That much? [LWN.net]

That much?

Posted Oct 30, 2004 19:15 UTC (Sat) by leonscape (subscriber, #12261)
In reply to: That much? by hingo
Parent article: KDE and the Linux Journal 2004 Readers' Choice Awards (KDE.News)

I agree partly with the above poster, mainly that KDE is easier too write
for. Other things I see differently.

I believe it simply comes down to the C too C++ bias, for some "elitist"
programmers, and the license as to why so many of what you call
"authorities" prefer GNOME. Gtk is LGPL, and Qt is GPL, QPL or a
commercial license(which you pay for). IBM by the way use Qt ( a big
customer for trolltech ), and have tutorials on their website on how to
program in KDE. So I don't know what Algol meant by IBM backing Gtk.

As for the number of users, every poll tends to be similar, I think GNOME
users tend to make a bit more noise, but KDE users have always out
numbered GNOME users.

What I believe tends to be your favourite is what you use most the first
time with Linux. So you tend to get comfortable with it, Then don't like
other approaches. Its the same with programming what you use first tends
to be what you prefer. I think I'm slightly unusual having switched from
one to the other. It is an effort making a switch, I switched from
Windows first, so switching again, and having to learn things again is
always a pain.

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IBM backing GTK

Posted Oct 30, 2004 22:48 UTC (Sat) by Algol (subscriber, #2681) [Link]

Well, all I meant was that IBM is in the board of directors of the gnome foundation, that oversees the gnome/GTK development (and sponsor some). I also tend to see them more actively involved in gnome/GTK business. Anyhow I'm glad to hear that trolltech is making money. :)

(And btw IBM has tutorials for GTK-programming too :)

IBM (and others) 'backing' GTK

Posted Oct 31, 2004 17:16 UTC (Sun) by louie (subscriber, #3285) [Link]

IBM is indeed on the GNOME Foundation Advisory Board and a contributor to the foundation. But their main developmental focus at the moment is really the eclipse platform- which uses GTK, but isn't particularly gnome-integrated, unfortunately.

The record suggests that gtk is the linux target for the most important third-party linux ISVs (IBM with eclipse, Open Office with their Q Document, Real with Helix, Mozilla Foundation, others I'm not yet at liberty to speak about) but none of these partners (except maybe Real) have really gone the distance yet to integrate actively. By which I mean they've used gtk as their platform, but have not attempted to integrate with the GNOME HIG, use gconf, or other such steps. So... it is premature to say that GTK/GNOME have definitely won in the critical third-party developer wars, but we can see some trends in that direction that GNOME needs to take advantage of in order to reach its goals.