[HLUG] What is the Gnome & KDE difference??

[Julian Robbins]

Hi

Interesting question.

KDE was the first of the 'real' as we know it today desktop 
environments, (although fans of window maker and enlightenment might 
disagree) in about 1999. Gnome followed shortly after, but always lagged 
a bit behind. Both these early versions at vers 1.0 were very different 
to KDE and Gnome now. Although KDE was always ahead and integrated more 
items into the desktop, ie kmail, konqueror etc, at around 2004, IMHO 
KDE and Gnome to a lesser extent, integrated as much functionality as 
was really required. At this point KDE suffered from a bit of overkill 
in terms of so much stuff thrown in the pot. ie rightclicking on the 
desktop would give you something like 12 options of things to do !!

Gnome always stuck to a 'less is more' mantra, and kept things simple. 
Gnome also has much more tightly defined and adherence to its Human 
Interface Guidelines which has kept a possibly smoother appearance and 
sheen through the Desktop and Gnome programs, ie gnumeric, gimp, 
abiword, gnomemeeting, etc.

I sensed a change in attitude in Gnome amongst some people, like Jono 
Bacon, Linux format writer, and OpenAdvantage staff member and myself 
where I felt that KDE was throwing more and more good stuff at the 
desktop, but that IMHO it was getting just too much, and the knobs and 
whistles were actually getting in the way of work.

So, in essence I wouldn't say that Gnome was/is for the old guard, (it 
was actually started after KDE), actually I would say that Gnome seems 
to be in the ascendency compared to KDE.

ie Ubuntu, Novell, Sun, Fedora use it by default leaving only Mandriva 
and Suse to offer it, though Suse offers both options. Yes I know there 
are many other distros that use one or the other, but my point is that 
Gnome used to be really only used as a default in Redhat and KDE 
favoured everywhere else, but this is not the case now.

Some apps have many gnome dependencies, true, but again many apps also 
have quite a few KDE library requirements too. You can easily run gnome 
apps on KDE, and vice versa with no problems at all, apart from the fact 
that they don't always match with the desktop.

But the future looks bright with F-spot, Beagle and Tomboy, to name but 
three excellent applications under heavy development by Novell, who also 
are putting a lot of effort into Gnome too. These three, 
photo-managemnt, Desktop metasearch (really must be tried!), and note 
taking application are all innovative useful Gnome programs.

Julian


Emon wrote:
> Hi all
>
> I running Slackware10.2 with KDE desktop. Since Slacwkare10.2 Gnome has
> been dropped from the vanilla packages. I didn't mind because I never
> used Gnome. But you can still get unofficial Gnome pkg from FREEROCK,
> DROPLINE & others like them. Having shifted to Linux from Windoz, I
> found KDE easier to use. But my question is why are some people
> (especially the old guards :) I think ) still seem to be obsessed with
> Gnome?? Is there any reason in particular, or is it just nostalgia?
>
> Also there are some applications which are very very dependent on Gnome,
> like Evolution, Gnomemeeting to name a few. Why does applications have
> to be so Gnome dependent, can't they be a bit more independent??
>
> Hope I asked the questions right.
>
> Thanks
> Emon
>
>
>
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