On 7/7/06, Curtis Rey <crey@san.rr.com> wrote:
KDE community may come from. Once again. SuSE and GNOME have been fringe to each other for some time now - at least until Novell bought SuSE and Ximian. KDE users and devs feel they are often taking a back seat to GNOME. This angers many, especially since KDE development seems to be more stable and predictable than that of GNOME - yet GNOME gets all the limelight.
Hmm.. Interesting. I guess it all depends from which angle you see things. The way I perceive it is that GNOME has always and still are taking the back seat to KDE in SuSE. The KDE environment on SUSE is much better integrated and smooth than the GNOME environement on SUSE. Compare GNOME on SUSE for instance with GNOME on Ubuntu and take my original question as an example. So, the way that I see it is that, even though the suits are pushing GNOME in SLED, KDE is ruling SUSE and openSUSE. So I don't really see why people complain. I can understand that people might think that new Linux users might lean towards GNOME because that is what is pushed onto them in corporate marketing and commercial systems that might be rolled out at thier place of work. But I do not see it as such a big risk. If KDE is technically and ergonomically superiour to GNOME, then people would still use it when they get thier home computer converted to Linux, which will probably be openSUSE or SUSE (not SLED) Maybe I underestimate the average user and the influence of marketing. I know that marketing is powerful, but I think that in the case of OpenSource, where people have a choice, technical superiority will have a bigger influence against marketing. Unlike the proprietary market, where people are only exposed to marketing and do not have a choice, so they never get in touch with the technical superiour product, so they start to believe that watever the market is forcing onto them is the only choice. This was the situation in the PC market for very long and the reason why Windows was so successful. But look what is starting to happen now that people are being exposed more and more to a choice in the PC OS market. Therefore, I don't see Novell's choice for SLED as a threat to KDE. Also take the XFree86/Xorg situation into account, then one can deduct that if KDE is superiour to GNOME, then it will prevail and GNOME is not a threat. That is how I see it. But I still prefer my GNOME and SUSE, even though it is taking the back seat in SUSE and I have to use some KDE and Qt apps for some things. I can live with it. -- Andre Truter | Software Consultant | Registered Linux user #185282 Jabber: andre_tux@jabberafrica.org | http://www.trusoft.co.za ~ A dinosaur is a salamander designed to Mil Spec ~ -- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com