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  • Originally posted by BlackStar View Post
    Both Gnome and KDE are usable by an experienced user. However, Gnome is also usable by an inexperienced user, while KDE tends to be too confusing (judging from experiements on my immediate family).
    That actually exactly the opposite of what the local LUG group found here. They were doing one of their install-a-thons and found completely new users who have never used linux found KDE a more comfortable de. IIRC they used Ubuntu for Gnome and openSUSE for KDE.

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    • Originally posted by BlackStar View Post
      No, KDE is not stable. Not just my opinion.
      For me it's rock stable, but there are different builds.

      Clear usability guidelines means this: http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/stable/
      Thanks.

      Both Gnome and KDE are usable by an experienced user. However, Gnome is also usable by an inexperienced user, while KDE tends to be too confusing (judging from experiements on my immediate family).
      KDE is very easy to use 14 year old girl have no problems with it (also experience from family ).

      KDE is not bad, but it doesn't really offer anything Gnome doesn't already do better. Name any app! Chances are you'll find a better alternative built on the Gnome stack (Firefox, Banshee, Brasero, Gnome Do, OpenOffice, Chromium, ...)
      K3b, Amarok, Konqueror, Kate, Octave and few more. However, it depends on taste. I used Brasero before instead of K3b (when there was only qt3 libs version) and I like it. Of course, I use Open Office and Firefox, because it's hard to find good alternatives right now.
      Last edited by kraftman; 18 August 2009, 09:02 AM.

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      • I find Arora promising, but you need a very recent version of Qt-webkit if you want to use plugins like Flash.

        Once that is sorted, I might consider switching from Konqueror, after 7 years or so.

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        • Originally posted by pingufunkybeat View Post
          Firefox and OpenOffice are not, in any way, built on the GNOME stack. They both have their own internals and only do the drawing using GTK. In fact, OpenOffice has KDE integration that is the same as the GNOME integration, it's as much a KDE app as it is a GNOME app.
          I never claimed either was a Gnome app. As you admit, they *are* using GTK, a part of the Gnome stack - which proves my point. The fact that OpenOffice also integrates with KDE is an interesting tidbit that I wasn't aware of - scratch that from the list, if you will.

          Originally posted by pingufunkybeat View Post
          I'll also name Krunner.

          It's THE killer app.
          From a quick glance, it looks like a poor-man's imitation of Gnome Do. Which indeed is THE killer app.

          That said, most application preferences are indeed based on familiarity and other subjective features. For instance, I think the Amarok interface looks ugly (the overlayed stop, play, next, previous buttons) and clunky (too busy) compared to Banshee. Others think its the height of interface design - fine by me.

          Originally posted by kraftman
          KDE is very easy to use 14 year old girl have no problems with it (also experience from family ).
          Nice. My 11 (now 12) year old cousin loved Gnome on first sight. It was an enlightening exprerience watching him learn his way around an unfamiliar system (damn, these guys have it too easy nowadays - we grew up on the commandline, where having the "up" key rewind the command buffer was considered a killer feature).

          Edit:
          Originally posted by deanjo
          That actually exactly the opposite of what the local LUG group found here. They were doing one of their install-a-thons and found completely new users who have never used linux found KDE a more comfortable de. IIRC they used Ubuntu for Gnome and openSUSE for KDE.
          I'd be uncomfortable too, if I my first encounter with Linux sported an orange-and-shit-brown interface. I also disagree with the default two-panel layout in Gnome, but I find the 40px+ taskbar on KDE an even worse eyesore.
          Last edited by BlackStar; 18 August 2009, 09:17 AM.

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          • Originally posted by BlackStar View Post
            ...they *are* using GTK, a part of the Gnome stack...
            Were I not in a library, I'd be laughing really hard right now.

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            • Originally posted by blackstar
              From a quick glance, it looks like a poor-man's imitation of Gnome Do. Which indeed is THE killer app.
              I guess you're new to this, no offense. Gnome Do's oldest release is from 2008. KRunner has existed since the earliest KDE versions. It was doing all the cool things (dictionary lookups, formulas, google queries) since KDE2 days, and has had the funky eyecandy plasma form since the early KDE4 alphas.

              It is certainly not the one doing the imitating.

              That said, most application preferences are indeed based on familiarity and other subjective features. For instance, I think the Amarok interface looks ugly (the overlayed stop, play, next, previous buttons) and clunky (too busy) compared to Banshee. Others think its the height of interface design - fine by me.
              Yes, but the cool thing about Amarok is that you never look at it. It manages your collection, you drag a couple of albums (or a dynamic playlist or whatnot) over to the playlist and you close it, and it plays things and you control it using shortcuts. I'm sure that there are plenty of other programs that do this, but I don't know any that are as good at managing huge collections for you.

              I never claimed either was a Gnome app. As you admit, they *are* using GTK, a part of the Gnome stack - which proves my point.
              This is a very strange argument.

              GTK is much older than GNOME. It is a part of the "GNOME stack" like X11 is a part of the "GNOME stack". This is like saying that Skype is a KDE app, or that it uses the "KDE stack" just because it is based on Qt.

              Furthermore, neither OpenOffice nor Firefox are based on GTK. OpenOffice uses VCL, a proprietary widget library, and Firefox uses XUL. The only thing they use GTK for is to do the actual drawing, and they only do this on Linux (not on Windows or Mac). In fact, there is a Qt frontend for OpenOffice (for KDE3), and there was a Qt frontend for Firefox, but now that Webkit is integrated into Qt, nobody really cares about that.

              GTK is simply a widget library. GNOME is a project trying to create a comprehensive desktop environment based on this library. If everybody simply uses GTK and ignores all the GNOME additions, that is a very strong statement.

              In contrast, most Qt-based applications make full use of KDE features. There are pure Qt applications around (SMPlayer, Mnemosyne, VLC, Arora, etc.), but the majority of the Qt-based apps take advantage of the KDE extensions. Because they are easy to add and useful.

              That's my point. GTK is good software (though I dislike OO programming in pure C), and many of the extensions (like Pango and the GNOME VFS etc) are decent, but a typical GNOME desktop just seems like a random collection of unrelated programs that all use non-GNOME technology of their own. And this is not what I expect a desktop environment to be like.
              Last edited by pingufunkybeat; 18 August 2009, 10:04 AM.

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              • Originally posted by pingufunkybeat View Post
                I guess you're new to this, no offense. Gnome Do's oldest release is from 2008. KRunner has existed since the earliest KDE versions. It was doing all the cool things (dictionary lookups, formulas, google queries) since KDE2 days, and has had the funky eyecandy plasma form since the early KDE4 alphas.
                Not to mention Katapult back in the 3.5 days...

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                • KDe is eeasy enough to be used by 5 year olds. So the argument 'kde is too hard' is bogus at best.

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                  • Originally posted by BlackStar View Post
                    Edit:

                    I'd be uncomfortable too, if I my first encounter with Linux sported an orange-and-shit-brown interface. I also disagree with the default two-panel layout in Gnome, but I find the 40px+ taskbar on KDE an even worse eyesore.
                    Color is hardly the deciding factor on a desktop. Everybody had ample time to test de's and distro's. This annual install-a-thon is done at a community yard sale where everybody gets rid of their old systems and such. There were more distro's and de's on display it just turned out that those two tended to be the trend of choice.

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                    • Originally posted by pingufunkybeat View Post
                      I guess you're new to this, no offense. Gnome Do's oldest release is from 2008. KRunner has existed since the earliest KDE versions. It was doing all the cool things (dictionary lookups, formulas, google queries) since KDE2 days, and has had the funky eyecandy plasma form since the early KDE4 alphas.

                      It is certainly not the one doing the imitating.


                      Yes, but the cool thing about Amarok is that you never look at it. It manages your collection, you drag a couple of albums (or a dynamic playlist or whatnot) over to the playlist and you close it, and it plays things and you control it using shortcuts. I'm sure that there are plenty of other programs that do this, but I don't know any that are as good at managing huge collections for you.


                      This is a very strange argument.

                      GTK is much older than GNOME. It is a part of the "GNOME stack" like X11 is a part of the "GNOME stack". This is like saying that Skype is a KDE app, or that it uses the "KDE stack" just because it is based on Qt.

                      Furthermore, neither OpenOffice nor Firefox are based on GTK. OpenOffice uses VCL, a proprietary widget library, and Firefox uses XUL. The only thing they use GTK for is to do the actual drawing, and they only do this on Linux (not on Windows or Mac). In fact, there is a Qt frontend for OpenOffice (for KDE3), and there was a Qt frontend for Firefox, but now that Webkit is integrated into Qt, nobody really cares about that.

                      GTK is simply a widget library. GNOME is a project trying to create a comprehensive desktop environment based on this library. If everybody simply uses GTK and ignores all the GNOME additions, that is a very strong statement.

                      In contrast, most Qt-based applications make full use of KDE features. There are pure Qt applications around (SMPlayer, Mnemosyne, VLC, Arora, etc.), but the majority of the Qt-based apps take advantage of the KDE extensions. Because they are easy to add and useful.

                      That's my point. GTK is good software (though I dislike OO programming in pure C), and many of the extensions (like Pango and the GNOME VFS etc) are decent, but a typical GNOME desktop just seems like a random collection of unrelated programs that all use non-GNOME technology of their own. And this is not what I expect a desktop environment to be like.
                      You're still getting hung up on project names. Who cares about the name? GNOME apps use all kinds of libraries that most GNOME apps use. Some of them are part of the GNOME project, some aren't. They all use stuff that they need.

                      You say Gstreamer is not part of GNOME. Yet any GNOME app that wants to do some multimedia, uses Gstreamer to do that. Even whole widgets are reused. Gedit, Anjuta, Geany use the terminal from Gnome Terminal. Any app that deals with code uses Gedit's text editor. Any app with a file browsing component uses Nautilus' file browsing. Kioslaves? Gvfs. Dcop? Dbus (which KDE now uses too). Just like KDE, GNOME will use WebKit to do web content.

                      And as for GTK: it is developed by GNOME developers and its development infrastructure is provided by gnome.org. I see a very strong connection between GTK and GNOME.
                      Last edited by Remco; 18 August 2009, 11:05 AM.

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