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GNOME Software GUI KDE Linux

KDE And Gnome Together At Last? 466

Posted by timothy from the all-in-the-same-gang dept.
HangingChad writes "eWeek is reporting about Novell's plan to combine elements of both into a unified desktop. Apparently the work has already started. Chris Schlager, vice president of research and development for SUSE, thinks the differences between KDE and Gnome developers have been overstated. Apparently he's not a regular /. reader."
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KDE And Gnome Together At Last? More

KDE And Gnome Together At Last?

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  • Gnome and KDE? (Score:5, Funny)

    by nick-less ( 307628 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @06:58PM (#8650797)
    Whats next? Cats sleeping with dogs?

    • Re:Gnome and KDE? (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Venkman: This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
      Mayor: What do you mean, biblical?
      Ray: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor... real Wrath-of-God-type stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies.
      Venkman: Rivers and seas boiling!
      Egon: 40 years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanos.
      Winston:The dead rising from the grave!
      Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats, living together... mass hysteria!

    • Re:Gnome and KDE? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Alan Cox ( 27532 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @07:11PM (#8650937) Homepage
      I seem to remember that being done for Red Hat 8, making them fit together isnt that hard now days, and all the joint work KDE and GNOME people have been doing at freedesktop.org on common specifications helps even more.

      Its the peanut gallery who seem wedded to the 'gnome v kde war'

      • Re:Gnome and KDE? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by gorre ( 519164 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @07:30PM (#8651121) Homepage
        RH just used themes to make them look similar. The integration was no more than skin deep.

      • Finally, we're getting somewhere on the desktop (Score:5, Insightful)

        by tentimestwenty ( 693290 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @07:54PM (#8651285)
        As long as I never have to hear the names of 2 desktop environments when talking about Linux, I'm happy. Choice is great but having two pretty good environments instead of one great environment is not going to win any market share. Only in open source could the two top competitors work together. For this we should be thankful. I don't think there's much to stop Linux from taking down Windows if this is even remotely successful.
        • Linux is not about "market-share". It's about developers writing the code that they want. Sometimes they take outside ideas because they WANT to help people; that's why we have things like accessability in the mainstream GNOME (and KDE?). Anyway, if you want the one great desktop, write it. Nobody's stopping you.

          (FWIW I prefer XFCE4, nice and clean but still featureful)

          • Re:Finally, we're getting somewhere on the desktop (Score:5, Informative)

            by jdray ( 645332 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @09:04PM (#8651813) Homepage Journal
            While I understand what you're saying, I have to disagree with you in one respect:

            There is a huge movement afoot to create marketshare for Linux, and unification of the two leading desktops would help that movement along immeasurably. Now, don't confuse "marketshare" with "profits." The intent is to gain as much penetration into the OS market as possible for Linux. For every Windows desktop or Solaris server or WinCE handheld that is displaced by a Linux instance, Linux as a whole gets stronger. For every user that says, "Yeah, I use Linux now," Linux gets stronger. And the stronger it gets, the more useful it gets, not only to average end users but to those of us who like it for all the reasons we've adopted it early.

  • Apparently he's not a regular /. reader. (Score:5, Funny)

    by GMFTatsujin ( 239569 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @06:58PM (#8650805) Homepage
    Maybe he browses at +5. :)

  • Wow! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bishop, Martin ( 695163 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @06:58PM (#8650808)
    I can't wait for KGplayer, twice the features, double the resource usage!

    • Re:Wow! (Score:3, Funny)

      by iminplaya ( 723125 )
      Doesn't resource usage increase to the square of added features?

    • Re:Wow! (Score:3, Funny)

      by Moraelin ( 679338 )
      Nah, you're not thinking far enough. Let's really merge them.

      Let's have a desktop which now starts _two_ sound daemons on startup. Nevermind that ALSA already can mix sounds very well on its own. We're hackers. We want to write yet another complex handler, especially if it involves threads. In fact, let's write a third sound daemon, whose job is just to interface with the other two.

      Let's also load and initialize two damn huge graphics libraries, and the usual gazillion wrappers around each of them, right

  • Early leak (Score:5, Funny)

    by salimma ( 115327 ) * on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @06:59PM (#8650810) Homepage Journal
    Obviously, this must have been meant for publication on April 1st!

  • What's next on Novell's agenda? (Score:5, Funny)

    by metallicagoaltender ( 187235 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @06:59PM (#8650811) Homepage
    Are they planning on unifying emacs and vi?!?

    • Re:What's next on Novell's agenda? (Score:5, Informative)

      by AndrewRUK ( 543993 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @07:10PM (#8650932)
      Who needs to unify them?
      Emacs can pretend to be vi (M-x viper-mode [gnu.org]) and vi can pretend to be emacs (vimacs [vimacs.cx].)

      (And anyway, why would anyone use anything other than emacs - yeah, trying to remember all the keystrokes will drive you insane, but M-x doctor is there to help ;-) )
      • And anyway, why would anyone use anything other than emacs...

        Well, I would use emacs, but I couldn't afford an extra 100 GB disk to use as a swap partition. So I just use the standard -- ed [gnu.org].
        • It's really funny to me that emacs was once considered a really big and bloated text editor. Compared with just about anything Microsoft makes these days (this isn't MS bashing, I just happen to have quite a bit of MS software handy to compare emacs with at the moment), emacs is extremely zippy and lightweight.

      • viper-mode works quite well. For a programmer, using vi for efficiency and emacs in vi mode for large files is an awesome combination of tools. One key command set, two complementary tools.

        Yes, I did say it: vi and emacs are complementary. Oh, Slashdotters why do you cry out in pain?!?
      • Here's my session with the emacs doctor:

        I am the psychotherapist. Please, describe your problems. Each time
        you are finished talking, type RET twice.

        help me

        Why do you say help you?

        because I'm a loonatic

        Is it because you are a loonatic that you came to me?

        yes!

        I see... Well, what makes you believe this is so?

        well, I keep thinking "Hey, vi is pretty cool" but then I discover
        something about it that sucks so I'm like "Wahey, fuck it"

        Are you afraid of sex? ... what?

        Can you elaborate on that?

        elaborate

  • Do they call it... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @07:00PM (#8650817)
    Knome or GDE?

  • KDE Compromise (Score:5, Funny)

    by TwistedSquare ( 650445 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @07:00PM (#8650821) Homepage
    Maybe if KDE gets compromised too it could bring them closer together? *ducks*

  • Gnome/KDE (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Melvin Daniels ( 757374 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @07:01PM (#8650826) Journal
    You have to admit both have strong qualities that the other does not. For instance, the Gnome stuff has a tendency to run a little better for me while the KDE stuff looks a bit cleaner. Aesthetics, yes, but it sells it to me. Maybe they just want to offer that whole 'choice' thing Open Source keeps talking about.
    • You're right! The Gnome stuff DOES run better for you! I'll switch today! :)

      Seriously, I've found that the KDE stuff seems to work the best for me. But I regularly use programs for both, and I'm glad the integration is getting better all the time.

      My major wish for the two projects at this point is to settle on one sound server, esound or arts. Running esound through artsdsp has some odd effects. Is there really a need to have two separate sound servers that (appear to) do the same thing?

      --RJ

  • Gno way (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @07:01PM (#8650827)
    Kant happen.

  • Better yet, bring Blackbox to the mix... (Score:5, Funny)

    by AvantLegion ( 595806 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @07:02PM (#8650839) Journal
    ... and unveil the next generation of X desktop environments: KGB

  • A mutant GUI (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bull999999 ( 652264 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @07:04PM (#8650858) Journal
    Reminds me of an episod of The Simpsons where Homer puts the Santa's Little Helper (dog) and Snowball II (cat) in to a sack because he wanted to cross breed them out of bordom.

  • Soup to Nuts (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @07:04PM (#8650859)
    quote -
    "He said he thinks the ability to offer customers a complete, soup-to-nuts solution will be a valuable addition. "We've learned our lesson from Microsoft." "

    Does anyone feel a bit uneasy with that expression 'soup-to-nuts'?

    Hot soup can burn my lips - I'm not a bout to put that you-know-where!!

  • Not a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dealsites ( 746817 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @07:04PM (#8650865) Homepage
    Different desktops exist for different people. It's easy to change back and forth to figure out the one you like best. I think that merging the two would stiffle features in the long run. It's best to have 2 competing platforms. Ultimately each group will incorporate the ideas from the other platform, but competition is what drives innovation.

    --
    Tons of electronics deals updated in real-time. The most powerful listing known to man. [dealsites.net]

    • Re:Not a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Goaway ( 82658 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @07:07PM (#8650897) Homepage
      Yes, the lack of desktop alternatives is one of the main reasons Windows has been so unsuccessful.
    • I can't see bad coming from this. KDE and Gnome will continue to exist and compete, but there will be yet another desktop thrown into the mix that just happens to resemble the two of them.

    • Re:Not a good idea (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      competition is what drives innovation.

      More, like, in open source, competition is what drives ego-driven reimplementations of the same ideas.

      This isn't "choice", nobody (outside the geek crowd) gives a shit about the desktop environment. It's like going into the supermarket and seeing the same identical cola, with nearly identical branding, but with.. different metals in the cans! Woohoo!!!! And some metallurgy geek going on and on about how much better metal X is over metal Y, but it's the same damn c

    • Which idea is that? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @07:21PM (#8651049) Homepage Journal
      Why do you suppose KDE and GNOME exist? It isn't as if there were no Linux or Unix desktops before these projects appeared, and most of them have a much higher hackability factor. Problem is, we want non-hackers (which is most computer users, believe it or not) to use Linux too, and that means standardizing the user experience. It might be uncool and anti-creative, but it's what it takes to appeal to people for whom software is something they use to get their work done, not a way of making a personal statement.

      Every Slashdot user should say to himself at least once a day, "I am not a typical computer user."

      • > Problem is, we want non-hackers (which is most
        > computer users, believe it or not) to use Linux
        > too

        Do we? Serious question: why do we want this? I've always wondered. I use the OS I like (Solaris) and I don't care *at all* what anyone else uses. I just don't get this advocacy thing.

        Despite the flag waving and fanaticism I think most people round here would probably hate it if Linux went mainstream, because they'd lose their superior, leeter-than-thou bragging rights. I imagine they'd all move
    • I find I use both depending on what I'm doing, I use gnome if I'll need a few more system resources, and KDE if not. Windowmaker if I need a ton more.

    • Re:Not a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Nailer ( 69468 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @07:41PM (#8651187)
      Different desktops exist for different people.

      So what makes KDE and Gnome different anyway? The developers of both are aiming to look and function, well, exactly like each other in most cases.

      • A panel at the bottom of screen
      • Various panel applets
      • One of those being a menu of applications located at the far left
      • A few shortcuts for commonyl used apps beside that
      • A taskbar besides that, including pop up listy boxes for duplicate apps
      • Some panel apps beside that, for the weather or whatever else
      • A clock over on the right
      • Icons on the desktop
      • A file manager
      • A web browser
      • An email app

      What makes KDE and Gnome different for end users? Certainly not anything most people cares about. KDE has a better save dialog, Gnome will in its next release. And Gnome puts questions suggesting the negative first, because some Apple researcher said that was a good idea ages ago.

      Oh, and different keyboard shortcuts, mime types, etc. These don't attract end users, they annoy them.

      • Re:Not a good idea (Score:5, Informative)

        by Mr2cents ( 323101 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @08:44PM (#8651687)
        the IO slaves? I don't know gnome well, so they could have it as well.

        BTW, you should know this little trick: you can browse through folders on any computer with a ssh login. Just type fish://your-login@computer-with-ssh-access.domain in konqueror (or in the run dialog), it will show your remote home directory as if it were a local directory. There are lots of other io slaves, too (see all available protocols using K->system->info center->protocols).

        • Re:Not a good idea (Score:5, Informative)

          by iso ( 87585 ) <slash AT warpzero DOT info> on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @09:24PM (#8651972) Homepage
          One of the most impressive IO Slaves is audiocd:/. It displays a CD in your drive as having a bunch of folders: "By Name," "By Track," "MP3," and "OGG" for instance. If you want an MP3 of a track you put in the CD, access it through audiocd:/ in Konqueror, go to the MP3 directory and copy the MP3 "file" to your hard disk. It's an unbelievably intuitive way to search an audio CD.

        • Re:Not a good idea (Score:3, Informative)

          by superjaded ( 617714 )
          gnome-vfs is essentially gnome's answer to KDE's IOSlaves, I believe.
          And while I don't believe gnome-vfs has quite the breadth of fs modules that KDE has, it does has some of the more "important" ones like smb and ftp that I can think of offhand. It also supports a "sftp://" protocol (which, obviously, lets you access the ftp subsystem of ssh), as well as a "ssh://" protocol of which I'm not sure how it's supposed to work.

          Of course, for simple SMB on LAN use I still think smbfs coupled with automount is st
        • Yes, Gnome has IOSlaves. They're called Gnome VFS modules, and, just like KIOSlaves, they're limited to programs written for their desktop environment with no good reason why this is the case.

          LUFS [sourceforge.net] works with any program - KDE, Gnome, the shell, or whatever else, and allows you to mount shares via SSH, HTTP, or whatever else.

          If I were a Linux distributor I'd actually cut out the desktop-specific IOSlave / VFS crap and use this instead, thereby providing a consistent experience for my users.

      • Re:Not a good idea (Score:3, Informative)

        by zsau ( 266209 )
        I suspect you haven't used the latest Gnome releases. They have for a while had a bar at the top with separate Applications and Actions menus. The taskbar remains at the bottom. There is work going on to unify MIME types (using a library developed for ROX), though many people will tell you it's a bad idea.

        As an end user, Gnome seems gratuitously unconfigurable but nicely simple, whereas KDE seems gratuitously configurable and overly complicated (though I've never played with it long enough to see if that's

      • Re:Not a good idea (Score:4, Informative)

        by jsebrech ( 525647 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @07:57AM (#8654807)
        # One of those being a menu of applications located at the far left
        # A few shortcuts for commonyl used apps beside that
        # Icons on the desktop

        Shared menu's [freedesktop.org], shared icon themes [freedesktop.org]

        # A taskbar besides that, including pop up listy boxes for duplicate apps

        Shared window manager specs [freedesktop.org], so any app will be known to a taskbar which supports the spec, and will be controllable by it.

        # Some panel apps beside that, for the weather or whatever else
        # A clock over on the right

        Shared system tray [freedesktop.org]

        # A file manager
        # A web browser
        # An email app

        All of these use shared communication protocols (http, imap, pop, smtp) or file formats (bookmarks.html, mbox). The only thing not common (yet) is the ioslave/gnomevfs duality.

        Oh, and different keyboard shortcuts, mime types, etc. These don't attract end users, they annoy them.

        Shared mime database [freedesktop.org], shared default key bindings [freedesktop.org] (that last one is in the planning stage)

        The difference between gnome and kde is getting to be quite minimal. I fully expect there to come a point where the two desktops will just be two skins on the same backend.

    • Re:Not a good idea (Score:5, Funny)

      by nvrrobx ( 71970 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @07:56PM (#8651301) Homepage
      Corporations regularly push out restrictive Windows policies to stop users from tweaking the desktop beyond repair.

      IT departments want a unified desktop - it'll lower support costs. Picture this help desk call:

      HD: Sir, what desktop are you using?
      User: I dunno.

      HD: Do you see a K or a foot in the lower left?
      User: Ummm, it's a foot.

      HD: Hold on while I transfer you to a GNOME specialist.
      User: A what? I'm not a gnome!

    • Re:Not a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Sleepy ( 4551 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @08:08PM (#8651420) Homepage
      Best to have competing platforms?? You do realize this is not the BSD page, right?
      (Just kidding, BSD'ers... :-)

      Seriously, merging KDE and GNOME piece by piece will NOT remove choices. No one is going to put a gun to anyone's head, developer or user and force a switch.

      It's strange that so many people cry out against desktop unification. I suspect the same people note with uncomfortable silence as freedesktop.org continues to take away "choice", by working out interoperability issues among free desktops.

      You get innovation and ideas in development branches, and temporary forks.

      People just want KDE and GNOME to "work" together. I don't mind a little software bloat in exchange for rapid development, but any GNOME/KDE user can tell you it's pretty slow firing up Konqueror/Evolution from the "other" desktop. You get two of everything that the "alien" app wanted. Yuck.

      I'm sure it's a real pain in the ass for commercial developers also. Code for both?? No thank you! Of course, some users will see this as a big IBM/Novell/Microsoft-Mono-Ximian conspiracy.

  • It won't work (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Novell is wasting its time. Integration between KDE and GNOME will never surface. Their programming philosophies, tool kits and target audience are just different.

    GNOME's focus is on users, usability and simplicity, to mention a few. KDE's focus is on power, flexibility and reconfigurability, to mention a few. How do you blend those two disparate attitudes towards software development into one unifying pot?

    I just don't see how it will work. Good luck to Novell.
    • >GNOME's focus is on users, usability and simplicity, to mention a few. KDE's focus is on power, flexibility and reconfigurability, to mention a few.

      Are you sure that's not backwards?

  • THIS WEEK ON IRON SLASHDOT (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @07:08PM (#8650911)
    BATTLE: DESKTOP

  • not that different (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @07:09PM (#8650921)
    It's like GPL vs. BSD or other similar arguments. To a "normal" person, they are nearly identical. Or Emacs vs. vi .. to my boss, they are both cryptic editors for geeks to confuse people with.

    The average Joe just wants the computer to work. He thinks in terms of tasks and software to accomplish the tasks, not the underlying nuts and bolts which are just different ways of accomplishing the same boring things.

    So the more we (the free software community) can unify these desktop environments and smooth out these incompatibilites, the better. It's not like we don't all run desktop environment A but still use apps from environment B under it.

    Personally, I think they both stink. I can't wait to see the unpronouncable app names. :-)

  • Bluecurve? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PineHall ( 206441 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @07:09PM (#8650922)
    How is this different from Red Hat's Bluecurve?
    And will there be a big outcry as there was when Red Hat combined looks and features?

    • Integration, Man. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @08:05PM (#8651396)
      I imagine this isn't about so much look and feel but more about desktop integration. Imagine using Evolution to open an attachment using the default app settings confiured in KControl. Or saving the image you just edited in the GIMP directly to a remote server using the FTP KIO slave in the KDE file dialog. Or scripting office procedures using the desktop agnostic D-BUS (KDE's admitted DCOP successor).

      There's so much more that just theming. Look at freedesktop.org [freedesktop.org] to get a feel of the potential.

  • Why mix them? (Score:2, Informative)

    by digitalpeer ( 564005 )
    I thought RedHat did a decent job of not mixing them, but making them look the same. Besides, licensing will never let them be mixed code wise. The article states that they arn't being combined anyway. It simply says they are taking the best features from each and making one interface. The slashdot and article titles are misleading.

    • Re:Why mix them? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by pavon ( 30274 )
      Actually licencing is not an issue and hasn't been for years. They are both a combination of GPL and LGPL.

      Argh, I wish they had interviewed a developer. This article is extremely vague. It says they are not merging KDE and gnome code bases - just making a single desktop with all their features. So which one? Are they adding gnome features to KDE, or KDE features to gnome? What features are we talking about here?
  • It's those evil Novell people stealing GNOME's valuable source code to include in KDE.

  • Don't read slashdot??? (Score:4, Funny)

    by dokebi ( 624663 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @07:17PM (#8651007)
    How about the second paragraph of the article:
    Supporters of the two interfaces have often sparred with each other in flame wars on Slashdot, mailing lists and newsgroups.

    Looks like submitters don't read articles either.

  • Already done... (Score:2, Informative)

    by plasmaroo ( 687475 )
    >> reporting about Novell's plan to combine elements of both into a unified desktop. Apparently the work has already started

    Way ahead of you, SuSE: clicky [gentoo.org]!

  • Moving SUSE to GNOME (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    To me the article clearly suggests that Novel will be replacing KDE with Ximian GNOME in future releases:

    "we're going to migrate to a single Linux desktop."

    Read, we will not support GNOME and KDE.

    "Technically, you can't combine them, but we are working toward having the best features of both in a single interface. We'll implement all the best features in one technology."

    Read, we're not even going to try to combine them, but our sales guys will explain how Ximian GNOME has all the same great features as

  • Much like the Red Hat "Blue Curve" fiasco. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by freeio ( 527954 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @07:19PM (#8651025) Homepage
    This really looks to me like tilting at windmills. Red Hat Tried this with their eminently forgettable "Blue Curve" standard look and feel, and the result pleased no one that I have asked. It is possible to skin them to look alike, of course, but below decks there is little enough similarity to make them mix as well as oil and water.

    The real question is "Why Bother?" If both libraries are present, apps from both work well enough together to make the whole question moot. This is a marketing driven decision, with no real respect to the technical merits of the question.

    • Re:Much like the Red Hat "Blue Curve" fiasco. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jason Earl ( 1894 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @07:42PM (#8651195) Homepage Journal

      Novell probably will be a little more successful than Red Hat simply because they now employ both the folks at Ximian and the bulk of the KDE hackers (who used to work for SuSE). Red Hat, on the other hand, employed very few KDE hackers (and the one outspoken KDE hacker they did employ quit :).

      My guess is that the folks at Ximian and SuSE are likely to see more eye to eye seeing as how their paycheck will depend on them getting along.

    • "Red Hat Tried this with their eminently forgettable "Blue Curve" standard look and feel"

      You say "tried" but most people I know including the IT Press liked the way Blue Curve looked. They liked that everything finally looked the same in both Gnome and KDE. Blue Curve wasn't the failure your implying.

      Novell also isn't trying to merge the two and until I see what they come out with its hard for me to comment on it. Most distros let you launch either QT or GTK apps from either environment. Perhaps they'll

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @07:20PM (#8651037)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Irony? (Score:2, Funny)

    by jcuervo ( 715139 )
    Funny, how the next story down is people (jokingly) saying KDE just hacked Gnome's site. :-)
  • Why settle for Gnome xor KDE when you can have the best of both worlds ?
    Novell just cut through the Gordian Knot that has been annoying me each time I installed Linux :
    What desktop should I choose ?

    Opening Yast/pieces of Netware and now aiming for the best desktop...It looks like Novell wants the leadership/to set the standards in Linux very badly....
    Well, there is a lot of money at stake...in a world opening to open source....

  • rtfa? (Score:3, Informative)

    by anthonyclark ( 17109 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @07:24PM (#8651063)
    The article said, at least the way I read it, that Novell was going to write yet another desktop combining the 'best' features of both KDE and Gnome. Not combine the two but create a third version. Whether such a third way will take off among anyone other than Novell's corporate customers, will be interesting to watch.

    BIAS: I prefer Gnome to KDE and am using it right now; I hope that Ximian's involvement in all this will steer the new hybrid offspring desktop in a more Gnome-ish direction.

    (And here's hoping that the improvements they create will filter back down to us poor Gnome|KDE users).

    Or maybe they should just license MacOSX' desktop UI :-)
    • > create a third version

      Correct. The code differences are too vast between the two to actually try to merge one into the other.

      Steven

  • Can anyone think of a name ou could form by mixing the letters

    KDE GNOME

    Geode?
    Genomed?

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Novell's next plan (Score:3, Funny)

    by Zalgon 26 McGee ( 101431 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @07:41PM (#8651186)
    "We'll merge Vi and Emacs! That way, everyone will be happy!"

  • Unify them both--into GNUstep (Score:5, Insightful)

    by metamatic ( 202216 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @08:11PM (#8651450) Homepage Journal
    Let me repeat myself...

    If there was any sanity in the open source desktop developer community, we'd see more effort going into GNUstep.

    Works with everything we have today? Check, there's compatibility with KDE and GNOME applications as well as Motif, with window style hints too.

    High level language support? Check, Objective-C provides Smalltalk-like object orientation, and automatic memory management is available. There are also bindings to Ruby and Java. You can even build Java applications with native quality look and feel.

    Compatible with what programmers know today? Yup, Objective-C is a slight superset of C, so almost any programmer can get to grips with it in a weekend. (Speaking as someone who did.)

    Good class libraries? Yes, modeled on NeXT's excellent work, the same foundation used to build OS X. I've written Cocoa code, it's the most painless class library I've encountered. (Yes, I write Java too and have written C++.)

    Cross platform? Yes again, programs are portable between GNUstep and Cocoa without too much work--see GNUmail for an example. Non-GUI programs even port to Windows without major effort, allegedly.

    Good developer tools? Again, yes. Excellent developer tools on OS X. Doubtless the free tools on Linux could use some work, but that shouldn't be too hard. We can even build them using the OS X tools if necessary.

    Pretty UI? Well, I think it looks OK. Not as nice as Aqua, but it's functional.

    Mature? Well, the Objective-C compiler is GCC, Apple use it for their developer tools and push back improvements, the class library design has been refined over the course of 10+ years.

    Think about it, people. We could unify the Linux and Apple developer communities. All work towards one common goal. Get 10%+ desktop market share for OpenStep/OS X/GNUstep in no time.

    Hell, get GNUstep up to scratch and you'd probably see developers porting their commercial applications from OS X to Linux. Wouldn't you like to see products from Adobe, Macromedia, maybe even Apple available to run on your Linux desktop?

    Think about all the problems that have been solved by NeXT and Apple. Application packaging, for example? Solved, applications are bundles of files that you can just drag-drop wherever you want to keep them, and they work.

    • Exactly! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Arker ( 91948 )
      I agree completely. Well, the one thing I disagree on is the UI, frankly I find GNUSteps preferable to Aqua (and I'm writing this on a Mac.) I've never understood why folks wasted all that time reinventing everything for GNOME and KDE when they could have done everything they wanted, easier, with GNUStep.

  • Nat Friedman's Comments (Score:5, Informative)

    by Kur ( 195888 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @08:28PM (#8651575)
    I was in a session at Brainshare on the "Novell Linux Desktop", lead by Nat Friedman. Someone asked him about Gnome vs. KDE and his reply was that the only people who bring up this topic seem to be Slashdot posters.

    Seriously, he called attention to the fact that Novell is committed to both KDE and GNOME. According to his slide, Novell is now the #1 contributer to both KDE and GNOME. From what I've seen, though, Novell will certainly leverage its purchase of Ximian in every way it can. All of the desktops and kiosks run SUSE with Ximian. All of the demos and new applications have been written on SUSE and Ximian. Finally, projects like iFolder are being built with Mono. Nat also talked a little about freedesktop.org and the worry that KDE and GNOME will become incompatible, something Novell does not want to see occur.

  • Wrong approach (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Brandybuck ( 704397 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @08:29PM (#8651582) Homepage Journal
    Combining the two into a single desktop is the wrong approach. Their internals are just too different. For instance, how do you use combine KWin with Metacity when their written in different languages and paradigms. Or do you hack KWin to use Metacity themes, or vice versa? Ditto for Kicker verus Panel.

    A much better approach is to help in the interoperability effort. Make the two desktops work better together. Create some unified themes. Work on QtGTK+ or GTKQt. Then pick ONE desktop to be the default, while still providing the other as an alternative.

    Unfortunately, I see this as an uninformed pronouncement by Novell management. Consider the two following incompatible quotes from the article:

    "Technically, you can't combine them, but we are working toward having the best features of both in a single interface. We'll implement all the best features in one technology."

    and

    "...you'll see the first major results of this effort in the next versions of SUSE Linux, which will be released toward the end of the year."

    I wonder what this major result is going to be? KPanel? Metaciwin? Konqilus?

  • FLOSS the Cat (Score:3, Funny)

    by 0x0d0a ( 568518 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @06:09AM (#8654416) Journal
    Novell:

    The Open Source world consists of a massive herd of cats. They live by themselves, they do their own bizarre cat things, and they're awfully independent. They're talented but touchy. Some of them are awfully stubborn. Sometimes, one will get interested in something or gets an idea into its cat-brain, and start heading the direction of whatever's interested it. Sometimes other cats come along, and you get a whole pack swarming along. Occasionally a lot of cats get really interested in something (like a kernel), and then the sight is truly magestic, with a herd of cats pouring over everything that obstructs them from their goal. They're really quite unstoppable then.

    The problem, Novell, is that right now a good-sized pack of cats have it firmly in their heads that they definitely and without question want to go *west*. There is another good-sized pack of cats that are absolutely certain that they want to go *east*. The combination has produced cats going in opposite directions colliding with each other and hissing and scratching at each other.

    However, Novell, before you step smack dab into the middle of this writhing, temperamental herd and try to direct them to go *north*, I suggest that you keep in mind -- you are herding cats.

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