As someone who has recently stopped using GNOME, let me give my viewpoint, then, about why I have stopped using it. It isn't so much knee-jerk, I would hope, as simple, everyday usefulness. It was not an easy decision for me to leave and start using KDE - I have used GNOME from the beginning and preferred it over KDE.
With any tool that provides as much functionality as a desktop, there will inevitably be a number of irritating issues; this is true for KDE as well. But I think what really did it for me, in the end, was the trend towards oversimplification - and what I feel is the complete lack of will to heed any call for change that I sense from the developers. In my view nothing would be lost to the GNOME community by not cutting away features that are actually useful to some users. The default values could still be set to "simple", the parameter file could even be well hidden if need be. And don't try to tell me that it is beyond the capabilities of the GNOME developers to make things this way; it wouldn't even make it harder to program or maintain, on the contrary, parametrising things generally makes it easier in my experience (25+ years). So it comes down to philosophy, if that is the right word, or choice - a conscious choice has been made to do it this way despite what a number of the expert users have had to say. So where is this trend going to stop? Nobody has been willing to say - in principle it could go all the way to where we have a system that goes squeek when you push the big plastic flower and can speak baby babble. A couple of examples of what I mean - they are not big, overwhelming issues, but small irritations that I remember because I have found KDE gives me what I wish in this respect: 1. X used to display a small "label" containing the position and size of a window when you moved it. That was one feature I found hugely useful; I usually have 9 desktops and organise my applications with fixed dimensions and positions different desktops - like Pidgin on desk 1, thunderbird and firefox on desk 2, a number of xterms on desk 3 etc, all started from scripts with positions and dimensions that I have taken from the little "dimension label". I can't do that in GNOME and find the right position and dimension takes a large amount of trial and error. Not a huge thing, really, but why take it away? 2. All of a sudden, in the latest version of GNOME, you get a silly warning about not logging on as root. Now one may dispute the wisdom of working that way, but that is the way I work. I have considered the implications and secured things in other ways, let's put it like that; at the end of the day this is MY MACHINE and there MY DECISION to make. One of the basic tenets in good software is that you don't impose policy of any kind on your users. You provide options, you may provide a selection of preset parameters that suggest a sensible policy, but at the end of the day it is up to the owner of the system. That is the way KDE does it - by default root is not allowed to log on to the desktop, but there is a parameter. In GNOME I found that it is hardcoded into gnome-session. I mean, show some respect for your customers - we have already proven that we are intelligent and thinking individuals by chosing Linux over Windows, haven't we? And so on - these far from the only gripes I have had over GNOME over the years. On their own these two wouldn't have made me change, but it all adds up. I think it is important that my tools don't work against me; GNOME did, KDE doesn't. -----Original Message----- From: gtk-app-devel-list-boun...@gnome.org on behalf of Thomas Stover Sent: Wed 14-Jan-09 16:10 To: gtk-app-devel-list@gnome.org Subject: qt vs gtk With the recent news that Nokia will be releasing QT under LGPL, I'm seeing allot of knee-jerk anti-GTK comments out there. I know I'm preaching to the choir on this list, but for the sake of moral I thought I would post my 2 cents on the matter. -I can't think of single QT application I even use. (although I admit I don't look for them) -Without getting into a C vs C++ debate, being able to use GTK straight from C really is the whole universe right there. Try returning GUI objects from dynamically loadable modules without C. In general, C libraries mix together far better than C++ ones. I use GTK together with all kinds of stuff. I'm younger and learned C++ in school. I had to unlearn the damage. The guys I know that still believe C++ always have this mental model that every library needs to be wrapped in some sort of all-encompassing toolkit, or you can't use it. -QT (last time I checked) is not even C++. It's C++ and a custom macro language. building ouch. debugging ouch. C++ paradigm ouch. -HUGE: glib and gtk are separate. glib can be used on it's own. so one mental model to work with for gui and non-gui events. -When you start getting into it, there is just no contest. I love GTK. I have no doubt that if I started to read about qt, that I would constantly be saying, "oh you can't do that", and "you mean you have to that". Long live GTK! _______________________________________________ gtk-app-devel-list mailing list gtk-app-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-app-devel-list _______________________________________________ gtk-app-devel-list mailing list gtk-app-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-app-devel-list
