yeap.

Novell: next time, better listen to the big crowd of customers "outside" than to the little crowd of ex-ximian people "inside" (no matter how loud they are)

The, or rather one, good thing about open source is that you don't have to trus them. I will continue to use SuSE since I find it to work best. But the day they are not the best anymore, e.g. by not supporting KDE, I simply switch to the next best and continue to use all my apps. There is no way SuSE can lock me in, especially with YaST open sourced.

KDE will be the center piece and default on OpenSUSE. Nothing much has changed really since OpenSUSE is what has replaced the old SUSE Desktop.

Have you used GNOME?

Yes, it really is.

GNOME doesn't work the same way that KDE does, and I do not like the way it works. I have horrible trouble trying to do any decent file management in GNOME, and find most of their basic tools awkward.

I want to be able to easily sort files between my FTP storage at work, my main storage at home, and my back-up list. In Konqueror, I just hit ctrl+shift+L and ctrl+shift+T and I have one view with three panes. About ten total keystrokes after that, and each one is an open folder and I can easily pass things between them. Last time I tried GNOME, I didn't get my panes. That might seem like a corner case, but I do that about every two days because it's easiest that way. Maybe GNOME can do this now, but I couldn't when I was still considering it as an option.

I try to do some easy text-file editing under GNOME, and I end up wishing I had Kate still. Why? Because basically everything I do is in text files and it's wonderful to have fifteen open in an easy-to-sift-through sidebar all in one screen. Again, the pane splitting thing is wonderful, allowing me to easily work on one file while referencing another, or to look at one portion of a file while looking at another. Since Kate is open on my computer twenty-four hours a day (no, really, the last time I closed it was about three weeks about, and that didn't last long) and I average about ten files open (I currently have 22 open, seven of which I've need to use in the last two hours), it's kinda essential that they have a replacement. Again, maybe GNOME has one. Last time I tried it, the only option I really had for a text editor was Gedit, and it didn't give me panes and a list of opened files.

The other apps that I use constantly would in some ways be easy to replace, as with Amarok and Kopete, but switching over to Rythymbox and Gaim would still require some time and hassle, making actually switching over desktops irritating.

Further, I'd have to reset all my keybindings so that pressing the media key would give me a run command and the go key would switch virtual-desktops, and that's always a lot of hassle.

The only advantage switching to GNOME would give is that a few apps that are in GTK would fit in a little better (Inkscape, Gimp, and Gnumeric being the only apps that KDE has no superior alternative for that I've ever had cause to use). However, those are all less commonly used and work easily along with my current setup. By contrast, using a different file manager with a desktop is definitely more trouble.

Yes it is, and on their server products rather pointless. They're going to have to replace YaST, develop new graphical tools..... Years of effort for nothing.

Meanwhile, you've got a lot of Ximian people at Novell trying to be King Canute as most of their employees and customers choose KDE as their desktop.

"hmmmm" indeed

I have been using SUSE for 6 years. And Yast has been working in Gnome on SUSE all that time.

You should know that even KDE aplications like Konqueror and K3b work in Gnome, just as well as Gnome applications like Pan and Evolution work in KDE. And I am happy for that, because Pan is a much more advanced newsreader compared to Knode, just as well as K3b is a much more advanced CD/DVD-burner compared to the Gnome CD/DVD-creator. So I am glad I can use these apllications at the same time without switching desktops.

Yes, and 64 bit version.

Feel the sarcasm - this was meant as a joke ;-).

Thankyou, Rinse,

for your patient and friendly reply. It clarifies a _lot_ for me.

Sorry for my apparent doubts about your sincerity. However, believe me please, it was more of a surprise that made me write my posting than it was a real suspicion of you having made propaganda without substance.

The OSdir screenshots of NLD with KDE are really nice. I never saw Novell itself promote KDE with NLD. They don't have KDE screenshots of NLD on the Novell website. They seem only to be interested to sell Gnome with NLD. I wonder how many potential customers they have turned away by showcasing only one, and not both of their major desktops?

I'm starting to understand the gripes of the KDE community now, being treated in such an unfair manner. I'll have a closer look at all the PR I hear from each of the two camps from now, and not blindly trust everything I hear from the official spokesmen.

I am a Gnome user ever since I started to use Linux, 3 years ago. Every time I looked at KDE, it always behaved "different" to me as a person now being used to Gnome (but so did Gnome, when I came over from Windows).

Humans are animals that like to stick to what they have learned, and don't like to relearn everything every other month (or even every other year). This is the reason why Windows is still so powerful -- people started with Windows, and they'll stick to it, unless there is a *very* strong reason to switch.

I recently saw someone showing off a few really cool features on his KDE desktop (webdavs:// URLs used to open files from the FileOpen dialog, fish:// URL to directly save a HTML file to a webserver, and the beautiful kdeprinter, t oname a few). Maybe I will give KDE another chance in the near future.

However, let me first congratulate you to your success with KDE in the record shop chain! I do not doubt that what you write is true.