Mark Shuttleworth interview (Linux Format) [LWN.net]

Mark Shuttleworth interview (Linux Format)

Posted Oct 3, 2006 7:28 UTC (Tue) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
In reply to: Mark Shuttleworth interview (Linux Format) by ajross
Parent article: Mark Shuttleworth interview (Linux Format)

I'd be curious what your examples are of KDE features that "just work" where the equivalent Gnome ones don't

Well, support for indic fonts for one. You claim pango is a great thing, but getting GNOME on a vanilla ubuntu system to display unicode Hindi or Tamil text properly is a pain (Abiword seems incapable of it, and in firefox it's disabled by default on ubuntu.) In fact till about GNOME 2.8 you were basically out of luck. See here for a discussion. KDE has had full support for it for years, no tweaking or environment variables needed.

PPP: maybe dialup is obsolete now, but GNOME lacked a dialup program for years (maybe it still does) while KDE had kPPP which "just worked".

Bluetooth: I tried it for the first time yesterday, with a USB dongle and my mobile phone. It just worked on KDE, which showed me a vast list of services, most of which I never knew existed. I transferred files back and forth with ease. On gnome, gnome-bluetooth isn't even installed by default on Ubuntu, and when I installed it, I couldn't figure it out.

Konqueror: It is the most versatile file manager I've seen, bar none, and it's a pretty darn good web browser too. You can browse your desktop or the web or use various other services, it can open pretty much any other media type. Nautilus doesn't come close (and I'm not talking about the spatial view.)

As for stupid UI decisions: there's the GNOME decision to reverse the position of the "ok" and "cancel" buttons. Maybe it makes sense in some language where you are used to saying "do you want to do this, no or yes?" but that's not the case in the four languages I know.

Then the GNOME habit of hiding 75% of the interesting configuration options. You need to open gconf-editor and fiddle with some obscure value to, for example, disable the "battery is fully charged" notice on your laptop (or do any number of other things).

I used GNOME for a few months because I was tempted by compiz, and installed it on my wife's laptop because it's Ubuntu's first-choice desktop. Now I'm back to KDE (on my laptop) and my wife wants it too.

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Mark Shuttleworth interview (Linux Format)

Posted Oct 3, 2006 18:35 UTC (Tue) by oak (subscriber, #2786) [Link]

I myself like using both, KDE for the Desktop:
- Konqueror is nicer & slimmer than Nautilus + Firefox
- I also prefer KMail above that awful Evolution
But Gnome stuff for the other applications:
- Abiword over KWord (my main word processing app is lyx-qt though)
- Gnumeric over Kspread
- Dia over Kuml/K*
etc.

Mark Shuttleworth interview (Linux Format)

Posted Oct 3, 2006 19:22 UTC (Tue) by ajross (subscriber, #4563) [Link]

Wow, it seems this has sparked quite the flame war.

Without going line by line, it seems to me that most of your information is either stale (fonts), wrong (PPP, OK-button), or just a reasonable difference in opinion (Konqueror, or all the UI complaints)*. Please try a modern Gnome desktop and be more open minded. You may not like it, but what I take from your list of complaints hardly rises to the level of "doesn't work" or "stupid".

Flaming about this stuff really has to stop. Neither desktop is going away, and you are more than welcome to use the one you prefer. But be rational about it: flipping out because some folks (me, for instance) prefer one over another for architectural reasons isn't going to win KDE any converts at this point.

* The Bluetooth point is valid though. I'm not aware of any good Gtk-based OBEX clients. The OBEX server applet works acceptably, though. If Bluetooth weren't such a disaster, I might care more. As it is, I use my phone over USB exclusively.

Mark Shuttleworth interview (Linux Format)

Posted Oct 4, 2006 5:28 UTC (Wed) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]

"Flaming about this stuff really has to stop. Neither desktop is going away, and you are more than
welcome to use the one you prefer. But be rational about it: flipping out because some folks (me,
for instance) prefer one over another for architectural reasons isn't going to win KDE any converts at
this point."

Well, you did post quite debatable comments about KDE and GNOME, and when someone decided
to correct you, it's "flaming" and it "has to stop"? No, no-one has flamed anyone here. Someone
posted comments about something, and some other people disagreed with those comments, that's
all.

I might as well say that disparaging and untrue comments about KDE isn't going to win any converts
to GNOME at this point.

Mark Shuttleworth interview (Linux Format)

Posted Oct 4, 2006 7:30 UTC (Wed) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

most of your information is either stale (fonts),

No it's not stale. Read the wikipedia page I linked to. That page is there for a reason.

wrong (PPP, OK-button),

The ppp thing may be stale (not wrong), and I explicitly said so. As for the button, are you claiming that the order is "ok/cancel"? Every GNOME installation I've seen has "cancel/ok" by default. It is possible that there is an obscure gconf variable to change that.

Pointing out shortcomings of your pet desktop isn't flaming.

Mark Shuttleworth interview (Linux Format)

Posted Oct 4, 2006 8:01 UTC (Wed) by micampe (guest, #4384) [Link]

As for the button, are you claiming that the order is "ok/cancel"?

No, the fact is that there are no dialogs with "cancel/ok" buttons, and if there are, it's a bug. The buttons should read "don't save/cancel/save", for example.

Mark Shuttleworth interview (Linux Format)

Posted Oct 4, 2006 14:21 UTC (Wed) by ajross (subscriber, #4563) [Link]

rsidd: No it's not stale. Read the wikipedia page I linked to. That page is there for a reason.

I did. It says, in no uncertain terms:

You do not need to do anything to enable viewing of Indic text in Gnome 2.8 or later.

rsidd: Every GNOME installation I've seen has "cancel/ok" by default.

Sorry, but Gnome applications don't have OK buttons. They have an affirmative action, always explained in the label (e.g. "Save"), and it is always in the bottom right corner for consistency (because there may be more than one way to "cancel" or "negate" a dialog choice). This is sane, well considered, and consistent. You may not like it, and there may even be some good reasons why you do not like it. But calling it "stupid" as you did (especially since you clearly don't understand the issue) seems like mindless flaming to me and not reasoned argument.

Just stop. You like KDE better, and your are more than welcome to tell us why. But you are going beyond merely stating a preference, and making arguments about Gnome (the desktop you don't use) that are misleading at best and in some cases simply not true. This is called "flaming" or "spin", and only makes you look like an immature fan boy.

Mark Shuttleworth interview (Linux Format)

Posted Oct 5, 2006 11:49 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

To be fair, the changed button order in GNOME 2 *was* contentious and the source of considerable flamage on the gnome lists at the time: what's more, the flamage was halted by a blatant argument from authority ('that's the way Apple does it'). Small surprise that some people consider this somewhat weak...