OfB.biz: Geramik Reduces KDE/GNOME Style Differences

Craig Drummond has released a new theme and "engine" for GTK programs that provides something many people have been looking for: a common look and feel for KDE and GNOME applications. While Red Hat's Blue Curve attempts to do something similar, Mr. Drummond's Geramik is the first theme implementation to provide smooth integration between environments. Read the full story at OfB.biz.

[Ed: What about usability issues? If KDE and GTK+ apps don't act the same or provide the same set of functionality in practice, should they really look the same? Wouldn't that mislead the user?]

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Comments

by Julien Olivier (not verified)

I know this isn't the perfect place to make such a confession but, well, anyway.

I love RedHat artwork ! I love GNOME2 artwork !

OK, now: why am I saying that ?

First, because that's right: I just installed RedHat 8.0 and I find it great... looking. I'm writing it from Mozilla on RH8 and that's nice-looking. Icons are great, bluecurve (style and window dec.) is great, Nautilus toolbar icons are great (original, simple and nice), wallpapers are great etc...

BUT

GNOME is so horrible to use ! It is fast (yes, faster than KDE) but it lacks lots of functionalities (ftp:// doesn't work in Nautilus, there is no way to know if an app is starting, there is no 'show desktop' button, the desktop is in '~/.gnome-desktop', there is no good office suite etc...).

So my problem is that I'd like to have a desktop that looks like GNOME and act like KDE. So, I installed Mandrake and downloaded freecurve. That's almost perfect but 2 things are still lacking:

- automatic color scheme matching between GNOME and KDE.
- a GNOME icon set for KDE

The first one is coming according to someone on this forum.

Now, is it so difficult to make GNOME and KDE icon sets match ? I'm talking about stock icons (left, right, up, reload, stop, print, save, copy, paste etc...).

My dream would be to be able, one day, to choose 'GNOME look' in kpersonalizer.

You know, I'm pretty sure it could even attract GNOME users to KDE.

I don't know why but I've read lots of comments on french sites (linuxfr.org for example) saying that keramik is awful, much too colorful, and the same for crystal. I know ot's a matter of tase but I think it's stupid to lose users because they prefer the other desktop's look.

by aigiskos (not verified)

GNOME2.2 (due out in Jan/Feb 2003) will address some of your complaints, I think.

*I'm not sure about broken ftp functionality in gnome-vfs: please file a bug in gnome.bugzilla.org if there isn't one already. gftp works well otherwise.

*Havoc has put in a show desktop button.

*Havoc was working on a common launch-feedback scheme with KDE (I don't know whether it will be implemented for GNOME 2.2 or not, though) under freedesktop.org

*Abiword is hoping to have version 2 out by January (it's looking very nice!), and Gnumeric is working under a similar time-schedule (but it might be delayed). Mergeant is also hoping to come out with its 1.0 version around that time. The big, gaping hole, of course, is a presentation program (Agnubis is still embryonic). There's always KPresent or Impress for that.

*The GNOME folks are working on a common color-scheme notification system using xsettings, so that color changes can be registered across the board. I don't know whether that will be implemented for GNOME 2.2 or not, though.

At any rate, I hope this summary has been informative. Both KDE and GNOME are proceeding excellently. Both are becoming (and are) great desktops with active development communities. It's heartening to see how well both desktops are doing, and I think that the combination of competition and cooperation (see freedesktop.org) is making both KDE and GNOME better faster.

Cheers!

Andrew

P.S. I like GNOME's look, but I think KDE looks pretty sweet as well.

by Julien Olivier (not verified)

hi

Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to bash GNOME or saying "KDE is far better then GNOME. GNOME sucks etc...". I know GNOME developers have already done a great job and are currently working on filling the gasp which currently make KDE better for me. Of course I'd like to try GNOME 2.2 as well as 2.4 and every future releases as I'll try each version of KDE.

But I don't have a fast internet connection so I have to use what comes with distros I can buy in stores (Mandrake, Red Hat, Debian, Slackware and Suse). And the GNOME I got in those distros just makes it harder for me to achieve my work. For the moment...

I'm sure future is bright for both desktops and I hate when peope bash one of them or say they want one of them to die.

I'd just like them to share more artwork and underlying technology but i'm also aware that something is cooking in this direction.

by martinf (not verified)

What *would* be good, in my opinion anyway, would be if desktop elements were more modular. Im meaning that in the sense of creating some (vague) standards as to what goes where, how elements communicate etc.

Wouldnt it be nice...

* to use a single icon set to be used by any program, gnome or kde (as you said)
* to be able to choose things like, which html renderer to use (maybe you like interface in konqueror, but what mozilla html renderer), media players, whatnot.
* for all apps, (as this thread is about) to be able appear as if kde or gnome, depending on what you want!!

..this strikes me as the only way to get full choice - as in, you can use what you want for what. Well, it wont be that that simple, but if some standards where banged out, it'd make for a more consistent experience. Its a big deal for user-friendliness - who wants to have to learn 5 diff ways of doing something?

Its not a case of KDE/Gnome merging... who wants that - the more the merrier. But not duplicating effort, except where there is real benefit.

Bear in mind, i dont really know what Im talking about.

by Mandrake (not verified)

I think the iKons iconset is the best there is for Linux.

by EvilSmile (not verified)

hey all,

i've been waiting for this step since a long time (and i have really welcomed redhat's attempt with rh 8.0)

the next thing i'm waiting for is :
kde apps and gnome apps dock in either panels (without any change in behaviour).

anyway
i love KDE and will be using for a long long time :)

ES @ GT }=)

>the next thing i'm waiting for is :
>kde apps and gnome apps dock in either panels (without any change in behaviour).

Consider it done: it is already in KDE-3.1 and gnome-2.1.x. And it's great :)
freedesktop.org's standards pay off!

by anon (not verified)

When is KDE going to K in it's program names. Isn't anyone else gettting
sick of it?

by ac (not verified)

No, actually it's brilliant. Nothing wrong with namespacing...