Tracy R Reed wrote:
Todd Walton wrote:
Only KDE is suitable for new Linux users. Gnome is actually a
dysfunctional desktop solution, I saw a technical paper once that
proved it. Gnome developers are probably smelly anyway.
I really don't understand the religion around window managers. Because
that's all these really are. The average user will spend very little
time interacting with gnome or kde specific applications and nearly all
of their time in firefix, thunderbird, pidgin, openoffice, etc. If
anything it seems most people acquire feelings about a particular window
manager from its default window management behavior which is usually
easily changed. Things like how focus works etc. The file manager might
be the next factor but again, it is relatively rarely used. Single or
double click to open files and whether the same window gets used or
whether another window is opened when you go into a folder seem to be
the main differentiating factors here. Things I really can't give a care
about.
Unfortunately, KDE and GNOME are not just window managers. Instead, they
incorporate an entire desktop environment that includes things like
inter-process communication and messaging in addition to what many see
as the just the window manager.
In the monopoly environment of MS Windows or Apple Macintosh,
applications share the same communication structure such that something
that seems as simple as drag-and-drop gets built into every application
by virtue of using the defined system APIs. The apps might not do
anything with it but it's always there if needed. With Linux, there is
no defined way for applications to communicate with each other, except
for some X Windows primitives. What KDE and GNOME did was to define
their own, incompatible standards. This was really bad about five years
ago, but it is getting better. Through the efforts of freedesktop.org,
there is a concerted effort to bring the stuff together into a single
standard, but it's still not there yet. GNOME's IPC is based on CORBA
(Common Object Request Broker) which should send shivers down any
developers spine. KDE developed their own light-weight IPC that wasn't
compatible with anything except itself.
For most people, you won't really notice much difference between GNOME
and KDE. I personally switched to KDE a couple years ago when the GNOME
guys removed the console from the right-click menu and buried it under
Accessories just like MS Windows. And the only way to get it back was to
install a binary extension to Nautilus. There is just something evil
about removing the console from a Linux user.
Gus
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