Evans Data: Linux Developers Prefer KDE

A recent study prepared by Evans Data concluded that KDE is the preferred desktop environment amongst Linux developers. 65% of the 600 surveyed said that they currently use KDE, against 56% for GNOME. Nicholas Petreley, Evans Data's Linux analyst, said "It is also interesting to note that KDE has taken a statistically significant lead in use and deployment after running neck and neck with GNOME for the past three years."

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Comments

by right (not verified)

65% of the readers will believe these findings while 56% will not.

by Richard Moore (not verified)

I think it's more interesting that most people have more than the average number of legs (it's true, think about it).

Rich.

by Otter (not verified)

Well, using the median (or, better yet, mode) would probably be more informative in this case...

More to the point, while the latest KDE/GNOME jockeying is interesting, I'd be much more curious to know the details of the 125 people in "other". What is up and coming these days -- Fluxbox, ion, ratpoison? Are there still a lot of Enlightenment and WindowMaker users? CDE on Linux -- are these guys still using Red Hat 4.0?

by cbcbcb (not verified)

I use Windowmaker on my laptop because it uses less memory and is significantly faster than KDE. I run KDE on my desktop and at work.

I actually hate Windowmaker and periodically try looking for a different lightweight window manager which works nicely. Kwin would be ideal if it wasn't so SLOW. :(

by Lee (not verified)

try icewm.

by Aaron J. Seigo (not verified)

i doubt that it is kwin that you are finding to be slow, but the added load of all the other apps and processes that are run when in a standard KDE session. btw, how fast is your laptop, and how much RAM does it have?

by cbcbcb (not verified)

It's a celery 333, with 128MB of RAM. It doesn't normally swap in regular use though.

I don't actually run many KDE apps - I usually only have Konqueror loaded and a shed load of xterms. When switching desktop from a desktop with Konqueror to a desktop with 4 xterms it takes MUCH longer to redraw the screen, which with Windowmaker it's almost instant. I always try again when I install a new version of KDE. When debian gets QT3.2 I'll build KDE 3.2 from CVS and see if it's any better.

by Aaron J. Seigo (not verified)

the refresh/redraw may well be due to kdesktop or other kde apps, but i HIGHLY doubt it is kwin... i wonder if you'd get the same problems with desktop icons turned off, or a light (or no) wallpaper, or.....

btw, how do you manage with only 4 xterms on a desktop? right now my konsole window has 11 sessions in it and i'm trying to keep it down today ;-)

by Ricardo Galli (not verified)

It's a power law distribution, and the average it's not important, but the _typical_ value.

BTW, the web, internet, and even TCP congestions have the same distribution.

by Alex (not verified)

Seriously, I really wish we could find why many companies choose GNOME to KDE like SUN and Novell so we can get ebtter funding too. I remember in one of Derek's Digests that very few people are actually paid to work on KDE, while at the GNOME camp there is a larger number o people who are actually getting paid for their work on KDE.

by djay (not verified)

well
sun american
novell american
red hat american
ximian american
suze european -> kde
mandrake european -> kde

by Timothy R. Butler (not verified)

Except that Mandrake has pledged support to both KDE and GNOME and seems to stick to that. Mandrake's tools are all GTK-based as well.

FWIW, I think besides "americaness," I think some of the driving factor for companies such as Sun and Novell is the fact that GTK is LGPL'ed, thus giving them free reign with making proprietary solutions in addition to Free Software ones. Red Hat, I suspect likes GTK because they can have more influence on it than they ever could Qt (they also seem to be willing to stick to an early bet).

At any rate, this isn't to say all of this is good, I'm a long time KDE user, but its some observations...

by Mike Hearn (not verified)

FWIW other reasons I've seen listed are:

- gnome/gtk is in C which means more familiarity with the sun guys
- Ximian was around meaning a pool of developers that could be easily hired

I know Sun hired in Ximian for their expertise on at least a few matters, from what I recall, and that was a deciding factor. And of course the license.

As to why Red Hat prefer it, I guess it's because they have lots of developers who are experienced in it. It's also more aligned with their (perceived) needs for what a corporate desktop should be like.

Like most things, who really knows?

by ac (not verified)

Your first reason is bullshit (sorry), given what a mess GTK+/C is compared to Qt/C++. Many have acknowledged this except for the trolls looking for fake "reasons". I don't know about your second reason but seems to me Sun isn't very interested in Ximian except for Evolution.

As for Redhat, well of course they have great amounts of control over GNOME since they control GTK.

by Ryan (not verified)

If you going to accuse others of BS, then you should atleast refrain from it yourself. RH doesnt control GTK -- TT has FAR more control than RH ever will. Just because their employees are highly placed, doesnt mean their employees are sheep, or dont have to listen to the community.

Language IS a factor for what people use. It might not be the most rational factor, but you are full of it if you dont think so. In fact I initially wasnt going to use GTK because it was C based, until I found the nice GTKmm C++ bindings.

As far as "GTK the mess" you should atleast have a single clue about what it is your talking about. GTK is one of the most elegant C libraries Ive ever seen -- its so good it even does OO in a reasonable manner, which C was never designed to do. I dont like C, its not designed for modern large scale development, so I use C++, but GTK is NOT a "mess".

Go Troll somewhere else.

Cheers,
Ryan

by Paul Seamons (not verified)

Except that Mandrake has pledged support to both KDE and GNOME and seems to stick to that. Mandrake's tools are all GTK-based as well.

I think that it isn't so much a case of them wanting to use GTK as it is them wanting to use Perl. All of the extra applications are in Perl. Until recently there hasn't been as a stable of an offering of Qt for Perl.

Hopefully now that smoke and Qt Perl are going strong there will be more of a chance of them using them for the utilities. Of course - they may need to work for KDE Perl bindings to be done.

by Rich (not verified)

>I think that it isn't so much a case of them wanting to use GTK as it is them wanting to use
>Perl. All of the extra applications are in Perl. Until recently there hasn't been as a stable of an
>offering of Qt for Perl.

I'd agree with that and, as you say, PerlQt is coming along nicely now - a great testament to the ongoing work by Ashley and Germain.

This could be an ideal time for Mandrake to review MDK Tools, since some of them very buggy. The odd thing is that RedHat, Mandrake, and SuSEs tools are all pretty flakey - try their respective log file viewers on large log files to see just how bad they are - bizarre really, since it would only take a few hours coding at the most to fix them.

by Alex (not verified)

In fact here is what miguel said about that: http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=4198

by Eric Laffoon (not verified)

> sun american
> novell american
> red hat american
> ximian american
> suze european -> kde
> mandrake european -> kde

Kitty Hooch (me) KDE sponsor - American (Though Andras is a Hungarian living in Romania)

So remember, if you really don't like Americans don't use Quanta. I'm sure there's a lot of other parts of KDE you'll want to uninstall too but I'll let others post this in a long and tedious fashion so you can watch it melt slowly. ;-)

by Jan (not verified)

LOL. I hope it won't get that far. I for my part don't have any problems with "American"
software. Usually it's a rather American type of behaviour to rename French Fries into
Freedom fries and pour away German beer for some foolish reason. KDE is quite an
international project even more than some other Open Source projects. No reason now
to spin it into sth. European. It's been invented here and has lots of sponsors in Europe,
but anyone in the world can help working on this project. So all you Americans: No more
excuses why you don't help making KDE a better desktop ;-)

by Evan "JabberWok... (not verified)

>> American type of behaviour to rename French Fries into
>> Freedom fries and pour away German beer for some foolish reason.

I really hope that most Europeans know that that was pretty much a joke; nobody on this side of the world really referred to them as "Freedom Fries" except in jest (other than the original cafeteria which was the source of the name and widely and rightly lampooned for being quite silly).

As for KDE, I keep hoping that it will break down walls through cooperation, but threads like this worry me intensely. Less about KDE and more for humanity.

by Guillaume Laurent (not verified)

> I really hope that most Europeans know that that was pretty much a joke

Sorry to disappoint you, but here (in France), there was very little indicating that this was a joke (seeing the general tone of Fox News toward France and Germany at the time, it would have required some serious stretch of thought to imagine so). It was just downright appalling.

by Ed Cates (not verified)

FOX News does NOT represent the mainstream American point of view. They have a definite agenda that they try to push, using the "repeat a lie often enough . . ." method. :P

I would argue that seeing it on FOX (or Faux, as it is often called) "News" should be taken to mean the opposite is true.

Pleeease, do not judge all Americans by FOX.

Or CNN, for that matter.

Thanks!

by Guillaume Laurent (not verified)

> FOX News does NOT represent the mainstream American point of view.

That's somewhat reassuring, but isn't it the most watched information channel ?

> They have a definite agenda that they try to push

That we know. From here it seems they succeeded in pushing it.

> Pleeease, do not judge all Americans by FOX.

I don't, as I routinely discuss with americans, but it's somewhat hard not to. To have such blatant propaganda as the leading information TV channel does not improve how a country is seen from abroad (then again, that's just one among the many issues in how the US are seen from "Old Europe" these days :-).

by Ed Cates (not verified)

I believe that Faux is the highest rated CABLE news channel. Which makes it a far cry from being "the most watched" anything.

I understand that it's hard to not judge all Americans by the news outlets, especially Faux. But Mr. Murdoch knows which politics and policies will best line his pockets, and he knows how to sell them to the American public. Such as, tax cuts. You would be surprised how many Americans foolishly believe that THEY are in the upper 1% income bracket, and are thus lined up to get more money back from the federal gov't this year.

Probably about the same percentage that believe Iraq had something to do with 9/11, but I'm getting waaaay off topic now. ;-)

Sad.

by Bob Collins (not verified)

Funny, FOX news is news, and pretty straight up. You and your ilk, have become so accustomed to the Communist News Network, that anything not along the party-line of neo-socialism is seen as an agenda of the right.

Wake up and get real. News, whether it be print or TV, is nothing more than a chronicaler of events, however Tom, Dan, and Peter, as well as the krew at KNN, only tell you the story they think you are capable of understanding. If you took a minute to actually listen to those three talking heads and the KNN knuckleheads, you would realize that anything positive in the USA is not to be reported, and anything bad, should be reported and made overly important.

Way off topic is tax cuts, but if you insist, according to the latest figures from the IRS, 96% of taxes are taken from the top 50% of wage earners. So, before you spout that crap about tax cuts for the rich. look up the numbers. They deserve a break because they pay the largest chunk of taxes. And those who make small incomes pay almost no taxes percentage wise.

by Jamieson Becker (not verified)

I think that Fox News represents a refreshing change of pace from CNN. Case in point: Hannity and Colmes. Sean Hannity is a articulate and opinionated person with integrity who is clearly a conservative. Alan Colmes is also an articulate and opinionated person, also with integrity, who is clearly a liberal. Each of them respects the other person's opinion, if not their ideologies, and each of them tries to be fair and balanced to each other and their guests. This is a very nice change. I respect how each of them is willing to say when their personal perspective differs from that of their parties; they aren't parrots of party philosophy.

What I don't like about CNN is how one sided the reporting is, but that's ok. Everyone, including news networks, are entitled to their own opinions -- I'd just like to hear both sides. I'm an American and I respect and support both "sides" on different issues. For example, I support privacy, civil and personal liberty, the European Union, and the due process of law in its entirety -- i.e., not too much power to police agencies. That would brand me a Democrat. On the other hand, I believe Bush is doing a very good job in going after terrorists where they live (although I disagree with some of the more aggressive information-gathering policies on US citizens) and I think he's done a good job in a tough situation; I also credit him -- and Alan Greenspan -- with bringing back an economy that crashed two months after he won office. He got handed a bad economy and a very tough war to fight, and he's done admirably. I'll vote for him in the upcoming election, although if John Edwards or even Wesley Clark was still in the running, it would be a closer call. (I just have zero respect for John Kerry.)

What I like and respect about Fox News is that they mean what they say: We report, you decide. You do hear both sides on Fox, with the possible exception of O'Reilly Factor. (I do agree with a good portion of O'Reilly's points, but he's a bit strange for my tastes.) I think Shepard Smith is a lot more interesting than Aaron Brown and he seems to have a sense of humor.

Not sure what brought this up, but I just wanted to toss a vote in for Fox News. They're doing a good job by me. CNN just isn't balanced enough.

This is a big world. We need to listen to all sides. Everyone shouldn't get their news from just one source anyway -- even if the one side consciously avoids bias, an institutional bias is inevitable and must be balanced by news from multiple sources. We're intelligent enough to discern the truth most of the time. (You can't fool all the people all the time.)

So, the other responses are right: don't judge a country on its news reporting, anymore than the non-Arabs should judge the Arab world based on Al Jazeera. There are always dissidents, and most of the time the natural biases built into the media does not even reflect popular view; instead, it's the other way around: the natural biases try to shape popular view.

Just two cents worth....

by Mel (not verified)

do you actually watch the news????? ummm if you read the PIPA survey it proves that people who do watch Fox news and only Fox news are less informed than people who get their news from other sources. before you open your mouth read the facts.....

by Chakie (not verified)

I don't think the author meant his/her comment as something anti-American, more like an observation. I find it pretty obvious that companies invest in "local stuff", so it's pretty natural for large US companies to support Gnome which is largely based and controlled by smaller US companies and individuals.

I just wish that European companies did the same and invested more in largely European projects, such as KDE. But it's a sad and curious fact that there really is very little IT industry in Europe, the few large ones focus on mobile phones and technologies related to that. Few European companies do shrink wrapped software or anything else related to desktops.

by AC (not verified)

This is not only about "local stuff", also about personal relationships. If you look, for example, at the speakers of US conferences like Linux World you can rarely find a speaker who does not live in the US. And those who do are usually from Canada, Australia or the UK. On the other hand you can frequently find US speakers at european conferences.
One of the main reasons for this is the language barrier. While most europeans, especially in the open source field, understand english well enough to listen to a US speaker, most of them do not have sufficient skills for a good presentation in front of an english-speaking audience.

The personal network among Gnomes, large (US) companies and well-known hackers is much tighter, while it often appears like KDE is quite disconnected from the rest of the free software world.

by Eric Laffoon (not verified)

It's funny all this comes up. Americans are really okay as are Europeans... but those Canadians... There's talk of building a large wall at the border. (I know my Canadian friends know I'm teasing them.) ;-)

Maybe I should seek to get on the speaking circuit. I lead a popular project, have experience doing public speaking and love to work a crowd. I also have a good perspective and a visionary approach in my area which I can couple with my irreverent humor and moments of insane rambling. I would think I would have a very good chance of having them in awe of the excellence of KDE or laughing hysterically. At least they would have some opinion as to whether they would want to program in close proximity to an opinionated nut case. But hey, wouldn't we all? ;-)

Cheers

by AC (not verified)

Hey, I didn't say that it's a bad thing. But there is some language, or cultural barrier, or whatever barrier. It's hard to dispute that all >5 people companies that employ KDE contributors are european and from non-english-speaking countries(suse, trolltech, mandrake, connectix(sp?), sap, kroupware consortum etc, see the last cvs digest).

BTW I wonder why the more visible US distributions that are using KDE (Lindows, Xandros, Lycoris) are hardly visible in the KDE community.

Gnome, on the other hand, is supported by Ximian/Novell, Red Hat, Sun, HP and maybe others. Is there a european company that is doing any Gnome work?

There must be a reason why it is like this. Assuming that there are no technical problems, the logical consequence would be some failure of communication.
So what is it? Location (geographical distance between the KDE founders and the english-speaking world)? Language (english-speaking people are more comfortable to speak wit other native speakers)? Promotion (KDE people seem to attend more trade fairs in Europe)? Culture? Patrotism/'Continentism'? My guess is "relationship networks combined with the language barrier". But that's just my guess.

by Mike (not verified)

They are largely ignored in the KDE and Linux community because they are not for us, if we're interested enough in DE to visit the Dot it usually means that we are curious enough to want to really learn Linux and have the latest version of KDE.

xandros and Lycoris are both running KDE 2 and don't have the klatest and greatest so we don't really care too much. Lindows is more ignored ebcause of their CNR which gives you free packages in an easier way to install but for qutie a price. Also, because of their marketing lies.

It has nothing to do with location IMO.

by Anonymous (not verified)

This is clearly KDE 2.2 with Lycoris adaptations.

by fault (not verified)

> BTW I wonder why the more visible US distributions that are using KDE (Lindows, Xandros, Lycoris)

Xandros, when they were Corel, used to have 20+ KDE developers. Alas, they are still working on KDE 2.x :(

> Gnome, on the other hand, is supported by Ximian/Novell, Red Hat, Sun, HP and maybe others. Is there a european company that is doing any Gnome work?

Mandrake does a little bit with GNOME. HP doesn't work on GNOME anymore.

by Anonymous (not verified)

Xandros just announced a beta program for Xandros Desktop 2.0 which "will incorporate the latest version of KDE plus several unique innovations from Xandros".

by AC (not verified)

I don't really think it's a US vs Europe thing, but a licensing issue. Companies know that they can create closed-source software based on GTK+ without paying anyone.

I'm not trying to complain about KDE's license here. One license favours free software, and the other is business-friendly. Nothing wrong with either approach.

by IR (not verified)

Same here. I use KDE as desktop, but I do not target for the QT widget purely because of license issues. Its almost a paradox and while I plaud KDE development, the fact that I just cannot afford to use QT at this moment makes it much more attractive to develop for other wxWindows in this case - a shame really.

Cross plaform is the wave of the future, as its about platform independance AND Open Source AND making a bloody living.

by IR (not verified)

...but I do not target for the QT widget purely because of license issues.

I meant I do not develop software to use QT

by Datschge (not verified)

You mean you are more likely to earn money by working on closed software which you then sell instead by offering your work on improving open software as a paid service? Just asking.

by IR (not verified)

My purpose is commercial use plus having a GPL license to my software.

The only thing available under the GPL seems QT v2.3 for windows. How does that encourige using QT as a cross platform tool? I dont want to develop using an old version of QT.

by AC (not verified)

Who said that the use of Qt as a free cross platform (=win) tool should be encouraged? TT obviously does not have an interest in it, and most KDE people do not care.

If your platform is proprietary, use proprietary tools.

by Anonymous (not verified)

There was never a Qt 2.3 for Windows available under GPL.

by IR (not verified)

>>There was never a Qt 2.3 for Windows available under GPL.

What I meant was that if my software is GPL and I want to use QT on windows, then I seem to have to use a QT version 2.3 - this doesnt make QT attractive

by Jeff Johnson (not verified)

That's like saying the $500 don't make MS Office attractive :)

by IR (not verified)

>>>That's like saying the $500 don't make MS Office attractive :)

Thats true I get your point, but its also a matter of entrance barriere for new developers/managers. One entrance barriere early on and you are not very likely to port the whole thing back to QT once you do have the money.

by CE (not verified)

There was a free edition for non-commerical use.

by fault (not verified)

> I don't really think it's a US vs Europe thing, but a licensing issue. Companies know that they can create closed-source software based on GTK+ without paying anyone.

.. except that companies license other people's software all of the time. It's more of a C++ versus C thing mostly.. and the fact that a truly KDE company doesn't really exist like Ximian.

by Anonymous (not verified)

Lycoris.