Re: KDE vs GNOME war

I dont know much about the war between GNOME nd KDE ...but eventually it is
giving (like everything else in LINUX) end users choice!. and it is what we
practice on that really matters...i am relatively new so i started off in
GNOME... now i find working with GNOME fine! than KDE and I know one person
who have been using KDE for a long time ...and he likes to be in KDE(even
when the default of many distro now is GNOME)
and I think UBUNTU has not turned off that feature of Nautilus but thy have
made a hack to it that previous windows auto-closes when new ones are
opened......................

regards,
Anoop

On 10/8/05, Tinku Sampath <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> The great battle between the two most popular ( sorry.... if my word hurt
> any one whose use other lightweight desktops ...) KDE and GNOME (i am not
> the one who can decide which one is better ... ) continues. Here i am not
> concerned about spread the war to this mailing list. But we together can
> discuss the reasons behind it and conclude with individuals comments.
>
> GNU/Linux is taking small steps.. or creeping... towards desktop users. As
> far as the desktop environments, which are built upon Xwindow system, are
> concerned, they are gaining popularity and their look and feel and also the
> performance are improving with each new releases. Users in the free software
> will have so many choices. From hundreds of GNU/Linux distributions to
> admirable no. of quality desktops... the same things happens in the field of
> applications.
>
> But what is there for the fresh users to the world of GNU/Linux?.
> Initially they will be confused in choosing a GNU/Linux distribution at
> first which satisfies their requirements. The next difficult thing will be
> finding the application which will satisfy their day to day work they
> continued with other proprietary systems. But the desktop environments are
> the most important instances which will stick the users with GNU/Linux. So
> each desktop project has to be working to make the things done with
> easiness. But something strange in happening for past few months. The fight
> between KDE and GNOME is there from the beginning of the GNOME project which
> was started in protesting in the change of license of Trolltech Qt
> development tool, tool to develop KDE, to proprietary. But later Trolltech
> changed its license in to a dual license scheme which allows free use of qt
> for the applications released under GNU GPL V2.0. But the GNOME project
> continued and also turned as desktop environment favored by geeks and
> developers (may be for new users!). A lot of companies like Novell, Sun, Red
> Hat etc started supporting GNOME... and few of the distributions changed
> their default desktop environment in to GNOME from KDE.. But majorities are
> still staying with KDE giving a second rank to the GNOME. But the fight
> between these two environments are now in to public. This is visible if you
> go through previous few issues of Tux Magazine (http://www.tuxmagazine.com
> ) <http://www.tuxmagazine.com/>.
>
> As a newbie GNU/Linux magazine, Tux Magazine's publishers make things
> going in KDE way. That means they are answering basic queries considering
> KDE as most users working environment. They may be right since all of we
> admit the fact that majority are KDE users than those who use GNOME. Since
> KDE gives a polished look like other proprietary systems (eg: Mac OS) and it
> is highly customizable than any other operating desktop in the world.
> Additions to this it provides quality applications of almost all kind. The
> KDE factor was also visible in the 2005 READER'S CHOICE AWARDS conducted by
> the magazine vendors on August. (Refer September 2005 issue of Tux
> Magazine).
>
> A lots of letters are coming to include more GNOME flavor equal to that of
> KDE. But the publishers are reluctant to give more recognition to GNOME.
> They continue to reply why they are strictly following KDE by showing only
> the user base. There is section called Q&A with Mango Parfait where newbies
> can ask Mango Parfait, a young woman (or may be acting like a young woman),
> for help. But her comments and way of convincing is not liked by a few users
> (or most?.. I can't say.. But i like her presentation... ). After hundreds
> of request from GNOME followers, finally she burst flames towards GNOME in
> the September issue of Q&A section. Her few comments are as follows ...
>
> *" Hint to GNOME developers: some of GNOME is okay, but most of it works
> like you hate users. Some of GNOME runs like you think users are too stupid
> to wipe themselves. What do you do for these users? You do not make GNOME
> easy. You just take away their toilet paper and force users to wipe
> themselves your way. Some of GNOME runs like you want users to suffer. The
> file open and save dialog is worse than bamboo shoots under fingernails.
> Better to call Nautilus an attack from space invaders than a spacial file
> manager. Here is my advice. Make your monkey-brain environment a
> configuration option if you want to keep using GNOME your way. The rest of
> us are not monkeys. Give us a default desktop for humans. If you keep having
> no clue, less and less people will use GNOME, and the only GNOME users will
> be monkey-brain GNOME developers. "*
>
> But the request for GNOME coverage continues. One of the user's comment is
> as follows ...
>
> *" More GNOME Coverage. I read the latest TUX today, and somebody asked
> the same question as me. Why not more GNOME coverage? Your response was that
> KDE is the preference of most new users. What distro are they using? Because
> in another breath, you heartily recommend Fedora, which uses GNOME as its
> standard desktop. And that's not even mentioning the popularity of Ubuntu. -
> Robert Holmes "
>
> *After lots of protest against magazines coverage and Mango's comments,
> Tux publisher NICHOLAS PETRELEY addressed readers with more specific reasons
> for their GNOME hate. A few of his comments from the P2P column of this
> moth's Tux...
>
> " *What bothers me is not GNOME, but that we critics of GNOME have been
> accused of disliking GNOME simply because we don't understand it. I don't
> think that's the case, but if we really don't understand it, shouldn't that
> tell you something? Why wouldn't we understand it? Could it be because GNOME
> is one of the most unintuitive, inconsistent desktop environments ever
> designed? Could it be because GNOME keeps undergoing dramatic changes in its
> philosophy toward how a desktop should behave?...
>
> Indeed, the frequent overhauls to the philosophical approach to how a
> desktop should behave puts GNOME evangelists and defenders in a very awkward
> position. Take Nautilus, the file manager, for example. "It's great because
> it does everything." When GNOME dumped the buggy Midnight Commander file
> manager in favor of the original version of Nautilus, the hype was all about
> how Nautilus would be a Swiss Army knife for GNOME. It was a file manager,
> browser, system administration tool, package manager and more. It was
> considered the core component of GNOME. See
> http://www.businesswire.com/webbox/ bw.032001/210790539.htm for a sample
> press release in 2001. "It's great because it's so simple and does only
> basic tasks." Later, GNOME developers decided to rip out most of the
> features in Nautilus and strip it down to basics for the benefit of speed
> and ease of use. But if you read the press release mentioned above, the
> original point of making Nautilus do everything imaginable was for the
> benefit of "ease of use". So which approach actually made GNOME easier to
> use?
>
>
> "It's great because it has a revolutionary new spatial design." Then
> Nautilus morphed into a "spatial" file manager. This "spatial" file manager
> was supposedly revolutionary, although anyone who has used OS/2 knows
> better. The idea was that every folder should have its own size and place on
> the desktop, which gives that folder a unique "spatial identity". Every time
> you opened a folder, that folder would appear in the same position and size
> on the desktop you had used the
> last time you visited that folder. Unfortunately, whenever you open a new
> folder, the previous folder window remains on screen. As you navigate deeper
> through subfolders, your screen becomes cluttered with open windows. When I
> complained to a GNOME advocate about this behavior, his response was that I
> could change the default behavior of Nautilus back to the way it used to
> work by changing a registry setting. A registry setting? That's GNOME's idea
> of ease of use?
> Eventually the Nautilus developers relented and added a preferences option
> to choose between the new "spatial" behavior and the old explorer version of
> Nautilus. "It's great because it's not spatial anymore." Now I've downloaded
> and installed the preview of Ubuntu 5.1, which includes the latest version
> of
> GNOME. I assume that GNOME still makes the "spatial" behavior of Nautilus
> the default behavior. I don't know. But Ubuntu makes Nautilus default to an
> explorer mode that works similarly to prior versions of Nautilus. This
> raises the question, if the "spatial" approach to file management was so
> terrific and simply misunderstood and underappreciated, why did the Ubuntu
> team decide not to use it by default? I'd applaud the change, but the new
> Nautilus explorer mode includes one of the most abominable features ever
> conceived, ostensibly "borrowed" from the hideous GNOME file picker. In one
> of the toolbars, you'll see a back arrow, after which buttons appear as you
> navigate through folders. Each button represents a folder, a subfolder, a
> sub-subfolder and so on, as a history of where you've been. If you go back
> one step, it keeps the extra button there, in case you want to go forward
> again. Why buttons are supposed to represent folders is a mystery to me. But
> here's a bigger mystery. If you navigate deep enough, there's no room for
> all the buttons, so a scroller appears. A scroller for buttons? Now that's
> revolutionary. This is especially a problem with the file picker, where
> there's even less space for the buttons. Worse, I still haven't figured out
> why the back arrow I mentioned earlier creates two buttons called home and
> then changes into an icon that, if clicked, takes me to the top level of the
> entire filesystem. This
> is intuitive? Here's the point. GNOME defenders can rant all they want
> about how critics simply misunderstand it. The problem illustrated by the
> crazy history of Nautilus is that there's no "it" to misunderstand. If "it"
> is so great, why does "it" keep going through so many radical changes in
> philosophy? I have sympathy for longtime GNOME advocates because they've had
> to defend both the original designs and the contradictory overhauls as being
> the best approach..... *"
>
> ... and the publisher concludes as follows....
>
> " *So, many of the people who complain that we are obsessed with KDE and
> never deal with GNOME, obviously aren't reading TUX. Has someone told GNOME
> fans and evangelists to spam us with these letters? I don't know. But if so,
> it's time to call off your dogs. TUX will become a GNOME-focused magazine
> the day GNOME users vastly outnumber KDE users. So if you GNOME fans want
> more GNOME coverage, I suggest you improve GNOME first. Until then, we'll
> continue to publish according to the balance that we believe serves our
> readers best.* "
>
>
> What is happening every where?. Are you coming to my point?. The fight
> continues and have reached at a stage that must be seriously considered by
> every member of the Free Software community. I have a doubt. If GNOME is not
> great enough ( I am extensive KDE user from the beginning... No doubt in
> it... I tried GNOME at each of its release.. But i am not satisfied a little
> bit about it in considering as my desktop... I can't see any of my friends
> using GNOME as their desktop... I can see a few other people who are newbie
> to GNU/Linux using GNOME since most of the beginners start with Fedora and
> go for a personal desktop installation where the Red Hat guys continues to
> deselect KDE from their install section as default... Fact that, most of
> them don't know there is a feature rich polished alternate desktop named KDE
> ...), then why it can't be improved?. I don't know whether you know this
> fact. The birth of Mandrakelinux ( now Mandriva Linux) is a result of this
> war which started long ago when Red Hat removed KDE from their distribution
> supporting only GNOME. But after the popularity of Mandrakelinux, Red Hat
> was pressurised to include KDE with their distro but still GNOME as default.
> Even nowadays Red Hat is showing their excessive discrimination towards KDE.
> Most people ( including me ) are away from Fedora due to this attitude. Is
> GNOME is preferred since GTK is purely under GNU GPL?.
>
> I can see two types of outcome from this fight...
>
> Positive factor : This fight may create a competing environment in FOSS
> field and may result in the improvement and enhancements of each of the
> desktops.
> Negative factor: Rather than concentrating in the spread of GNU/Linux and
> FOSS across the world, rather than fighting against those actions that will
> wipe out the freedom in software field, this can make the community
> development to a debate and result in a creepy progress for free software
> revolution.
>
> What you think about all these? Comments please....
>
> - Tinku Sampath
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