[RANT] Why is KDE the default in YDL?

[Eric Dunbar]

On Fri, 25 Feb 2005 06:48:36 +0000, Thierry de Coulon <tcoulon@> wrote:
> On Friday, 25 February 2005 00.21, Cian Duffy wrote:
> 
> > GNOME feels like.... a hybrid of OSX and BeOS. Its fast, and its
> > clean. KDE feels like a cheap Windows clone - Breadbox Ensemble,
> > anyone? (not sure if you have that the other side of the pond,
> > relatively modern attempt at a GEOS based OS, used in Nokia cellphones
> > and on desktops by very strange people..)
> >
> > Cian
>  
> - we have different distributions, that specialize on one of the desktops, and
> the user chooses. That's clean, but probably you won't gain much as you'll
> anyway have the other's libraries installed because you'll want this or that
> app requirering parts of the other desktop.

That "distro that dare not be named lest it solicit the ire of certain
individuals on this list" is trying that -- two separate but
intimately linked versions of the same distro. As far as libraries are
concerned -- that's not an issue. If a package requires a particular
library as a dependency apt-get'll download/install it.

> - we get sensible and friendly distributions, where you are asked on
> installation: which do you want, and even better you should be able to
> reconfigure that at any time.

Here here.

> KDE is not a cheap Windows clone - saying that seems to indicate you have
> never used either. But KDE took from many other GUIs, including OS/2, and it
> can be configured nearly any way you like. Gnome is not that flexible (I
> personnaly find kicker better, I can't change the button's position in the
> title bar without changing the windows manager in Gnome,  but once again
> that's purely a personal feeling).

This is exactly my impression of KDE as well -- a cheap Windoze clone
(with emphaaaasis on the cheap). It's all fancy and flashy but it
doesn't provide a whole lot of extra utility (IMdefinitelyNSHO).

GNOME (at least in the incarnations I've used, especially on that
nameless distro) is much closer to the design philosophy of Mac OS --
simple and USABLE. No funky
move-over-this-window-and-something-dumb-happens or
I-do-this-and-that-part-of-the-GUI-crashes (that's perhaps my worst
experience of KDE... an unstable mish-mash of bad GUI ideas).

> What we need is an OS that makes everyone FREE, not a new war to add upon the
> Linux vs Windows, Linux vs MacOS and Windows vs MacOS wars.

That would require some creativity on the part of OSS GUI makers. So
far, both GNOME and KDE are moderately cheap knock-offs of Windows and
Mac OS. Sometimes a theme comes up with some good ideas, but the
Windowsification of some many of their element compromise the
potential for the GUIs.

My hope is that (someday) we'll see some truly innovative GUI
developments come out of the OSS "movement". The Mac OS-style menubar
at the TOP of the window would be a great first step and there are
many other ideas that are there but haven't been properly implemented
(yeah, KDE can do menu-at-top for some  specific KDE-only apps, but it
still doesn't eliminate the Q$@!##%! menubar-in-window paradigm of BAD
GUI design (and, how many people use KDE-only apps... most apps of
note are not KDE-only and are often GNOME oriented).

Eric.