the same time isn’t exactly fair.
As for his comment about KDE, I suspect he is referring to the release of KDE4. I know that a lot of Gnome users (myself included) are looking forward to seeing what it has to offer.
> He didn’t say that Ubuntu was the major contributor of Gnome. He said that Ubuntu played a major role in Gnome coming out ahead of KDE.
Image Ubuntu using CDE/Motif, can you image CDE/Motif number 1 ?
Gnome played a major role in Gnome coming out ahead of KDE.
> As for his comment about KDE, I suspect he is referring to the release of KDE4.
This is more interesting than Ubuntu blabla.
You’re thinking about this the wrong way. There’s never been anything wrong with Gnome, it’s always been the users choice between Gnome or KDE. They’re both very capable for the desktop. Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution, and the Gnome implementation is excellent. This is why Ubuntu played a large role in putting Gnome ahead of KDE in the survey.
Think of it this way. Internet Explorer leads the market share in web browsers not because it’s the best, but because it’s on the majority of computers out there.
This is just a survey, it shows you what people are using. Nothing less and nothing more.
If it was using CDE/Motif, Ubuntu wouldn’t be very popular in the first place.
You’d better stop a junk flame war about *DE. That is nonsense mates.
Whatever you are using is to be getting a good performance at work. arent you?
i gotta use some KDE and Qt’s application on Gnome DE.
Only onething I hardly use KDE since it starts with the K at first, it makes me confusing anyhow.
cheers
K.
I took that post to mean that the popularity of gnome is in part due to the popularity of ubuntu? Am I missing something here?
Of course.
If you take the 30% that Ubuntu has and subtract it from Gnome then Gnome would only have about 15%.
Even more interestingly, give the 30% to KDE and it has 65% of the desktop share.
Ubuntu basically put Gnome on the map.
though Ubuntu was important for Gnome, I think your numbers are a bit ‘weird statistics’…
I think these numbers simply show how Gnome finally catched up with KDE, the latter not having a release for 2 years now… I think it’s pretty realistic to say the latest Gnome is pretty equivalent to the latest KDE. 2.20 might be a bit more usable, KDE 3.5.x might have a few more features, but overall – each is approximately as good as the other one. Of course, I expect KDE 4 to change that
KDE4 may well catch up because it’s more simplified and Ubuntu people like this, thats why they like GNOME. I wouldn’t expect KDE4 to blitz GNOME, people like what they are used to and have grown fond of GNOME.
2.22 will be much better in regard to artwork and presentation, I hope to make them seen sense with new ideas.
(I hate the fact select-middle-click-to-paste doesn’t work on windows, and the fact I have to use that inferior excuse for an OS in my daily job. sorry about that.)
>I wouldn’t expect KDE4 to blitz GNOME, people like what
>they are used to and have grown fond of GNOME.
Sure, sure. I don’t expect a huge mass-migration to KDE, from Gnome either… Maybe the adoption rate for NEW users might shift back to KDE, though. Either case, FOSS wins.
BTW and I must say, I see more and more work on the basics in Gnome lately. Might be due to all the “three-point-zero” discussions, or due to KDE working on the libs, but whatever causes it – there are some nice infrastructural improvements in the work. /me likes that.
And personally, I don’t care that much about artwork. I mean, Ubuntu imho looks better than Kubuntu, and it has been that way since a long time (Ubuntu and Kubuntu both are the best looking distro’s out there, imho). So that won’t change much. Gnome always had more theme and artists stuff, I never understood why ppl called KDE the eyecandy DE, Gnome looks much better… KDE is more efficient (though maybe slightly harder) to use, THAT’s why I use it. Themes can be changed, anyway.
I’m not sure how much I’d believe the numbers this year… there is a discussion on the dot where some of the KDE guys were keeping an eye on the totals and they saw some odd behavior. One quote from that thread:
Absolutely. I noticed this as well. Gnome and KDE were neck and neck, and then suddenly almost 10,000 votes were added in favour of Gnome and OpenSUSE within a day. There’s no way those are legit.
Also, even though desktoplinux said that they would not allow multiple votes from the same IP, I had no trouble voting again to see the intermediate results, from the same machine (I made sure to vote “other” so as not to skew the results too much
). But it really shows that the results are pretty much useless.
I’m really shocked that there is not more discussion on here about how these results mean just about nothing. Is everyone just blindly believing things they read on the internet these days?
I’m really shocked that there is not more discussion on here about how these results mean just about nothing. Is everyone just blindly believing things they read on the internet these days?
Well, there were some voting irregularities in the last survey about a distro I believe, and they were struck off. I wonder why this wasn’t discussed?
I also find the shares of OpenSuse and Evolution odd as well, because they were both about a distant third last year.
Another thing to point out – the poll asked people not to promote it in distro-specific places like mailing lists. Several un-official distro forums, though, had threads urging people to vote for that distro. http://www.suseforums.net had such a thread and wouldn’t remove it when I suggested that might be a good idea.
The forum moderators at the PCLinuxOS official forum and Ubuntuforums.org did remove such threads when I suggested it, and I removed two such threads from the official Mandriva forums.
So, it’s also worth considering that when looking at the results.
Absolutely. I noticed this as well. Gnome and KDE were neck and neck, and then suddenly almost 10,000 votes were added in favour of Gnome and OpenSUSE within a day. There’s no way those are legit.
Maybe that was the day when the German newsticker “Heise” had a report about this ongoing survey on their front page. German home users are mostly OpenSuse, and OpenSuse defaults to Gnome. So this would be an expected result.
Definitely Ubuntu played a major role (if not THE role) in putting Gnome ahead of KDE. I just can’t wait KDE’s response.
It *might* have played a major role in putting Gnome *usage* ahead of KDE. But this survey is useless to support that conclusion.
Read my thoughts on it here (and btw. I wrote those in a year when KDE won even though I use KDE):
http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=15590&comment_id=155116
http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=15590&comment_id=155152
Edited 2007-08-23 14:51
I am happy that SUSE was a solid second and “Other Debian” a solid third (I didn’t quite understand Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols when he put Freespire, Linspire, Linux Mint, among “Other Debian, aren’t those Ubuntu derivatives?)
I expect an even bigger jump forward when openSUSE 10.3 is released. From what I have seen from Beta 1, it is going to be a killer distro. All problems which have being affected SUSE so far (ugly fonts, package management, slow operation) should be solved.
“All problems which have being affected SUSE so far (ugly fonts, package management, slow operation) should be solved.”
Yeah, boot time and easier installation of packages too (1-click install via some sort ‘a web links). But… it seems like a large undertaking, so I will keep my fingers crossed.
Maybe the Microsoft/Novell idea really ISN’T hurting the SUSE distro much?
Maybe the Microsoft/Novell idea really ISN’T hurting the SUSE distro much?
That’s also the first thing I wondered about when I saw SUSE’s strong showing. I’m leery of it for that reason (not really sure what to think), and I thought everyone else was too. But maybe not.
it never had. the patents issue is of no value. the fact that people want integration is a good thing. It’s an utopy to think that it will be windows only or linux only. But good integration, causing heterogenous networks to exist, is a good thing. Novell did that before the MS deal already with SLES and SLED and now it also shows more and more on openSUSE.
I have been running 10.3B1 and B2 now and so far it’s a killing one!
The thing I noticed about Gnome is there a minimum of apps that come with it–your distribution adds more. KDE, on the hand, is a giant bloated mass. So many apps included in KDE that just sit there, taking up disk space. Sure, you can remove them from the menu but they are still there and there is no way not to install them.
Gnome is just simpler and cleaner. That’s why I switched to it.
O please give it a break. Could we just drop the meaningless KDE vs GNOME wars? They’re both bloated and none of them can do something the other one can’t.
For all the useless “just disk space waiting” KDE apps, GNOME has an alternative, so that’s nether a valid argument
It’s just great to see, that this servey proves that GNU/Linux as a general purpose desktop system is growing in popularity or at least that more GNU/Linux desktop users have participated.
> Could we just drop the meaningless KDE vs GNOME
> wars?
that i agree with.
> They’re both bloated
that just betrays your own ignorance.
> and none of them can do something the other one
> can’t.
but this takes the cake. please compare changelogs for the last 5 years and see how consistently gnome changelogs tend to contain things that kde has had for quite some time. remember the whole printing bruhaha? yeah, that was over things kde did for years that gnome couldn’t. and let’s not even start down the road of amarok, kalzium, marble or many of the other apps that simply do not have real analogs elsewhere in the free software ecosystem.
connivingly ignoring the differences is what causes people to bitch and moan. you say “there is no difference!” well, there is. as soon as people cop to that fact then people can all go their separate ways happy with their personal choices and we can start ending the arguments.
as long as people make stupid statements like “there are no differences!” there will be arguments. accept that your choices are not pan-superior and may even, *gasp*, be inferior in ways but that as your choice it’s what you like and that’s all the reason you need.
in case the above is hard to understand, let me state it more plainly: people such as yourself making comments such as yours do not help. in fact, they are a primary source of the problems you rail against.
> For all the useless “just disk space waiting” KDE
> apps, GNOME has an alternative, so that’s nether a
> valid argument
wow. try living up to your own words before proscribing them to others.
besides being innaccurate, your sentence above doesn’t line up with the message of the rest of your comment. besides being out of line with reality, it also ignores the needs of those who happen to prefer kde.
> general purpose desktop system is growing in
> popularity
i think so.
of course, it could also be that desktoplinux.com is growing in popularity, but i think your call here is right based on other trends that can be seen elsewhere.
KDE members really need a code of conduct like Ubuntu and GNOME has, the most I see you and Superstoned trolling in GNOME related topics the more I dislike KDE, really, you are not going to your beloved project any favor trolling here, all the contrary, you just make your self look bad.
Edited 2007-08-23 13:33
so … you switched desktops just because you think ( clearly i would like to see proof of this ) that kde uses more disk space ….. i fear for the company you have to make decisions for ! lol
whats next ? you will switch computers because of the “on/off” button ?!
[quote] Gnome is just simpler and cleaner. That’s why I switched to it.[/quote]
but of course!!! that is the reason why gnome was dropped of slackware ! clearly slackware is only for giant bloated “mass”, there is no room for simpler and cleaner things in slackware !
LOL
yeah, this shows how it is a matter of perception, not reality. Reality would say KDE is less bloated than Gnome, or equally so at worst. By sharing more functionality, you save memory and disc usage. And it’s usability has been hugely improved since 3.2 (which was horrible, indeed). Yet ppl still consider it bloated because it comes with big libraries (even though that’s efficient thus good) and think it’s unusable.
Certainly, Gnome is ahead in the usability area (except for those area’s where it is simply missing crucial functionality). But both KDE and Gnome are mostly ahead of the competition (MS, that is) in the area of usability…
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Ivory tower, academic reality perhaps. I support business desktops. And in practical reality a business desktop needs Firefox in place of Konqueror, OpenOffice instead of Koffice, Thunderbird instead of Kmail. And often, IE under Crossover, too. The memory savings you refer to quickly get swallowed up by a sea of external libraries.
No one makes you install KOffice with KDE or even KMail. I don’t have either one installed on my OpenSUSE boxes. As for Konq vs. Firefox, you still have Nautilus on your Gnome system for file browsing and you still need Firefox, no? Thought so.
ThawkTH is exactly right, the beauty of FOSS is choice, no one is ramming anything down your throat unlike some other vendors.
Edited 2007-08-23 14:25
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“””
I’m not sure what you are getting at. The previous poster claimed that KDE was lighter due to having more “shared functionality”. My position is that once you have a usable business desktop set up, with all the necessary apps in place, any advantages that pure KDE might have brought with it have been either reduced to irrelevance, or completely lost.
Anyway, to answer your question… I don’t use Firefox under Gnome. I mentioned Firefox since it is what I have to install to make a KDE business desktop do everything required. Under Gnome, I would use Gnome’s own browser, Epiphany, which is quite suitable for a business desktop.
By the way, I run XDMCP servers. So disk space does not concern me. Every installed program is shared by 50+ users. What I care about is memory footprint.
Edited 2007-08-23 14:44
Even if you run these (btw desktop independent, thus ALWAYS waisting memory) apps, you are running a lot of KDE infrastructure which shares memory. So in practice, this works already. Yes, it will improve if KDE 4.1 will use webkit in konqi and ppl will ditch the monstrocity that is firefox. Hopefully the same goes for KOffice/OO.o
Either way, you are right, in practice the diff isn’t huge. Yet it is unfair to call KDE bloathed, imho. It’s actually pretty efficient, and most of it’s inefficiencies are due to lower-level stuff, not KDE.
Pat Volkerding gave up on gnome because of maintenance complexity, _not_ because of gnome complexity. There is a huge difference between bloat on the backstage (maintenance, development for devs, compilation, installation for power users/distro developers), and bloat on the stage (slow response, big memory footprint, weird bugs/crashes, brain-dead UI consistency and usability). One refers to the code itself, the other refers to what the code is doing.
[edit: typo]
Edited 2007-08-23 12:02
and if you cared to read the parent before replying to me , you would read that the parent was refering to “too many apps , and too much disk usage”.
that is much more related to maintenance than what code is doing
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“””
Indeed. To put that in perspective, it took over 3 and a half years from the release of kernel 2.6.0 for Slackware to move from 2.4.x to 2.6.x. Until last month, Slackware was still 2.4.x-based.
What Patrick accomplishes may be impressive for a one man show. But an impressive one man show is still a one man show. His human resources are extremely limited, and KDE definitely comes with less in the way of dependency issues.
Erm. Both things a distro maintainer should ALWAYS take into account when constructing a distro.
Really, they’re just different DE’s. Some people prefer Apples, other Oranges. That’s it. Some people will fly around KDE, know every shortcut, intuitively understand dialog boxes, settings, etc.
Those same people will feel Gnome is clunky, boxy, overly restricted and limited with a lack of configuration/tweaking options.
The same goes the opposite way – Gnome users may find KDE too cluttered and complex, etc.
What the REALITY is most users have used both. Most people aren’t religious about it. It reminds me of the Red vs. Blue talk in the USA that polarizes so many people for no reason. Most are in the middle and have their preferences.
Fighting about it is pointless…
… Not GNOME vs KDE again?
Can’t you just give it a rest?
This is probably the most stupid thing I read the whole week.
I do not know any Linux distribution, or other operating system where KDE is deployed on, where you cannot remove KDE application the way you can remove others, e.g. the package manager.
Actually, why did you install them in the first place?
Let me guess: just to demonstrate that you can artifially create a situation you then can bitch about
I was actually quite surprised to see Gentoo ending so high in the stats. Don’t get me wrong, I like the distribution, just never thought it would be that popular a desktop distribution. Then again I don’t really know the crowd that visits Desktop Linux.
Ubuntu was the first distro that I got serious about. The main reason was because it installed from just one CD or because it was just easier for me to learn, but that’s neither here nor there. I can tell you that I was a huge fan of gnome and virtually a hater of KDE. I still like the layout of gnome, but I have since switched to KDE for the most part.
The main reason I switched to KDE was because it just seemed faster to me. More responsive. Maybe that’s a fallacy, but that’s the way it seemed to me. I’ve since stuck with KDE because I have grown to like the way it works.
From what I’ve seen, it seems KDE vs Gnome in terms of speed depends a bit on what you think is important. KDE apps draw faster (Qt is more efficient than GTK), but Gnome apps start faster due to GCC and the other parts of the stack below the DE being better with C than C++. Wen run from within KDE, KDE apps start almost as fast as Gnome ones, but run from Gnome, KDE apps start very slow. Time will fix this, as things like the dynamic linker get better at C++ code.
Vaughan-Nichols finally wrote the word “PCLinuxOS”!
I ksnapshot the article to document the historical event, though I kind of suspect he had foam at the mouth when writing it.
Looks like more people are using Linux and that is always good and Being that I like Ubuntu its even better if you ask me.
On the other side I find it a little odd that their is still so much in fighting going on. This:
Ubuntu Vs Fedora or KDE Vs Gnome going on, really people we came to Linux in the first place because we didn’t like being stuck with something.
Exactly!
We came because we wanted choice, freedom.
We have choice and freedom.
So stop complaining, and stop trying to force everyone to think/work/play like you do
I’m happy to see how well XFCE is coming up. I recently setuped my system using slackware 12 and XFCE. I always struggle between full blown desktop like Gnome/KDE and simple window manager like AfterStep.
XFCE gives me best of both worlds. Furthermore, XFCE as the best compositor out there, ultra stable with several options so you get great ice candy.
Agreed!
XFCE developers are also working on infrastructure project everyone else benefits from, e.g. zeroinstall, and they are quite active in cross-desktop efforts like freedesktop.org and the Portland project.
In some way they even work as an arbiter between the big two
“e.g. zeroinstall”
ZeroInstall is more a ROX project than an XFCe project.
Interesting results, I have to tell though, numbers based on votes only show the opinion of the specific visitor base. Nevertheless, probably it’s a good estimate of the average user’s opinion.
Regarding the higher numbers for Gnome: I think you owe Ubuntu a great deal of thanks and a wagonload of sixpacks
One personal point: I’m glad to see Debian being the 3rd and Gentoo the 4th, nice.
read here http://prevedgame.ru/in.php?id=20508
I hope this will bring back gnome into Slackware, please Pat
The reason he dumped gnome had nothing to do with its popularity, but with the fact he wasted a huge amount off his time getting it to build. If the Gnomes fix their build system, he might add it back. They should consider CMAKE, imho, though their NIH syndrome won’t allow that, I’m afraid.
Well KDE used the new tools like CMAKE mainly for crossplatform reasons I read(one of the main reasons for using dbus as well).
Personally I dont see the big deal with porting to Windows, fine the applications(which GTK has already) but the desktop i’m not a big fan of waste resources on that to port the entire DE.
KDE uses CMake for various reasons.
The KDE guys said that autotools is too compicated (new developers have to spend too much time just figure it out rather than code something) and CMake offers besser portability (easy integration with Visual Studio and Xcode).
Oh, I see now that there was even a story about that on OSAlert: http://www.osnews.com/story.php/15046/Why-KDE-Moved-From-autotools-…
I’m not sure if GNOME suffers from NIH. GNOME has lots of external dependencies (Mozilla code in Epiphany for example).
KDE OTOH has very few external dependencies and the KDE guys are proud of that (IIRC besides Qt only some XML parser, and some compression libs).
Hmmmm. Gnome indeed does incorporate non-gnome code and libs. But rarely, if ever, KDE technology.
On the other hand, KDE has been depending on Glib for years. While Gnome started projects to clone Amarok and Kalzium, didn’t want to use Arts, cloned DCOP into dbus (which KDE promptly adopted), there are more examples.
Gnome fans don’t like KDE apps, even if they have no alternative (K3B) they rather shiped Ubuntu without a decent CD burn app for years.
Rest assured, of course both sides are guilty of NIH one time or another. But it’s far more prevalent on the Gnome side. KDE works on integrating in Gnome (Klearlooks, automatic button reordering), and integrating gnome apps (GTK-Qt theme, ld_preload hack, option to disable DPI detection), and Qt even supports the Glib event loop so you can use GTK in KDE apps and vice versa. Now give me a few examples from Gnome work in integrating (instead of rewriting) KDE apps in Gnome…
True, the developers are working together more and more on lower level libraries. It might be the community who rather tells ppl ‘LINUX does not support 16bit RAW images’ than admitting only KDE apps like Digikam, Gwenview and Krita can do that…
And it’s not true KDE has ‘very few external dependencies’ -> http://www.kde.org/info/requirements/3.5.php
Yes, many are ‘optional’ which means you CAN compile the basic KDE apps without, but you’ll lose functionality. take poppler, without it you can compile okular, but of course, it can’t view PDF’s…
Hmmmm. Gnome indeed does incorporate non-gnome code and libs. But rarely, if ever, KDE technology.
On the other hand, KDE has been depending on Glib for years. While Gnome started projects to clone Amarok and Kalzium, didn’t want to use Arts, cloned DCOP into dbus (which KDE promptly adopted), there are more examples.
Part of this phenomenon has to do with licensing and partly with the way Qt used to be set up. As to licensing, Gnome has a policy that its libraries be LGPL or some similar license (less restrictive than GPL). Any KDE libraries that linked to Qt would become, in effect, GPL for Gnome. As that would run counter to Gnome’s usual library licensing scheme, linking to Qt (or KDE libraries which linked to Qt) was discouraged. DCOP, if I remember correctly, linked to Qt and serves as a good example.
Of course, the LGPL license of the Gnome platform libraries doesn’t usually present a problem for KDE/Qt under their licenses. You can link to LGPL libraries without changing the license of your own libraries in turn.
As to Qt’s structure up to and including Qt 3.x, my understanding is that there was no library separation between the graphical classes and the non-graphical classes. (I may be wrong about this. Please feel free to correct me. It is also my understanding that QT 4.x has this separation now.) So, if Gnome wanted to link to QString, for example, it would have been linking all of Qt’s graphical toolkit classes as well. Clearly, that would present a problem for Gnome.
On the other hand, GLib contains non-graphical classes and functions. GTK+ was and is separated from GLib. (I.e. GTK+ links to GLib, but GLib doesn’t link to GTK+.) So, KDE/Qt could link to an event loop in GLib without drawing in GTKButton from GTK+, for example.
So, practical considerations made it difficult for Gnome to make use of actual KDE/Qt code. On the other hand, Gnome folks started DBUS and patterned it after DCOP partly because the Gnome folk hoped it could be adopted by the KDE folk as well.
In fact, freedesktop.org was founded in large part by Gnome folks who wanted to find a neutral ground to develop technologies *with* KDE to be used by both desktops. (I remember some of Havoc Pennington’s early emails on both the Gnome and KDE lists about this.) Much of Gnome’s energies for the past three or four years have gone into freedesktop.org projects with the hope that the code could be used by *both* desktops. Some even when out of their way to avoid linking to GLib so that KDE more would be more interested in the libraries. That, I think, is the opposite of NIH.
However, as you say, both desktops have been guilty of NIH in the past, and both undoubtedly will be guilty of it in the future.
Cheers!
True, there are technical reasons for some of these things. But not all KDE technology depends on Qt – take the work by Jos van den Oever on indexing stuff [1]. or Arts, which I mentioned.
Anyway, the work going on on freedesktop.org is great, so let’s be happy and hug
[1] http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/2931
Same for KDE see (3) in this document
http://techbase.kde.org/Policies/Licensing_Policy
DCOP is actually a bad example, since it is a communication protocol and can therefore be implemented with basically any kind of technology that can operate on raw data.
Basically like the Mono and Java implementations of D-Bus are directly implementing the “wire” protocol instead of mapping to the base library.
Indeed. Besides, I’m always a bit annoyed if ppl call the LGPL ‘more permissive’. Of course, the MIT and BSD licenses are also ‘more permissive’ than the GPL. The GPLv3 is less permissive than the GPLv2, even. But these restrictions are there to protect the freedom of the code. BSD code can be used to lock users out of the code, GPLv2 code can be put on a device with restrictions on modifications, and LGPL can be used in proprietary applications without ANY contribution back to the community.
How permissive is that? So saying ‘KDE is less free’ because it is based on the GPLed Qt is BULL. To protect freedom, you have to restrict those who endanger it. Everyone who denies that is just plain stupid.
On the other hand, KDE has been depending on Glib for years. While Gnome started projects to clone Amarok and Kalzium, didn’t want to use Arts, cloned DCOP into dbus (which KDE promptly adopted), there are more examples.
Those are half lies and half trues, GNOME didn’t clone anything, if a project do not meet GNOME guidelines then of course they will but Amarok is as old as the GNOME options, now, KDE apps. are to dependent of Qt and Qt is GPL and since GPL can take code from LGPL easily LGPL can’t take code from GPL, now, the only compatible LGPL are the KDE libraries, wich are to tied to the all KDE libs, that’s not very atractive at least you are creating a KDE application.
And you give to much credit to dcop, dcop was to dependend of KDE and Qt and that was out of the question for GNOME, and dcop was a mess by itself in the code point of view, saying that dbus is a clone of dcop is just a fallacity, dbus is way ahead of dcop, and no, is not real that dbus borrowed a lot from dcop, because dbus is clean, dcop is not, that was made up by KDE developers.
Gnome fans don’t like KDE apps, even if they have no alternative (K3B) they rather shiped Ubuntu without a decent CD burn app for years.
K3B is nice but it makes to much for the basic needs of the users, till now I haven’t found any killer feature K3B has that I need.
Rest assured, of course both sides are guilty of NIH one time or another. But it’s far more prevalent on the Gnome side. KDE works on integrating in Gnome (Klearlooks, automatic button reordering), and integrating gnome apps (GTK-Qt theme, ld_preload hack, option to disable DPI detection), and Qt even supports the Glib event loop so you can use GTK in KDE apps and vice versa. Now give me a few examples from Gnome work in integrating (instead of rewriting) KDE apps in Gnome…
KDE dind’t do all that, all comes with the benefit of using Qt as a toolkit, the Glib Event loop, the button order, the Klearlooks theme, even the dbus libs come with Qt, all was made by TrollTech for Qt, not by KDE developers, the only credit KDE developers get is the Qt-GTK theme engine.
True, the developers are working together more and more on lower level libraries. It might be the community who rather tells ppl ‘LINUX does not support 16bit RAW images’ than admitting only KDE apps like Digikam, Gwenview and Krita can do that…
16 bits, CMYK ain’t nothing than more fallacities to show off, those are good to have but certaintly not necessary.
I really hate to be involded in this GNOME vs KDE war but I really can’t stand the trolling and half trues of KDE members.
Edited 2007-08-23 16:10
I am afraid Thiago will not like hearing that he is no longer a KDE developer.
And I am afraid I do not like to read that I am no longer a KDE developer, just because I created Qt3 bindings for D-Bus.
Cruel world, this is.
Using Qt dbus libs?
or you started them from the ground?
please enlight me.
Edited 2007-08-23 18:46
I don’t use Qt’s D-Bus code, since this is on no way possible to translate to Qt3.
It started with an earlier draft by Harald Fernengel for Qt4, which in itself is very different from the approach Thiago used for the final Qt4 version, but I guess what is left is basically just the design, which is very good IMHO.
Edit: it’s a pretty moot point anyway, because by the same logic D-Bus itself has been purely the work of Redhat, since they happen to be the employer of both Havoc and John.
Edited 2007-08-23 19:37
I’d go with Anda here, he makes a valid point. Technically, Qt and KDE are seperate, but in practice, they are as tied to each other as GTK and Gnome.
He makes a point about the DCOP thing as well, I guess you read that, so I don’t have to reply on that as well.
The K3B thing was mostly a thing of the past, when Gnome/GKT didn’t have a half-decent cd burn app (and I’m not only talking about features like burning a .iso file, but also about working on and with every cd burn device out there). Now there are G apps that are good enough, and if you are happy with basic and (believe you) don’t need anything else, you can do without K3B.
Anyway, lovely comment – ‘half lies half trues’. I did exaggerate, but not lie – it’s more true than you think (and say). Though, I agree, truth is a difficult thing and there’s a thin line between exaggerating and lying. So I guess it depends on one’s world view.
As a MS refugee, I’m pleased to have the choice of desktop enviroments. When starting with Linux four years ago, I only used KDE, however at this point, GNOME works well for me. I have an old laptop that works well with XFCE, or a light install of KDE, of course Fluxbox and Icewm are lighter, but a bit too sparse for me. I’ve read many opinions that the choices in Linux hinders it’s adoption, but having the choices have been what has caused me to abandon MS, as GNU/Linux is so versitle for average users such as myself. I would argue that the many choices available in free software is a benefit for those comming from MS, even for new users. Anyone first using a new OS will find it a bit confusing, Windows included. What I think gets lost in these discussions is the fact that Linux is very user friendly, whether it is with KDE, GNOME or other desktop enviroment. I think too often we become too defensive about Linux, when the “unwashed” complain about a game, video card, or (insert rant here) doesn’t work out of the box. The diversity in Linux is it’s greatest benefit. Where else can you find the wealth and shear number of applications from the very simple to the very complex. We have tools and choices that no other OS offers, including desktop enviroments, distributions, and applications. For the casual computer user that uses the internet, email, and general multimedia and word processing, Linux is by far the easiest OS to use, people just get too hung up over issues that are nothing more than a “tempest in a teapot.”
Edited 2007-08-23 10:13
Several posts here say that Ubuntu put GNOME on the map. You could also think it the another way around: GNOME (and Debian) put Ubuntu on the map.
Ubuntu was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. Shuttleworth employed a bunch of Debian’s top developers and they took Debian’s new easy-to-use installer before Debian proper managed to make use of it. They also took Debian’s big package repository, new packages from Debian Unstable and, of course, Ubuntu took Debian’s excellent package manager.
Then Ubuntu packaged the new Xorg and the GNOME desktop that was just becoming a mature and polished desktop environment. GNOME had a good set of desktop applications (especially if you add some third party applications, like Openoffice and Firefox) and when Ubuntu was first started, GNOME was just getting some advanced features, like the automatic mounting of removable media.
Ubuntu developers did a good job in packaging the right components of the Free and Open Source Software but they were also extremely lucky with their timing. Now that also Debian has an easy installer and relatively up-to-date packages (including GNOME with the auto-mounting of removable media), Ubuntu doesn’t look that special any more.
Popularity has a kind of snowball effect — when new people try GNU/Linux, they pick almost without exception the flavour that seems to be the most popular at the moment. But, in the long run, people also like to taste some other available flavours.
The auto-mounting of removable media what you speak of has been in Debain/GNOME for quiet a while now, it’s got nothing to do with the timing of Ubuntu. Ubuntu polished up for the desktop with there own features, Live cd installer from the desktop, migration assistant, Restricted drivers manager, Add/Remove manager.
Debian on the other hand just used the default gnome with their package manager thrown in. Debain may have the more “stable” packages but polishing up the latest release it where it’s at and thats Ubuntu.
Ubuntu polished up for the desktop with there own features, Live cd installer from the desktop, migration assistant, Restricted drivers manager, Add/Remove manager.
Hmm… the “Add/Remove manager” was already included in the early Ubuntu releases, IIRC, but the rest of the features you talk about are new additions that didn’t exist when Ubuntu created its popularity. The early Ubuntu releases used the debian-installer that had been developed for the Debian Sarge release, and back in those days Ubuntu’s installer and the live-cd came on separate disks.
Back then, Ubuntu’s “desktop polish” consisted mainly of a recognizable brown-yellow theme and a splash screen during the system boot and shutdown. The rest of the perceived Ubuntu “polish” came from the default GNOME features.
The majority of Ubuntu users use Gnome and this poll was posted on the Ubuntu forums.
The majority of Suse users use KDE and this poll wasn’t posted on OpenSuse or KDE forums.
That may not explain everything, but it explains a lot.
By the way, I think that both Ubuntu, Mandriva and Opensuse are doing lots for desktop linux.
well , yeah , you are right !
i use openSuse ( after 4 , 5 years of gentooing , lots of hate and love there ) and i use kde !
and my vote isnt there
http://dot.kde.org/1187268289/
I wasn’t aware of this. Thanks for pointing it out. Do realize that the posting on dot.kde.org about the poll was very controversial.
I started using Linux nearly 8 years ago and everyone still argues over the same stuff…gnome vs kde, vi vs emacs etc…haha, it will never grow old. Anyway to throw my .02 in, I’m unsure of the newbs who actually spout random stuff about kde being bloated know this but you do know KDE is broken into various packages, right? Of course you could just do apt-get install kde and have it install EVERYTHING but there is kdecore, multimedia, games etc just fyi. I was also a long time gnome fan back in the 1.x days…2.x just started getting strange though…one release they would add in a menu editor then take it out another…I mean wtf is that about? Then they put in some crappy xscreensaver replacement, yes I know it can be changed but that is beside the point. GNOME just got dumbed down while KDE and its applications imho got a lot better. I have no doubts KDE4 will be brilliant. Oh and btw Debian ++ =)
Edited 2007-08-23 14:31
Didn’t the article mention something about most of the traffic coming from digg and another german site. Well has anyone ever been to the linux section on digg…It’s the home away from home for Ubuntu people..seriously…it’s more or less an extension of Ubuntuforums and always has been.
A point that is very overlooked; it’s even a running joke on digg that the most inconsequential Ubuntu links are automatically dugg up.
I talked to three people I know that use linux, and they’re all running openSUSE with KDE. If I ignore the fact that the survey sample is statistically irrelevant, I can post an announcement claiming Suse and KDE have achieved 100% market share.
There’s now 4 kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics and Web Surveys.
I personally prefer XFCE to Gnome, and Gnome to KDE, and KDE to other DEs, but what really shits me is that different applications behave and look different depending on the DE. Applications should be built on an API which will work properly and consistently regardless of DE, and this whole DE war in the name of choice is a big factor in the slow rate of Linux uptake. It is bad enough that few commercial apps have Linux versions, but it is worse still when the vast array of native Linux apps have wildly different behaviour depending on the DE.
Applications should integrate seamlessly into whichever DE is being used.
In any case, I have big reservations about the merits of separating the GUI (the desktop environment) form the underlying OS in a desktop system. Having a separate DE makes perfect sense if the machine is being used as a server, but only creates more problems than it solves on a desktop machine. At the very least, the DE and the X server should be merged and integrated.
Applications should be built on an API which will work properly and consistently regardless of DE…
Well that’s just a paradox, because the API is the DE.
And that is the problem. The API should sit underneath the DE. Libraries should be shared at the OS level or not at all.