I had to wrack my brain for my password since I haven't logged in in some time (since I never posted that much anyhow), but /.'s been one of my favorite sites since before you started offering accounts on it. Thanks for all the great times.

Gnome is a problem because it doesn't encourage desktop use of linux in the sense that users use applications that are written to work and play well together. Gnome does nothing to encourage that.

This is the reason why OSX (and even windows) is beating the crap out of linux on the desktop and why it always will.

The average Gnome user (according to /.'s own roblimo) patches together a bunch of applications that are pretty much desktop agnostic.
The other two cases are the "optimizer" that worries about the terminal program they're using taking up another half kilobyte of memory when they recompile their kernel, or a developer that doesn't care about the desktop because all they really do is development.
All of these type of users would be just as well using Windowmaker or FVWM or any other window manager that we used to fight over last decade.

KDE has its issues, but at the very least it attempts to encourage users to utilize the K* applications and those K* applications actually work together very well. Further, the environment is a fairly consistent development target for applications.

At the moment, KDE is really the only coherent desktop environment that the free unix world has (with a possible nod to Xfce). Enlightenment development stalls out on a regular basis and as it stands now is years behind even Gnome for the most basic stuff. GNUstep was a great idea, but its in the same boat as E, too little, too late.

Finally, let's remember why Gnome was initially developed -- as a political response to some issues with QT that no longer exist -- and more often than not Gnome is still chosen over KDE in distros due to politics.

The linux booting on the iPhone part was kinda cool, but this is like the second time someone threw slashdot's traffic at a poorly written, poorly thought out blog entry. I wish I had the minute back that it took to read this garbage.