Novell to Standardize on GNOME 599
Motor writes "In what must be one of the least unexpected announcements of recent times, Novell says that they are standardizing on one desktop rather than supporting two different codebases. From the article: 'Novell is making one large strategic change. The GNOME interface is going to become the default interface on both the SLES (SuSE Linux Enterprise Server) and Novell Linux Desktop line. KDE libraries will be supplied on both, but the bulk of Novell's interface moving forward will be on GNOME.'"
Re:Best KDE-centric distro now? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Do any major distros standardize on KDE? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Management (Score:5, Informative)
The GNOME interface is going to become the default interface on both the SLES (SuSE Linux Enterprise Server) and Novell Linux Desktop line.
All that is happening is that the distributions they are pushing to corporations will use Gnome as the default. Big deal. SuSE Personal/Professional/whatever will continue as normal.
Re:nuts (Score:5, Informative)
Usability. It's that simple.
I mean, it's not the lack of a kparts equivalent, being programmed in a 70's language - c++ is a bad OO language, but C is much worse as "OO language" still gnome went with C (and you have to admit those even if you're a gnome zealot)
Fortunately, KDE 4.0 is focusing in usability. The reasons that keeps many people away from KDE is usability, anything else. KDE is great, in some aspects their technology is ahead of other desktops and not just gnome (I love kparts). Bring usability to kde (ie: wait for kde 4.0) and you'll see lots of users switching to kde
Ximian (IBM+Ventures Capital ) has won (Score:1, Informative)
From someone who uses both (Score:3, Informative)
I actually find Gnome prettier and less clutsy in apperance and I dislike the fact that default KDE apes the crappiness of Windows Keybindings, but on the other hand I love KDEs easy configurability. The utility libs are, afaict, more sophisticated (example: editor widget) and KWin has evolved from a joke of a WM it was to a solid foundation for KDE. Unlike Gnome the KDE people don't change their core WM every odd month - in the end it paid off.
This is the general impression I've had about KDE/Gnome the last two years. I've actually wondered why Ubuntu uses Gnome as default. From what I can tell, the core Gnome team members are probably better at advocacy than the KDE people. That could be the reason.
One last indicator makes the last solid point:
The reality is that I miss an awfull lot in a pure Gnome enviroment, but I nearly miss nothing in a pure KDE setup.
Re:There were signs (Score:3, Informative)
Proprietary Qt libraries? I've got news for you: QT is GPL licensed as well.
Closer to QPL, read the following to understand more...
http://www.ofb.biz/modules.php?name=News&file=arti cle&sid=364&mode=&order=0&thold=0 [ofb.biz]
The short if it is:
A smooth roadmap ought to include licensing and other non-technical concerns along with the technology. Unless KDE can get Trolltech to release Qt/X11 under the LGPL, or at least get a guarantee that Qt/Commercial licenses will never go above a certain price and never have any more restrictions in usage than the present EULA has, the roadmap will always have a certain air of uncertainty to long-term enterprise decision makers.
By Timothy R. Butler Editor-in-Chief, Open for Business July 05, 2005, 22:32:41 EDT
Re:Management (Score:3, Informative)
here is a tip, NLD has always been Gnome. So basically, SLES is going gnome. BFD.
kde is not going away in OpenSuSE (the replacement for SuSe Pro)
holy crap, the GP is modded interesting.. its like talking to a wall
"The entire KDE graphical interface and product family will continue to be supported and delivered on OpenSuSE," said Mancusi-Ungaro.
wtf has happened to reading comprehension in the 21st century ?
or, a better question, why do I even try talking to slashbots even more ?
Re:Do any major distros standardize on KDE? (Score:3, Informative)
Mandriva offers both KDE and GNOME (and a host of other WMs) and molds both to its particular interface, "galaxy" using themes, patches and other stuff. The Mandriva tools (Drakxtools) are written using GTK. So I don't see it as "standardized on KDE".
KDE must-have apps (Score:5, Informative)
Of course SUSE customers won't be pleased. There are many must-have desktop apps built on the KDE framework that don't have any good gtk equivalents:
AmaroK music player [kde.org] -- Steve Jobs' nightmare, the single greatest threat to Itunes on the Free Software platform.
DigiKam [digikam.org] -- The most feature-rich application for digital photo management.
Konqueror File Manager" [konqueror.org] -- Embeded image/PDF/music/video viewing (via KMPlayer [kde.org]) and a tree-view arrangement of the filesystem familiar to Windows users (Nautilus doesn't come anywhere close)
Seamless, transparent network file access [kde.org] on SMB, FTP, SSH and WebDav networks from _any_ KDE application.
Kaffeine [sourceforge.net] -- The most polished FOSS movie player.
Baghira [sourceforge.net] -- A native QT style that faithfully imitates OS X eyecandy, aimed at new users coming from the Mac world.
KDE and QT also make up a technically superior platform for developers, drastically lowering the learning curve for programmers new to FOSS development. KDE apps can be built from the ground up using the best development tools in the Free Software world (which also happen to be built on QT/KDE):
QT designer [trolltech.com] for GUI development
Kdevelop [kdevelop.org] for syntax highliting, application templates, and project organization.
BKSys environment [freehackers.org]for a complete replacement of the autotool chain (libtool+automake+autoconf+make) that will make dependency a whole lot more simpler and efficient.
Gnome is way behind KDE with regards to these features. The only reason Redhat's doing so well with Gnome is because they're targeting geeky sysadmins who don't care about having a good-looking desktop. The other 99% of the world does care, and gnome just doesn't fit the bill.
Re:Best KDE-centric distro now? (Score:3, Informative)
It comes down to Xinerama support. I personally believe Gnome's window manager (metacity) does a little better with two screens than KDe's (kwin) but that just my opnion. They both do a million times better than Window XP's (which loves to maximize things over both screens).
Re:Best KDE-centric distro now? (Score:5, Informative)
KDE is the "default GUI" for a basic install, although Mandriva also comes with Gnome, IceWM and others.
I use Mandriva/Mandrake since it has always provided such a great support for KDE, "everything just works" approach for hardware, easy system administration (both GUI or command-line) and urpmi, the best package manager for rpm. As good as "apt-get".
Everybody seems so "Ubuntu" centric today, singing praise to Ubuntu's "new stuff"... when all that "new stuff" has been in Mandrake/mandriva since version 8.0 (and we've had 8.1, 8.2, 9.0, 9.1, 9.2, 10.0, 10.1, 10.2 and now 2006.0; one release every 6 months). So, you see, all that "new" stuff is "old news" for the Mandrake crowd.
And then, KDE is an almost alien part of Ubuntu (Kubuntu)
Ubuntu is all hype.
Anyway, back to my boring Mandriva (yes, boring as all works, and all has been working for so long...)
Peace
Re:Remember what JWZ said? (Score:3, Informative)
Correct you are my friend. Honestly, what did Ximian bring to Novel in terms of actual products? What happened to Ximian Desktop, that lovely modified Gnome with a devilish monkey wallpaper? Have you heard anything about it? No, it's been discontinued. Do you remember their Red Carpet? That usless shi!t that was supposed to unify software deployments? What happened to it? It turned out that Novel already had a similar product, and so RC has been discontinued. And you know what, as lovely as that crashoholic buggy Evolution is, and Mono (which is going for a long catch-up phase with the releaasse of C# 2.0 and the new .Net framework) these are bringing a total of $0.00 in terms of revenue for Novel.
Buying Ximian was a terrible mistake that Novel made during their hurry to jump into the Linux bandwagon. As if that was not enough, it seems that the Ximian guys now hold major positions in Novel, and have been put into positions to be able to kill SUSE's especial relationship with the KDE community. As other's have mentioned, SUSE was only strong in Europe, and in Europe, desktop Linux means KDE. I know that the Munich municipality is definitly going to have a strong word with SUSE about this.
I'm sure this won't affect KDE much. KDE just gets better with every release, and with 4.0, it will put all those usability criticisms to rest once and for all. But I do know that this will affect SUSE. The whole YAST2 is written with Qt, and it will be a massive redundant job to rewrite the whole thing in Gtk+. Also, this probably means that SUSE 10.0 was the last release that I bought, and I know I am not alone in this boat. Happy gconf hacking SUSE!
Re:Do any major distros standardize on KDE? (Score:3, Informative)
1. KParts
2. Kate
3. Konqueror (file manager)
4. KHTML (browser)
5. KControl and its new System Settings replacement
6. Integrating Super Karamba into desktop
While Gnome has made some colossal errors in judgement.
1. Removing the menu editor (just back in newest version)
2. Forcing 'spacial' Nautilus as the default before anybody could even try it.
Luckily, Kubuntu is still great
I doubt KDE will die quickly, but it does seem the writing is on the wall. If major distros are really standardizing on Gnome I think KDE is too big a project to keep all the developers it needs. I hope KDE 4 + Plasma aren't affected by this move by Novell because it looks like KDE is much closer to an OS X-level desktop than Gnome is.
Re:Remember what JWZ said? (Score:3, Informative)
Mostly true
Well Red Carpet basically just got renamed "Zen for Linux" the product still exists.
FUD
Well currently Gnome is *better* than KDE for Enterprise use especially with it's Accessibility features which are a requirement for government use. The licensing of the core libraries is much more GNOME friendly for integration with proprietary enterprise apps also. For their target audience, corporate & government organizations (not hobbyist), it's a better choice than KDE.
I very much doubt that Munich will say anything to Novell.
I'm sure your wrong
Re:Best KDE-centric distro now? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:KDE must-have apps (Score:2, Informative)
K3b [k3b.org] -- Best CD and DVD authoring program with intuitive wizards, on the fly transcoding between WAV, MP3, FLAC, and Ogg Vorbis, normalization of volume levels, CDDB, DVD Ripping and DivX/XviD encoding, Save/load projects, automatic hardware detection/calibration and much more.
Klik [atekon.de] -- Gives non-expert access to bleeding edge versions of apps without requiring any compilation or permanent installation.
KDE Control Center [kde.org] -- Centralized location for desktop control. Controls _all_ common aspects of the KDE applications: language, power settings, special effects, icon and window themes, shadows, shortcuts, printers, privacy, etc. This is what makes KDE so well integrated -- all KDE apps respect changes made here, so they all have the same feel. SUSE has even made YAST a module of the KDE control center so users can access distro-specific settings from here. Compare this to the dismembered approach Red Hat (and other gnome distros) have been forced to adopt in the absence of a centralized gnome control center. (ie. a bunch of individial programs named redhat-config-**** that nobody can ever remember)
Wireless Assistant [kde-apps.org] -- Most user-friendly app for connecting to wireless networks. Managed Networks Support, WEP Encryption Support, Per Network (AP) Configuration Profiles, Automatic (DHCP, both dhcpcd and dhclient) and manual configuration options, Connection status monitoring, etc
MythTV [mythtv.org] -- The most advanced analog and digital TV viewer/recorder in the Free Software world (built using QT).
KDE Education [kde.org] -- Educational (Science, Literature, Geography, etc) programs for children. Could play a big role in whether school districts decide to use Free Software in their classrooms.
Quanta [kdewebdev.org] -- Rich web development environment for PHP, CSS, DocBook, HTML, XML, etc with advanced context sensitive autocompletion, internal preview and more.
Cervisia [kde-apps.org] -- User-friendly GUI frontend for CVS.