The KDE vs. GNOME Schism In Free Software

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The KDE vs. GNOME Schism In Free Software

For those looking for an interesting read today, Martin Gr??lin, the maintainer of KDE's KWin and known for his insightful blog posts, has written about fighting the schism in free software; in particular, the KDE vs. GNOME battle...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=OTk0Nw

[FreeBooteR69]

I like the fact that there is a schism between Desktop Environments. Sure there should be some cooperation, but I would hate to see real competition diminish. Get too close and smarmy, and you end up with only one desktop environment, and IMHO that would be a very bad thing. I despise the direction of the Gnome project. I don't want to see KDE cozying up too close to them, but I won't get into a firey debate on why. I just like a nice distance between the two, with some healthy respect, but also a firm dislike.

[droidhacker]

I used to think that gnome was good and kde sucked.




Now they both suck.

[movieman]

Now they both suck.

Yeah, the real battle will be between XFCE and LXDE after everyone dumps Gnome.

[kraftman]

Yeah, the real battle will be between XFCE and LXDE after everyone dumps Gnome.

The real winner here (and overall in Linux) may be Unity in Ubuntu. It really looks like a product with vision and users in mind. About Grasslin, I think the guy sometimes doesn't know what he's talking about:

http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2011/09/developer-and-user-interaction/

It?s the argument I hate most when it comes to adding new features or removing existing ones when needed. Nobody is going down the GNOME road and it?s a very insulting statement towards the awesome GNOME developers for whom I have great respect.

Why it's insulting? I don't want KDE to go the same way as Gnome, something wrong with that? Reading some of his responses makes me wonder in what world is he living?

You are not a Developer

Remember that you are not a developer. You should not try to discuss about technical details with developers: you cannot win. No matter how good your opinion is, no matter how smart you are, the developer is most likely an expert in his area and has a better view on issues. If he tells you something is not possible, it most likely is. If he tells you he cannot fix a bug, that?s the case. If he has to remove a feature, he has to. Please accept it, don?t argue, you will make a fool out of yourself.

That's a total bullshit.

[sabriah]

I like the fact that there is a schism between Desktop Environments. Sure there should be some cooperation, but I would hate to see real competition diminish. Get too close and smarmy, and you end up with only one desktop environment, and IMHO that would be a very bad thing. I despise the direction of the Gnome project. I don't want to see KDE cozying up too close to them, but I won't get into a firey debate on why. I just like a nice distance between the two, with some healthy respect, but also a firm dislike.

That schism should be relegated to Mad OS and Windows 7/8.

Pray, let the KDE/Gnome/xfce/LXDE debacles die.

[89c51]

I don't care about desktop schism and it doesn't matter much i think. What i find somehow annoying is the toolkit schism -or at least lack of the seamless cooperation between gtk,qt,enlightenment etc. Consistency is important and the lack of it hurts the experience.

[KhaaL]

I don't care about desktop schism and it doesn't matter much i think. What i find somehow annoying is the toolkit schism -or at least lack of the seamless cooperation between gtk,qt,enlightenment etc. Consistency is important and the lack of it hurts the experience.

What you think *does* matter, since the desktop is supposed to cater your needs.

I agree that inconsistency and using different standards makes my soul bleed.

The real winner here (and overall in Linux) may be Unity in Ubuntu.

I agree with most of your post, but unity?!?? I tried gnome 3, KDE 4.6 and I liked them both way more than unity. I almost prefer Windows over unity. And I've been a ubuntu-kiddie for over 5 years.

[V!NCENT]

Without trolling, seriously, the only reason that people want to support old crap form a publicity standpoint is that Gnome is way more popular than KDE, whilst no one being realy serious can say that Gnome is better than KDE.

KDE looks better, does things more efficiently, has more features, has technological superiority.

Gnome just is a piece of usability that has gone one bridge too far. If you cut features out of the users control then fine, but automate them in the background. But no... None of this happens. And it's not as if it can keep up with Mac OS X advancements, or even Windows advancements for crying out loud.

It's just a piece of crap. Period. I like XFCE, Enlightenment, KDE, Fluxbox, WindowMaker... but there is this one garbage GUI that is called Gnome. And if the rest of the OS spectrum could fill in the gaps, but then they even made Gnome 3 the way it is today. An absolutely horrible implementation of a semantic desktop, aka WinFS, that just shot down literaly all hope of progres to somewhat removing all the issues that Gnome 2 had from a missing feature standpoint.

Realy, just realy horrible. I have a touchbased GUI in mind that can do the commandline without the typing, which can save Gnome and could even make its way into the poweruser club, while being so simple that John Average could understand it and shoot the tablet potential from utter crap into the sky. But the hell that I'm even going to document the idea and send it to them because I know that no-one is going to care for constructive critisism with potential solutions, because they see the DE not from the user demands but from the insights and aspects of their own organisation.

It's just a horribly bad scenario and it's good that Canonical & Co(mmunity) stood up to make a replacement for it.

[DeepDayze]

The real winner here (and overall in Linux) may be Unity in Ubuntu.

Say what? Unity to me is the worst UI ever...to be relegated to netbooks or smartphones. While we need healthy competition between desktops, there should at least be some common ground