KDE and the Linux Journal 2004 Readers' Choice Awards

KDE and its various applications have featured very well in the Linux Journal 2004 Readers' Choice Awards which are published in the November issue of the magazine. Most importantly, in the category of "Favorite Desktop Environment", KDE came in first followed by GNOME. The trend over recent years has shown KDE gaining more and more popularity over GNOME and this year KDE received two votes for every one that GNOME received.

There was a bit of bad news for KMail which dropped from second place last year to third place this year in the "Favorite E-Mail Client" category. Mozilla came in first with Ximian Evolution in second place. Kontact received no mention in the write-up but may have taken a share of KMail's votes. This dual-heading for KMail may have confused both the voters and the survey editors which omitted a number of obvious choices in many of the categories.

KDevelop came in fourth in "Favorite Development Tool" behind the old favorites of GCC and Emacs in first and second places respectively. IBM's Eclipse eclipsed KDevelop out of third place. Also-rans included vi and vim of which the survey editors put into two separate categories which reinforces my misgivings on the possible Kontact/KMail mix-up. Not that I'm a sore loser!

The field of "Favorite Text Editor" was by dominated by 'the old reliables' - vim took first place, followed by "vi and vi clones" in second and GNU Emacs in third. Kate came "in at a strong number four" and the editor, Heather Mead, asks the question "Could readers finally be ready for a modern user interface in an editor...?"

A surprise to me was that KDE Desktop Sharing came in third behind Webmin and YaST in "Favorite System Administration Tool". Congratulations to the development team behind that.

There was also some bad news for the KOffice team which didn't make the top three in "Favorite Office Program" or a mention in the editorial on the category. As you might guess, OpenOffice.org came in a clear first and miles ahead of the competition. AbiWord took second place followed by StarOffice.

Kopete jumped a place to second in "Favorite Instant Messaging Client". However it only knocked Jabber back into third by 7 votes. Gaim was the clear winner in first and Kopete has some ground to make up before it over takes it. In my opinion, Kopete is a far superior product but lacks the public awareness that Gaim has gained through outlets such as regularly featuring in the top 20 active projects of SourceForge as well as winning it's "Project of the Month" on more than one occasion. The Kopete team should consider a big push to coincide with the realise of KDE 3.4 concentrating on advertising its new features that are in development; such as its integration with Kontact in a similar way as MS Outlook and Messenger. With any luck you'll rise to first for next year.

Finally, in the category of "Favorite Web Browser", Konqueror retained its second place position with Mozilla again taking first. Opera took third and Galeon ended up in fifth place. Firefox was not offered as a choice and some users wishing to vote for it used the Mozilla box or the "Other" and this will no doubt have an effect on the results.

All in all I think it's a great set of results for KDE and all those who contribute to the project should be proud of their work and the recognition it is receiving.