LWE Wrapup

Rob Kaper and myself have collaborated on a summary of the happenings at last week's LinuxWorld Expo. We tell you what really took place at the most fabulous booth at the show <grin>. And don't forget to check out Rob's extended and hilarious picture gallery of the event!

KDE Report: LinuxWorld Conference and Expo 2001


KDE Project Shows Off KDE 2.2 and KOffice 1.1 at LWE 2001 (San Francisco, CA)

Rob Kaper and Andreas Pour
September 4, 2001
San Francisco, CA, USA

The KDE Project used the occasion of
the LinuxWorld Expo in San
Francisco to show off the most recent release of the K Desktop Environment, KDE 2.2. The
Expo was also the perfect place to announce and demonstrate the new KOffice 1.1,
the KDE office and productivity suite.

KDE was represented by Bay Area locals Jim Blomo, Jason Katz-Brown and
Charles Samuels as well as Bohemians Waldo Bastian, Kurt Granroth, Rob
Kaper, Andreas Pour and Chris Schläger. Also present at the KDE booth with
the best of intentions were Paul Campbell, Bill Huey and Eunice Kim.

One of the highlights of the event was the announcement that KDE had won the
LWE Excellence Award for Best Open Source Project. After receiving the
award, it was proudly displayed at the booth by the developers present, who
felt it was great to see appreciation for the combined efforts of the entire
KDE community.

Over the three days that the exhibition was open, many visitors were seen
at the KDE booth. Most of them were impressed by the demonstrations given.
Most popular were Konqueror,
Noatun-plugin Madness, the Internet
keyword architecture, renewed text editor Kate and especially the KIO
slave architecture.

Demonstrating the kio_audiocd plugin with the flair of a magician
("see, this is a regular CD") to rip and encode audio tracks to
MP3 and Ogg Vorbis almost caused some
visitors to leave the exhibition so they could install KDE on their
computers immediately. Also met with great interest was the mention of the
kio_freenet and kio_sftp slaves for respectively the Freenet distributed file network
and secure file transfers using SSH.

Interest from the media was also intense. Andreas was forced to purchase
lozenges to protect himself after the large number of interviews the
KDE League's PR firm arranged for him (thanks Eunice!). Earlier in the
week Andreas took part in a live interview and another recorded interview for
TechTV, an international
technology cable channel.

One of the most frequently asked questions at the booth was the
difference between KDE and GNOME, the two most popular open source
desktops. Most users did not realize
that both projects share the same goals (improving UNIX usability) while
approaching them from a different technical point-of-view. Despite popular
belief, the KDE
developers and GNOME developers
did not engage in WWIII but instead met
under friendly conditions. Andreas also met with Nat Friedman from
Ximian in an effort to improve
relations and to discuss ways that KDE and GNOME can work together to make
Open Source more attractive to computer users. The meeting went very
well and concrete actions to improve KDE/GNOME interoperability were
discussed. Some of these ideas were already planned in a KDE/GNOME hackfest
to be held at the XFree
Technical Conference
this November under the umbrella of
Keith Packard of the
XFree86 Project.

Some other frequently heard requests were for CD's with KDE installed
and whether MieTerra's big stuffed Konqi could be given away. For various
reasons the KDE team could not comply, but were able to point to a page
on the KDE website with third part CD-ROM resellers and KDE merchandise. It should also
be mentioned that most Linux distributions ship with KDE, many of which have
it as the preferred or default desktop environment. We would like to
specifically mention both SuSE and Mandrake and thank them for the hardware
they contributed for the KDE booth. Another thank you goes to the KDE League for providing food for the
developers in attendance.

A photo impression of the event and the KDE booth made by Rob Kaper is available here.

Dot Categories: 

Comments

by jamal (not verified)

So...? Nobody said it not possible.
It is nothing new. Cups support has been in KDE and Gnome for sometimes if you followed both.
But didn't we talk about Konqueror and Nautilus support in Gnome for these facilities such CD ripping and printing?
And since you acknowledge the lack of these which certainly missed by some (because it is not implemented yet but easy, you said), that's the problem. I didn't see the implementation of these in Gnome's nautilus but in konqueror it has. Anybody can make a claim something is easy to be done and we will believe them if they gave us the result.

by Juan Cortez (not verified)

this is not very elegant..

again GNOME has a less integrated feel than KDE

of course, i do not want to see GNOME die, so I wish it shall catch up more when GNOME 2 gets released

remember, the best thing that ever happened to KDE was GNOME. KDE would not be so nice if GNOME did not exist. So I say, GO GNOME. AND GO KDE!!

If GNOME will not get its act together, I think KDE would progress slower. In the last year (and especially the last 6 months), KDE has seemed to go very fast and bring many users in from GNOME. It has lots of momentum. I hope GNOME also releases new version so that KDE will go faster again. Competetion is good.

by David Rihaur (not verified)

I've tried both ajunta and gide in the last week, and neither of them have feature sets anywhere near to KDevelop2. Seriously, have you tried all three recently? Gide seems like an build of an early kdevelop (pre 1.1). Ajunta was a little bit better, but seemed to be more like kdevelop 1.2.

This was released 3 years ago.

by Gary Storla (not verified)

I agree. Ajunta is nice-looking and everything, but it still lacks features that kdevelop has had from the start. kdevelop is probably the defacto free GUI ide for Linux (and yes, gide has existed as long as kdevelop has).

by Gary Storla (not verified)

kate in cvs has python editing support, as well as Makefile editing support (both were oversights, afaik). I'm not sure if this has been placed into the kde 2.2.1 branch or not, but it will definatly be in kde 3.0.

by Stof (not verified)

I think all GNOME's "mainstream press" has actually done more harm than good.
Look at all the people today: they are all anti-GNOME and pro-KDE.
I can't see why, but for some reason people just *WANT* to believe that Ximian and all other GNOME-supporting companies are evil, while Ximian hasn't do anything harmful (wether Mono will be harmful or not will be clear in the future; nobody can tell what will happen just by using prejudgements).

You said that GNOME is nowhere near KDE 2. I disagree.
Dispite KDE's "technical superiority" or "better open source project" or "better useability" or whatever, I still prefer to use GNOME.
You can't say that KDE is better. Every desktop has it's own advantages and disadvantages. Wether a desktop is better is an opinion, not a fact.
And GNOME is good, so unless it gets completely messed up (which will not likely happen), I will keep using GNOME as my primairy desktop environment with some GNOME and KDE apps.

by John Porter (not verified)

Why do you like GNOME better, in your opinion?

by Stof (not verified)

- If feels more comfortable to me.
- The panel is more configureable.
- I prefer to program in C rather than C++, using GTK+ and gnome-libs.
- It is faster (I have a Pentium 233 with 48 MB RAM, so it's quite noticeable).

I don't login to KDE. When I want to do something only KDE apps can, I open a terminal and types 'kfoobar' to do it.
All KDE programs runs fine in GNOME anyway.

by Menderes Chiracouglu (not verified)

I doubt that GNOME would be faster than KDE on a Pentium 233. On my Pentium 166, originally, KDE1 was very usable, KDE 2, and Gnome 1.2/1.4 were not. After I installed 96mb of ram, and installed a faster rpm hard disk, KDE 2 was usable (but still not as fast as KDE1), while Gnome was not. Note that gtk apps were usable, but not Gnome apps. Konqueror ran at acceptable speed but neither Mozilla nor Galeon rendered at acceptable speeds. On my Athlon 750, Konqueror and Galeon are about the same speed, so that leads me to beleive that Gecko is a bit more resourcee intensive.

Also, I think that KDE 2.2's panel's configurability has cought up to Gnome's.

I can understand it being more comfortable, as I ran fvwm and ksh for a very long time :).

Btw, on my Pentium 166, I'm running kwin. It is extremely fast (as fast as blackbox).

by Stof (not verified)

I once had a Pentium 166 too. I was using RedHat 6.0/6.1, and I had GNOME 1.0.
Back then, I prefer using KDE 1 because it was faster than GNOME.
However, when GNOME 1.2 was released, and I replaced Enlightenment with IceWM, GNOME became much, much faster.
I prefer the highly customizeable GNOME panel over the KDE one, so I switched to GNOME.
I never had stability problems with GNOME 1.0, probably because I install every update and bugfix immedietly when they were released.

And I don't notice a speed difference between GNOME apps and GTK+ apps (except for startup time, but the same applies to QT and KDE apps).Now I have a Pentium 233 with 48 MB RAM, and Galeon runs faster than Konqueror here.

by John Martin (not verified)

Remember that Konqueror is a lot more feature filled than Galeon is. After all, Konqueror is NOT a web browser, but can be one.

I'd think that konqueror-embedded would be faster than Galeon, mainly because Galeon still has to load gtkmozembed (which STILL takes more resources than khtml (konqueror takes more memory using kmozilla than khtml)).

I'd like to see a way to use gtkhtml2 in galeon. It is a nearly complete port of khtml, just like gtkhtml is a port of the old khtmlw (kde 1.x's html widget). Of course, it'd miss things such as kjs. This'd make galeon be a bit less bloated (right now what's holding it back is gtkmozembed). Also, it'd make galeon render pages better (namely ones than use IE rendering features).

by Gary Storla (not verified)

Yeah, khtml seems to be faster on slower systems than gecko.

Compare konq-embedded to something like light (the small gtk+-based browser that uses gecko). Comparing these two will show the speeds of the rendering engines, and not the outer user interface.

From my experience (on a Pentium 200), these things happen.

Gecko is faster for loading large pages (>300kb).
Gecko is faster in loading pages with MANY medium sized (40k) images.
khtml is faster for loading medium-sized pages.
khtml is faster for loading pages with large (200k) images.
they seemed to be the same in loading small pages and small images.

I think khtml had the advantage in speed because konq-embedded was "zippier" overall. By this, I mean that it was more responsive to the mouse and keyboard, as well as opening new windows. Also scrolling and selections were noticebly faster with konq-emb. Curiously, I think that this is reveresed in faster machines. Scrolling is about the same, but selections are slower in konq. Weird.

by Matthew Johnson (not verified)

xine is not a GTK app

by Spark (not verified)

> The only GTK app I use is the first one: gimp (ok and mozilla and vlc/xine).

Wow, great argument. ;)
I used a Gnome desktop for several months without ANY Qt or KDE app at all and I really liked it. I was never able to run a desktop without Gtk apps (yet) so KDE always felt incomplete to me.
Gimp, Xmms, Loki Installer, Debian Tools, XQF (Quake browser), etc. All those little tools are writtin in Gtk. There is nothing left in the Gtk world, Qt/KDE is/was not quite there (yet).

by John Martin (not verified)

And I've used KDE 2.1/2.2 for the last 6 months without having even having Gtk app.

Gimp->krayon (yeah, I know, krayon sucks. but the next version of gimp will remove all gtk dependencies, so the kimp project can be revived).
xmms->noatun OR kaboodble (noatun and aRts is a much more featured filled program than xmms will ever be).
Loki Installer->This has Gtk+ STATICALLY linked.
Debian Tools- because you use the gnome frontends to them maybe? try kpackage, it's a lot more elegant (imho) anyways.
xqf- never heard.. pretty much a niche program I guess

by Spark (not verified)

> Gimp->krayon (yeah, I know, krayon sucks. but the next version of gimp will remove all gtk dependencies, so the kimp project can be revived).

Yep, this might change in the future (I hope so) but *currently*, the Gimp is the only real choice.

> xmms->noatun OR kaboodble (noatun and aRts is a much more featured filled program than xmms will ever be).

Hmm well. I'm using noatun currently and it's not bad. I don't know if aRts is used, I always had problems with aRts and disabled it, but it runs pretty fast now. Maybe it's disabled or has improved a lot. But I don't really need a sound server...
Granted, noatun is a nice replacement for xmms. It lacks skins, but I hide it all the time, that's quite neat. The dockbar icon does everything I need. I miss a possibilty to change the volume though. It would also be neat if I could change the volume by using the scrollwheel above the noatun dock item (this works with xmms).

> Loki Installer->This has Gtk+ STATICALLY linked.

So what?

> Debian Tools- because you use the gnome frontends to them maybe? try kpackage, it's a lot more elegant (imho) anyways.

Elegant thant WHAT? You don't even give a name but you know it's more elegant? :)
Fact is, that Deity-Gtk is THE graphical APT frontend in development currently.
But I don't use an APT frontend, so it doesn't matter.
There is also the Gtk frontend to debconf and the progeny configlets for the Gnome Control Center. But I figured, that I don't need them. It's not that bad.

> xqf- never heard.. pretty much a niche program I guess

Yeah, that's the point... all those little "niche" programs I found were for Gtk. I couldn't live without a good quake server browser for example.
The only reason I don't need this yet is, that I don't have NVidia drivers running on my Debian box (where KDE is installed).
It seems to get better.
I also noticed, that there are less "Gnome developers should stop working for Gnome and develop for KDE" trolls lately. I guess that's because they are not so frustrated anymore, that KDE lacks applications. ;)

by John Martin (not verified)

> > xmms->noatun OR kaboodble (noatun and aRts is a much more featured filled program than xmms will ever be).

> Hmm well. I'm using noatun currently and it's not bad. I don't know if aRts is used, I always had problems with aRts and disabled it, but it runs pretty fast now. Maybe it's disabled or has improved a lot. But I don't really need a sound server...
Granted, noatun is a nice replacement for xmms. It lacks skins, but I hide it all the time, that's quite neat. The dockbar icon does everything I need. I miss a possibilty to change the volume though. It would also be neat if I could change the volume by using the scrollwheel above the noatun dock item (this works with xmms).

Noatun lacks skins? It's skin support is in fact a LOT better than xmms's. Kjofol and Kaiman skins are so much better than Winamp style skins (simply because they can be shaped in so many ways possible. In fact, Kjofol was the choice mp3 player of skinners for nearly two years before AOL/nullsoft/netscape bought the programmer out ;p.

Also, I suppose you could use the winskin noatun plugin in noatun-cvs. It lets you use all winamp skins in noatun.

> > xqf- never heard.. pretty much a niche program I guess

> Yeah, that's the point... all those little "niche" programs I found were for Gtk. I couldn't live without a good quake server browser for example.
The only reason I don't need this yet is, that I don't have NVidia drivers running on my Debian box (where KDE is installed).

Heh, I tried xqf just now. It sucks. It is nothing like gamespy or eye. Nuff said.

> I also noticed, that there are less "Gnome developers should stop working for Gnome and develop for KDE" trolls lately. I guess that's because they are not so frustrated anymore, that KDE lacks applications. ;)

Well, kde 1.0.x, kde 1.1.x had more apps than gnome 1.0.x
and gnome 1.2.x had more apps than kde 1.2.x and kde 2.0.x

Now from what I've noticed, kde 2.1.x and kde 2.2.x have had a increasing number of apps compared to gnome 1.4.x.

Results? About tied right now I think. Name a few more gtk+ "niche" apps that do not equivalents in kde or qt. I really can't think of any others. Exclude distro apps, because each distro picks the toolkit they use to build config tools with. Afaik, SuSE, Caldera, TurboLinux, and Mandrake use qt/KDE, while currently, redhat and debian (debian and progeny) use gtk+/GNOME.

> > Loki Installer->This has Gtk+ STATICALLY linked.
> So what?

The point I was trying to make it that you do not need to have gtk+ installed to run these.

> > Debian Tools- because you use the gnome frontends to them maybe? try kpackage, it's a lot more elegant (imho) anyways.

> Elegant thant WHAT? You don't even give a name but you know it's more elegant? :)

I was comparing it to gnome-apt, deity-gtk, stormpkg (any apt frontends that work in X11). Out of these, gnome-apt is abhored by even the diehard gnome fanatics, deity-gtk is not completely stable nor completely finished, and stormpkg showed promise, but hasn't been updated in nearly 8 months).

> Fact is, that Deity-Gtk is THE graphical APT frontend in development currently.

No, Deity is. Deity-Gtk is just a module for it. There might never be a qt/kde module for it. Why? Because there is already kpackage. There needed to be a deity-gtk because Gnomeapt was not good.

> But I don't use an APT frontend, so it doesn't matter.

Neither do I.

> There is also the Gtk frontend to debconf and the progeny configlets for the Gnome Control Center. But I figured, that I don't need them. It's not that bad.

I've tried the gtk (or was it GNOME) frontend to debconf. It seemed pretty buggy at that time (seemed more like a toy/demo). Of course, that was a few weeks ago, and so it might have changed. I think most users will continue to use something like the slang frontend.

Well,

by Shane Colson (not verified)

I've been listening to this discussion for a while, so I'll put in my 2 cents. I am a long time GNOME user, but I've installed and tried almost every KDE version since 1.2. KDE 1.x felt too windows-like for me to use and KDE 2.0 and (to less of a degree, KDE 2.1), didn't "feel" right. Although I've long wavered between GNOME and KDE (and ultimatly chosen GNOME every time), KDE 2.2 made me switch completely to KDE. As for this thread, here goes.

1) Noatun has become an amazing program. Previously, it was either incomplete (in the form of Kaiman in KDE 2.0), or buggy, (in the form of the noatun in kde 2.1). Now that most of the bugs in noatun and aRtsd have been worked out, I think it's great. Noatun and aRtsd are definatly something that GNOME is missing. aRts isn't a simple soundserver like esound, it is a complete environment to itself. I heard GNOME 2.0 might be adopting aRtsd, so there will hopefully a frontend to aRts for GNOME. And yes, Noatun's kjofol skins support is great. Kjofol skins are just _awesome_. Xmms has a kjofol vis. plugin, but the default winamp-like interface is shown, so It does not integrate as well as the Kjofol support in noatun.

2. Yeah, xqf isn't a great app. However, it works. KDE definatly needs a game server browser or something like gamespy or EyE for windows. Any kde developers listening? ;). Even a simple qstat frontend like xqf would _work_, but I tend to avoid xqf.

3. I also agree with you that the number of KDE programs has increased a lot with KDE 2.1 and KDE 2.2. I also think that there is way too much duplication in program efforts in gtk+ and/or gnome apps. There is almost two seperate apps that do almost the same thing.

This is after the GNOME 1.2 days when there seemed to be a huge lead in gtk+ programs. Except for licq, I don't think I used any qt or kde apps at all then. I could have even probably deinstalled qt and kdelibs. But now, I think that the situation has *almost* completely reversed. I don't think i've used any gtk+ apps in a regular basis in the last month since I switched to KDE.

4. I don't use Debian, so I don't have knowledge of those programs, but I also use kpackage(for rpms). In fact, I didn't even know kpackage could work with apt. I think that is a positive feature to be transparent like that :). Also, SuSE(my current distro) provides excellent configuration/updating tools in the KDE Control Panel that are similiar to the various ximian tools.

So, for right now, KDE is my DE of choice. But I will try and test GNOME 2.0, just like I tried all the versions of KDE.

-Shane

by Spark (not verified)

1.) Well, I think I have to agree on this one... Just tried the skins and... yes, pretty damn nice. :) The last time I tried it, it was "Kaiman" and that has to be the most ugly media player I've ever seen. Nice to see it's gone. :)
I also found out, that I can place a kmix icon in the dock and that does adjust the volume using the scrollwheel. :) Yay!

2.) XQF is nice! I don't need much more. However, I don't know, if I could come up with more examples... it's just that I searched for something like that and the only nice thing I found was a Gtk app... that was the case always. Loki installer is still Gtk, even if statically linked... Mandrake uses Gtk for it's config tools (most of them), although they started out as a Red Hat clone with KDE...
Whatever, I figured that I don't really need much apps...
I even didn't miss anything important in BeOS. :)
I think KDE 2.2 has come a long way... it is also currently looking amazingly outstanding. The Liquid style is very nice. :) Now if Linux wouldn't have such a crappy hardware support (yeah, it lacks binary compatible drivers) and I could get my USB mouse and the newest NVidia driver to work (the one with mousecursor shadow!) this would be a great OS.

4.) Yes, SuSE is doing so but who cares? YAST is somewhat proprietory, so nobody else can use it. And no, I won't buy SuSE just because of this... in fact this is the reason, while I'll NEVER AGAIN buy SuSE (I did way too often).
XST is free and it works. At least on Red Hat and on Debian. Sure, it's not there yet, but it could if everybody would help (distributors could finish the parts for their distro, add new modules, etc) and it really needs a KDE frontend.

5.) Gnome still rocks. :)
Like BeOS, AtheOS, Enlightenment and sometimes even Windows 2000 do.
I think one of the main reasons why we get so much "I used XY for the last month, but version x.x of YZ has totally convinced me!" messages is, that people often get bored of something and are very excited about a change. That's a good thing.
We need diversity. :)
Like we need different languages. What a big waste of resources... but sometimes different languages are fun. :)
And at the end, this is all that counts.
What is all this "money" and "success" for, if not to have some fun?

Yeah, I'm tired. Yawn. Seeya!

./Spark

by John Martin (not verified)

And I've used KDE 2.1/2.2 for the last 6 months without having even having Gtk app.

Gimp->krayon (yeah, I know, krayon sucks. but the next version of gimp will remove all gtk dependencies, so the kimp project can be revived).
xmms->noatun OR kaboodble (noatun and aRts is a much more featured filled program than xmms will ever be).
Loki Installer->This has Gtk+ STATICALLY linked.
Debian Tools- because you use the gnome frontends to them maybe? try kpackage, it's a lot more elegant (imho) anyways.
xqf- never heard.. pretty much a niche program I guess

>That's way I said you peoples just keep masturbating.

Here class, we have an example of what makes the difference between a suggestion and a troll. That is, a suggestion is giving a reccomendation polietly, and realizing that you aren't the definitive source of sagely KDE advice. A troll is insulting the developers because they aren't doing things the way you'd like them too, whether that be how they code or how they PR.

Gee.
I am not even suggesting anything and I don't want persuade anybody.
I just want to tell you guys the simple fact that all these great things about KDE that you guys keep repeating : "The leading linux desktop" or "The best open source project" is only well known among KDE peoples or maybe Linux users. But what about outside Linux users which is represnted in the mainstream media? Gnome, Ximian and Icaza is the representative of Linux/Open source.

>I am not even suggesting anything and I don't want persuade anybody. I just want to tell you guys the simple fact that ... Gnome, Ximian and Icaza is the representative of Linux/Open source.

If you aren't suggesting antyhing and don't want to persuade anybody, then why are you trying to pass of a bit of dogmatic information (that also happens to entirely support your arguments) as fact?

Sorry,
for me the representatives seem to be:

For Linux: Linus Torvalds, who's friendly when it comes to interviews and behaves exact the right way to make others trust in Linux.

For Open Source: well known Mr. Stallman of FSF, who advertises himself and the FSF by representing aggressive opinions in the public press.

For PR: the CEO's of all major Linux distributors like SuSE, Debian, Mandrake and RedHat + the press related persons of companies getting more and more involved into Linux/OpenSource like IBM, HP, and Sun.

Besides: None of the major companies (including Sun) would ever tie itself to only one dektop. For me it seems, that de Icaza is spending to much time in convincing these companies. This way he gets addicted to them and looses his independence. But he gets nothing back. Even Sun will _never_ tie itself to the ideas of Mr. Icaza.

When it comes to Gnome it is 'de Icaza' and Ximian. Both are _not_ official representatives of the Gnome project and I doubt, they always behave like the free, non-paid Gnome developers want them to.

Just my 0.02 euro

Hmm, did you mean to post this to the comment I replied to, as opposed to mine?

no, sorry, it was meant as reply to theman.
It was just the wrong [reply-to] link

I think you misunderstood what I said or u just simply take my words out of the context.
What I really said is that for people outside linux which is represented by the mainstream media, Icaza, gnome or his Ximian is the representative of Linux/Open Source. Just read some edition of time magazine couple months ago or read Washington post articles, or watch some holywood movie like 'antitrust', you saw him there. All of them talk about Gnome or Icaza as an Open source leader.
Meanwhile these KDE peoples keep repeating that they are "the leading Linux desktop", but nobody outside linux will think KDE when talking about linux desktop. They are talking about gnome since the popular media mention it.

People who are interested in desktop computing read standard Computer-mags to find valuable information. Compare the amount of KDE-related articles to the ones related to ''de Icaza''.
And whoops... the project ''KDE'' seems to get a lot more attention than Mr. Icaza. How can that be, if that man even jumps on the screen of your local cinema...?

To be nitpicky, Antitrust does not mention Icaza or Gnome at all, it just shows it on a few computer screens in passing, without actually mentioning it. Ha, told ya so! ;-)

Hmm, seriously though, I really am not sure as to the importance of this. Almsot every distro includes both KDE and GNOME, and they don't have to be gotten ahold of seperately, so even introductory OSSOS (Open Source Software Operating System :-) users who may have never heard of KDE (or even GNOME) before, will have an oppurunity to try both.

In a loosely related way, this is why you never often see M$ ads for Windows itself. Though they often advertise upgrade package, Office, their set-top box, and X-Box like crazy, non-PC specific audiences (like people who watch TV, or read Time) aren't told to buy Windows itself.

This is because (unfortunately) Windows is bundled with almost every single desktop PC sold, they don't need to advertise it, they can rely on the ads of the computer companies to sell systems with Windows on it. In the same way, a user can hear about GNOME and not at all about KDE, but they are likely to get a chance to use both (along with Enlightenment, WindowStep, etc) when they grab a distro.
Once the user tries Linux (or BSD), they will almost certainly try everything a little bit, since at this point, PC tinkerers are the most likely non-programmer audience to buy a desktop distro. Then, once they make a choice, they will get news about their

by SuD (not verified)

When Milo does a "ps" on the console you can see a process called "kpanel" running as root. isnt that kde?

ok, everywhere else you can find gnome desktops running.

by me (not verified)

CUT YOUR HAIR!!!

That's where all the gnomes are hiding!

by Sam (not verified)

So where I can buy a stuffed Konqi? Who made it for you?

by Michael Häckel (not verified)
by anon3 (not verified)

Well this is probaply been discuised before, but why it seems
that ximian/gnome is getting all the atention outside linux-centric
press. Even tho it has not even reached the same technical merits as kde?

Is it besauce gnome foundation? + bigest linux shop redhat is supporting it or
maybe besauce i dont know what?

shouldnt be suprise anyway, since when the quality of a product has been the key to sucses, well never. Its all about relations and marketing.

sad but true

by Stof (not verified)

GNOME getting more attention? Yeah right!
I think KDE gets a lot more attention than GNOME does.
Look at all the rewards. Look at all the users.
Look at all the "GNOME sucks, KDE rules!" trolls!
I'd say KDE is a lot more popular than GNOME.

by Robin Sharf (not verified)

I agree

by Jeremy Petzold (not verified)

in the end, does it realy matter who is getting more industry press?
all of the distros that are making a desktop centric product use KDE, most that are making a server/workstation centric product use gnome, the ones that wanted true freedom at a time when thier was a big diffrence between KDE and Gnome use Gnome. the Unix vendors choose Gnome, the desktop ISVs choose KDE, I see very little competition between the two, one is good for grandma, the other is good for the admins and engineers. that is how I predict the two will eventualy develope into, KDE=desktop pc, Gnome=server/workstation.

and to mae it even better, the engineer can come home, and work in the environment he uses at work(Gnome) while his wife and kids can work in KDE when they are doing normal home PC stuff.

noif we can just get a common clipboard so we can cut/paste from a GTK+ app to a QT app, then Life will be perfect, almost >:)

by Stof (not verified)

Doesn't both GTK+ and QT use X selections?
I can cut & paste between KDE apps and GNOME apps just fine.

by Matt (not verified)

There's much more to life than plain text :)

by Stof (not verified)

You can copy & paste images between KDE apps?
I've never seen a program that can do that.

by Marko Samastur (not verified)

Yes, you can. I just did from Kpaint to Kword.

by Stof (not verified)

I can't even copy and paste within KPaint itself...

by John Martin (not verified)

Edit->copy
goto kword, edit->paste

this is the standard way to copy/paste across most platforms, if you did not know.

by Stof (not verified)

1. I start KPaint.
2. I draw something.
3. I select something using the Selection tool.
4. Edit->Copy => the selection disappears.
5. Edit->Paste => Nothing happens.

by Stof (not verified)

6. I close KPaint => it segfaults.
KDE apps seem to crash sometimes at shutdown when I start them in a non-KDE environment.

by Gary Storla (not verified)

Instead of your bitching and trolling, please submit a report to bugs.kde.org.
That's a lot more constructive.

Thanks.

by Stof (not verified)

Bitching and trolling you say? What I just said are FACTS!
This is MY computer, and you have no right to tell me what problem I do and do not have!
I don't care what you call it, the fact is that the problem still exists.

Besides, sending a bugfix now is useless. I'm still using KDE 2.1.1, and I can't upgrade to 2.2 until I get Debian installed.
If the bug has been fixed in 2.2, then I would have send a duplicate bug.
Is that what you want me to do?

by hind (not verified)

Just tried the Ximian Gnome, it crashed so many time. Especially the red carpet doorman and Evolution. What I also don't like about it is that it takes over all my mandrake menus. Now I can't see KDE or Manrdrake 8.0 menus in Ximian gnome. I have to type in program name in console if I now their name.
And I should say that ximian Gnome is pretty desktop. They paid professionals to do designing and they do a great job. KDE can learn something from them.
BUT overall, I still like my KDE2.2 much better, though. Look forward to KDE2.2.1 for the bug fixed version.

by Stof (not verified)

Then use KDE. It's your computer, so you decide.

by Gary Storla (not verified)

Apparently that problem does not exist in KDE 2.2. So please upgrade before a whole thread pops up :).