Torvalds Says 'Use KDE'

An anonymous reader writes "Without tip-toeing around the matter, Linus Torvalds made his preference in the GNOME vs. KDE matter quite clear on the GNOME-usability list: "I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE. This 'users are idiots, and are confused by functionality' mentality of Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it. I don't use Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long since reached the point where it simply doesn't do what I need it to do. Please, just tell people to use KDE." Also, "Gnome seems to be developed by interface nazis, where consistently the excuse for not doing something is not 'it's too complicated to do', but 'it would confuse users'.""

Sod Gnome & KDE

[madaxe42]

Get E! [get-e.org]

Havoc's Response

[chennes]

Gnome developer Havoc Pennington's response [gnome.org] points out that "reducing complexity" was not, in fact, the reason the particular dialog in question doesn't have all the options Linux wanted:

"Just for the record, since I made this decision I can tell you that 'might confuse people' was not the reason. More evidence for my point that 'might confuse people' is the reason made up by others, not the reason given by the decision makers."

Which is not to say that Linus is wrong (in the e-mail he writes that "If this was a one-off, I'd buy it. But I've heard it too damn many times. And only ever from Gnome.") -- I'm not a big fan of Gnome's lack of features (at least as compared to KDE), but it's not like anyone on Slashdot really conforms to the "average computer user" concept. And Linus surely doesn't either. Maybe Gnome is better for Mom and Grandpa. I'll stick with KDE, myself.

What's wrong with GNOME anyway?

[farmer11]

I've used both GNOME and KDE, but I decided to use GNOME. Been using it with Fedora Core 3 for over a year now and it works just fine. What's this big problem with GNOME anyway? My 2 biggest complaints are lack of a "show in groups" in the nautilus file view and closing multiple instances of the same program from the taskbar (there's no close all, you have to click close on each one).

He's right, you know

[Tom]

In 1998, I was a very active participant on the Gnome UI mailing list. In fact, the very first Gnome User Interface Guideline was in part based on my proposed one (google for "Rogue GNOME style guide" if you care about the details).

Two things shocked me back then, and from Linus comments it appears that neither of them have changed.

One is that Gnome has a ton of great contributors - and just as many who are not as great. Unfortunately, in areas where the matter is more discussion and consensus based and you can't prove your point by just coding it, the vocal trolls crowd out the valuable contributors.

Two is that within those who contributed the the UI discussion there was a surprising lack not only of experience in the HCI field (ok, I had just started out there myself) but also a strong resistance to pick up the vast literature available or trust in actual end-user studies.

The last was what caused me to quit. How can you design a user interface without talking to the users? You can't. Anyone working in HCI knows that. Assumptions == Disaster

Why I use Gnome

[The Bubble]

Typically a user of the SuSE distribution, I have had the opportunity to use very good implementations of both KDE and Gnome. I have no qualms with saying that KDE has some nice applications (AmaroK stands out). In fact, at one point, I was using KDE because Nautilus could not interface with a specific BSD SFTP server, while Konqueror could; but when I figured out how to do it, I switched back to Gnome. I like Gnome because it feels _designed_, whereas KDE simply feels like a hacked~together copy of Windows. Granted, there are obvious differences, and even improvements, but, while individual applications in Gnome may be behind the similar applications in KDE, I see in Gnome to be something far greater than what KDE will be. I use Gnome because of the future I see for it: I want to be a part of what gets it there.

Ali, stop trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

In case anyone is wondering, the parents post was brought to you by oooGalaxyooo, a well know Anti-Gnome troll who spends his days copy and pasting the exact same message into every discussion on the net that might be in any way related to Gnome.

Btw, he's the guy who brought you the wonderful successful GoneME fork of gnome, which is indeed gone now.

For more information, feel free to visit his hompage:
http://www.akcaagac.com/index.html [akcaagac.com]

Re:Torvalds is right. Avoid GNOME use KDE!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, this has never been posted anywhere else [google.com] and you don't look like a troll. At all.

Check out Jeff Waugh's reply

[Andabata]

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2005-Dece mber/msg00027.html [gnome.org] Just a sample: We're not aiming for "powerfully extensible". We're aiming for "Just Works". Some people will hate that. Some will love it. Personally, I'd rather have passionate users, lovers and haters, than be than average and ignored, and I think you'll find most GNOME developers feel the same way. Personally, I think Linus ought to know better by now than put out a self-centered post like that. There are more users in the world than just geeks. Most aren't geeks, in fact. For Linux on the Desktop to survive beyond the lifespan of its proponents, it needs to acknowledge that, not fall trap of intestinal power struggles.

Nat Friedman's follow-up

[wild_berry]

Nat Friedman's follow-up to Linus' post is grown-up and sensible (http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2005-Dec ember/msg00025.html [gnome.org]):

On Mon, 2005-12-12 at 17:46 -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE.

Everyone on this list knows the Linux desktop is in a "pick your poison" state right now.

Anyone who's used Linux for a year has experienced this, whatever choices they've made of desktop environment, settings, etc.

We can snipe at each other all day long. (Linus, every time I copy large files between devices on my Linux system my mouse pointer skips. It works fine on my Mac). That's not productive.

Usability is important. Usability encompasses multiple things: functionality, robustness, performance, sensible user interface design. We all need to do a better job of this (insert usability testing/betterdesktop.org plug here).

Yes, some GNOME developers are self-appointed control freak antifeature nazis who've stripped functionality in pursuit of some theoretical "non geek" user who does not exist, thereby crippling their software.

And probably some KDE developers are feature sluts who never saw a checkbox they didn't love, exposing users to all kinds of broken features.

Follow either of these ideas to their logical extremes and we won't have a useful desktop for a large user base.

We need Linux to grow up if we're going to make Linux on the desktop a success. Let's have a grown-up discussion. If I worked for Microsoft I'd be very happy to see you throwing pejoratives around like that on this list.

So, yes, usability is important and Linus being able to bind his mouse buttons to whatever he wants is important, I guess. But it's probably not what's stopping Linux from dominating the desktop market. What's holding Linux back on the desktop? Applications, device support. Time, also. The printing dialog? I don't know.

(By the way, on my GNOME machine at home, there is code running that parses the options from the PPD file and makes a GUI out of them. Maybe this ships in SUSE but not in whatever distro Till is using?)

Nat

Re:He's right, you know

[Anonymous Coward]

Two is that within those who contributed the the UI discussion there was a surprising lack not only of experience in the HCI field (ok, I had just started out there myself) but also a strong resistance to pick up the vast literature available or trust in actual end-user studies.

List of references considered for the Gnome Human Interface Guidelines [gnome.org].
Usability Study from Sun Microsystems [gnome.org].
Usability testing videos from Novell [betterdesktop.org]

Somehow, the current situation looks quite different from what you describe.

Re:Torvalds is right. Avoid GNOME use KDE!

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no Mozilla and no OpenOffice on the screenshot.

Linux is wrong on one thing at least.

[nrc]

And lo The Torvalds did say unto his flock,

Same with the file dialog. Apparently it's too "confusing" to let users just type the filename. So gnome forces you to do the icon selection thing, never mind that it's a million times slower.

Not really true. If you bring up a Gnome file dialog and just start typing a file name Gnome will open a text box and allow you to enter the file name with tab completion.

It's a very slick example of what Gnome needs to do more of. Gnome has focused its efforts on simplifing the interface for the masses. They've made good progress but the masses seem unimpressed.

It's time to think about finding elegant ways to put that power back in while keeping it transparent to the masses.

Re:Havoc's Response

[Anthony Boyd]

Havoc Pennington's response points out that "reducing complexity" was not, in fact, the reason the particular dialog in question doesn't have all the options Linux wanted:

You are correct that Havoc is distancing himself from that. However, Frederic Crozat, GNOME packager/maintainer did cite that as the reason. And that's what Linus was responding to. So at best, Havoc and Frederic have a disconnect in what they tell end-users. In any case, it reveals that some of the Gnome leadership are in a rut, using the stupidity of their users as an excuse for the stupidity of their interface.

That's just IMHO, of course. ;)

"Dumbed down interfaces"

[theurge14]

Ah, but see, what you're seeing on the Mac is actually elegant simplicity. There's power lurking there.

Sure the playlist selector in iTunes only has one button to add a new playlist, but hold down the Shift key while your mouse is in the playlist area and the button turns into an add new Smart playlist button. Or in the Browse area, click on the column header to Genre, Artist or Album and you zoom back to the top of the list.

These sort of rewards await those who explore. But for the faint of heart, the simple interface still functions.

Re:Yes, especially the File dialog

[SmartSsa]

I invite you to press CTRL-L in nautilus, or any file browsing dialog.

Re:Well then

[Vo0k]

Use Kubuntu instead.

Re:KDE vs. Gnome. Ready...FIGHT!

[DocOmega]

Mod parent up!

I remember seeing a poster in college stating that about 1% of the world's population has a four year degree. That impressed me. I realized that I was becoming part of an elite. The eight percent mentioned by the parent post seems a bit off based on this. Maybe complex expressions on the command line at times are the ideal tool to accomplish a specific goal, but lets remember who we're leaving out.

The CLI-only world

[roscivs]

Try using elinks for a web browser and WordPerfect 5.1 in Dosbox. :)

Re:Linus, Thank You for Sharing

[jone1941]

http://betterdesktop.org/ [betterdesktop.org] - an ongoing and very recent usibility study.

Gnome isn't perfect neither is KDE. I personally find that I don't like the default settings for either desktop. The thing that turns me off of KDE as a whole is that even knowing already what I'm going to want to change it takes me forever to step through the mess that is kcontrol and to remove the mess that is every application under the sun from kicker. As a desktop I prefer Gnome, it does everything I need it to do without causing me much pain to get it to the point that I like. However, I still install KDE simply for konsole and kate the two apps I could not live without.

Re:Linus, Thank You for Sharing

[Anthony Boyd]

You are an expert in operating system kernels. Please keep to what you do best.

Translation: "Someone with influence is saying something I don't like. Shut up shut up shut up!"

Re:Metacity

[Anonymous Coward]

GNOME switched to Metacity after the main delevoper of sawfish took a job with Apple, and virtually deserted sawfish. Nobody else had the time or Lisp knowledge to keep sawfish properly maintained. Sawfish also introduced alot of overhead because it also require its own lisp interpreter plus lisp->gtk bindings. So there you have 3 different software packages and no maintainers.

Re:In defense of Gnome

[fymidos]

>KDE installs all this useless crap that I don't want on my machine.

Most of these apps, (keyes,kteatime,amor etc) are in the package kdetoys, which you can safely remove from your installation.

Re:Metacity

[jdub!]

Wait... We changed from an unmaintainable (and back then, officially unmaintained because the only person who understood it went to work for Apple and wasn't allowed to hack on it anymore) hairball that was substantially different from everything else in the GNOME stack, to a simple, familiar window manager with basic accoutrements... and you think this shows that GNOME was hijacked by suits?

Dude, as release manager at the time (definitely not a suit - I was doing consulting at the time, and relished the opportunity to work from home and forego wearing pants), I pushed really hard for us to switch to metacity for the very first 2.0 release, because sawfish was in such a state. I distinctly remember stumbling around at the Ximian sponsored party at GUADEC, convincing all the stakeholders it was ready to go, and then attempting to get Havoc drunk so we could convince him. Alas, he was entirely correct in his refusal to ship it quite so early. We ended up doing it for 2.2.

Yes, metacity is unexciting. But precisely how exciting do you want window management to be? Further to that, precisely how exciting does your Mum want window management to be? Beyond our vocal minority of geeks who love computers, no one actually cares.

Re:Inevitable

[BenjyD]

Using "FUCKING IDIOT" [osdl.org] in caps on a mailing list is fairly childish behaviour, I think. There is a reasoned debate to be had there with the devs (not to be confused with the GNOME fanboy users) - how to add the complex options given limited developer time and a desire to make things usable without significant mental energy. Just shouting and insulting the developers is not the right approach and somebody needs to tell Linus that.

Ironic choice of words

[freeweed]

I'm just condoning his actions.

Condoning his actions implies you agree with, and to some extent support him. Your post speaks differently.

Perhaps you mean condemning?

Oh well, I'm still mystified as to why this is either a) removing your freedom of choice, or b) zealotry. A man gives his opinion. You're free to do whatever you choose.

Gnome and KDE ... We Need Both

[Chris Tyler]

I've been using Gnome (on FC and Ubuntu on my personal, business, and client systems) and KDE (on SuSE systems at the college where I teach) pretty much every day for years. I know the keybindings, the shortcuts, and the configuration options for both, and I'm including coverage of both in a book I'm writing. I personally prefer Gnome (gasp! - a longtime *nix user, a competent programmer, an experienced sysadmin that ... prefers Gnome!) but that's by a small margin.

But as I've been writing the book, I've realized that both include some pretty hoary crud from a user perspective. (Before I get flamed: yes, of course FC uses a heavily themed version of both desktops, but don't skip the line above where I noted that I also use Ubuntu and SuSE).

Take KDE's configuration system, for example -- you can get to the configuration module for, say, the Window Manager in several different ways (through the Control Center, or a right-click on titlebar), but the user interface is very slightly different depending on how you get there (butons vs. tabs? different numbers of options on the buttons and tabs?) -- why?! What purpose does this serve other than confusing the user? People criticize Gnome's [various versions of] load/save dialogs, but KDE's use of a horizontally-scrolling display of variable-width columns brings new meaning to the phrase 'user hostile' (and copying it from a braindead Windows design is no defense). What about configuration options that have proliferated to the point of absurdity? - such as window focus options that include "focus follows mouse", "focus under mouse", and "focus strictly under mouse" (when the differences are not documented except in some obscure post on a developer's list)??!?

Gnome is no better. Why can I drag'n'drop a wallpaper or a desktop theme onto the appropriate configuration dialog, but not a GDM theme? When I successfully install a new personal font using the fonts:/// location in Nautilus, why doesn't the new font show up in that Fonts window??!?

Both desktops have significant shortcomings. The features and shortcomings of each will rub us in different ways. But without friendly competition between the two camps -- thankfully, augmented by cooperation through freedesktop.org -- I think the free desktop would not be anywhere close to where it is now.

So long live diversity, choice, and friendly competition!

KDE has superior apps, more energetic users &

[billybob2]

Mark Shuttleworth [slashdot.org] and now Linus Torvalds seem realize the value of KDE's superior architecture, on which which many must-have KDE apps. These apps don't have any gnome equivalents that are nearly as useful and feature-rich:

AmaroK music player [kde.org] -- The most feature-rich and polished music player on the Free Software platform.

K3b [k3b.org] -- Best CD and DVD authoring program with intuitive wizards, on the fly transcoding between WAV, MP3, FLAC, and Ogg Vorbis, normalization of volume levels, CDDB, DVD Ripping and DivX/XviD encoding, Save/load projects, automatic hardware detection/calibration and much more.

DigiKam [digikam.org] -- The most feature-rich application for digital photo management.

Wireless Assistant [kde-apps.org] -- Most user-friendly app for connecting to wireless networks. Managed Networks Support, WEP Encryption Support, Per Network (AP) Configuration Profiles, Automatic (DHCP, both dhcpcd and dhclient) and manual configuration options, Connection status monitoring, etc

KDE Education [kde.org] -- Educational (Science, Literature, Geography, etc) programs for children. Could play a big role in whether school districts decide to use Free Software in their classrooms.

Konqueror File Manager [konqueror.org] -- Embeded image/PDF/music/video viewing (via KMPlayer [kde.org]) and a tree-view arrangement of the filesystem familiar to Windows users (Nautilus doesn't come anywhere close)

KDE Control Center [kde.org] -- Centralized location for desktop control. Controls _all_ common aspects of the KDE applications: language, power settings, special effects, icon and window themes, shadows, shortcuts, printers, privacy, etc. This is what makes KDE so well integrated -- all KDE apps respect changes made here, so they all have the same feel. SUSE has even made YAST a module of the KDE control center so users can access distro-specific settings from here. Compare this to the dismembered approach Red Hat (and other gnome distros) have been forced to adopt in the absence of a centralized gnome control center. (ie. a bunch of individial programs named redhat-config-**** that nobody can ever remember)

Seamless, transparent network file access [kde.org] on SMB, FTP, SSH and WebDav networks from _any_ KDE application.

Kaffeine [sourceforge.net] -- The most polished FOSS movie player.

MythTV [mythtv.org] -- The most advanced analog and digital TV viewer/recorder in the Free Software world (built using QT).

Baghira [sourceforge.net] -- A native QT style that faithfully imitates OS X eyecandy, aimed at new users coming from the Mac world.

Klik [atekon.de] -- Gives non-expert access to bleeding edge versions of apps without requiring any compilation or permanent installation.

KDE and QT also make up a technically superior platform for developers, drastically lowering the learning curve for programmers new to FOSS development. KDE apps can be built from the ground up using the best development tools in the Free Software world (which also happen to be built on QT/KDE):

Kdevelop [kdevelop.org] for syntax highliting, application templates, and project organization.

QT designer [trolltech.com] for GUI development

Quanta [kdewebdev.org] -- Rich web development environment for PHP, CSS, DocBook, HTML, XML, etc with advanced context sensitive autocompletion, internal preview and more.

Just part of the story

[graiz]

This posted snippet is just part of the stuff that Linus said. You can read some more of this interesting thread here: The Linux Attitude [raizlabs.com]

Re:The other alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, other then Firefox and a Word Processor I could almost get by with a CLI only environment in this day and age.

Umm... In terms of Word Processor alternatives, might I recommend LaTeX (teTeX is the distro of choice for Linux). I (almost) never use a word processor anymore and the output is FAR more professional to boot. Viewing can be done using dvi2tty (if you are really hardcore) or using dvips+svgalib+ghostscript, I suppose. Web browsing is trickier, as it is often a very visual experience. Personally, I would be cool with a better version of graphical links running on a framebuffer, with all the cool extras of elinks and all the smooth interface of lynx... but that's just wishful thinking for a non-programmer such as I.

I'm a big time CLI freak too, but I have to admit I rarely use the CLI exclusively... if only framebuffer were better developed... sigh.

Re:Dude, FVWM

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Firefox doesn't want or need the gnome-settings-deamon. It would make it unusable on windows for instance. However, the packager for your distribution might have thought it was a good idea to link firefox to said daemon. That's something entirely different though.

Re:Havoc's Response

[Craig Ringer]

Moving windows is fine, opaque mode or wireframe. Aren't modern video cards great?

The issue is the window maximization/minimzation animation, which is the wireframe I was referring to in case that was unclrear. That's the one that causes the problems, and the one I don't understand why it can't be turned off. Everything else the window manager does is fine over remote X, it's just that damn animation. It's a small thing, for sure, but it's a case where people have repeatedly submitted small patches that make it configurable, because lots of people need this, and they're all being ignored.

If I turn on limited resources mode (which it took a lot of arguing to get included), it turns off useful things as well, including things like opaque move/resize. I then get complaints from users. It seems silly to prevent the admin from just turning off the problem feature and being done with the issue.

Re:Inevitable

[Bogtha]

Using "FUCKING IDIOT" in caps on a mailing list is fairly childish behaviour, I think. There is a reasoned debate to be had there with the devs

You are assuming he hasn't already tried that route. From the email you linked to:

I've argued with them about this before, and I know others have too, and mostly given up.

I don't think this is a case of him simply deciding to be a flaming idiot, I think this is a case of having a legitimate complaint, trying to resolve it with the developers, being ignored, noticing everybody else was being ignored too, switching to an alternative desktop, and then getting fed up with people saying that "it's easier" the GNOME way. He's frustrated, not childish.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:The other alternative

[Oopsz]

SVGALib +FB will do it quite nicely, thank you very much.

Kate

[jaydonnell]

You forgot the most important one for us programmers: Kate It's the best text editor I've ever used.

Re:Not really a cogent argument

[DrXym]

And if you're not that much of a power user? If there's something users are going to want to change, it should be changeable from within the GUI.

And therein lies the exciting field of usability - figure out what fields most people are likely to want to change and those fields that very few people want to change. Then proceed to design a user interface which pushes the commonly used settings forward in a task-oriented, logically presented fashion and holds back the advanced settings either in advanced dialogs, or even hides them from the UI altogether.

It is quite conceivable that you might have a normal user who wants to touch some advanced setting. But I would argue that it is better that they visit a secondary dialog or read a HOWTO to change it rather than confuse the hell out of everyone else who doesn't by lumping it in with other actions.

RTFP (Read the F*ing Parent)

[Andy Dodd]

"There might be an option to turn this off in the system registry but it also turns off other features. For example a window now turns into a wireframe when you drag it."

I guess you missed that.

Re:KDE has superior apps, more energetic users &am

[kimvette]

It does if you mount the network share. Create a mount point (say, /mnt/cd_source) and mount the share on that point, and add the files you need from that mount point.

There are almost always multiple ways to solve a problem. :)

Re:Hell. He's right.

[nutshell42]

Argh. It ain't enough to make me switch to KDE -- I *like* Enlightenment, dammit --

You *can* use a different WM with KDE. Just set the KDEWM (iirc, do a grep on /usr/bin/startkde) environment variable to whatever WM it should use. Additionally, you might want to kill off kdesktop to get access to enlightenment's desktop menus.