Re: [gentoo-dev] KDE 3.2.3

[Dylan Carlson]

On Saturday 10 July 2004 2:18 pm, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> Besides... why in the world would you want to use KDE anyway?  Gnome is
> *way* better...

Wow, your desktop environment just got SERVED.

Let the flamewar begin!   (not really, but I'd just like to weigh in on why 
I use KDE...)

FWIW, I use KDE because it has everything I need, want, and didn't know I 
wanted (and then some) ... I resisted using the desktop for quite a while 
fearful that I would get too "married" to a particular branch of 
technology.  But as years went on I found myself using more and more KDE 
apps, simply because they were "better" (to use your term, heh).

At some juncture it was just the next logical step to use the desktop.  
Ever since I switched to the KDE desktop exclusively (since early 2003) it 
has made me a lot more productive.   And that's the bottom line.  For the 
things I do, KDE does them the best.   

"UserLinux" might be Gnome by fiat, but users will use whatever works best 
for them, not Bruce Perens.  And KDE has more users now... and I see a lot 
of merit in that, in the face of all the commercial promotion of Gnome by 
RedHat, Sun, Perens and others.

Most things can be done with some equivalency in Gnome.  But let's face 
facts -- Gnome would not exist without KDE.  Gnome was started as a 
project ~1996, was built upon a toolkit that was written for an image 
editor (gimp), for the sole purpose of making a "truly free" desktop, with 
the implication KDE wasn't.  KDE, which was built upon Qt, which was not 
"truly free" in, whatever, 1996.  

Of course that issue is moot now.   Qt is GPL just like all of KDE.  What 
remains is a matter of preference, most everything else claiming 
superiority of one over the other is hyperbole.

As a developer, I will say this:  If this were some case of disliking C++ I 
would understand, but only to a small extent.  If it works as well or 
better than competing technology, it doesn't matter (much) what the 
language is; and Qt clearly works well.  

As a user, I use what works.  As a developer or director of engineering, I 
would choose Qt/KDE over Gtk/Gnome.  The job can't get done in Gtk as 
quickly as Qt.  Also, Qt does things that Gtk doesn't. (Gtk you would have 
to tack on a few more libs in addition to the base Gtk library to be 
mostly equivalent with what Qt does by itself).  

Also compare the documentation and then tell me which you would rather work 
with:  

http://doc.trolltech.com/
http://www.gtk.org/api/

For the sake of the inevitable ("Trolltech controls Qt") counter-argument:  
If Trolltech ever pulled the GPL license off a future version of Qt-X11, 
the most recent GPL version can simply be forked.  There's no indication 
that will ever happen simply because it doesn't make any business sense 
for Trolltech.  Besides widening the user base for Qt, it gives them a 
cheap, global QA department and quality feedback from the KDE camp.

Cheers,
Dylan Carlson [absinthe@g.o]
Public Key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x708E165F

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