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.'"
Cost savings - makes sense (Score:3, Interesting)
For Novell to work on one interface isn't saying "Oh, Gnome is the Hawt and KDE is not!" - it's just a cost saving move, and I can agree with that. The question is: will this help lead to a "one Linux Desktop" future where the de-facto standard is Gnome. When that happens, will more apps be Gnome based, or will we continue to see the dual-track desktop development?
Do any major distros standardize on KDE? (Score:5, Interesting)
Gnome can be good (Score:2, Interesting)
I've customized my Ubuntu 5.10 with the metacity theme "Blended 1.5", the "NuoveXT" icon theme and the grass wallpaper from one of the leaked longhorn/vista betas. Try it!
How it will look like (Score:4, Interesting)
http://tango-project.org/ [tango-project.org]
Re:Best KDE-centric distro now? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't want a KDE-centric distro anymore than I want a Gnome-centric distro. Personally my favorites are Ubuntu/Kubuntu for the latest desktops, Debian for server/workstation machines that need to be rock stable. And they both should do a good job at running Gnome apps in KDE and KDE apps in Gnome.
Management (Score:3, Interesting)
Unbelievable. They ruin a distribution.
A real company would listen to customers first, then allocate the ressources to development. Suse was very good on that in the past.
A bad company is driven by engineering. The role of marketing is to sell what the developers invented or want to create.
The second approach is doomed to fail.
Re:Best KDE-centric distro now? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not advocating that, I'm just noting that Novell has done a 180 and seems to be regressing. SUSE has always been considered one of the best distros out there, and at least OpenSUSE will continue with community support.
Re:Best KDE-centric distro now? (Score:3, Interesting)
nuts (Score:4, Interesting)
Why is that so many people prefer kde over gnome, yet redhat, debian-based distros like ubuntu and now SuSE use gnome as their primary? What main distros will be left that uses kde in preference? I can only think of mandriva now.
I'm not criticising gnome, it's a fine project and a good desktop environment, but I really like the unified desktop, reusable kparts and configurability you get with kde. I'm far from alone, as the vibrancy of kde-look.org shows. How come gnome, which is not *that* much superior to kde (some would argue that it's inferior at the moment) is making all the headway?
Re:nuts (Score:5, Interesting)
As for Novell... hard to say. But it's worth noting that many core KDE developers are from Germany, and SuSE is (was), too; Gnome, on the other hand, is pretty much a US development, and Novell is also a US company. Coincidence? Maybe, but I wouldn't be surprised if these things did play a role, in both cases...
Gnome is an error. (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, we support some clients with NLD9, and everything are problems, from mime types to gconf. Our support team has started to hate Gnome a lot. Our roadmap for our clients is to switch them to KDE, but with this decision, it will not be a Novell "official" product, it will be probably OpenSuSE.
With Novell having bought Ximian, it's logical that Novell standarizes on Gnome, but with this decision, SuSE only losses, and so does Novell. Will have to think twice before suggesting a partner renewal... They still have cool products, but they are taking the grown decisions (again and again)
Re:There were signs (Score:3, Interesting)
While I'm still a bit surprised to see Novell give such a slight to KDE this soon, there were signs that they were becoming a GNOME operation.
I am not, although KDE is a good interface, I have always favored GNOME. So to me, seeing SUSE carry GNOME right there along with KDE was good and is now one of the reasons why I now run SUSE 10. The other is SUSE 10 supports my 54g wireless card.
But I suspect there is more to it. Proprietary Qt libraries inside of KDE have always plagued KDE adoption. And quite frankly, I like programming in the GNOME/GTK+ environment and usually have no trouble to move such works to Solaris x86 or Sparc.
Qt is KDE's achilles heel.
Re:Cost savings - makes sense (Score:4, Interesting)
No, it's a lot more than that. Suse has been a KDE-based distro forever. Many of the KDE developers are Suse employees, and while Gnome has been included pretty much as long as it's been available, it's been practically unusable. (I don't know if it's just been a Suse thing, or if the Gnome tools really are that much more primitive.)
This is a sea change.
The question is: will this help lead to a "one Linux Desktop" future where the de-facto standard is Gnome.
I wouldn't be surprised if this were actually Novell's intention. I'm sure there are plenty of vendors who will be quite pleased with this decision. Unfortunately, I think a lot of Suse customers will not be so pleased. Maybe it's the Novell curse striking again?
Seriously? We should care about this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux systems are more or less founded on choice. Which is a great thing, but has no relationship with user-friendliness or consistency. Remember part of the original motivation behind GNOME - it was because a crew of folks was unhappy with the QT licensing. So they reinvented the wheel to deal with it. That's what's great about both Open Source and Free software, but it's also why a wide-open platform is not going to gain mainstream use anytime in the foreseeable future. Even if either KDE or GNOME shut down all their development efforts tomorrow, someone would pick up the dropped torch and keep it going. And then competing vendors would still have to pick one or the other.
The day Linux desktops start spreading is the day all the big projects decide they need to focus less on eye candy and more on making the system as simple, consistent, and reliable as possible. Kind of like OS X.
Nice... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Management (Score:2, Interesting)
I am not really sure whether the desktop preference has something to do with Europe vs. US - though, incidentally, I *am* in Europe, I *am* using SuSE and I *am* a strong KDE supporter - I detest Gnome, to put it straight (why? HUGE widgets, esp. buttons, swapped "OK" and "Cancel" - the list is long; OK, the rant is over, it is not the time nor the place to discuss personal preferences).
The fact is that both Gnome and KDE have huge userbases and the decision to favor Gnome is at least not understandable to me. There is no point in exploring the specific differences between Gnome and KDE but suffice to say that KDE is at least not worse than Gnome.
They ruin the distribution, as the parent poster said.
Shall we expect KOpenSuse anytime soon?
Re:Best KDE-centric distro now? (Score:5, Interesting)
Honestly I don't even know the reason, maybe it is the Dark Side of the Force, or maybe the panels just have less clutter, maybe stuff just works better. I don't miss the transparency, the shadows, the SVG icons of KDE, at first I thought they were great, but after a while it didn't matter. Maybe it is also less stuff to configure and less options to worry about. Sometimes I think in UI design "less is more", but of course it is still very much a subjective thing, so I am glad there is the choice and the options for everyone KDE, GNOME, Blackbox, Xfce and others.
Big Mistake (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Management (Score:3, Interesting)
Huge chunks of any Linux distribution is GPL, and since the QT GUI toolkit is GPL as well, what's your problem?
Would you say that if a distribution was released with a GPLed libc? The current favourite one is LGPLed, which enables none GPLed applications to be included or run on that OS with less overhead.
This situation is very very similiar.
Re:Management (Score:1, Interesting)
Huge chunks of any Linux distribution is GPL, and since the QT GUI toolkit is GPL as well, what's your problem?
Qt is a library, fucknut. Get this into your thick religion-addled brain. The GPL on Qt spreads out onto everything that links with it, which includes every app written to run on KDE. THIS IS NOT TRUE OF THE LINUX KERNEL... or the GNU TOOLS, or the many other libraries you find in a Linux distro.
Everything you build on KDE is subject to Qt's licensing, and Qt is not just a GUI toolkit. KDE uses it for strings, general utility functions. It's in everything. Write it down and remember it.
Too many KDE zealots just don't fucking get this. The licensing on QT is what's killing KDE. Now, either Trolltech will get desperate and release Qt as LGPL (doubtful, but possible), or KDE is going down the pan... it's been circling the plughole for a while now.
Re:Huge (Score:3, Interesting)
Funny, I've always felt the other way around. To each his own...
Dists are moving to GNOME for a reason (Score:5, Interesting)
As it happens I just installed SUSE 10 and I quite like it. I'm using KDE right now but even the integration efforts of SUSE can't paper over the cracks. Just seeing 6 menu items in a row in Konq that say "Configure" just makes me shudder. If I had a choice I would use GNOME, but the GNOME integration in SUSE is terrible (where is the input from Ximian?). Therefore it's a surprise to hear they're now going to favour GNOME. I guess they've decided its better to go with Ximian than with SUSE.
Re:There were signs (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Management (Score:3, Interesting)
First, A company that buys top of the line technology and after that screws it magestically for the sole reason that it is "Not Invented Here (tm)" is bound to have some serious troubles down the road.
Second, Suse marketed towards Europe and was quite successfull. KDE was one of the major pieces in the puzzle and one of the reasons for SuSe success. By taking this step, Novell shows that it does not give a flying shit about the Europe market wishes.
So there is nothing myopic here. It is just business Frankie, just business. I will simply give my money to someone who actually pays attention to the market where I operate. Novell is showing that it is not that company.
Re:Nice... (Score:3, Interesting)
Dictionary.com is full of crap, that's why I never use it. Quite apart from that, if you done a bit more checking you'll find that dictionary.com does in fact have an entry, under standardise [reference.com], which just goes to show what a poorly organised piece of crap it is.
As for this being an American site (other reply) -- yes, but then my submission wasn't written by an American, was it? Edit the title if you wish, but not *my* text. The story says "Motor writes:"...
Re:Best KDE-centric distro now? (Score:5, Interesting)
Until a month ago, I would have agree with you
However, I switched to dual monitors, and they just don't work under kde (t's probably just me, I'm NOT flaming the kde developers). So I've been using gnome for the last month, and, surprise - it's a LOT better than it used to be, and it runs faster than KDE.
Te KDE apps work just fine (Kontact and KWallet are running all the time on this box).
My only question is - do I try to install a 3rd monitor (I've got 2 19" ones, but I could still use a smaller one for keeping a small to-do list, etc., front-and-center.
Re:Best KDE-centric distro now? (Score:2, Interesting)
I use Ubuntu now just for it's great working Gnome. I do miss YaST but I am learning a lot using the command line and editing config files.
Re:Remember what JWZ said? (Score:1, Interesting)
It's good that the SuSE distribution is moving to a desktop developed by people who dotted their i's and crossed their t's before shipping. Getting rid of KDE as the default is the best thing that could happen to SuSE.
Re:Best KDE-centric distro now? (Score:3, Interesting)
But when the feeble die, young blood arises to continue on. And in that case it will be distros like Kubuntu.
Re:Best KDE-centric distro now? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, a KDE-centric distro means that default software packages offered for installation are KDE-based. So you get JuK rather than Rhythmbox, and your OpenOffice will have Qt native widgets rather than Gtk ones. Again, nothing a user can't do on his own, but why should he waste time on finding out how?
It works the other way around, too. When have you last seen a distro which doesn't provide base Gtk and GNOME libraries for the same reason? As for vast majority of applicatons being written in Qt... please. You certainly can have an all-Qt desktop, but just as well you can have an all-Gtk desktop. However, Gtk is currently the dominant widgetset for Linux; see the numbers for yourself here [sourceforge.net] and here [sourceforge.net]. This implies that GNOME is only good as a replacement for Qt, and does not have merits of its own, which is obviously false. On a side note, have you noticed that most Linux commercial applications lately are also favouring Gtk and GNOME? RealPlayer, Acrobat Reader, Nero... I wonder if it is because of LGPL, or because they see that GNOME is a de facto standard for a Linux desktop these days.Re:KDE must-have apps (Score:2, Interesting)
Baghira [sourceforge.net] -- A native QT style that faithfully imitates OS X eyecandy, aimed at new users coming from the Mac world.
Have you ever used OS X? Baghira doesn't come close. It sortof gets the look, but the feel very poor compared to the real thing. Try OS X for a week or so, then see if you think Baghira comes anywhere near it. I'm posting on a PowerBook (w/ Tiger), BTW.
Kdevelop [kdevelop.org] for syntax highliting, application templates, and project organization.
Eclipse [eclipse.org]? KDevelop used to be my IDE of choice until I started using Eclipse.
Kaffeine's cool, though it'd be nice if I could close it without having to killall -9 it afterwords. It seems that every time I close it, it instead goes into the background and starts taking up all the processor. Latest version, multiple distros. If they could fix that it truely would be an awesome player.
QT designer, I'm not going anywhere near that. I'd like to have the option to dual license my work some time in the future...
AmaroK is awesome, I can't praise that enough. Whenever I'm away from Linux I have to get by with iTunes (Mac, Win).
Fork Urgently Required. (Score:3, Interesting)
This is yet another classic example of an American Corporate being totally out of touch with the customer base out here in the Rest-of-the-World. Message to Novell:- "Enjoy the continuing death experience". Message to shareholders:- "Cash up quick before they stuff up completely and blow all your dough".
Re:KDE must-have apps (Score:4, Interesting)
AmaroK music player
Banshee [banshee-project.org], developed by a Novell employee, is leaps and bounds ahead of any existing music app for linux.
DigiKam
F-spot, [gnome.org] also by a Novell employee.
As far as all of the other applications you mentioned, each has a gnome equivalent that in many cases does a better job.
Re:KDE must-have apps (Score:2, Interesting)
QT does, which you'll be developing for if you use qt designer. If you develop something with the free version it has to be under an approved license. You also can't later use that code with the commercial version:
"Please note that it is necessary to choose either the Open Source or Commercial license at the outset of development. Trolltech's commercial license terms do not allow you to start developing proprietary software using the Open Source edition."
http://www.trolltech.com/company/model.html [trolltech.com]
It's not like I'm planning on doing proprietary software, who knows what I'll be doing a year from now. I'll probably release some of the stuff I develop internally as GPL (I hold the copyright) but do a ghostscript-like scheme for a few parts of it (release it under GPL after a certain time). If I go with QT, even after I pay their $1800 I wouldn't be allowed to do that under the license.