(News) "Tech giants offer stable systems as Linux loses focus"

[MasterNetra]

"... One thing is notably different from the 1990s. Linux, both the central core as developed by Linus Torvalds and his colleagues, and the complete versions packaged by companies and communities like Red Hat, Ubuntu and Debian, aren’t settling for stability. One of the key components of the Linux ecosystem, the GNOME Desktop, has recently decided to push for a radical new set of features for its new version. Its competitor in this space, KDE, has recently finished a similar transition. KDE’s rewrite prompted a great deal of upset in its user base – the new KDE was viewed as slower, had bugs and was overly concerned with flashy new features. GNOME’s plans may face a similar backlash.

Could it be that, after a decade, it is Windows and Apple that have got the speed and stability gospel, and Linux that has lost it?"
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Full Article (http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2009/0904/1224253822424.html)

[achianese]

I hope the revised Gnome isn't as bad as KDE 4 was for a while.

[Irihapeti]

People will see what they want to see.

It seems to me like more hypothesis, speculation and personal opinion. And bias?

[hanzomon4]

OSX from what I understand was a wreck when it first came out and Vista is considered a flop. Gnome has to innovate, sure it might be painful but it seems like that comes with the territory. KDE4 has gone from bust to boom because they had the courage to and talent to work through a major transition same with Windows Vista/7. Better painful then never I say

[madjr]

As Bill Gates himself said in an interview in 1995: “The reason we come up with new versions is not to fix bugs. It’s absolutely not. It’s the stupidest reason to buy a new version I ever heard. When we do a new version we put in lots of new things that people are asking for. And so, in no sense is stability a reason to move to a new version. It’s never a reason.”

Is it a reason now? This year, we have two new major operating system upgrades.

Windows 7 will be available in October. This week, it was the turn of Apple, who shipped MacOS X 10.6, or Snow Leopard, to its fans.

Both have a smattering of marketing suggesting they have exciting new features. But behind the simple headlines, both Microsoft and Windows have been pushing rather more careful language. Apple has been the boldest about it. When previewing the new OS to its developers earlier this year, the company took its slogan for Snow Leopard’s predecessor, “300 New Features!” and turned it on its head. Instead, Snow Leopard was presented as having “0 New Features!”

interesting

[Exodist]

One thing about the GNOME team is they will focus on new ideas and concepts without breaking stability to the extent that KDE team did.

Already stated about Gnome 3.0 is not a huge amount of flash being added, but a rework of files that make up GNOME. Currently compiling GNOME is the hugest headache in linux community. The GNOME team will be condencing many of these packages and totally removing obsolete ones. Other then that dont expect GNOME to come out as a new flashy DE, but more of a huge rework of the current..

[RabbitWho]

Tell them I said : Bleaugh

[MasterNetra]

Tell them I said : Bleaugh

You can do that yourself, as they have a "email to author" link above the title. ^.^

[pwnst*r]

good read.

[Whiffle]

It depends which distro you use. Debian is very stable, and so is Slackware...I don't really agree with that quote at all.

Additionally, I wouldn't say gnome is a "key" component in the linux ecosystem, as it completely ignores one of the things Linux excels at...being a server.

[MikeTheC]

Read it.

What poor authorship and journalism. It's an entire article that doesn't actually say anything.

And for the record, based on my own personal experiences with Snow Leopard, there's simply no question there are many underpinnings improvements, any of which the Linux community would do well to adopt.

[Frak]

If you've never heard talking without saying a word, the article does just that.

I know at what they're trying to point at, but that's the usual development cycle as it is. GNOME 1 comes out, buggy, it smooths out; GNOME 2 comes out, buggy, smooths out; GNOME 3 will come out, buggy, but it will be smoothed out. Innovate and then harden.

[chessnerd]

"...KDE’s rewrite prompted a great deal of upset in its user base – the new KDE was viewed as slower, had bugs and was overly concerned with flashy new features. "

This is the problem that Vista/7 have in my opinion: all flare and no substance. Under the hood Vista and 7 aren't much better than XP, but on the GUI end they are like night and day. Yeah, Aero looks nice and, sure, the new "superbar" has jump lists and fancy task launcher/task manager hybrids (also known as a dock interface), but I'd rather use something with a Windows 95 interface that was stable with low requirements, than a buggy RAM-sucker with a pretty face.

That's why I choose Gnome over KDE.

Sure, the K-menu has the Vista-style search and widgets can be thrown on the desktop and it all looks really sleek, but it uses 30-50% more RAM which, on my limited hardware, is something I can't afford. Also, when I ran the Kubuntu Live CD its network manager had a hard time using my wifi card. The Ubuntu manager? Flawless.

If Gnome goes the way of KDE, I'll have to go down to XFCE again, which isn't a big deal, but it would feel like a step backward for me...

[Warpnow]

I won't know what I think gnome 3 until I use it for at least a month.

[Whiffle]

This is the problem that Vista/7 have in my opinion: all flare and no substance. Under the hood Vista and 7 aren't much better than XP, but on the GUI end they are like night and day. Yeah, Aero looks nice and, sure, the new "superbar" has jump lists and fancy task launcher/task manager hybrids (also known as a dock interface), but I'd rather use something with a Windows 95 interface that was stable with low requirements, than a buggy RAM-sucker with a pretty face.

That's why I choose Gnome over KDE.

Sure, the K-menu has the Vista-style search and widgets can be thrown on the desktop and it all looks really sleek, but it uses 30-50% more RAM which, on my limited hardware, is something I can't afford. Also, when I ran the Kubuntu Live CD its network manager had a hard time using my wifi card. The Ubuntu manager? Flawless.

If Gnome goes the way of KDE, I'll have to go down to XFCE again, which isn't a big deal, but it would feel like a step backward for me...


This is the kind of thing that bugs me about Kubuntu. It always has been, and apparently still is, a second class citizen in the Ubuntu world. I know the last couple of times I've tried KDE4 under Ubuntu, I've been disappointed, because it just plain sucks, and then end up back in Gnome, which is "ok."

But. I installed Slackware64 yesterday, and it comes with KDE 4.2.4, and it runs amazingly well. It hasn't crashed on me, everything works as expected, its really a nice experience. And I like it way better than gnome. I'm also using 438 MB of RAM right now, with Opera open with 8 tabs, 2 terminals, thunderbird, and I'm compiling Wine. For comparison, my laptop running Jaunty is at 418, with thunderbird, firefox (no tabs), and 1 terminal. (yeah not a great comparison, but its late and I'm lazy)

Its this kind of experience that leads me to 2 things:

1) I wish Ubuntu would drop Kubuntu, because it appears to give many people bad impressions of KDE4 (including myself).

2) What we as end users experience on our desktops is the sum of a whole slew of upstream activity, and the various people between the developers who write whatever software we're using (ie, the people who package the distro), have *alot* to do with what we experience. Therefore, I think it is unwise to generalize "Linux" as this article has attempted to do.

[HappinessNow]

There is much more to Linux then Gnome or KDE!

[Mr. Picklesworth]

One of the key components of the Linux ecosystem, the GNOME Desktop, has recently decided to push for a radical new set of features for its new version.

That is somewhat off the mark. GNOME Shell is a new feature, yes, but the platform (which is the important bit) remains the same. New stuff can use the new bits and pieces, but the only really obvious change is in the front-end. The other "radical new feature" would be Zeitgeist, which happens to be a self-contained pool of awesome that, again, is just new stuff; nothing breaks or disappears with it. (As for GNOME panel applets, those were doomed from the start).

Everything else is incremental, such as the API break provided with GTK+ 3 and client side windows.

[Hallvor]

Yeah, Aero looks nice and, sure, the new "superbar" has jump lists and fancy task launcher/task manager hybrids (also known as a dock interface), but I'd rather use something with a Windows 95 interface that was stable with low requirements, than a buggy RAM-sucker with a pretty face.

That's why I choose Gnome over KDE.

Sure, the K-menu has the Vista-style search and widgets can be thrown on the desktop and it all looks really sleek, but it uses 30-50% more RAM which, on my limited hardware, is something I can't afford. Also, when I ran the Kubuntu Live CD its network manager had a hard time using my wifi card. The Ubuntu manager? Flawless.

If Gnome goes the way of KDE, I'll have to go down to XFCE again, which isn't a big deal, but it would feel like a step backward for me...

KDE4 was a total rewrite, while Gnome has only had incremental upgrades since Gnome 2 was launched and has matured a lot since then. KDE4 will also need some time to mature, but it has undergone incredible changes since KDE3, and KDE4 and all its applications are now cross platform. Bugs are being sorted out and new features are being added. Despite a lot of initial problems, I think KDE4 is coming along great.

It is simply not true that KDE 4 uses 30-50% more RAM. You are probably comparing regular Ubuntu without compositing with Kubuntu with compositing enabled. On startup without compositing, KDE4 is just a few megabytes heavier. And if you run KDE4 with KDE4 applications it will probably be lighter than Gnome because of more shared memory between applications.

http://www.techenclave.com/open-source-and-linux/kde-4-the-lightest-desktop-yet-114725.html

Kubuntu is hardly the way to go if you want to try a good KDE4 distro, so I`m not sure that the network manager is a KDE problem and not a Kubuntu problem. If you want to test a good Debian based livecd with KDE4, try Sidux. Their implementation of KDE is very good.

[koshatnik]

interesting

Apple had no choice but to cut all the crap from OSX - it was ridiculously bloated. When a 5 year old crappy Dell laptop with 512MB RAM can batch process a folder full of photos faster than my Macbook running leopard with 2GB RAM and 64-bit processor, you know something isn't right.

OSX now runs at what I would call acceptable. I wish devs would concentrate on speed and stability as a priority, above everything else.

[chessnerd]

You are probably comparing regular Ubuntu without compositing with Kubuntu with compositing enabled. On startup without compositing, KDE4 is just a few megabytes heavier.

I believe that might be the case as I don't use compositing in Gnome. However, I still think there is a bit of a KDE memory problem because every distro I try to run on my Linux box that uses KDE doesn't seem to want to load. Mandriva, Fedora, OpenSuse, and Kubuntu all don't load. However, Fedora and OpenSuse using Gnome and, of course, Ubuntu, load just fine.

Is there a way to prevent compositing at the startup of these distros? I'd like to have a distro using KDE on my Linux box but if I can't even load the Live CD I'm worried that it will run slower than molasses once installed.

[Johnsie]

I think the tech giants have created alot more polished interfaces than Linux. They have also done a much better job at marketing their products.

Windows 7 and OSX are shiny and beautiful and the gui's on the programs match the themes. With Linux on the other hand there is QT vs. GTK and alot of programs with ugly gui's that look like they were badly designed. More often than not those programs are attempting to clone the basic functionality of a more polished Windows/Mac equivilent.

Apple have the 'we're great for multimedia production' status and Microsoft have PC hardware manufacturers under the thumb... But Linux has the 'we're free and open' which doesn't really say alot about what Linux is actually good for.

I think the main problem with Linux is that by releasing the sourcecode you are making sure that there is nothing special about Linux that can't be done on other operating systems. The Linux idealogy is actually making Linux unable to compete.

And just to stay on topic... I think Linux is pretty stable, but some of the programs aren't so stable. Most of the problems on Linux aren't the OS itself, but the quality of the software then runs at the application level.

[purgatori]

Gnome and KDE aren't Linux. Amazing how many people forget that.

[Johnsie]

No, but they are the interfaces most users use to interface with Linux so quite often are important selling/scaring points for Linux.

[bryncoles]

I won't know what I think gnome 3 until I use it for at least a month.

That's no way to make a knee-jerk emotional reaction based on no evidence what-so-ever. What are you, trying to be reasonable and informed? On the internet? THE INTERNET?