gnome vs. kde [LWN.net]

gnome vs. kde

Posted Aug 20, 2006 18:00 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304)
In reply to: gnome vs. kde by drag
Parent article: Take notes with Tomboy (Linux.com)

FUSE could never replace kioslaves and gnome-vfs for two reasons. Firstly,
it's not as portable (though it has been ported to FreeBSD and I believe
OpenSolaris). Secondly, kernel mounts are much, much more expensive than
kioslaves on many Unixes (although not Linux to such an extent).

However, it is plausible that kioslaves and gnome-vfs could use FUSE :)

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gnome vs. kde

Posted Aug 21, 2006 13:07 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

But if FUSE is portable to other operating systems doesn't it mean that FUSE is portable?

Or in 'other operating systems' you specificly mean 'windows', right?

Because it works on OpenSolaris.. FreeBSD. This means it would work on NetBSD and OpenBSD also. And OS X if anybody cared.

I only say that Gnome and KDE should use FUSE instead of their own paticular VFS implimentations becuase..

KIOslave and Gnome-VFS are almost completely worthless unless your running a totally pure KDE or Gnome desktop. How well does it work when the majority of applications are not able to directly use what you setup via the GUI? It doesn't make any sense.

Why is it reasonable to expect that it's ok if I can access a share via Epiphany or nautilus, but not be able to access it via Amarok or Krita (and visa versa)?

How is a unknowlegable Linux user on some desktop somewere going to understand that if they access a Windows share via Nautilus that they still won't be able to use it with the vast majority of applications?

And even if I set it up so that I have both G-VFS and KIO I still can't use either with anything that isn't Gnome or KDE, which is a lot of stuff.

With FUSE it's instantly usable by EVERYTHING. Not just one or another paticularly tightly controlled desktop environment setup by some project-specific developers.

gnome vs. kde

Posted Aug 23, 2006 19:23 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Oh, I agree that FUSE implementations are preferable, but you have a few
problems which can't be overcome:

kioslaves and gnome-vfs modules aren't restricted to POSIX interfaces (at
least not in theory): you could do things with them that you can't do with
POSIX. The interface for POSIX is (at least semi-)frozen.

And there's no way to make FUSE work on systems with non-free kernels. I
thought GNOME and KDE were supposed to work on non-free systems? There's
certainly effort going on to make them work under Cygwin (and both already
do to a considerable extent). You could fake FUSE under Cygwin, too, but
what about non-free Unixes? (Or do we just say 'increasingly irrelevant'
and forget about them?)