KDE Wins Best Desktop Environment Award

The results of the LinuxQuestions.org 2005 awards were published earlier this week and KDE once again won the Desktop Environment of the Year award. The distance between KDE and the other desktop environments increased over last year while no less than 3 KDE applications won in their own categories. The LinuxQuestions.org visitors thought that Quanta, the homemade feature rich web development application, is the best Free Software application available for web design. The extragear music player amaroK, which helps you rediscover your music, finally took over reign within the multimedia category. Last but not least KDE's most used application, the pumping heart of the desktop environment, Konqueror, received an award as best file manager.

But that's not all, various applications also received mostly close second places. The code development application KDevelop, which is used by most KDE authors, got a supremely close 0.61% less votes than the winner Eclipse. Kate, the text editor of choice for KDE users, also got a solid 2nd place in the editors category, and is probably the only one within the top 3 also usable by non-geeks. Coming close behind the cross-platform competition was KOffice in the Office Suite category, Konqueror for web browsers, KMail for e-mail clients and Kopete, the Instant Messenger of KDE, narrowed its position compared to last year. Finally the application that everyone is using, but noone knows it exists, KWin, our mighty window manager, received a second place as well.

KDE and its applications are still improving so expect increased ratings next year, when LinuxQuestions.org again asks "Who rules the Linux world?".

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Comments

by Chris Howells (not verified)

http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/06/1413237

"In his opening remarks at the start of the conference Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth announced that he was now using Kubuntu on his desktop machine and said he wanted Kubuntu to move to a first class distribution within the Ubuntu community"

So yes is the answer.

Well, that's been by the time Novell "tried to abandon" KDE. Shuttleworth just jumped in. Guess why? Right! It's all about popularity and money :-)
So, no, (k)Ubuntu is not really a major distribution (just compare how well organized/arranged GNOME is compared to KDE).

"(just compare how well organized/arranged GNOME is compared to KDE)."

users think otherwise :o)

"the only major distribtion which is left is mandrake. "

out of how many major distributions?
can you tell me which major distributions switched from kde to gnome?
I can't name anyone..

For example Novell, do you know how many kde-developers Novell has? 3 out of 7 members of kde's technical working group are employees from Novell.

Looking at SUSE 10.1, most promising additions to the desktop are kde-applications developed bij novell (kpowersave, knetworkmanager, kerry).
Now, that's not something a distro that moved to gnome would do, don't you think?
Novell also pays the guy that makes openoffice.org integrate in kde

"kubuntu is second class compared to ubuntu."
ubuntu never abandoned kde, ubuntu started as a gnome distribution, and made a move towards kde by giving kubuntu the same status as ubuntu.
That's not a move away from kde, that is a move towards kde, no matter how insignificant you find kubuntu compared to ubuntu.

"Do you really believe that mark shuttleworth, a long time gnome user and contributor, suddently promotes kde? "
Well, apparently he does, canonical now also ships kubuntu cd's.

"the reason behind it was"
hmm, so he did promote kde?
Your now contradicting yourself: did or didn't mark promote kde?

"(maybe still is) that novell (suse) stupidily decided to drop kde. as you know, they now promised to support kde as well (while gnome being the major desktop on the enterprise poducts)."
on novell linux desktop, gnome was already the desktop of choise for novell.
So no loss over there.
Besides, not every novell customer chooses gnome, see some articles about the novell desktop and kde on the dot.

"linspire really isn't a major distribution, the distribution is just being sold by a few people "
linspire can't make a living from just a few people, so i guess it should be a lot more then just a few :o)

"(some who buy new computers)." Ah yeah, linspire comes pre-installed on several computersystems.
Even on HP laptops in Africa, which should be the domain of ubuntu..
Now, who is major, and who is not?

" on the long run, gnome seems to win (which isn't gnome's fault,rather being kde's which always wanted to be independent)."
Hmm, gnome isn't independent?
It was the last time i looked, what has changed since then?
Who controlls gnome according to you?
And is it a good or bad thing for linux is a major component like the desktop is controlled by one entity?
I thought the whole purpose of Gnome was to provide a free and independent desktop, as answer to KDE, which depended on TrollTech.

by Apollo Creed (not verified)

Let's not be pessimistic.Yes, it seems that for some reason most distros prefer Gnome at the moment, but things change over time - sometimes rapidly. And it's not like Gnome is attracting lots of commercial apps either.. Nothing is carved in stone.

Yes, it seems that for some reason most distros prefer Gnome at the moment

-> name 1 distribution that prefers gnome at the moment :)
It is just plain nonsense, most distributions (even redhat) include both desktop, some distributions (like linspire) have only 1 desktop.

Apperently 2 out of 3 linux users prefers KDE, so distributions would be real stupid if they dropped kde.
And therefore no distribution ever dropped kde.
(some do drop gnome, like slackware last year...)

Slackware always had Dropline to begin with, so dropping Gnome didn't make much difference.

Stop living in denial about KDE and distros.

"Slackware always had Dropline to begin with, so dropping Gnome didn't make much difference."

Just like KDE has it's own line in Fedora

"Stop living in denial about KDE and distros."

Well, give some evidence about distro's moving away from kde towards gnome.
So far, none seen in this thread.

It's easy to comment like "you guys have all the users, but we own the distro's"
Without giving any proof..

It doesn't really matter if Gnome is winning the distros. It's not like the desktop Linux is becoming mainstream. If anything, it gives KDE more creative room.

"What a pity for KDE! does anyone know why KDE is losing acceptance by the big distros?"

It's not, and even if it was, it doesn't matter because the distributions don't matter.

indeed, it's the users that count :)

And the users will find their way to KDE, no matter what desktop their distibution prefers...

by Futal (not verified)

Unfortunately, there was no award for CD-burning application because K3B should definitively have deserved an award. It is far more useable than any other burning application, even Nero which has been released for Linux is not as good.