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On the GUI Selection in UserLinux
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CommentsGNOME and KDE are both Free Software. Both are developed by lots of good programmers, with the support of honorable business people. Many people in the Free Software community have a huge emotional (or even financial) investment in KDE or GNOME, because they have put a lot of development into one of those desktops, or they've just spent a lot of time with one of them as a user.
To many of those people, it's simply unbearable for their personal GUI not to be the one chosen for our project.
Why play favorites at all? Debian doesn't, and UserLinux is to be derived from Debian. There are more than 13,000 software packages in Debian's pre-release at this writing, including at least three complete desktop GUIs: KDE, GNOME, and GNUStep. The FreeDesktop.org site hosts efforts to increase inter-operability between GNOME and KDE, and the Red Hat Bluecurve project has created a theme that makes the two GUIs look identical. Applications from KDE and GNOME run reasonably well together today. And most important: non-programmer users don't care what GUI toolkit their application is built upon. The GUI issue is a developer, not user, discussion.
But all of the efforts to unify these two desktops do not change the fact that there are two entirely different GUI SDKs. The two competing GUIs are each of a complexity equal to or greater than that of the Linux kernel. For developers and support staff, maintaining expertise in both of two GUIs is an expensive proposition. Many IT shops, when faced with such choices, have decided to consolidate to fewer options in order to reduce expense.
UserLinux is intended to be a system for business people. Central to its design is a network of competing for-profit service providers, who perform engineering and support services for the system. Because these service providers are basing their business upon a commodity product, there are already economic limits upon how profitable they can be. The difference between one and two GUIs may spell profitability or bankruptcy for some of our service providers. In a similar vein, internal support and engineering staff at businesses that employ UserLinux would like to have only one GUI SDK to develop for and maintain. This is not to say that choice is bad. Rather, it's bad when people aren't allowed to choose.
We held about a week of discussion on the GUI issue, on the UserLinux mailing list - about 200 postings. It drowned out all other work. It was clear from the discussion that while GNOME and KDE each exceed the other in some areas, when you weigh them all together they are of equal technical merit. However there is a critical business difference between the two GUIs: GNOME does not require a royalty in connection with proprietary software development based upon their SDK. Qt, the widget set upon which KDE is based, does have a proprietary developer licensing fee connected with it.
It's important for us to get more Free Software into business, so that businesses will be sympathetic with us when we need to ask for legislative changes to support the long-term viability of Free Software. You know the issues: software patents, DRM, etc. Today these are seen as business vs. fringe-party issues, and we're on the losing side. The extent to which our software penetrates the business world will govern our effectiveness in getting the legislative changes we need.
Enterprise users buy solutions, not systems. And it's a fact of life that enterprise customers will want to run a mixed Free + proprietary environment, choosing whatever software is best for a particular application. The overall viability of UserLinux will be based upon the size and quality of the ecosystem of solutions around it, both Free and proprietary. So, in order to get any Free Software into businesses, our Free system must promote the creation of a large collection of proprietary solutions that do not exist today. As we penetrate the enterprise, we will continue to move Free Software higher up the application stack, until these businesses make use of Free Software predominantly. But you need proprietary software to get in the door.
It is possible for us to make our system entirely royalty-free for solution developers, both Free and proprietary. This dictates some software choices: GNOME and PostgreSQL rather than KDE and MySQL, simply because of the way those products license proprietary developers. This will support a large ecosystem of both Free and proprietary solution developers by lowering the financial barriers to entry all the way to zero. This will be especially important in third-world countries, where the expense of an SDK license is much more significant than to a developer in the US or Europe.
Almost all Linux distributions have been quiet about their GUI choice, because it does seem to make a few enemies and might dissuade some customers who have already made a GUI choice. I felt that attempting to be everything to everyone would be the coward's choice and the worst possible decision, that focus would be appreciated by business users, and that most business users don't have any GUI preference other than wanting to be able to focus development and support on only one GUI. Thus, it would be necessary to select one GUI.
As you can see on our mailing list, most of the software consolidation in UserLinux is going on by consensus. I saw that no consensus would be possible regarding the GUI. So, I made a decision by fiat to get the project moving past the GUI issue. UserLinux will be GNOME-based, will not include Qt or KDE components by default, and we'll make it known that project policy is to develop for, and support GNOME. Obviously, this caused much emotion: while the formal proposal of the KDE group was polite, there has been a large amount of personal abuse on the mailing list. But there is little reason for the emotion. The decision does not prevent anyone from using KDE and Qt components on UserLinux, does not prevent anyone from installing those components from the Debian packages, and does not prevent any of our support providers from formally supporting KDE. It doesn't take any choice away from users, who can get KDE on our platform or elsewhere.
The plan presented by the KDE supporters is a good one, and I would encourage them to go ahead with it, using a Debian base. We'll have no problem sharing work with them, just as they share work through FreeDesktop.org and Debian today. But the decision to base UserLinux on GNOME stands. Further personal abuse will be ignored as cheerfully as it has been for the past week, I've had a decade of practice at that and do it really well now. It would be nice if people would allow the mailing list contributors to continue to work on non-GUI issues, by not spamming the list with GUI partisanship.
In February, my book series will publish C++ GUI Programming with Qt, the official Trolltech guide to Qt 3.2, by Jasmin Blanchette and Mark Summerfield. I have a minor financial interest in promoting Qt (I don't make much money from my books), but no such interest in the case of GTK/GNOME at this time. Because of a miscommunication with my publisher, there is some non-free software on the CD attached to that book - Windows Qt and some compilers from Borland. Although that is against my policy for the books, and I told my publisher not to allow it to happen again, I chose to allow it to continue this time rather than create hardship for Trolltech at a late stage in their book production. I also recently recommended Qtopia to a consulting customer, for what could be a billion-dollar project. I point this out so that you might have some clue that I not an anti-Qt ogre.
I am carrying on the UserLinux development, and am currently working on the installer. Others are also pursuing much constructive work, as is visible now on our mailing list.
Many Thanks
Bruce Perens
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on On the GUI Selection in UserLinuxNote: Comments are owned by the poster. We are not responsible for their content.
Summary:
- Some Linux vendors are trying to create lock-in.
- Some Linux vendors are adding non-free stuff to their distros
- Some Linux vendors want per-seat licences for their distro
Then look at "The Solution"
- Trust in a brand.
- Endorsement by application vendors.
- A development and service organization that users can be confident in.
- Certification by standards organizations.
- All without vendor lock-in or other "commercialization" issues.
If you object to these goals, tell us why. If you think these goals, in a single distro, are not important, tell use why.
I think you got the answer to your question but you just don't like the answer.
Summary:
- Some Linux vendors are trying to create lock-in.
- Some Linux vendors are adding non-free stuff to their distros
- Some Linux vendors want per-seat licences for their distro
None of these is a problem nor a bad thing for the businesses that will want to run Linux. The first point is vague at best in that none of the mojor distros is creating any kind of lock-in in the way MS has with Windows. The second point is a positive thing for businesses. The third is a minor issue as businesses already are paying per-seat licenses for their systems.
Then look at "The Solution"
- Trust in a brand.
- Endorsement by application vendors.
- A development and service organization that users can be confident in.
- Certification by standards organizations.
- All without vendor lock-in or other "commercialization" issues.
The above neatly describes RHEL 3. It should also apply to Novell/SUSE within the next 6 to 12 months.
So again I ask WHY?
There already exists solutions that businesses are using now. By the time UL gets to it's goal it will be as relevent to businesses as SLS is now.
You know what? I already have choices, at least choices with distros that offer choices. You know something else, I think it is complete BS to state that Debian doesn't already fullfill these goals.
Good luck on this UserLinux thing, we'll see where it goes...
IMHO Red Hat has seriously shot themselves in the foot over this issue, and opened up a huge opportunity for other distros. If you can't support entry of new people trying out the system with a stable, and relatively cheap product, then they're not going to use your product when they become more proficient. SuSE and others should be licking their chops right now.
MS understands this idea very well, let me promise you (I used to work there). They give away tons of software to universities and others. It's not altuism either. MS gets new developers used to using Visual Studio (or Office), and then you don't want to use anything else. In fact the IDE is a big issue for me. VS.Net is a VERY nice environment with TONS of functionality. And yes, I and many others are willing to pay for that functionality now that we're comfortable with it. Which locks you in nicely to Windows. But if that wasn't what I got used to in school, I would have a much easier time making the move to Linux.
I'm making the effort to break the cycle now, because I am sick and tired of the constant updates breaking my network. But many others may not.
(If anyone is listening, creating a really great, integrated set of development tools ***not the CLI*** would be a great thing for UL).
Microsoft 'per seat' licensing is very different. For MS OS's, you pay once for the OS when you buy the machine, then you pay again for the OS for the 'Software Assurance' upgrade insurance, and you pay for each and every service you want to connect to your servers to use (file shares, MS Exchange, SQL Server, etc).
(If anyone is listening, creating a really great, integrated set of development tools ***not the CLI*** would be a great thing for UL).
Have you tried KDevelop (Gideon)? KDevelop 2.x was okay, but not spectacular. They've added a lot of extra features and capabilities in 3.0, although it's still in beta. It's got support for Gnome/GTK projects and such, but I've never tried to use it for that.
I'm done being patient with people on this. From now on whenever someone starts the whole "RH sucks 'cause now you have to pay for everything" bullshit I'm just going to explain to them, not so politely, that they are total idiots and should not be alowed near a computer nor any school or business IT department. Better off if they changed carreer fields to ditch digging.
It is nearly impossible to predict how an client developped application will run in a new environment. We are talking about a kernel upgrade, a libc upgrade, an apache upgrade (for 1.3 to 2.0 !) and so on...
Clients never have time to test and trust me, the Fedora release period is *way* to short to represent a viable option.
Well, Bruce does. So Bruce is doing something that he believes is a good solution for that.
Just because it isn't as bad as with Microsoft does not mean that other people don't view it as bad enough to do something about it. Bruce is one of those.
If you do not believe that having a business orientated distribution built exclusively from Free Software is better than having a business orientated distribution built from Free Software and proprietary software, then you will never understand Bruce's position or efforts.
Nothing against Bruce, but this is really just another distro, but with grandious beliefs.
As far as I am concerned, this is just another distro looking to get up off the ground, but with nothing new to bring to the table.
Linus started Linux just for the fun of it. Why not a distro? Others participation in a project does not injure you. So, why do you worry about it?
-- Major distributions charge for locked-in proprietary "Enterprise" Linux. While the product is excellent (RHES is very solid, stable, and has important-to-the-boardroom 3rd party vendor certifications, but is more expensive than Windows 2003 for similar configurations)
-- Debian, while excellent, is not a "finished", or, polished, distribution
-- A Free standard implementation of a finished Kernel and OS based on Linux, GNU tools, etc., provides a target for Enterprise vendors to certify against.
Linux is becoming "RedHat" to the industry. Redhat, while excellent, is moving closer to proprietary models. Caldera was once a Linux distributor that added a proprietary model to its Linux distribution...then a management change made it Enemy #1 (but, considering the slap-stick side show they've put on for the last 3 quarters, we couldn't ask for a better enemy; RedHat is smarter and learning from SCO's foolish shenanigins would provide a formidible opponent if that should happen; don't think it can't -- many free peoples awake one morning to find their government replaced by Bolshiveks, Maoists, Khmer Rouge, Nazis, etc. -- tyrannies happen).
What Mr. Perens is doing is establishing the next level of freedom for Linux: not at the kernel level or individual application level or even at the conglomeration/package management level. He's going after the finished product level of Operating System development -- specifically, the business solution level.
Anyway, he says it better. That's just my thinking on the subject. I'm a current RHES customer. I *love* RHES for large-scale system implementation. I *specify* RHES currently for clustered web/app/db environments. And I look forward to UserLinux, or Plinux (Peren's Linux), to be running and available so that Linux, polished, enterprise-class Linux remains Free.
I think Plinux will keep RH, and Novell, honest. Without this step, Linux could be an unmantain mangle of options with no polished version available without proprietary licensing. Not good.
And while we are at it, what is going to be the real outcome of this effort? Business acceptance? I don't know about that, I think this is already happening.
You know what I think? Energies would be better spent trying to standardize GNU/Linux as a whole...not saying one distro over the rest, but how things are done within each distro to include the GUI. Personally, I think this is the true problem that the corporate world will have.
You know what pisses me off? I know that Linux is the best solution, but when I try to introduce it to typical users, their resistance is truly justified. You still have to be a geek to make simple things happen.
You know what else? The presumption that the choices can not be made and standardized on by the IT staff.
I don't think UserLinux will go anywhere, I believe the market will play this out, and I also think that the reasoning behind the Project is BS. Put your efforts where it is really needed...
But saying it is more free? Are you crazy? you dn't know what you are talking about.
Linux has not been hijacked because the GPL does not allow to do that. The hole GNU system on the of of it still exist in free form because the GPL makes you contribute back. The GPL gives you more freedom. The LGPL is just gratis.
RHES is about locking Free software in a proprietary bundle that cannot be distributed Freely or freely as a unit.
Plinux is about polishing a Linux distribution and keeping it free. Debian isn't a polished distribution any more than the Linux kernel is an Operating System.
However, if a complete re-write of the Gnome UI isn't part of your plan, then it's a bad choice.
You aren't going to woo many Windows users with the Gnome desktop in it's current state. I've shown my clients both KDE and Gnome, and Gnome normally gets a big YUCK! Just awfull!
I understand and agree with your reasoning, but only if your going to FIX IT!!
Choosing GTK over QT because og LGPL is also an important argument.
Well despite the above im still happy as KDE user but doubt the kind of users this wants to reach will also find KDE as usable for them as me.
My personal immpression of Gnome is,Gnome is downright flat and "creepy" looking, almost gothic, like you need black mascara and fingernails to feel at home with it. It certainly isn't "cheery" looking like KDE or even Windows (any version).
Its appearance is highly configuable. You are bound to find a look that suits your eye.
I have been using KDE exclusively since very early on in my Linux quest.
And, dear fellow anonymous user, that's the most popular mistake. Also, in general, argumenting like "I've always used product A only, so I can say product B sucks ass" is not very convincing.
I can say, every time I've tried a new distro (which has usually shipped with new(to me) kde and gnome), I have tried both. To this day I still haven't found out why should I, or anyone else, use a desktop environment, which starts slowly, looks weird(ugly), applications start slowly, start menu and panel are cluttered with things I don't need, Yes, I'm talking about KDE.
What looks good is always a subjetive matter, but I think gnome 2.4 with a good theme and some customization looks really great. Why would I want kazillion things on the start menu when I need only 5-10.
Anyway, KDE may be good for starters, like someone said people can play around with control center, change background images etc. which may help them feel at home with the new OS. This is fine, but how about advanced users? Yes you can clean your menus, disable annoying helpers, make shortcuts etc. but it won't change an elephant into a jaguar. When you know what you want to be done, you don't want to wait seconds here and there just for nothing.
Well, I guess these rants will never change anything but really, especially those who have "always used exclusively X" it's about time you tried something else. Especially something lightweight and fast, which gets things done just as well. You'll be hooked with the speed, feeling of the "instant response" is something you'll never want to give up after that.
Also, if you bothered to read past the first line, before registering your knee jerk reaction, you would see that I agree with Bruce's choice of Gnome. I simply, further stated that it needs some serious work in order to become acceptable to current KDE and Windows users. And that, my friend, should be a major goal in this endevour. So great, start with a solid unencumbered (non proprietary) base, but get rid of the warts that make it unacceptable to a bunch of would be users. If want want more in depth answers than "Gnome Sucks", just ask. But as far as I can tell nobody is asking for constructive criticism, they just respond with defensive, useless,unproductive, "your sister is ugly too" attacks.
Bruce wants to be the captain of a new (Distro) ship. What value to the community, or anyone is it, if it grows to no bigger than a dingy?
If "it looks ugly" is the biggest complaint about gnome, I think it's excellent then. It's pretty easy to make something look good, the functionality is what I'm more concerned about. Why I wrote the last comment? Because there's nothing wrong in making something better, but who
says what *is* better, there's flip side in this coin too. If in the process of making gnome more attractive to that bunch of would-be-users they trash the qualities the current users value, nothing is won. People are different, they value different things, it's better to have different
programs for them than try to make all the same.
Perhaps a standing survey (one that doesn't scroll into oblivion in 4 hours) sponsored by NewsForge to flesh out some of the specific gripes and ideas for improvements would help this project apeal to more people. I don't know about the rest of you, but I was keenly interested in the Java desktop, hoping they would work some magic to the Gnome desktop, but they did basicaly nothing.
Re: Show us your Farfegnugen! (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Sep 06, 2003 - 09:53 PM
I agree with you (this articles author) in one basic point. Idealy, all of the Linux desktop environments would be somewhat more universal in the way they act and feel. But! At this point, none of them are even close to mature. Even stable released versions are still (at least feature wise) beta software. You mentions Gnome as the team that's going in the right direction. Well consider this. Pick what you feel is the absolute worst (bugs you to beat hell) feature of the present version of Gnome. Next, the head of the gnome team reads your article, agrees with your assesment, and proceeds to hard code forever your most hated feature. Ouch! I for one don't and won't use Gnome because some of the already hard coded features are, as you put it "garbage". Example: Could they possibly have wasted more precious desktop area than the layout of the location,menu,and button bars in galeon? Huge empty gray areas that don't need to be there. The menu and button bar could easily be nested together on one bar which would then eliminate an entire (space wasting) bar. You mention limiting mouse-scrubbing. Why then are the forward, back and up navigation arrows on the extreme left of the button bar. Any high school math student or tennis player could tell you that the optimum (shortest scrub distance) placement for these nav buttons would be in the center of the lower most bar. I use these examples to ilustrate that now, just isn't the time to start hard coding everthing. To remove any of the tweaking function at this stage of Linux desktop developement would be counter productive. The desktop developement proccess is extremely well served by this abundance of tweaking options. Just consider them desktop beta testing tools. If you want to use your design talents for the Linux community. A well laid out, single window, Video player front end for Mplayer and/or Xine are urgently needed. Those DVD player front ends are again as you say "garbage". Plus it would be a great show place to demonstrate your version of "
Farfegnugen".
If a developer feels that he is unable to make a decision on some basic interface things, then he shouldn't be developing UIs. Seriously, what then is his expertise in. Developers should know these things and make decisions for the users. Users do nto care so much about what they are given, only that it works as advertised and with a minimum of fuss.
Features are not what makes beta softwae, but rather maturity. If an app works as advertised, its no longer beta. If it frequently segfaults or crashes without good reason, is beta.
I do not think that the optimum position of the nvigation buttons is anywhere specific. Maybe I do not use those buttons much. I think interface predictability is more important than some dreamt up optimizations. Do you haev studies to back up your statements.
Besides, most, if not all, GNOME apps ship with only one toolbar showing, which is the main toolbar.
There is one thing that I want to see improved in Gnome: the Nautilus File Browser. It's starting to get better, but has a long long way to go. It could use some performance improvements as well. KDE has Konqueror, which I think comes closer to what I want, though it is buggy and is very slow, it comes close to the functionality I want in a file browser. Make Nautilus fast, stable, and full-featured, but keep the interface simple like it is now and I think Gnome will have it made.
That would appear to be the point. It's going to be called "UserLinux" not "HackerLinux". I agree with the parent post. If you want to use GNOME, fine, but you have to make it palatable to the "Users" if you want it to play in Peoria. I started on Linux at 0.99 so I don't have a religious GUI axe to grind. I do however have a few hundred users to support and they, almost without exception, prefer KDE. So, as the parent post said, use GNOME but fix it for "Users".
If "fixing it for users" means it will feel cumbersome to use for more advanced users, there is no point to do it. There is already one KDE.
Also, I have always been so optimistic I have believed many "normal users" will become "advanced users" at some point. To me "advanced users" are not kernel hackers, just people who already know what they want to do and do it efficiently.
I'm not saying we don't need newbie stuff, linux has to have more user-friendly choices if it wants to conquer the desktop. I just want to ensure advanced users won't be forgotten.
"But the decision to base UserLinux on GNOME stands. Further personal abuse will be ignored as cheerfully as it has been for the past week, I've had a decade of practice at that and do it really well now"
Talk to the hand.
Creating a standard distro pales in comparison to the need of a standards base like United Linux.
The real need is a standards base like United Linux. What we don't need is another distro, especially a 'standard distro'.
The point of linux is choice. I choose to do this, and not that. That's the point. A standard distro brings nothing to the table that isn't already out there but another distro
Don't reinvent the wheel.
But he's _not_ reinventing the wheel.
Debian has almost 9000 packages, and they range from barely hatched to very mature. How is a business user -- who is not familiar with Linux, and doesn't have time to experiment -- going to decide which packages to use?
So Bruce is creating a subset of Debian, consisting of only proven packages, and completely Open Source. This will form a base that business users can trust, and on which developers can build.
> experiment -- going to decide which packages to use?
The business user is going to do just what they are doing right now... Choosing RHEL 3. Soon, they will also have Novell/SUSE and, possibly Sun's JDE. UL, if/when it's ever in a final production/release mode, will being nothing new to the table.
WBL (and another called cAos) are already here and should be production ready by the end of January. When will UL be in that same state? $DEITY only knows.
goal: prevent vendor lock-in
your answer: even though rpm is inferior to the deb format, because it's being used more, we should all use rpm and be locked in to it's format, and businesses won't look at anything that isn't locked in.
The remaining issue is that RHEL and WBL by extension is not controlled by the community but rather by the financial consideration of RedHat. This means that as long as RedHat's goals are in line with your's there is no problem, but we have already established that they are not, otherwise you would be using RHEL.
is for BIG biz only. RHEL and Fedora depend too much on the moody Red Had Corp. A Debian based, FOCUSED distro is really necessary.
now we both know that's not what bluefish and emacs are, but someone new to linux, wouldn't have the foggiest idea of the weird naming scheme of some projects, and he's trying to make a slim version, so people who aren't geeks can choose their text editor/e-mail client/etc...
notice: i mentioned only emacs because it sounds like mac, i in no way use, or support the editor in anyway. vim is the only editor for me.
This decision seemed to ignore a couple of important factors, first and foremost being what businesses have been installing to date.
Visit the US National Weather Service, and what have they chosen for their brand new forcasting system?? Proprietary software operating on the KDE enviroment. How about Lowe's Home Improvement - there's a big retail chain. Mozilla and some proprietary software on KDE, using KDE's kiosk tools.
When my organization began rolling out Linux desktops, we had to decide on a DE. We brought in our users (mostly transactional workers), and let them try out KDE and Gnome. These users had very little professional experience with GUIs, coming from a DOS environment. ALL preferred KDE.
Based on my observations, it is clear that 1) businesses do not have any trouble developing on QT/KDE and 2) Users prefer KDE in controlled trials. So why the heck are we pissing away the install base we already have by trying to 'standardize' on Gnome.
So what? They'll still have the choice to install the Debian KDE package if that's what they want to use.
> How about Lowe's Home Improvement - there's a big retail chain. Mozilla and some proprietary software on KDE, using KDE's kiosk tools.
That's good. Meanwhile, other businesses have been using Mozilla's kiosk facility instead of KDE's. Businesses will still have either choice available to them.
> We brought in our users (mostly transactional workers), and let them try out KDE and Gnome . . . ALL preferred KDE.
And yet, I prefer Gnome for its appearance and controls. How long ago did you run the test? Given the huge improvements that have taken place in Gnome's usability (thanks, on part, to help from Sun), I'll bet the results would be closer now. Personally, I am blown away by Gnome 2.4.
> Based on my observations, it is clear that 1) businesses do not have any trouble developing on QT/KDE...
And yet, IBM, Sun, and HP all chose Gnome.
Plus, there have been plenty of large Gnome installations, such as the <A HREF="http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS5160643271.html" TITLE="desktoplinux.com">80,000 Gnome desktops deployed in Spain</a desktoplinux.com>.
> So why the heck are we pissing away the install base we already have by trying to 'standardize' on Gnome.
Gnome is the "default," not the "standard."
And Bruce esplained why. GTK is Open Source for both OSS and proprietary developers. Qt, on the other hand, is only Open Source for OSS developers. For proprietary developers, Qt is proprietary, and requires a royalty payment.
If you produce open source apps, you don't have to pay anything, if you wanna go proprietary, you need to get a developer license. This is quite fair. And you are compensated with a much richer and better toolkit than GTK+.
Ignoring the KDE/QT toolset and framework for development will result in a strategic loss for UserLinux and its aim for standardization.
Development license costs for QT are marginally in relation to the whole software development costs.
Read my post again. I said:
"Qt . . . is only Open Source for OSS developers. For proprietary developers, Qt is proprietary, and requires a royalty payment."
So either you can't read, or you are trying to be misleading. I'll assume that you didn't read my post correctly.
Most corporations don't sell software, but do in house proprietary development. So most proprietary developers can work with qt _for free_.
It is a lie that you cannot use qt for that.
You see, how wrong can you be when you underestimate someone else's answer. You have to educate yourself about the GPL.
And more: even if you have to pay, qt is woth it!
When I said "proprietary developers," I obviously meant people who intended to distribute proprietary software. Why would I be talking about using a proprietary license for Qt if I was talking about in-house developers?
But I've noticed that about Trolltech astroturfers -- they will do anything to distract people away from Qt's proprietary side, and the fact that products like Kylix and Opera are locked-in to proprietary Qt.
One of the reasons that I avoid Trolltech's Qt is because of the dishonest arguments I see coming from its supporters.
As a professional developer I'm sure you understand the difference.
Bruce does not deserve to be called a leader. A leader unite people. There is a way to integrate everything: the standards path. There is _no_ technical reasons why all toolkits cannot live together happy as they do in many environments, and this is the freedesktop.org way.
He seems to be going the SUN way.
Re:Bruce, why ruling out kde applications?
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on December 16, 2003 07:08 PMI don't think that UserLinux means to ban _any_ application. Read the article again - Bruce said quite clearly that users can get and use QT/KDE applications quite easily if they want to. Nothing is banned.
Re:Bruce, why ruling out kde applications?
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on December 16, 2003 08:34 PMSo why banning kde _apps_ inside the project?
Its not an issue about being nasty, its an issue about what he wants. And he gives (good) reasoning for it too. What more do you want????
Re:Bruce, why ruling out kde applications?
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on December 18, 2003 01:38 AMWhy excluding only one toolkit?
These may look the same, but they are not. They are different frameworks.
Re:Bruce, why ruling out kde applications?
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on December 18, 2003 01:50 AMYeah, the cost to support different toolkits is sooo big... The guy is very stupid. He has chosen to exclude the toolkit with most apps in linux to save the cost of... one out of 8 different frameworks. The guy is a genius...
Could you naw explain what the (good) reasoning is?
bash-2.05b$ emerge k3b -p
These are the packages that I would merge, in order:
Calculating dependencies<nobr> <wbr></nobr>...done!
[ebuild N ] media-libs/id3lib-3.8.3-r1
[ebuild N ] media-sound/mpg123-0.59r-r3
[ebuild N ] sys-apps/eject-2.0.12-r1
[ebuild N ] media-libs/imlib2-1.1.0
[ebuild N ] media-video/ffmpeg-0.4.7
[ebuild N ] media-sound/mad-0.14.2b-r2
[ebuild N ] media-video/avifile-0.7.38.20030710
[ebuild N ] media-libs/libmovtar-0.1.3-r1
[ebuild N ] media-libs/libquicktime-0.9.2_pre1
[ebuild N ] media-video/mjpegtools-1.6.1.90-r1
[ebuild N ] media-libs/libfame-0.9.0
[ebuild N ] dev-libs/lzo-1.08
[ebuild N ] media-video/transcode-0.6.10
[ebuild N ] kde-base/kde-env-3-r2
[ebuild N ] app-text/sgml-common-0.6.3-r3
[ebuild N ] dev-libs/libxslt-1.0.33
[ebuild N ] x11-libs/qt-3.2.3
[ebuild N ] media-libs/libid3tag-0.15.0b
[ebuild N ] media-libs/libmad-0.15.0b-r1
[ebuild N ] kde-base/arts-1.1.4
[ebuild N ] net-nds/portmap-5b-r7
[ebuild N ] app-admin/fam-2.6.10-r1
[ebuild N ] kde-base/kdelibs-3.1.4
[ebuild N ] media-sound/normalize-0.7.6-r1
[ebuild N ] app-cdr/k3b-0.9
The fact that all apps written for kde depend on kde being installed, instead of just qtlib, with most apps, only the toolkit/framework is required, not the entire desktop. Apps, like Konqueror, and Nautilus are fine to depend on kde/gnome libs, but it's ridiculous when a cd burner like k3b requires all that stuff. I love k3b, but im not about to put all of kde on my system for one app...
Re:Bruce, why ruling out kde applications?
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on December 17, 2003 05:54 AMWanna add KDE/QT to UserLinux? No problem. Just Bruce isn't gonna do it for you.
Re:Bruce, why ruling out kde applications?
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on December 17, 2003 06:42 AMWhat the cd-burner program has to do with development? And the desktop publishing program? Nothing!
Now you explain that.
I fail to read in your explanation any reason to choose GNOME with exception of the licence. And that you knew before starting the project.
So why fool the KDE people into believing that they had a chance to be chosen? If you had said: this is a GNOME project from the begining, and not dubious things like "community driven process" or standard desktop?
There is no standard without discussion and an open process of choice.
That was explained in the article. It is no suprise that when viewed objectively Gnome and KDE would come out roughly equal when all things are considered.
It had to be debated any way and when it was clear that there was no clear winner then it reverted to a decision based on the software with the license that best fit the project goals.
YOU can use KDE and program in GTK and YOU can use Gnome and program in QT. Just like windows which is programed in C++, yet MickeySoft has VB, Borland has Pascal, Sun has Java, and there are many other languages and enviorments which are more than usuable.
HOW stupuid do you have to be (REALLY)to make your choice based on the development enviorment.
Gnome just sucks, I have gnome 2.4 and KDE 3.2 beta 2 and I never use Gnome becuase it just can't do the things KDE can. I always end up back to KDE.
Businesses that have in house programmers and not going to mind purchasing a QT license considering what they now spend on MS licenses.
Gnome needs to be put to pasture and all work focused on KDE, it's just superior.
You don't like his reasoning, don't use UserLinux. But don't be so naive to assume that your opinion is either universal or going to change anything in this instance.
As to KDE / Gnome, to each their own. Lots of linux users don't use either; maybe they should all get up in arms that their DE<nobr> <wb
Still asking "Why?"
Posted by: Joe Klemmer on December 16, 2003 10:02 AMWhy create UserLinux?
I read the whitepaper and have skimmed though some of the reports and PRs and such but I just can't find an answer. There already exists distributions and companies that are already providing everything that UL is proposing. I have always been in favor of the more distro idea (idealy there would be a distro for every person on the planet) but I can't see making a distro that has nothing significently unique to it.
If someone started a project to rebuild TurboLinux from scratch with the intent of having it be an exact replica of TurboLinux without using any of the work already done by TurboLinux it wouldn't be a good idea. We already have everything that UL will be in place right now.
One example would be RHEL -> Whitebox/cAos -> Fedora (there are others, I pick this only as an example). Between these one could get everything any business would need or want and they are already supported and exist in a useable format. They are here now, not at some unknown time down the road. There's nothing I have found in UL that makes it different from the above. If there is a difference and I'm just missing it I'd love to know about it.
As I said, I'm not against having more distros. I just don't see what UL will bring that isn't already here now.
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