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Re: Desktop look...
by About Gnome on Saturday 09/Feb/2002, @02:56
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This is a flame and I make no apologies for it.
Gnome started for one reason and one reason only: RMS didn't agree with the KDE developers' interpretation of the GPL wrt the QT library. Gnome was set up with the intention of creating FUD to delay the uptake of the best thing to ever happen to desktop Linux and to bluff and bully the KDE crowd into getting the QT licencing changed.
Yes, you heard it right, Gnome was *deliberately* started to be "bickering, competing and incompatible" and to stop Linux having a single desktop standard if that standard was to be KDE.
The licence issue is *long* in the past. That out of the way, the Gnome crowd should have had to decency to either scrap Gnome completely (as did those working on the Harmony project, which was developing a GPL QT clone) so we could unite behind KDE or keep Gnome going as a low key longer-term hacker R&D project like Enlightenment. But no, we had to keep the ball rolling didn't we.
Why, given the adverse impact this has had on Linux and other target platforms?
NIH syndrome partly; a lot of big egos (many in the US) were beaten to the punch by a bunch of (mainly) German students.
And the fact that it relies on an existing library means that big egos who want to reinvent the universe can't develop their own object library; they have to do something useful.
But the main reason, irony of ironies, is that it is LGPL rather than KDE's GPL; yes folks, the desktop that began as *THE* GNU free desktop now boasts that it is more commercial-friendly. That's why Sun and HP are putting money into it. Guarantees success? Ah, look at CDE...
Gnome is an expensive, deliberately divisive vapourware project that should have been scrapped after the QT licence changes if the principals involved had any sense of decency or any *REAL* committment to free software. It continues because a bunch of pricks can't admit that they were wrong and continue to put their own giant egos ahead of the development of desktop Unix.
Meanwhile KDE continues to release in its usual methodical fashion while Gnome 2 stays as FUD. ("You may think KDE's kewl, but wait till you see Gnome 2!") Pardon me while I puke...
Gnome and the bastards who've hyped this piece of vapourware and tried to sabotage KDE for the last five years can go to Hell! Who needs Microsoft trying to pull the rug from under the free Unix's when you've got this lot! (Yes, that includes RMS, who is responsible for initiating and encouraging this debacle).
To paraphrase the end of RMS's infamous letter of "forgiveness" to the KDE developers: Go KDE!!! |
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Re: Desktop look...
by dave on Saturday 09/Feb/2002, @17:15
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The reason it's stayed around is because people use it, like it and develop for it. You find kde better, great, use kde, others find gnome better - for them it i s better to use gnome. It might have started because of licencing issues but now it was never meant to be a clone of kde - just a good desktop.
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Re: Desktop look...
by About Ximian on Saturday 09/Feb/2002, @17:58
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Let us be realistic. It is obvious that Gnome is the desktop war, in Linux. I predict Gnome will live as a replacement for CDE, since Sun wants to force it on its users. Linux and the BSDs will be dominated by KDE. The Gnome team may as well not bother to support anything other than Solaris.
Gnome has some great applications, but as a desktop environment it is poor, and it cannot keep up with the onslaught of KDE releases.
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Re: Desktop look...
by me on Tuesday 12/Feb/2002, @07:12
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It sounds to me that you don't believe anyone actually uses gnome (unless they have a gun pointed at their head). It would be really great to have some real numbers on the proportion of people using each desktop - i know it's quite hard to get statistics like this mainly because (almost) all distributions include both desktops. However most of the people that i have spoken to who have tried ximian gnome after using kde for long periods of time seem very impressed and are enthusiastic about it "better looking and faster than kde". So i just wanted to assure you that some people do actually use and like gnome (and no there isn't a sun/ximian employee behind me forcing me to write this)
I'm not quite sure why you seem to want gnome dead, surely it does you (or kde) no harm.
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