newbie question - Desktops

[Jeffrey Watts]

On Fri, 12 May 2000, Doug Oden wrote:

> Being new to Linux, could someone tell me the advantages and/or
> disavantages to Gnome and Kde.

Both work basically the same.

Gnome is part of the GNU project, and is built on libraries that are
multi-language, multi-plaform, and under the GPL.

KDE is under the GPL (but was improperly so for a long time), and is built
on libraries that are only C++, are multi-platform, and are (now) under a
OSS-compatible license.  Its library, QT is the product of a commercial
software company in Scandinavia.

Personally, I will only use Gnome.  KDE's developers have shown again and
again that they don't get it philosopy-wise.  QT is also a BAD idea for a
base GUI toolkit.  Why?  What if you aren't a C++ programmer?  What if you
want to code in C (_the_ language of Unix), Perl, Scheme, etc?  You're
outta luck with KDE.  Gnome uses GTK, which is a C library and has
bindings for most languages.

Now, this is not to say that QT is a bad library -- in fact it is very
nice.  It's just a bad idea for a base toolkit.

As far as how far they are, KDE has about a 6 month lead on Gnome, but
usability-wise they are very similar.

J.

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| Jeffrey Watts                     |
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