KDE vs GNOME

[energyman]

messed up? really?

http://omploader.org/vMjV2dg

how could it be more straightforward?

Gnome is only 'default' in fedora and debian for historic reasons, ubuntu because ubuntu is a parasite and SLED because of the Ximian assholes at Novell who destroyed good old suse.

For some reason the majority of opensuse users want KDE as default back.
For some reason the majority of votes in this poll went to KDE
For some reason slackware dropped gnome because it was not maintainable

oh - and arch? Really bad example. Arch can't even get versioning right. Which makes one wonder what else they fuck up.

And Kubuntu's kde is KNOWN for being broken. Broken by the kubuntu devs who really fucked it up.

[energyman]

oh - the reason debian and redhat choose gnome back then (btw, created to become an exact windows copy), was the qt licence.

If debian or redhat had any balls left, they would have to change to KDE today, because from a pure 'free' POV KDE and Qt are 'more free' than gtk and gnome.

And don't even get started with MONO crap creeping in. A simple notes application needs MONO in gnome. Completly and utterly fucked up.

[Remco]

I have used KDE 4 on Ubuntu 9.04 for a month now. I did this because I need to be up to date on the alternatives to GNOME. And because of the whole Mono disaster.

Well, I'm going back. It's just not ready:

• KOffice is vastly incomplete and full of bugs. I now use OOo.
• Konqueror crashes, is slow, and incompatible with some sites. I now use Firefox.
• No Qt video player streams from an sftp connection. It copies the video to /tmp.
• Dragon Player doesn't display video time and doesn't queue files. I now use VLC, but Totem would do just fine, and would probably even stream files through gvfs.
• Amarok's UI sucks. Rhythmbox doesn't get in the way.
• Kopete is WEIRD. Offline messages are all separate pages. Contact list is either cluttered or bare. Let's just use Pidgin.
• Every Qt theme gets on my nerves. I use the GTK theme engine and Tango icons.
• I need a GIMP replacement. I just use GIMP.
• Kwin is really nice. Almost everything works better than Metacity and Compiz. But it doesn't support GIMP's utility windows.
• The search in K-menu is great, but app browsing sucks.
• Settings are all over the place.
• I need Synaptic.
• GTK apps don't look right in KDE. Font rendering is different.
• GTK apps don't work correctly in KDE. They don't use KWallet. They don't use Phonon. They don't use the KDE file chooser.

So, I'll be going back to good old GNOME Ubuntu soon. I'll just fill in GNOME in the poll, because the only things from KDE I'm using are Kwin and Plasma. Of Plasma, I only use the default panel.

If all these problems were fixed, would I go back to KDE? I would obviously check if out. But KDE is just like GNOME, and just like the Windows GUI. It is the same idea of a desktop, windows, and a panel or two. Why would I choose KDE over GNOME, or GNOME over KDE? It's really just the same thing.

I'm interested in GNOME 3's GnomeShell idea. That changes the idea of the desktop. If either KDE or GNOME implements some tiling window manager functionality, I'd be interested in that too. Windows 7 does this in a very limited way, and I like it.

Edit:
One thing I really like about KDE is Dolphin. It has an integrated terminal that cds to the directory you're viewing. If it would follow me through sftp connections, it would be perfect.

[energyman]

*so? use oo. OO has nothing to do with gnome or kde
*konqueror works fine here. But I don't use crabuntu. Firefox on the other hand is a bloated, slow *monster with no funtionality at all.
*vlc
*amarok rocks. The gui can be adapted
*kopete works well. You can configure it the way you want.
*tango is butt ugly. GTK themes are very, very slow
*gimp has nothing to do with gnome or kde
*strange, it seems to work here
*well.. yeah. Sometimes
*settings are where they belong, in the settings submenu.
*you 'need' synaptic?
*newsflash, gtk apps are broken by design. blame gtk apps. Not kde
* newsflash, gtk apps are broken by design, blame gtk apps. Not kde

try a distribution that does not break KDE.

[BlackStar]

oh - and arch? Really bad example. Arch can't even get versioning right. Which makes one wonder what else they fuck up.

You, sir, are sprouting nonsense. Go check your head or something.

@Remco: you've summed things up pretty well. I went back to Gnome for pretty much the same reasons.

Gnome may not be the most innovative thing in the world, but it *works* and it works well. Plus, it can become very beautiful if you start using applications like Gnome Do.

[monraaf]

I also have tried KDE a couple of times, including the 4 series, but I found it like totally not usable. Besides that I think KDE looks like a cheap fisher-price toy, so I can see why it appeals to a certain crowd .

[Wyatt]

Can someone tell me why, oh why people feel that they simply must make the transition from KDE 3.5 to KDE 4.x? They're not the same thing; how hard can this really be to understand?

I am still using 3.5. I like 3.5. I like 4.x, too. When the time comes, and the video driver thing evens out a little, I'll give KDE 4 another shot (I'm about due, come to think of it). If it doesn't suit me, I'll keep using 3.5. Even if it is unmaintained, it still stands head and shoulders over the "alternative."

Personally, I would use Gnome if I wanted to be continually irritated by poor interface design decisions and a frustrating lack of ability to configure things. If I absolutely had to have something GTK based out of some misguided perception of things being "more free," I'd use the far superior XFCE.

Also, Fluxbox is awesome.

Now, can we please get away from this "OMG KDE4 is actually a major version jump and a lot of things are actually different, thus I've inexplicably forgotten everything I've ever learned about using desktop user interfaces like the average Windows user confronted with the daunting task of using a Linux GUI! To fix this monumental problem, I will now take two steps back and use Gnome, screaming silently at the top of my lungs for the whole world to do the same, because obviously everyone has the same needs of their software as me" thing? Frankly, it's a little insulting. It was old a year ago, and that it still crops up hurts my brain like nobody's business.

[Remco]

*so? use oo. OO has nothing to do with gnome or kde
*konqueror works fine here. But I don't use crabuntu. Firefox on the other hand is a bloated, slow *monster with no funtionality at all.
*vlc
*amarok rocks. The gui can be adapted
*kopete works well. You can configure it the way you want.
*tango is butt ugly. GTK themes are very, very slow
*gimp has nothing to do with gnome or kde
*strange, it seems to work here
*well.. yeah. Sometimes
*settings are where they belong, in the settings submenu.
*you 'need' synaptic?
*newsflash, gtk apps are broken by design. blame gtk apps. Not kde
* newsflash, gtk apps are broken by design, blame gtk apps. Not kde

Some apps like OOo or Gimp may not have something to do with GNOME or KDE, but I use OOo over KOffice, so that reduces the "amount of KDE" I use. And OOo's integration with KDE is even worse than its integration with GNOME. I really wanted to like KOffice, because I don't really like OOo, but it's just not ready for use.

If I use GNOME, I don't need any Qt app to be functional. Some Qt apps may be better, such as Dolphin and K3b, but the alternatives are at least 'good enough'. OK, I once needed KGeography to compete with my friend at geography skills, but that's not a very critical app for me.

If I use KDE, I need some apps that don't have good replacements, such as Gimp and Firefox. That's why I need perfect integration of GTK into KDE. It may be GTK's fault that those apps don't work well in KDE, but it's KDE's fault that I need those apps at all.

Keep in mind that I really used KDE-only apps for about a week. But it was just not sustainable. Konqueror would get messed up with Gmail, blow up in memory usage and eventually crash. Because neither Dragon Player nor VLC would stream, I would have to wait half an hour before a high definition video would start playing. I would have to do my GIMP work in Krita.

GIMP's utility windows don't work in Kwin. That's impossible. You may think they work because they show up, but they also show up in the task bar, which is wrong. It clutters the task bar (I use 3 utility windows, so that's 3 windows that I don't need).

I need Synaptic, because KDE's package manager can't fix the more advanced dependency problems. If a broken package installation has messed things up, you need Synaptic to repair the damage. Granted, this doesn't happen every day.

After a month, I don't use much of KDE anymore. I use Kate for my dev work, but since that's practically the same program as Gedit, I don't feel that this is why I use KDE. I use Kwin and Plasma, but I don't really need them either. I use Dolphin, which is the best thing of KDE because of its terminal integration. I may use that instead of Nautilus when I switch to GNOME. A switch, by the way, that consists of replacing kwin with metacity and plasma with gnome-panel.

try a distribution that does not break KDE.

All these problems can't be created by Ubuntu. Many features are just lacking. I'll agree that some brokenness may be a configuration problem, but missing features and missing applications aren't.

[Panix]

kopete works very well in kde4. /me is using it every freaking day.

So - whom to blame? your distro or you?

Are you the authority on Kopete then?

What about the people who posted on the KDE forums having problems with Kopete? Are they to blame, too?



I don't know who is to blame but it suddenly stopped working a while back. Some update with a bug? I dunno...

[Panix]

Oh, btw, do you guys like Kaffeine or K3b at all? They are my favourite KDE applications. I'll give energyman that (out of KDE apps, that I think are better than comparable or equivalent Gnome apps). However, I haven't tried the comparable Gnome apps but I have read of Gnome users concede that the similar KDE apps are pretty good or even better.

I have mixed feelings about Amarok. I have had loads of problems with MTP formats but the standard USB or USB MSC/UMS format works fine on it.

I do like using Kate, too.

Other than that, I am not a fanatic about any of the other programs save Synaptic but it seems many KDE distros are not using it as default or even not supporting/favoring it?