Red Hat Explains Stance on KDE/Gnome Desktop Changes

An anonymous reader writes "A lot of people are angry over the changes RedHat has done to KDE and Gnome in their latest beta, code-named Null. They have basically "nullified" all the default themes and settings with which each desktop attempts to posture for more users. Instead, there is now a beautiful unified look. To explain RedHat's stance, Owen Taylor writes this piece here. I hope that RedHat successfully forces both Gnome and KDE to become compatible with one another which would result in the creation of a single desktop. This would be the greatest gift to the Linux world."

Grumbling is pointless - we should applaud Redhat

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't have your cake and eat it, unfortunately. If your wish is to see Linux achieve large scale desktop penetration, you need to acknowledge that the mainstream user wants one consistent interface, look and feel, etc. If they are a "power user", they'll hunt down the options you think they should have anyway, and customize quite happily. Don't worry about it!

Two thumbs up for Red Hat.

[veddermatic]

Linux is all about choice, yes... and most here will complain that Red Hat is somehow taking that away from them by having a "unified" desktop.

But if Linux is *ever* to succeeed in the desktop market, it NEEDS this. IT depts. in a large company will not tolerate one product behaving different ways... imagine Bob leaning over his cubicle wall to ask Sally how to check a new email account... something that happens all the time in the real world, and Sally can't answer, because while she's good with her KDE environment, she can;t help Bob out because he got set up with GNOME.

The desktop HAS to be standardized if it going to be used in the work place. Period.

If you don't like Red Hat's "removal of choice", here's a tip: Use a different distribution, or make your own. That sure sounds like choice to me!

Hopefully this won't be necessary soon

[Telex4]

What RedHat have done is really pretty insignificant. They've create a new artwork set that is applied by default to both KDE and GNOME so they look similar by default, and they've modified some codee here and there so they behave in a more similar fashion. In effect, they have made the first step towards making the two major desktop environments more compatable.

Note: they have not taken away any user choices. You can still completely change your KDE/GNOME appearance, perhaps even back to the KDE/GNOME defaults. The only things that might bug users are the changes they've made to the code, but we don't yet know what they are, or how significant they are, so we'll have to wait and see.

I for one would welcome it. I'd change my themes straight away, because I've spent far too much boredom-time making my KDE3 desktop look exactly how I want it. But I also had to spend quite a while getting GNOME and GTK+ apps to look right so they almost blend in with my KDE3 apps and desktop.

The final goal here is of course compatability in themes. I.e. you download and install a KDE theme, and you can then make your GTK apps look identical, either with the same theme, or a mirror package. It's something even RMS has proposed, and something that will make life a lot more pleasant for those aesthetic pedants like myself, without taking away any of the choice we have in desktops and looks. Hopefully RedHat will find a constructive way of using these code modifications to help the KDE & GNOME projects achieve this "integration".

Pictures of their desktop

[Mr_Silver]

You can find pictures here [gnomedesktop.org]

I have to say, it does look very nice and I (being in the "lets have one desktop and do it right for the sake of consistency and adoption" camp) will definately be installing it when it is released.

Re:This is a Good Thing

[KjetilK]

I agree! Free software is about freedom, also for commercial vendors. They are free, just like J. Random Hacker to tweak it to suit their needs, and the needs of their customers.

I'm a KDE user myself, and I think the KDE folks will also come to the conclusion that RH isn't doing anything nasty when they think more about it.

However, I do not agree that Linux needs a Single Unified Desktop. On the contrary, the competition now is good. It allows more room to experiment, it allows for different developers to have different priorities.

And it allows vendors to choose the best parts from each project to provide a unified desktop in their product. Or, leave the choice to their customers if customers want choice.

Re:Choice and Red Hat

[Epeeist]

> It's not like Red Hat is releasing modified versions of GNOME and KDE that don't let you customize the appearance;

I can't speak for GNOME. However, they have modified the code for KDE. This seems to be the main reason that the KDE developers are upset. They are not sure whether they will be responding to bugs in the vanilla version, or the one that RH modified.

Re:This is a Good Thing, but remember ...

[egghat]

... that Redhat was the major force behind Gnome, which came into existence *after* KDE (because qt wasn't completly free and open). They were the single most important distro to support Gnome instead of KDE, which has been chosen by almost all other distro makers as a default. Remember when Mandrake entered the market and basically was a Redhat with KDE? Mandrake's success told Redhat a big lesson.

So it's kind of hmmm strange, that nowadays Redhat tries to nullify the difference between KDE and Gnome.

But let me state it again: I think, we don't need two desktops. So every move to make those beast more similar is welcomed.

Bye egghat.

If at first you don't suck seed, suck some more...

[amper]

...until you *do* suck seed...

If anybody, RedHat included, is going to take a stab at unifying the look and feel of the mythical "Linux Desktop", they're going to need to put in a hell of a lot more effort than this.

While the screen shots I have seen so far of the Null desktop themes are a great improvement over previous attempts at a consistent UI for Linux, it would appear that this is Not Ready For Prime Time.

For Ghu's sake, people, pick up a friggin' copy of Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines! All the research has already been done! How much longer is it going to take for you to realize this?

I mean, really, throw me a bone here, people...

The number one thing holding Linux back from more widespread usage is the clunky UI implementations that are available. The people who are working on this stuff are smart enough that they should know when to bring in experts. I know nobody wants to turn over the care and feeding of their baby to someone else, but don't you think it's time that some *real* graphic designers/industrial designers got involved?

I'm sure at least some of you coders out there must know a decent designer or two, or even a bonafide HCI expert. If we could somehow lure a few good ones into working under a Free Software license to produce some artwork for this effort, we'd be going in the right direction.

Well, ranting aside, at least Null seems to have produced a decent font for the menus. IMO, this was one of the biggest problems.

It's more than look and feel

[henben]

A unified "look and feel" is one thing (probably a good thing), but I hope they will address the deeper interoperability problems between KDE and Gnome apps, and config problems in both. In particular, I'd like cut and paste between apps to work 100% reliably. I'd like Quanta not to use an illegible font (A.D. Mono) just because it's alphabetically first and something has monged the config files. In fact, why do distros ship with illegible fonts in the first place? I'd like a single "Control Centre" rather than a KDE Control Centre, a GNOME Control Centre and a $DISTRO Control Center (which from the article is something they're trying to do). I could live without apps looking exactly the same way as long as they play together nicely.

Your kidding right?

[kanotspell]

"I hope that RedHat successfully forces both Gnome and KDE to become compatible with one another which would result in the creation of a single desktop. This would be the greatest gift to the Linux world." I fail to see how this is such a gift, the desktops are different but not *that* different, just enough to give some nice variety. Since when does the linux world want to limit choice. Perhaps all the distros should merge to one unified, down the middle, bland, not-specifically-good-at-anything version. Oh wait that already didn't work. Come on Hemos, choice and variety are what it's all about. I really hope that comment was just a troll.

Re:Unified Desktop

[Animgif]

No, I don't think that we should all use the same distro from the same distributor. What I do think is that if Linux is going to succeed in the consumer market, then there must be a noticable face for the consumer to identify with. This is what Windows has done. Most users couldn't tell you the difference in the versions of Windows, other than the newer on is prettier.

In contrast to what you say above, I do think that a unified face will allow more software to be ported to Linux. As companies see that the market is maturing, they will be more likely to take the jump to a linux version because there is less risk to there bottom line. You have a chicken and egg fiasco, which will come first, products or customers? I definately feel that this more identifiable "version" of RedHat Linux will go far is helping the cause. Consumers will now be able to focus on making linux work for them, instead of making Linux work.

Re:Two points missed--

[Speare]

Braille is useful to the few people who have learned it. I know some blind computer users who use braille.

Braille is NOT useful to the huge numbers of people who have not learned it. This includes those with limited vision, those who have limited sense of touch also, and those who became sight-impaired late enough in life that learning Braille is not a viable option.

I wrote a nice utility for Windows called Dragnifier. It's donate-ware. It is a taskbar applet that can be attached to any hotkey, and will show a magnifying glass that moves with the mouse. It magnifies whatever is below the lens as the user drags the mouse. Quick, convenient, natural to the user. Easier than a lot of other magnification options out there, from the letters I get. I wrote it because I like to see pixels when doing detailed artwork. I was flooded with positive response from the limited-sight communities. There's a lot of senior users out there who don't see very well.

I'd love to make Dragnifier for X Windows and Gtk2. As I learn more of the X API, I'm sure I'll develop it.

Audible monitors (text-to-speech) need to be integrated into the standard application toolkits in such a way as to have almost zero burden on application authors.

Tactile and audible mice are still being developed and experiments show there are some cool things to be done with them.

Lack of eyesight doesn't equate to lack of visualization. To limit the blind solely to Braille and Speech is to isolate them from the rest of the society which advances into new visualization methods every year. Think creatively about "visualizing" existing applications in new ways.

Re:I'm with RedHat on this one

[N3WBI3]

This configuration is a great idea, I see a great deal of pissing and moaning about the fact Redhat has applied their own theme to KDE/Gnome, get over it its a theme.

If you dont like it change the theme yourself, or dont install it with the distro go out get the source and compile it yourself.

I love linux on the desktop (I use fvwm), but when I tried to set it up for a friend she went nuts becuase it was too much of a change for her. Linux has come far enough that there is no excuse for this, I spent about a day and a half tweeking it (Gnome) for her and now she loves it.

Re:Unified Desktop

[rseuhs]

No, I don't think that we should all use the same distro from the same distributor. What I do think is that if Linux is going to succeed in the consumer market, then there must be a noticable face for the consumer to identify with. This is what Windows has done. Most users couldn't tell you the difference in the versions of Windows, other than the newer on is prettier.

Oh, not another one explaining the success of Microsoft. Face it: Microsoft is successful because IBM gave them the OS-monopoly in 1981. Everybody would have been successful with that, even Microsoft which never really did anything other than following the market. Microsoft has delayed the wide adoption of a GUI (every other major platform had a GUI long before 1990, but Windows 3.1 was the first usable GUI for DOS and came in 1993), they delayed the wide adoption of the Internet (In the early 90's Bill Gates himlelf said that "Internet will never be popular" and "The Internet? We are not interested in it") and PDAs (Go! invented the first PDA, Microsoft killed them with a lot of FUD and PenWindows which came out 2 years afterwards - which was dropped after Go! went bankrupt. Great, eh? PenWindows only use was to kill a company, advancing technology was not really important for MS)

So please stop telling me Microsoft's great secret of success. In real life, Microsoft is one of the most chaotic and incompetent companies.

Microsoft's only interest is maintaining the status-quo. The only reason we have Windows now is because everybody else already had a GUI for years and Microsoft had to follow.

In all new markets like Webservers for example, Linux is doing great - better than Windows. In all old markets where people have tons of programs and documents to lose, Linux doing not so good.

We need backwards-compatibility or WINE. Everything else is already there.

In contrast to what you say above, I do think that a unified face will allow more software to be ported to Linux. As companies see that the market is maturing, they will be more likely to take the jump to a linux version because there is less risk to there bottom line. You have a chicken and egg fiasco, which will come first, products or customers?

Customers.

I definately feel that this more identifiable "version" of RedHat Linux will go far is helping the cause. Consumers will now be able to focus on making linux work for them, instead of making Linux work.

Nonsense.

Currently Joe installs Linux and either stays with it because he likes it better or drops it because doesn't run.

How will that change? RedHat's GUI will be as new as stock-KDE for Joe (only uglier), so why should Joe be more likely to keep using it?

RedHat won't enable Linux on the masses' desktops. Codeweavers will.

Re:KDE & Gnome desiring MS control?

[aardvarkjoe]

You know ... after this, and after the WINE fiasco, I wonder if people are actually going to start thinking about the effects of the licences that they choose. Maybe some people will realize that they don't really want their software to be as free as they want them to be.

(Of course, it's BSD for me all the way.)

Re:Why KDE people might not like this

[Rich]

The Gnome favourism isn't a problem, that's their decision. The main problem which you've missed is that have modified the names of the service types (so you'll find that if you download a 3rd party app as source it may well break). They've also changes the linker options used to load plugins which will caused weird crashes due to symbol name conflicts (eg. I doubt the Flash plugin works in Konqueror now because it has a name-clash with the OpenGL libraries). Needless to say we're less than happy about this, especially when Owen is claiming he want KDE and Gnome to compete on stability.

Basically it is obvious that the RedHat guys have made these changes without actually understanding what they were doing. Personally, I will be dropping any bugs reported by RH users as I won't be able to test them properly.

Rich.

Yes, I was Joe Windows once...

[dnoyeb]

I still get tempted to use KDE because so many people said KDE was better and I consider myself computer savvy so I thought I should use KDE.

But I couldn't find the RedHat RPM tools on KDE. I didnt see RedHat network. I used KDE but had to switchdesk to GNome to do any administration.

Next, can we get rid of the 100 word processors and text editors?? Its confusing as hell to have so many damn tools that do the same thing. Is this an OS or a program war???

Re:Why do we need "one unified" desktop?

[Metrol]

Maybe there should be a seperate "Glorified Typewriter" edition of Linux, so the rest of us don't have to be bothered.

As I'm reading through the various posts on this topic I can't help but wonder why more folks such as yourself aren't using FreeBSD or perhaps Gentoo Linux. I've been using FreeBSD as my primary desktop OS for over a year now with KDE. No OS branding to be found anywhere. Every part of it is directly (aside from minor patches) from the KDE source. The same being true for Gnome if that's your preference.

Having tried previous version of Suse, Mandrake, and a much older version of RedHat (6.1) I've come to the personal conclusion that I can't deal with all the OS branding. Upgrading apps is FAR harder, and updating the actual desktop environment seems to break all kinds of vendor specific configure tools. Well, unless you go and purchase a new CD.

I'm presently upgrading a friend's laptop to KDE 3.0.3 also running on FreeBSD. No funky vendor specific apps to break, it's about as pure a version of KDE as you can get. It's compiling from source now, and I have no doubts that when it completes everything will be up and running as well as it was under 3.0.1.

The upgrade process...

Delete all of KDE
pkg_delete -rf qt*

Install it from source
portinstall kde3

And that's it! As I understand it, Gentoo has a very similar type of package management.

The point is, there are plenty of solutions for those not wanting any vendor mucking around with their desktop experience. For the "blinking 12:00 on the VCR" crowd RedHat is trying to tweak things in for them. It's a different market, and one probably closer to where Microsoft's core market sits these days.

Its about sane defaults

[Nailer]

I, for one, like the different options we have in terms of desktop environments. I don't want either KDE or GNOME to go away.

People are continually misunderstanding this point. You can change the default look and feel and behaviour if you want t, but Red Hat have made the two desktops consistent. Which is a good thing, as users choose their desktop apps based on usefullness, rather than toolkit.

Re:Hopefully this won't be necessary soon

[ivan256]

Frankly, this borders on a GPL violation

Bullshit. You're in violation or you're not. This is clearly NOT violation. About boxes are stupid anyway.

Another example is Redhat's failure to submit changes to the code base to the code base authors. This is an egregious sin. It doesn't violate any licenses, but it is very rude.

Bullshit again. I work commercially with lots of GPLed software every day. We make changes, and we don't submit the changes back... until we're done! When we have a beta product, and beta quality modifications we keep them internal. When we're sure the changes represent the quality we like, only then do the changes go back. Have patience. They haven't released the product yet.

If they decide to fork, then that's fine too.

in a brazen display of disrespect, they put their head GNOME guy in charge of "fixing" KDE

Hmm, put their most experienced GUI guy in charge of packinging up and "redhatizing" a GUI. What a horrible decision. (Not)

If you don't want people customizing and redistributing your software, then don't make it customizable or redistributable. If you don't want people changing your software to, say, look like gnome, then license it apropriately. Either you believe in free software or you don't. It's very simple.

Let me offer you an analogy. LinuxMall wants a Unified Linux, instead of all these disparate distributions. That way they don't have to worry about customer confusion, and can offer a single meta-distribution. Step one is to remove the Redhat logos from Redhat. Step two is to make linuxconf look like YaST. Step four is to rewrite RPM without naming it or submitting the changes to Redhat. Oh, by the way, they hired Debian to be in charge of the retrofit.

How many distros out there started by taking redhat and changing the logos? Mandrake, Turbo, LinuxPPC, YellowDog, Caldera... Plenty of others I'm sure. They may have deviated significantly now, but they all started in the same place. You don't hear redhat bitching.

BTW, if you plan to accuse me of being a RedHat or Gnome fanboy, you may care to peruse my previous posts first. I use Debian, and I have other issues with redhat (like when they take GPLd software and change the title and copyright notice before releasing it, or when they ship documentation for said program with the new name even though the documentation isn't under an open license, all without giving any credit to the owner anywhere much less in an about box). I also think that "desktop environments" are a waste of cycles, memory, and pixels. They all suck.

Re:Why do we need "one unified" desktop?

[evbergen]

The problem is that some programmers tend to forget that to design is all about making choices. As that is a difficult activity, people tend to just 'make it a config option' and forget about the issue.

But people, configurability is good, but *putting the burden of 90% of UI design on the shoulders of the poor user* is not.

Indeed, because everybody effectively creates his own destkop environment because so little attention has been given to the *actual, practical, day-to-day, real-world* usability of the defaults, no effective feedback is provided to UI developers. The few advances in the field that are made are way too fragmented. This is a terrible waste.

We should strive to be able to build a *good, beautiful* UI. Not to demo the latest alpha blending feature, if it's ugly and confusing as hell. We should lean from Fitt's law, from people like Jeff Raskin, from Windows and MacOS 9, from OS X and X Windows and from people's gripes about all of those.

And, let's learn from Unix. We should build this UI using /Unix/ technology (that is pipes, sockets, processes, read, write, select, ioctl, mmap), and not with Corba, our COM-like thingy of the day or other funky fat binary interfaces, and not with multithreaded dlls that do not want to choose whether they are a process or a library. Let's not reinvent the OS in a very crappy and un-unixy way merely because we're building a GUI, for chrissakes. I really don't think the requirements of GUIs are so unique that that's needed. A module interface that allows each and every method in each and every every object to call each and every method in each and every other object in the system does not give any modularity, sorry. Think again. That's old-fashioned linking, worse, effectively going back to the days of single address space OSes by linking every application to every other, and that doesn't get you anywhere if you want to make standard, stable, secure component interfaces.

You don't want to have 'more' to have a funky ad-hoc RPC interface so that it can be called by 'ls', or do you? We may need to extend the pipe concept if it's to limited for GUI app-to-app interfaces, but let's do that then, without resorting to plain, unrestricted RPC all the way. Please.

Let's keep it simple, and let's make it beautiful.