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KDE or Gnome 2
- Thread starter Kinl
- Start date
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2
- #2
I suppose you have spent some time on recently, or seen the LinuxPlanet article,
As you will see from any search of Slashdot for KDE, or many many opinion pieces on the web, the KDE/Gnome rivalry is almost as heavy as the Netscape/Microsoft rivalry in '96-98. I would say KDE is a slight winner in popularity, but I have no numbers to back that up. If you want to aim your development work at "crossover" people, who were previously more familiar with Windows, then I say definitely KDE.
It seems that everyone who likes one of these, dilikes the other, at least somewhat. I personally cast my vote in favor of KDE for a couple of reasons:
1. I don't really like the brash in-your-face" attitudes of some of the people on the Gnome team, along with Ximian or Eazel projects. One example of this is when Ximian purchased thousands of advertising spaces on Google, to appear when people searched for KDE. Now this is legal, but it's kind of rude, and anti-intuitive to the way search engines are supposed to work.
2. I find that KDE is just a little more well thought-out in its approach. Gnome does have a sort of "coolness" factor going for it, but KDE seems to make more common sense. I haven't tried the latest version of Gnome, but in my past experience, Gnome was a lot more likely to crash than KDE.
3. KDE has a nice suite of integrated applications: a word processor, a spreadsheet, a database program, a presentations program, a graphics application, etc... and last, but not least, a browser (which, like ID, doubles as a filemanager, and which is DHTML-compliant, and which I have found much faster and stabler than Mozilla). This all is a little more like Microsoft than some of the free software people like, but I think KDE is on to something there: build a system where all the major business-type applications have a similar feel. You can cover all those bases with Gnome/GNU software, but it doesn't all have the same interface style, or even useability. The Eazel and Ximian people are trying to achieve this but they are not up to pace with KDE yet.
4. The actual code base: KDE uses C++ and the QT library( which uses C++ and is very OOP-based. Gnome, as I understand it, uses only C as its base. Since C is not very OOP-friendly, it seems that the developers have to work twice as hard as the KDE people to achieve similar results. I am not a C/C++ expert, but actuall results verify this: There has been *much* more money and time spent on Gnome, Ximian, and Eazel than on KDE. For example, the KDE browser, Konqueror, has only one developer. I'm sure he gets help from others, but this is definitely not a large team. In fact, when you realize the effort spent on Konqueror compared to Mozilla, it's astounding. (now mind you... remember that Mozilla is cross-platform, while Konqueror is not (yet;-)).
5. KDE has a nice development environment ( and on the whole, I imagine will be a lot easier to develop applications under. I also am willing to bet it is easier to make KDE apps embeddable in Gnome, or other window managers, than vice-versa. And speaking of development, check out the native abilities of the latest version of QT, while you're at it.
As you will see from any search of Slashdot for KDE, or many many opinion pieces on the web, the KDE/Gnome rivalry is almost as heavy as the Netscape/Microsoft rivalry in '96-98. I would say KDE is a slight winner in popularity, but I have no numbers to back that up. If you want to aim your development work at "crossover" people, who were previously more familiar with Windows, then I say definitely KDE.
It seems that everyone who likes one of these, dilikes the other, at least somewhat. I personally cast my vote in favor of KDE for a couple of reasons:
1. I don't really like the brash in-your-face" attitudes of some of the people on the Gnome team, along with Ximian or Eazel projects. One example of this is when Ximian purchased thousands of advertising spaces on Google, to appear when people searched for KDE. Now this is legal, but it's kind of rude, and anti-intuitive to the way search engines are supposed to work.
2. I find that KDE is just a little more well thought-out in its approach. Gnome does have a sort of "coolness" factor going for it, but KDE seems to make more common sense. I haven't tried the latest version of Gnome, but in my past experience, Gnome was a lot more likely to crash than KDE.
3. KDE has a nice suite of integrated applications: a word processor, a spreadsheet, a database program, a presentations program, a graphics application, etc... and last, but not least, a browser (which, like ID, doubles as a filemanager, and which is DHTML-compliant, and which I have found much faster and stabler than Mozilla). This all is a little more like Microsoft than some of the free software people like, but I think KDE is on to something there: build a system where all the major business-type applications have a similar feel. You can cover all those bases with Gnome/GNU software, but it doesn't all have the same interface style, or even useability. The Eazel and Ximian people are trying to achieve this but they are not up to pace with KDE yet.
4. The actual code base: KDE uses C++ and the QT library( which uses C++ and is very OOP-based. Gnome, as I understand it, uses only C as its base. Since C is not very OOP-friendly, it seems that the developers have to work twice as hard as the KDE people to achieve similar results. I am not a C/C++ expert, but actuall results verify this: There has been *much* more money and time spent on Gnome, Ximian, and Eazel than on KDE. For example, the KDE browser, Konqueror, has only one developer. I'm sure he gets help from others, but this is definitely not a large team. In fact, when you realize the effort spent on Konqueror compared to Mozilla, it's astounding. (now mind you... remember that Mozilla is cross-platform, while Konqueror is not (yet;-)).
5. KDE has a nice development environment ( and on the whole, I imagine will be a lot easier to develop applications under. I also am willing to bet it is easier to make KDE apps embeddable in Gnome, or other window managers, than vice-versa. And speaking of development, check out the native abilities of the latest version of QT, while you're at it.
- Thread starter
- #3
Thank you for your input. That was an excellent review about things I have never read about. I was wondering about the programming language of Gnome and I thought it was something like plain old C, but I wasnt sure. I have used Kdevelop and Love it, but I never heard any other things about gnome whatsoever.
Thank you again, for the review and for the links,
donn
Thank you again, for the review and for the links,
donn
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