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KDE Software GUI Linux

Why KDE Rules 97

Posted by CowboyNeal from the it-is-pretty-neato-for-real dept.
diegocgteleline.es writes "Being a long time Gnome user and while talking with some non-KDE users, I realized that non-KDE users know few things about what are the "Good Things" of KDE. So I wrote an article about "Why KDE Rules" focused in KDE, with lots of screenshots and some texts - so all those non-KDE (or non-Linux) users can take a look at what KDE can offer to them, why KDE users use it and what they can expect about the future of the KDE platform if they choose to use it. Of course, this doesn't means that this was written to critize other desktops neither it means you should start Yet Another Gnome vs KDE flamewar..."
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Why KDE Rules More

Why KDE Rules

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  • proper (Score:3, Funny)

    by sawanv ( 551336 ) on Thursday December 29, 2005 @10:52PM (#14362506)
    Can we please include a few opinion pieces about GNOME and OS X and have a real slug fest?
    • Yes. I imagine that this will quickly degenerate into a flamefest of epic proportions. Don your fire retardant suits now! On a more serious note, I've always used KDE in the past, and I've never really seen anything that was interesting or innovative enough to make me want to switch. On the other hand, I'd be quite open to trying Gnome or something, but I've just never been able muster up the effort.
      • I imagine that this will quickly degenerate into a flamefest of epic proportions.
        Yeah... but only because you didn't post that using Konqueror. (-:
    • Can we please include a few opinion pieces about GNOME and OS X and have a real slug fest?

      Gnome and OS X? Here's my opinion piece. It doesn't work. Or at least, it looks very ugly and out of place, and takes half an hour to boot. Same with KDE. The only WM worth using with Apple's X11 is quartz-wm.
      • I run enlightenment on my Mac. It works great and is light enough that it doesnt cause issues. I like variety though, so on my Linux boxes I use KDE, Gnome, XFCE, Elightenment in XFCE, and Fluxbox among others. Thats the great thing about X is that I am not restricted to what someone else says I have to use, I can play around with several different looks and configurations and ways of doing things. Variety is the spice of life and all that crap...

    • Re:proper (Score:3, Interesting)

      by SavvyPlayer ( 774432 )
      Debian (gnome) + arbitrary KDE apps = simplicity of Gnome + flexibility of K/QT = best of both worlds. On top of my standard debian system, I run kdevelop, quanta, cervisia, kompare, amarok, (konsole & konqueror as needed), qcad, celestia & umbrello (to name a few). Having run KDE for a few years, then having run Gnome exclusvely of the k* world, I couldn't be happier now.

      In global context, this isn't a struggle of *nix vs the local franchose, or *n* vs. varius *nix gui toolkits vs the world; Rathe
    • Woohoo! Let's all have a FLAME WAR!!!
      I'm in...

  • It's about choice. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by JTorres176 ( 842422 ) on Thursday December 29, 2005 @10:58PM (#14362529) Homepage
    What's better, daytime or night?
    What's better, rain or sunshine?
    Everyone has preferences, and Linux is all about choices. I'd rather see an occasional Gnome/KDE flamewar and have the choice to use whichever I prefer. Truth be known, I have both installed. I love Gnome's beautiful interface, and KDE's powerful apps for development. Depending on my task du jour is what I choose from my GDM login screen.

    Of course, if you can't make up your mind, there's always blackbox, xfce, windowmaker, enlightenment, and 7.2 hojillion other choices for your X environment. Of course, no one ever complains that Windowmaker is better than XFCE. >83=

  • Not likely (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Noodlenose ( 537591 ) on Thursday December 29, 2005 @10:59PM (#14362533) Homepage Journal
    Asking the /. community to not go all out into a KDE/Gnome slugfest is just as effective as asking the current Iranian president to not act like Hugo Chavez's angry little brother.

    oh yes, and just for the record: using Ubuntu at home and KDE (Knoppix) at work I have to state my preference for the less cluttered Gnome.

    Let the trolling begin.

  • I've used KDE since ~'96 and I had absolutely no idea you could do all of that. The dcop stuff is amazing!
    • Welcome to the world of *NIX. Plenty of ways to configure everything

      • Re:Whoa (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        You obviously are ignorant of CDE. KDE is more like Windows on steroids than a traditional *nix GUI.
      • DCOP is about as much about configuring as Brave New World is about snowmobiles. You obviously didn't RTFA and also don't know anything about DCOP.

        DCOP is simmilar to what is now 'dbus' (in fact the dbus idea is based off of it). It gives command line access to the APIs of an application during runtime, and can also be used to let applications communicate with each other across the system or even across the network.
        • I know this sounds embarassing, but I actually thought that the parent of my "welcome to the world of *NIX" post said, "all that conf stuff is amazing.". Sorry. That's what I get for posting when I'm so tired.
  • they often aren't stable (in my experience). For example, I might pop in a audio cd-rom. In GNOME, a dialog will pop up asking me if I want to play the tracks, browse the files, or rip the cd.

    The same action in KDE will open 4 boxes:
    • a dialog asking me which program I want to open the cd with
    • a konqueror window displaying the contents of the cd
    • an instance of kaffeine, playing the cd

    Now, I know I could change all of this, but try as I might, it just doesn't work.

    In short, KDE may offer mo

    • You can change all that. When I pop in an audio-cd, I don't get ANY dialog. ALL these dialogs have a "Don't ask again" option and a "Make this the default" option, and these work. Same goes for connecting your camera, or whatever USB-device or type of CD or DVD you insert. Make the right (for you) choice the first time the dialogs appear, and you won't be bothered by them ever again. And if you later find out that you did not make the right (for you) choice, you can change it in the controlcenter (kontrolke
      • You are right: KDE really lets you choose whatever you want to do with anything. The problem is: why the default behavior is to display every option? Why not take a default one (say, play audio CD) and there let the user choose what to do? AFAIR, that was the default behavior of GNOME a few releases ago: it opened the CD player, where you could select "Rip CD" from a menu.

        If the idea is display every open, take a look at the Nautilus dialog when you put a black CD on your CD writer: it asks if you want to w
  • I never much liked KDE, but this article does highlight some cool features. Time to give it another try, maybe.
    • Yeah, GNOME user here, but what I thought was a good idea when browsing that list was the file overwrite dialogs. Many times I've wanted to see a file preview before I overwrite it and have to browse to it manually. Though, it could look a tad better than it does on KDE....

      I still couldn't use KDE however... I'm not very good with reading (my eyes jump with text, slowing me down) and I struggle badly with the Windows and KDE interfaces.

  • KDE more configurable ? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Chaffar ( 670874 ) on Friday December 30, 2005 @12:31AM (#14362878)
    "...the fact is that KDE is WAY more configurable than others desktops. Example: You can have a Mac OS-like menu bar"

    Well you can do that too with GNOME after installing gDesklets... Actually you can get a mix of whatever you like like this [emcken.dk] or even this [labor-liber.org]... dunno but I like what I can do with GNOME when it comes to desktop configuration...

    • I don't think menu bar means what you think it means. You were showing screenshots of things with Dock [apple.com] work-alikes, not the menu bar. [apple.com]
    • Apparently you didn't really understan when I wrote "You can have a Mac OS-like menu bar" ;) There's no way Gnome can have a Mac OS-like menu bar. When I say "Mac OS-like menu bar" I mean: "Have a common file/edit/help menu bar at the top of the screen which changes when you switch between apps"

      If you look at the screenshot closely [terra.es], you'll see it.

      By the way, KDE also has a gdesklets equivalent called superkaramba [kde.org] which has been included by default in KDE 3.5.0 (I didn't put screenshots of that because I wan
    • No no no. "Menu bar", not launch bar. On a menu bar, the application menu goes to the top bar of the screen.

      GNOME doesn't have it and, right now, doesn't have support for something like that. The current menu objects can't be placed out of the current application (they are not bonoboficated or something like that).

      Also, I recall some talks of some developers saying that the menu bar at top could confuse users who use "focus follow mouse". As I use this focus model, I must agree. Of course, YMMV. :)
    • And what good is all that eye-candy in the last screenshot? When you actually use the computer to do some work, it all dissappears behind program windows. Pretty, but useless. (and it's, also, xfce, which seems to me to be cheating, somehow, if you're talking about the configurability of Gnome--which is my DE of choice, by the way.)

  • The Operative Concept is Choice (Score:5, Insightful)

    by eyepeepackets ( 33477 ) on Friday December 30, 2005 @01:27AM (#14363073)
    Having a choice of various different interfaces to computers systems is a blessing, not a curse. Need to build a netsurfer box for Grandma, wife, or kids then use Gnome or KDE. Put together a server, no GUI needed. On my workstation, WindowMaker on the main box, shell access only on the other but X displays on the main box. Others do different tricks with different tools.

    It's your box, your systems: Decide how the machines will be used and who will be using them, then pick the appropriate tools. Be glad -- and be thankful -- for the variety as it is a very good thing.

    And for those who insist that "Linux" have only one standard interface, just remember "Linux" isn't a monolithic structure but a collection of tools from which you build what you want or need. If you are with a company worrying about providing support, build a distro and tell your customers that's what you support directly, everything else Linux-wise is base info support only and the customer is expected to know what to do for their distribution. Or tell them you only support such-and-such distributions directly, everything else is basic info only. There are many different ways to skin this particular dog.

    Arguments over "which one rulz" are stupidly pointless unless it's a feature-by-feature comparison. The reference article would have done better to have done just that; a comparison of KDE vs. Gnome as concerns their features and tools. Are KDE and Gnome meant to address the same user groups? I'm not so sure and a good comparison of the two might have proven useful in deciding betwix the two. I am sure that having a choice between the two gives people flexibility via options.

    About preferences. Some people prefer blondes, some like brunettes and I've heard rumors of some folks even liking red-haired types. Then there is the whole eye color thing, and then body shapes and breast sizes, etc. Oy, it quickly becomes complicated, but it's such a fine form of torture. Indeed, beautiful women are like fine art: If you have to own every piece that strikes your fancy, you are either very rich or very frustrated. But _having_a_choice_ amongst so many different makes and models ensures continued shopping bliss by keeping it interesting.

    Start with GUIs, end with fine women; time to call Dr. Strangethoughts.

    Happy New Year!

    • Use FireFox as your window manager and set it to open absolutely everything in a new tab. Want a new window? Pfagh! "Let them use tabs!" (-:
    • here here. Personally I use fvwm2 with a heavily hacked configuration file such that I rarely need a mouse (evil mice... eeeevill). I still use the mouse for web browsing, but not much else. The wonderful thing about linux is that you can make it do what you want. My shell is powerful, because it's touring complete, same for my window manager configuration. New users don't want that power, so they can use KDE, or Gnome (yeah yeah, you COULD hack these too, whatever). People like me, who have nothing better
    • I do like the fact that KDE, ROX and Gnome are working together on a few interchangeable definitions and files - some core components just don't need to be rebuilt EVERY time, because they really are going to be essentially the same EVERY time.

      I have used fvwm2, Enlightenment, Gnome (with all the assorted window managers they've managed to go through! :), KDE, twm, olvwm, afterstep, gwm - I've forgotten the names of the others... All of them - yes, even OpenLook - have their place. OpenLook was one of the f

  • ....Its so fucking over simplestic.. For example, when I go to save a file, i cant enter a text path...Noooo that would be too hard for the nubs...So, I have to click around FOREVER tell i find where I want it to go. This theme of over simpleness is displayed everywere in Gnome.
    • Try taking your hand off the mouse and hitting the oh-so-obvious Ctrl-L sequence.

      Yes, I know it's about as intuitive as skinning a hedgehog -- remember the bit in the subject about "not a GNOMEhead" -- but so far I haven't seen anyone succeed in adding a clickety thing to do this.
    • sometimes in gimp it doesn't even display the thing where you pick directories to store the file in. i abhor all those things where they automatically condense the menus and have a little arrow to expand them again. thankfully there are programs available to me that don't do that, and that i only use gimp and gaim and nothing else from gnome.
      • Are you seriously telling me that Gnome has auto-condensing menus? Like Windows-XP style auto-condensing menus? Christ.

        That feature made me want to throw my work computer through a window until I figured out how to turn it off, and I expect my Windows machine to be difficult and poorly designed. And I'm paid to use it, so I can keep my frustrating in check by reminding myself that as long as the company is signing my paychecks, I'll sit there and figure out whatever retardate-designed operating system they
        • oh no, i meant that gimp has a file save where there's a drop-down for the most recently used directories, but you have to click something to get the full directory list. apparently this saves some people time.

          then i related that to something more common and frustrating, but you can probably see why i connect the two.
          • Understood. Okay, well I feel much better about Gnome, then. :)

            I actually use KDE on my Linux box (I'm primarily a Mac user, but I have a Linux machine so I can run Windows software in Cedega/Wine) right now, but I've been considering going back into Gnome. Initially I put Ubuntu on, took one look at Gnome, hated it, switched to KDE. But I was starting to think of giving it a more fair shot -- but I wasn't going to waste my time on anything that follows dumb Windows concepts like those auto-hiding menus.

            Tha
    • ....Its so fucking over simplestic.. For example, when I go to save a file, i cant enter a text path...Noooo that would be too hard for the nubs...So, I have to click around FOREVER tell i find where I want it to go. This theme of over simpleness is displayed everywere in Gnome.

      Please don't mistake your own ignorance for a problem in the software. In any Gnome file browser dialog, you can simply type Ctrl-L and type a text path.

  • I've been a Gnome user since 1998 and used it exclusively. It's ok, gets the job done. Many people complain about not having enough options; these people obviously aren't familiar with gconf-editor.

    Anyway, a few weeks ago I read how Linus Torvalds recommends KDE over any other desktop environment. Ok, so I decided to give it a real workout.

    I grabbed all the packages and logged in. Not bad, real pretty. Lots of little eye candy that really shows polish. I went into the configuration editor and for hour
    • Wow...not that Gnome has ever been slow on my machine, but KDE has never been slow for me. I currently use ion3 because I've gotten addicted to keyboard-manipulation, but I love KDE for its usability and configurability. Now, as for the slowness, my machine is almost identical to yours in power (original Athlon at 1.2GHz, 768 MB ram (though I used KDE on 512)). I don't recall ever having slowness issues except when I tried window transparency but that wasn't KDE's fault (that was poor graphics drivers
    • Hrmm...Ive ran KDE on quiet a few enviroments. On my PC (AMD Athlon XP 2400+, gig of ram, nvidia 5200FX) I run it on high settings and everything is quite fast. Ive ran KDE on a frends OpenBSD box which is 1 ghz (no idea what ran/gpu, just that they were crappy) and i ran it on low settings and it was still fast.
    • You may have another problem. I've used KDE since the 1.x days, on a pentium1 120MHZ/128MB RAM, and didn't have any problems then. Now I run 3.5 on an Athlon1800/1024MB RAM, and stuff is as snappy as can be. The slowest part, startup, has been dramatically improved since 3.4 and now the only thing that is slow is starting OOo. Things to look at may include swap (KDE loves swap to be available (even though it uses virtually none on my machine), or memory (EVERYTHING runs faster with more RAM).
      • ...and now the only thing that is slow is starting OOo.

        Which has little if anything to do with KDE, since it's a slow starter in every environment I've ever run it in.

        (FWIW, I generally use WindowMaker, with Konqueror as my file manager and about a 70/30 mix of KDE and GNome apps. Nautilus is worthless IMNSHO, being even less flexible than Windows Explorer.)

    • Ok, now here's the bad part: I decided that I do indeed like KDE and would like to continue using it, however it's too damn slow for my system! I even turned off a lot of features that are CPU intensive, but simply dragging a window around the desktop is spotty. My machine isn't too bad; it's 1130MHz and 512MB, Geforece2. Running Gnome on this machine is really snappy.

      You must have something really misconfigured. I have a pretty much identical system (1GHz, 512M, shitty video card) and KDE 3.5 works ve

    • As others have stated, there's something wrong with your setup. I've used KDE 3.4 with Debian on a 266 MHz Powerbook G3 with 320 MB RAM, and it was usable on that computer (more so than OS X Panther, which runs acceptably on it now). 1 GHz and 512 MB should be plenty for all ordinary use.
    • They're's someting wrong with your system. On the following machines KDE has felt very snappy:

      AMD K6-2 350MHz - 128mb RAM
      Pentium II 450MHz - 128mb RAM
      Pentium III 733 MHz - 256mb RAM
      Athlon 750MHz - 512mb RAM
      Duron 1.6GHz - 256mb RAM
      Athlon XP 2800+ - 256mb RAM
      Athlon 64 3200+ (64-bit mode) - 2GB RAM

      I give GNOME a try for a few weeks after every new release (Fedora and Ubuntu) and it always feels sluggish to me.

      -KDE user since '97
  • A feature I like in KDE is the ability to give window-specific settings that stick to windows based on a variety of criteria, including window title and program-defined "role." You can then set pretty much any window action available, such as resize, location, always-on-top/bottom, maximized/minimized, put it in the taskbar or not, prevent stealing focus, etc. These settings can either be forced at all times, or just set as the default whenever that type of window opens.

    For example, I want to make sure my I

  • More KDE love (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Laxitive ( 10360 )
    I'm a longtime KDE user. Some aspects of the system which I really like:

    the ssh ioslave (fish://).. any KDE app I'm using can read and write to arbitrary SSH shells I have access to. Works anywhere. So I can use it in web forms to upload files to websites from remote ssh sites, or within kmail to attach files on remote machines, or with ksnapshot to save snapshots directly to my webhost, or with konqueror to browse filesystem HTML on remote machines.

    I also use dcop functionality quite a bit. I have a fa

    • Re:More KDE love (Score:3, Insightful)

      by wertarbyte ( 811674 )

      the ssh ioslave (fish://).. any KDE app I'm using can read and write to arbitrary SSH shells I have access to. Works anywhere.

      No, it's not working everywhere, it is only working in KDE applications. It's another aspect of KDE reinventing the kernel function of abstracting the filesystems you access.The right way to do this would be on kernel level, allowing all applications to access the file system (like FUSE does). Of course it's just a question of perspective, you could argue that this is more like an


      • I agree with you. I'd really like for this functionality to be available in kernelspace. That potential already exists with userspace-filesystem kernel modules like FUSE, or with ReiserFS's plugin system. And if and when those semantics are standardized and established at the operating system level as opposed to the desktop environment level, everybody else will gain that functionality. Until then, KDE apps have nice behavioural properties NOW. The fact that non-KDE apps cannot do certain things that K
        • Ugh, I didn't mean to type 'kernelspace' in that last post. Kernelspace is the last place it should be implemented. The functionality should definitely be implemented in userspace. What I meant was that the abstraction should be exposed at the same level current filesystem abstractions are exposed.

          -Laxitive

      • I'd like to expand on the current logistical issues on making this functionality available at the OS level. I've already mentioned that there is no standard for how these IO portal semantics should be expressed. For example, most remote SSH filesystem access methods require a login and password: how is the kernel filesystem abstraction going to take care of that? Will it be encoded into the path, or will it be prompted for? Is that secure (I'm not saying that it isn't, just saying that these issues need
      • While you are correct, you are not being fair to the Gnome/KDE developers. FUSE has only been an option since it was merged into Linux, around version 2.6.12 IIRC. Were the developers supposed to sit on their hands until 2.6.12 came out? Are the users of Gnome and KDE supposed to wait until 2.6.12 is ubiqutous?

        Even now FUSE is available, you would have a hard time if you wanted to convince the Gnome/KDE developers to ditch gnome-vfs and kio(?) in favour of the Linux-specific FUSE.
        • FUSE/kioslaves was only an example, not a really good one I have to admit. I think there should be a layer (which is not specific KDE or Gnome, but something neutral), that handles those issues: If the underlying OS does support a feature, os the native method, and if it does not, try to emulate it in software. So if I call a fish:// on my linux box, Konqueror will mount a FUSE sshfs und cd into it, while it will use his own subsystem under Solaris or other Systems.
      • But I feel bad about adding more and more functions to KDE and leaving the rest of the system behind

        Yes, FUSE rocks. But KDE was started in 1996 - FUSE was far from being "there"

        It'd be a nice thing to se FUSE replacing KIO and gnome-vfs. SADLY, the freedesktop people have decided to start Yet Another Specification [freedesktop.org] which aims to unify KIO and gnome-vfs. FUSE is the right thing to do - transparent to ALL apps even those compiled years ago - but no matter how much I explained to him, they think that the "Righ

        • Yes, FUSE rocks. But KDE was started in 1996 - FUSE was far from being "there"

          So where kioslaves :-) But I think FUSE should have been there years to got. FUSE has the potential of taking "Everything is a file" to the next leven (plan9 anyone?). I'd really like to see more systems using it.

          SADLY, the freedesktop people have decided to start Yet Another Specification which aims to unify KIO and gnome-vfs.

          The problem with "freedesktop" is that they focus, well, only on the desktop. They do not see the

    • the ssh ioslave (fish://).. any KDE app I'm using can read and write to arbitrary SSH shells I have access to.

      Bloody hell, I had no idea you could do that.

      Dude, you rock. Thanks for the tip!

    • I have no more to say, LOVE this feature! You made 2005 a great year (1 day left!).

  • This might sound like a flame posting, but altough I have to admit that KDE and Gnome are pretty and probably good desktop environments, I'm sad that they are killing many established Un*x philosophies that have been around for a while and proven themselves. I already noticed this 10 years ago, when KDE started to "reinvent the wheel" [tm] instead of providing proper frontends for established (console) applications, with things linke kppp or kinternet. KDE also has the ability to configure many aspects of your Xserver like keyboard ayout, resolution, fonts... - but only for KDE, if you sitch to another Window manager, those changes will not be reflected, they only affect your KDE session. KDE and Gnome both have the ability to browse different "filesystems" in Nautilus or Konqueror, like sshfs/fish, bluetooth devices etc., but again, this only works for KDE/Gnome application. This might be a nice abstraction, but we already got such thing, it's called the VFS layer inside the kernel. Why not provide a nice interface for mount and perhaps FUSE [sourceforge.net], which can do the same thing, but in a nice and consisting way that fits into the Unix way of life (Yes, I know that FUSE is not perfect yet). Why design every application with a GUI, despite the fact that people might want to use them in a script (without an X session), just like kitchenync or multisync? I'd like to get my device synced automatically upon hotplug/udev detection, but that would require a command line version, just like pilot-sync used to have.

    Those DEs are also reinventing drive letters - not letters as such, but a directory structure that has the drives next to each other on the root. I know an OS who does this, and I think it has been proven a bad idea.

    The fact that each job had its own tool, and that those tools could be combined in an easy way (pipes, script) is what made Unix/Linux so great - But KDE/Gnome are ignoring the facts, repeating the same mistakes Windows made. Poor Kernel, getting run over by these reinvented wheels (called KWheels and GWheels) over and over again :-(

    • Re:KDE, Gnome, or: Why Linux is going down the dra (Score:5, Insightful)

      by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Friday December 30, 2005 @09:09AM (#14364272) Journal

      I'm sad that they are killing many established Un*x philosophies that have been around for a while and proven themselves.

      I don't think they are. Actually, I think KDE, with DCOP, Kioslaves and KParts, is doing a good job of extending the Unix philosophies into the GUI space.

      I already noticed this 10 years ago, when KDE started to "reinvent the wheel" [tm] instead of providing proper frontends for established (console) applications, with things linke kppp or kinternet.

      I don't know about kinternet, but kppp *is* a front end to pppd, a console application.

      KDE also has the ability to configure many aspects of your Xserver like keyboard ayout, resolution, fonts... - but only for KDE, if you sitch to another Window manager, those changes will not be reflected, they only affect your KDE session.

      I think some would argue that's a feature, not a bug. I can see both sides.

      KDE and Gnome both have the ability to browse different "filesystems" in Nautilus or Konqueror, like sshfs/fish, bluetooth devices etc., but again, this only works for KDE/Gnome application. This might be a nice abstraction, but we already got such thing, it's called the VFS layer inside the kernel. Why not provide a nice interface for mount and perhaps FUSE, which can do the same thing, but in a nice and consisting way that fits into the Unix way of life (Yes, I know that FUSE is not perfect yet).

      And kioslaves have been around for several years, while FUSE is new. Until file systems are implemntable in userspace, doing something like them at the VFS level means kernel hacking, which is much harder and more error-prone. Given that the kernel did not support the required functionality, the KDE developers' only option was to build their infrastructure in at a higher level. But they followed the Unix philosophy and made it very modular and pluggable, so that all kioslaves are usable from every KDE application that uses files.

      Why design every application with a GUI, despite the fact that people might want to use them in a script (without an X session), just like kitchenync or multisync? I'd like to get my device synced automatically upon hotplug/udev detection, but that would require a command line version, just like pilot-sync used to have.

      In the first place, assuming you have a GUI, there's nothing preventing hotplug/udev from starting a GUI app to do the synching.

      In the second place, you're complaining (and I think it's a legitimate gripe) about one particular application, and applying it to the whole desktop. I agree that the core functionality should be provided through a command-line interface.

      Those DEs are also reinventing drive letters - not letters as such, but a directory structure that has the drives next to each other on the root.

      This I haven't seen. Can you elaborate?

      The fact that each job had its own tool, and that those tools could be combined in an easy way (pipes, script) is what made Unix/Linux so great

      You really need to learn about DCOP.

      • I don't know about kinternet, but kppp *is* a front end to pppd, a console application.

        Yes, but it does not honor the way the particular distribution launches a ppp connection. I know it is nearly impossible to support every distribution available, but that is why we need clean interfaces, on both sides.

        [Drive Letters]

        This I haven't seen. Can you elaborate?

        I've seen KDE desktops that show physical drives next to each other, just like Windows Explorer does. Of course everything is mapped to the mount

        • You are talking about the 'Devices' pane in Konqueror. Its job is to list all your filesystem devices.

          If you are making a quick manual backup, or sending data to someone using a removable HD, then it doesn't make much sense to browse a traditional Unix tree to find the destination device. And its less Windows-like than it is Mac-like, basically just listing the contents of mtab.

          If anything, traditional Unix is unnecessarily Windows-like in the way it handles disk volumes. Instead of one letter, you get four
    • The author of this comment is missing something: KDE is not a Linux only desktop. Try forgetting about Linux completely and think Solaris or FreBSD - or even Windows, and read it again.

      I was using KDE on Solaris a while back, and it was every bit as powerful as it is on my Linux boxes. And that is because KDE does not use all sorts of Linux only technologies.

      This isn't the full picture, though. In many cases, KDE will use the enhanced options of your OS, and provide backups for other systems. A simple examp
    • The founder of the KDE project agrees with you BTW. He wanted KDE to be a GUI not a Window Manager / Widget set. In other words what you see with OSX to Darwin or NT to cmd.exe not what you see with WindowMaker to Linux. Gnome of course was fundamentally designed to challenge KDE so...

      As for the other comments they are implementation details. I tend to agree with you I like the idea of mounting VFSes rather than "browsing". But both Nautilus and Konq were browsers first so presumably the people who use

  • sorry... (Score:3, Funny)

    by C0vardeAn0nim0 ( 232451 ) on Friday December 30, 2005 @05:22AM (#14363657) Journal
    Of course, this doesn't means that this was written to critize other desktops neither it means you should start Yet Another Gnome vs KDE flamewar...

    too late.
  • ...but all of that is old stuff. OS/2 WorkPlace Shell (the desktop environment that lived on top of Presentation Manager) from version 2.0 and onwards had all that too. It was CORBA based, using (D)SOM and could be controlled via REXX, just as DCOP can for KDE. Control and send messages to/from SOM-aware applications were just as easy.

    So, what's my point... ranting on about a dead OS? My point is that people are continually re-inventing stuff. People live in seperate niches and recieve little imput from oth
    • Both KDE and Gnome use the Windows 3.1 angle, put a GUI with all its trimmings on top of an OS.

      I think you've got that backwards, friend. In this regard, Windows 1/2/3/9x used a paradigm (graphical shell atop a command-line OS) that was already well established in the Unix world.

  • Resources (Score:3, Interesting)

    by munpfazy ( 694689 ) on Friday December 30, 2005 @09:17AM (#14364320)

    [amaroK:]eats *lots* of RAM, but when you look at the alternatives you realize that they eat 50% of the resources amaroK uses to implement less than 25% of the equivalent functionality.


    I say, give me something that will eat 10% of the resources and provide 5% of the functionality. Then give me 20 other somethings that do the same, but provide different functionality, and we'll have all of amaroK's functionality with only 10% of the resource commitment.

    That's more or less my principle complaint against both KDE and Gnome: in order to get the hand full of features that could be useful, one has to add a bunch of stuff that at best isn't used and at worst gets in the way.

    But, the good news is those 20 programs *do* exist, and I can use them. So long as no one is forcing me to use amaroK, I'm glad to see that it exists and that someone enjoys it.

    In fact, it brings me great joy to know that both Gnome and KDE exist and that there are fans out there talking each other into using them.

    First, people find them useful, and anything that improves people's lives (even in a very small way) is a good thing.

    Second, they both help attract new users to free unix-like software, and give talented developers something fun to work on. Anything that makes linux and the BSD's more popular is good for those of us who love them.

    Third, I'm happy that *both* gnome and kde exist, because so long as both maintain a large following developers will have no choice but to make projects able to run without requiring either. That's good news for those of us who prefer alternative environments. The day one wins is the day third party apps stop simply requiring libraries and start requiring that the winner be actually running.

  • XFCE (Score:1, Informative)

    by yattaran ( 898911 )
    I recently switched from GNOME to XFCE, even though I've been a fan of GNOME for years I just couldn't use it anymore. The enourmous memory footprint is getting on my nerve and the developers of GNOME has proven over the years unwilling to do anything about it.

    Also the inclusion of Evolution and Ephiphany are just annoying. It would be much better if Evolution was replaced by Thunderbird and Ephiphany by Firefox. Installing GNOME you get Epiphany and also Mozilla (since Epiphany depends on it). I use Fire

    • I know what you mean. I used to run Gnome too, but then I discovered IceWM. The reason I like IceWM is that it has no fancy features and it just works. Memory isn't really a problem for me, having 1.5GB, although that may seem small to you, it works well for me. I find now, that when I go onto a KDE/Gnome machine, I find myself wondering why, with 512MB ram, someone decides to use KDE or Gnome. I mean, if you weren't using that RAM for a fancy window manager, heck, you might be able to compile reasonably f
    • Evolution has been part of the default installation of Ubuntu since I first started using Ubuntu (that was v5.04 and I'm now running 6.10). However, it's the only mail client installed. I just ignore it and "sudo apt-get install mozilla-thunderbird" and get on with it.
  • The battle between KDE and GNOME is like the American political structure: Whoever wins... We lose.

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