Wednesday, June 02, 2010
KDE vs. GNOME: Is One Better?
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/tags/index.php/86292
April 16, 2007
By Bruce Byfield
One of the hardest things for users of other platform to understand is that GNU/Linux does not have a single graphical display. Instead, there are dozens, ranging from basic window managers that control the look and positioning of windows in the X Window system, to complete desktop environments with a wide variety of utilities and specially designed applications.
However, for most users, the choice comes down to either GNOME or KDE, the two most polished and popular choices.
Which is right for you? In this two-part article, we'll make a close comparison of the two desktops, trying to get away from the holy wars that often obscured this topic. The goal is to discuss the differences as dispassionately as possible.
Here in Part 1, we'll discuss where the KDE and GNOME desktops come from. We'll also discuss the basic features that distinguish them from desktops on other platforms and their customization options.
In Part 2, we'll discuss the utilities, administration tools and desktop-specific applications of each.
History
In the mid-1990s, desktop options for GNUI/Linux and other UNIX-like systems were limited by lack of functionality, or by philosophical freedom – or both.
On the one hand, users could choose window managers like FVWM that had relatively little functionality compared to the Windows or MacOS desktops of the time. On the other hand, they could choose the proprietary CDE, a desktop built using the Motif toolkit, and developed by The Open Group, a joint effort of Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, IBM and Novell.
In response to this situation, Mattias Ettrich, then a student at the Eberhard Karls University in Germany, began work on the K Desktop Environment (KDE) in 1996. The project had two goals: a unified look to applications, and ease of use.
KDE quickly attracted developers, but immediately ran into controversy because of its decision to use Trolltech's proprietary Qt toolkit. In response, in 1997, the GNU Project began two subprojects to develop a free software desktop.
The Harmony project, intended to provide a free version of Qt, never did very much, but the GNU Network Object Model Environment (GNOME) became the major rival to KDE, with its applications licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and its libraries under the Lesser GPL, so that they could be linked to proprietary applications.
The difference in licenses between the two desktops soon ignited a fierce rivalry between their supporters, complicated by the fact that in the early years KDE was easier to use and included more utilities, making it more popular than GNOME. Trolltech responded to criticisms by releasing Qt under the Q Public License (QPL) in 1998, but this license was not accepted by the Free Software Foundation as a free license, and the controversy continued until 2000, when Qt was released under a dual QPL/GPL license.
Since then, the rivalry between KDE and GNOME has lost much of passion. However, you can still sometimes hear developers argue over which has the superior object model or some other technical aspect that is mostly invisible to the average user.
Occasionally, too, the rivalry flares up for other reasons, as when Linus Torvalds recently criticized GNOME's development policies in public. However, those most involved with the two desktops have generally learned to co-exist, working to assure interoperability through cooperation and the development of common standards via freedesktop.org.
Probably the one thing that distinguishes GNOME today at version 2.18 is its attention to usability, which is continually resulting in a refinement of its desktop – to the extent that some, like Torvalds, have become frustrated by the increasing difficulty of using it for advanced purposes. Another trend is a growing tendency to make its utilities – specifically its panel applets – dependent on Mono, the C# clone that is another project championed by Miguel de Icaza, one of GNOME's founders.
Just now, KDE is at version 3.5.6, but is becoming increasingly focused on its 4.0 release, scheduled for release by the end of 2007. This release promises to be a major revision of the desktop, with a default scalable vector graphics theme, a new file manager, a rewriting of the API for its core libraries, and new interface guidelines.
Figures vary with different studies, but today, KDE is probably used by about 65% of GNU/Linux desktop users, GNOME by roughly 26% (the rest of the market is represented by alternatives like Xfce and several advanced window managers).
However, GNOME has a larger presence than its popularity suggests because it is the default of several major distributions, including Fedora and Ubuntu, and because of the GNOME Foundation, which includes strong corporate representation, tending to make it more acceptable in business.
By contrast, the corresponding KDE League never developed the same influence or penetration into business, and is now defunct. Instead, KDE appears to maintain its importance through popularity alone.
Basic Desktop Features
With common roots in UNIX as well as imitations of Windows, OS X and each other, the modern GNOME and KDE have more similarities than differences.
Despite their different toolkits, it is not difficult to mockup either to look like Windows – or like each other, as Red Hat did a couple of years ago. In fact, what would probably strike most Windows users are a number of shared features with which they are unfamiliar. While new users of GNOME and KDE can quickly acclimatize to the desktop of icons, as well as the panel for notifications and docking minimized windows and the main menu, some of the details may take longer to become familiar with.
One of the most obvious features of KDE and GNOME are the virtual desktops – or workspaces, as GNOME call them. Under any name, these desktops are a way of increasing the area in which you can organize the programs you’re working with. You could, for instance, keep a web browser open in one desktop, a command shell in another, and a word processor in a third. To move between them, you can click on a thumbnail on the panel, or configure them so that sliding the mouse to the edge of one seamlessly moves you into another. The only limit is that each virtual desktop adds to the memory overhead.
Another major difference from other desktops is that both KDE and GNOME make extensive use of panels. In addition to basic features such as the main menu, a clock, a windows list, and system notification area, both desktops include dozens of applets for system and hardware monitoring, as well as easy access to basic utilities such as search tools.
Recently, GNOME developers seem to have been especially active in developing panel apps, some of which, like Tomboy, are showing such an increase in complexity that they deserve to be considered full-fledged programs rather than utilities. Both desktops allow multiple panels and their positioning on any side of the desktop, and customized menus, either in the form of GNOME's drawers or KDE's Non-KDE Application Launchers or Quick Launchers.
Other features shared by both: the ability to rollup windows so that only the title bars are visible; a broad choice of keyboard shortcuts; and a traditional if technically unnecessary selection of screen savers.
A lesser known shared feature – and one that both KDE and GNOME developers seem to prefer to hide – is that, users can replace the default window managers, Kwin and Metacity. From both desktops, you can change the window manager temporarily by typing new windowmanager --replace from the command line. In KDE, you can permanently change the window manager by changing the environment with export KDEWM=windowmanager, while in GNOME you can do so by editing .gconf/desktop/ghome/applications/window-manager/%gconf.xml in the current user account's home directory. However, before doing so, you should check that the new window manager is compatible with the desktop.
At this point in their development, the differences in basic desktop features are mostly minor. However, if I had to choose, then KDE has the edge.
It begins with a wizard that helps users customize their desktops and, even more importantly, choose the amount of eye candy they use; many, I suspect, automatically turn off the bouncing icons that appear while a program is loading.
Startup tips are also available, which are useful way for new users to learn the desktop in painlessly small increments. In addition, KDE includes menu items for organizing open windows, several different types of panels, and a multiple clipboard that is so convenient that I use it in GNOME as well.
Historically, too, KDE tends to have more complete help files, although the last few releases of GNOME are rapidly closing that gap. The one annoying feature in KDE is the truncating of long file names below icons.
Customization
From their earliest days, the do-it-yourself tradition found among users of UNIX-like systems has ensured that both KDE and GNOME are so highly configurable that new users are likely to develop option-anxiety if they try to deal with them all at once.
A surprising exception is the main menu, which, in GNOME, only recently became editable again thanks to the addition of the Alacarte Menu Editor after several years in which no menu editor was available.
Otherwise, looks and behaviors are highly customizable in both GNOME and KDE. Both allow a customized screen resolution and mouse behaviors, a selection of sounds and fonts, and the setting of preferred applications, such as web browsers, terminal emulators, and file manager.
Both, too, give an exhaustive set of options for how windows are placed, moved, minimized and maximized, stacked, and selected as active. The main difference between the two desktops is that GNOME tends to handle windows in relation to their parents or to a specific location on the desktop, while KDE is stronger in dealing with them as a group and keeping users from getting lost in them.
However, which of these methods is preferable seems largely a personal choice. A more important difference is that, in KDE, the behavior of individual windows can be customized, while in GNOME, a similar degree of control is not possible with the default Metacity window manager, unless the Devil's Pie program is installed.
For both desktops, dozens of themes and styles are available to customize the desktop with pre-defined color schemes, icon sets, and window decorations such as title bars and buttons for minimizing, maximizing, or closing windows. Dozens more are available online, and all can be further customized by users willing to take the time.
With such a thorough selection of choices, either KDE or GNOME can be customized to produce a desktop that proves, once and for all, that GNU/Linux is ready for the average user.
Which you prefer depends on what is important to you. To many, GNOME's font anti-aliasing seems smoother than KDE's, while others might prefer GNOME for its encryption and accessibility options.
Alternatively, you might prefer KDE for the ability to set the desktop-wide spellchecker or for the easy alteration of the opening splash screen compared to GNOME. Increasingly, the differences are minor, and, in many cases, can be minimized by anyone with the patience to experiment with all the configuration options.
Conclusion
KDE and GNOME both inherited the extreme individualism and love of innovation common to users of UNIX-like systems.
For much of their existence, they also played catch-up with Windows and with each other – however much their advocates might be tempted to deny the fact. After over a decade, the result is that, despite different design philosophies, the two desktops have come to resemble each other more than any of their rivals.
In terms of basic desktop features and customization, the difference is likely to come down to a matter of work habits and inclination. Increasingly, your choice may be a matter of one or two features to which another user is completely indifferent.
And what about the programs designed for each desktop? We'll examine them in Part 2 of this article.
== Part 2 ==
In Part 1 of this article, we looked at the history of GNOME and KDE, their basic features, and their customization options. In part 2, we'll look at the programs designed to run with both desktops, from the administrative tools and utilities, to the office programs and other applications designed to work with them.
Both KDE and GNOME, you'll find, have specific naming conventions for any program associated with them. In KDE, the tradition arose early of choosing a name that starts with the letter K, such as Kontact, or contain the letter somewhere in the name, such as digiKam. This practice is not only too Kute for words, but often makes it hard to remember which program is which, since only a few of these names, such as KMail, have much relation to what the program actually does. GNOME programs sometimes follow a similar practice of starting with the letter "g" as in GParted, but this practice has never entirely caught on.
One more thing: if some of the programs mentioned in this article aren't installed on your system, don't be surprised. GNU/Linux distributions vary widely in what portions of GNOME and KDE they install. A default Debian installation, for example, includes minimalist versions of KDE and GNOME that omit most of the desktop-specific applications. Other distributions choose the applications to install, and a few install the entire range of programs associated with the desktop.
Administrative Tools
While KDE centralizes administrative tools into a single window called the KDE Control Center, GNOME disperses them into separate windows, although keeping them together in the Desktop -> Administration and Preferences menus.
Despite this difference in organization, the selection of administrative tools in GNOME and KDE is similar, and has grown over the last few years -- so much so that the cry for for a cross-desktop control center has become rarer in the last few years, although distributions such as Suse and Mandriva continue to offer them.
Both desktops cover peripherals and external storage devices comprehensively, except -- for some reason -- for sound card configuration. Users, date and time, and services also have their own tools on both desktops. GNOME distinguishes itself through its Power Management and Shared Folder tools, the KDE Control Center through a system summary that is a graphical combination of the uname -a and w commands, a tab for setting locales, and -- most importantly -- a tab for installing and removing system fonts.
In both desktops, the organization of administrative tools could be improved by clarifying which tools are for system wide settings and which are for the current user account. If you are an inexperienced user, it can be hard to remember until you click which tools require logging in as the root user. In much the same way, both mix customization and administrative tools too freely for easy navigation. These problems are slightly worse in KDE because its menu items are sometimes less carefully named; for example, KDE refers to "storage media" where GNOME mentions "Removable Drives and Media."
Otherwise, choosing which tool set to use for administration depends largely on what annoys you least. For some, scrolling through the KDE Control Center is nightmarish, while others dislike having to open each GNOME administrative tool separately from the menu.
Accessories and Utilities
Once you move away from the administrative tools, the desktop-specific software depends heavily on which distribution you install.
However, my impression is that GNOME tends to focus more on small utilities. Increasingly, these small utilities are presented as panel applets, but others such as the calculator, character map, and dictionary are included in the menu. GNOME also includes some tools whose usefulness seems questionable; I doubt, for instance, that anyone interested in viewing the system logs is going to use the GNOME System Log rather than a command line text editor.
In comparison, KDE's focus in accessory and utilities is in monitoring and information. Outstanding examples include the KInfoCenter, which summarizes hardware and system settings, and KDE System Guard, which monitors system performance. These tools are not by any means unique to KDE, but their organization of information makes them easy to scan.
Both KDE's Konsole and GNOME's GNOME Terminal are emulators that support multiple tabs and whose background and foreground colors and fonts can be heavily customized. Both, too, are convenient for copying and pasting from the command line to other programs on the desktop. However, Konsole offers more comprehensive menus, with items for printing the screen, opening Midnight Commander (a text-based file manager that resembles the old Norton Commander from DOS), moving back and forth in the command history, and for bookmarking directories.
A particularly useful feature of Konsole is the ability to monitor tabs for activity or silence, which can be useful when you are compiling or running lengthy commands such as a grep search on the entire system. Next to these conveniences, GNOME Terminal seems painfully basic -- or, to put a more positive spin on the difference, designed for users who are extremely comfortable with the command line.
The same is true for the default desktop text editors. Both Gedit and Kate can handle a variety of different types of text files, such as HTML, XML, or scripts in different standard programming languages, highlight syntax in different colors and check spelling. Yet, beyond the basics, KDE's Kate offers a wealth of extras.
They include export to a mail program and tools for changing the case or indentation of selected text. Moreover, at a button click, Kate opens a pane that can list open documents, present a tree of the filesystem, a find utility with a full range of regular expressions, or a terminal. Admittedly, some distributions install a stripped down version of Gedit that limits its functionality, but, even at its best, GNOME's text editor is limited compared to KDE's Kate.
In file managers, GNOME and KDE take different approaches. GNOME's Nautilus is so tightly integrated into the desktop that all desktop folders are potentially a file manager. Although this approach is often useful, it is seriously weakened by a default view that offers a tree view in a pull-down menu available from the bottom of the window that must be navigated one step at a time if you are using a mouse. Nautilus' File Browser tool, available from the main menu as a system tool, is a traditional two-pane file manager, one of which can be configured to display the directory tree, and is consequently far more powerful.
By contrast, KDE's Konqueror also doubles as a web browser. It is also tied to the desktop folders, but its default two pane structure is more useful than Nautilus' single pane one. In addition, it includes links to a mail program, termina, and the main menu. Neither shows hidden files by default, and both support bookmarks, file sorting, and a variety of views. Nautilus also includes the ability to categorize files with emblems, although I have never known anyone to use this capacity. Both, too, have recently added CD/DVD burning capabilities.
For business use, KDE offers mail, address books scheduling, and task lists as separate small programs. GNOME, on the other hand, has chosen a more centralized approach in Evolution. Evolution could be characterized as a better organized, more easily customized version of Microsoft Outlook, with which it is constantly becoming more compatible. Divided into four views -- mail, contact, memo, tasks -- and easily synced with a phone or PDA, Evolution is designed primarily for business. However, it is memory intensive, although recent versions have been noticeably improved, and still subject to occasional fits of flakiness, all of which might make it seem overkill for a home user.
Office Suites
KDE comes with KOffice, a comprehensive office suite that includes not only a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program, and database, but also a number of smaller applications, including separate editors for rasterized and scalable vector graphics. KWord, the word processor, is probably the standout application in the office suite, being based on a series of text frames that give it advanced desktop publishing capabilities. However, the other KOffice applications are also suitable for beginning to intermediate use. The main disappointment of KOffice is that most of its applications have evolved more slowly than fans might hope, and many of them are just starting to get the advanced features that would make them a match for OpenOffice.org.
GNOME began its own office suite, but development had not gotten beyond basic functionality for either the AbiWord word processor and the Gnumeric spreadsheet when Sun Microsystems released the code that was to become OpenOffice.org. Plans for GNOME Office were quietly dropped, and, although you still hear it mentioned, it will most likely never be completed.
Today, although AbiWord and Gnumeric are not integrated with each other, both have become mature programs with a solid user base. AbiWord has found its niche as a lightweight word processor, useful on systems with lower memory or as a reader for MS Word attachments downloaded from the web. Similarly, Gnumeric has a reputation among advanced spreadsheet users for the speed of its calculations and unique functions.
Other Applications
Historically, one of KDE's advantages has been the number of programs written specifically for it. In recent releases, GNOME has started to close the gap, especially for programs. Still, it seems accurate to say that, for every three GNOME-based programs, there are at least five KDE-based ones.
Yet, increasingly, many GNOME programs are functionally equivalent to their KDE counterparts. Personal taste and the occasional difference in hardware support aside, there is little to choose between, for example, GNOME's FSpot and KDE's digiKam for uploading and organizing photos or Eye of Gnome and Kview for the quick display of graphics. The same is true for GNOME Baker and K3b for CD and DVD burning, even though K3b has the better reputation, since it was the first easy-to-use burning software for GNU/Linux.
Moreover, in many cases, desktop-independent programs are becoming more common. The GIMP has long been the main tool for rasterized graphics, regardless of the interface used. In the same way, Mozilla Firefox is shoving aside both Konqueror and Epiphany, the Mozilla-based browser that is supposed to the default for GNOME. With other large programs such as Scribus and Inkscape also being designed to be desktop-independent, this trend is likely to continue, especially given the increased cooperation between KDE and GNOME. Existing programs may continue to be oriented towards a particular desktop, but chances are that new programs will not be.
Making a decision
So which desktop should you choose? The answer must be both personal and context-based. Some users make their decision on the basis of aesthetics, arguing that one desktop is more corporate-looking or friendlier than the other. Others choose on the basis of a feature that is important to their work or habits, such as KDE's multiple clipboard or Evolution's business-like structure.
However, if neither GNOME or KDE seems decisively better than the other, why choose at all? With hard disk space no longer at a premium, you can install both desktops with all their bells and whistles in no more than six or seven gigabytes. If you are selective, the desktops and their basic utilities should occupy less than a gigabyte each. After all, not being locked-in to specific programs is part of the power of free software -- so why not take advantage of the fact to pick and choose the best of both?
April 16, 2007
By Bruce Byfield
One of the hardest things for users of other platform to understand is that GNU/Linux does not have a single graphical display. Instead, there are dozens, ranging from basic window managers that control the look and positioning of windows in the X Window system, to complete desktop environments with a wide variety of utilities and specially designed applications.
However, for most users, the choice comes down to either GNOME or KDE, the two most polished and popular choices.
Which is right for you? In this two-part article, we'll make a close comparison of the two desktops, trying to get away from the holy wars that often obscured this topic. The goal is to discuss the differences as dispassionately as possible.
Here in Part 1, we'll discuss where the KDE and GNOME desktops come from. We'll also discuss the basic features that distinguish them from desktops on other platforms and their customization options.
In Part 2, we'll discuss the utilities, administration tools and desktop-specific applications of each.
History
In the mid-1990s, desktop options for GNUI/Linux and other UNIX-like systems were limited by lack of functionality, or by philosophical freedom – or both.
On the one hand, users could choose window managers like FVWM that had relatively little functionality compared to the Windows or MacOS desktops of the time. On the other hand, they could choose the proprietary CDE, a desktop built using the Motif toolkit, and developed by The Open Group, a joint effort of Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, IBM and Novell.
In response to this situation, Mattias Ettrich, then a student at the Eberhard Karls University in Germany, began work on the K Desktop Environment (KDE) in 1996. The project had two goals: a unified look to applications, and ease of use.
KDE quickly attracted developers, but immediately ran into controversy because of its decision to use Trolltech's proprietary Qt toolkit. In response, in 1997, the GNU Project began two subprojects to develop a free software desktop.
The Harmony project, intended to provide a free version of Qt, never did very much, but the GNU Network Object Model Environment (GNOME) became the major rival to KDE, with its applications licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and its libraries under the Lesser GPL, so that they could be linked to proprietary applications.
The difference in licenses between the two desktops soon ignited a fierce rivalry between their supporters, complicated by the fact that in the early years KDE was easier to use and included more utilities, making it more popular than GNOME. Trolltech responded to criticisms by releasing Qt under the Q Public License (QPL) in 1998, but this license was not accepted by the Free Software Foundation as a free license, and the controversy continued until 2000, when Qt was released under a dual QPL/GPL license.
Since then, the rivalry between KDE and GNOME has lost much of passion. However, you can still sometimes hear developers argue over which has the superior object model or some other technical aspect that is mostly invisible to the average user.
Occasionally, too, the rivalry flares up for other reasons, as when Linus Torvalds recently criticized GNOME's development policies in public. However, those most involved with the two desktops have generally learned to co-exist, working to assure interoperability through cooperation and the development of common standards via freedesktop.org.
Probably the one thing that distinguishes GNOME today at version 2.18 is its attention to usability, which is continually resulting in a refinement of its desktop – to the extent that some, like Torvalds, have become frustrated by the increasing difficulty of using it for advanced purposes. Another trend is a growing tendency to make its utilities – specifically its panel applets – dependent on Mono, the C# clone that is another project championed by Miguel de Icaza, one of GNOME's founders.
Just now, KDE is at version 3.5.6, but is becoming increasingly focused on its 4.0 release, scheduled for release by the end of 2007. This release promises to be a major revision of the desktop, with a default scalable vector graphics theme, a new file manager, a rewriting of the API for its core libraries, and new interface guidelines.
Figures vary with different studies, but today, KDE is probably used by about 65% of GNU/Linux desktop users, GNOME by roughly 26% (the rest of the market is represented by alternatives like Xfce and several advanced window managers).
However, GNOME has a larger presence than its popularity suggests because it is the default of several major distributions, including Fedora and Ubuntu, and because of the GNOME Foundation, which includes strong corporate representation, tending to make it more acceptable in business.
By contrast, the corresponding KDE League never developed the same influence or penetration into business, and is now defunct. Instead, KDE appears to maintain its importance through popularity alone.
Basic Desktop Features
With common roots in UNIX as well as imitations of Windows, OS X and each other, the modern GNOME and KDE have more similarities than differences.
Despite their different toolkits, it is not difficult to mockup either to look like Windows – or like each other, as Red Hat did a couple of years ago. In fact, what would probably strike most Windows users are a number of shared features with which they are unfamiliar. While new users of GNOME and KDE can quickly acclimatize to the desktop of icons, as well as the panel for notifications and docking minimized windows and the main menu, some of the details may take longer to become familiar with.
One of the most obvious features of KDE and GNOME are the virtual desktops – or workspaces, as GNOME call them. Under any name, these desktops are a way of increasing the area in which you can organize the programs you’re working with. You could, for instance, keep a web browser open in one desktop, a command shell in another, and a word processor in a third. To move between them, you can click on a thumbnail on the panel, or configure them so that sliding the mouse to the edge of one seamlessly moves you into another. The only limit is that each virtual desktop adds to the memory overhead.
Another major difference from other desktops is that both KDE and GNOME make extensive use of panels. In addition to basic features such as the main menu, a clock, a windows list, and system notification area, both desktops include dozens of applets for system and hardware monitoring, as well as easy access to basic utilities such as search tools.
Recently, GNOME developers seem to have been especially active in developing panel apps, some of which, like Tomboy, are showing such an increase in complexity that they deserve to be considered full-fledged programs rather than utilities. Both desktops allow multiple panels and their positioning on any side of the desktop, and customized menus, either in the form of GNOME's drawers or KDE's Non-KDE Application Launchers or Quick Launchers.
Other features shared by both: the ability to rollup windows so that only the title bars are visible; a broad choice of keyboard shortcuts; and a traditional if technically unnecessary selection of screen savers.
A lesser known shared feature – and one that both KDE and GNOME developers seem to prefer to hide – is that, users can replace the default window managers, Kwin and Metacity. From both desktops, you can change the window manager temporarily by typing new windowmanager --replace from the command line. In KDE, you can permanently change the window manager by changing the environment with export KDEWM=windowmanager, while in GNOME you can do so by editing .gconf/desktop/ghome/applications/window-manager/%gconf.xml in the current user account's home directory. However, before doing so, you should check that the new window manager is compatible with the desktop.
At this point in their development, the differences in basic desktop features are mostly minor. However, if I had to choose, then KDE has the edge.
It begins with a wizard that helps users customize their desktops and, even more importantly, choose the amount of eye candy they use; many, I suspect, automatically turn off the bouncing icons that appear while a program is loading.
Startup tips are also available, which are useful way for new users to learn the desktop in painlessly small increments. In addition, KDE includes menu items for organizing open windows, several different types of panels, and a multiple clipboard that is so convenient that I use it in GNOME as well.
Historically, too, KDE tends to have more complete help files, although the last few releases of GNOME are rapidly closing that gap. The one annoying feature in KDE is the truncating of long file names below icons.
Customization
From their earliest days, the do-it-yourself tradition found among users of UNIX-like systems has ensured that both KDE and GNOME are so highly configurable that new users are likely to develop option-anxiety if they try to deal with them all at once.
A surprising exception is the main menu, which, in GNOME, only recently became editable again thanks to the addition of the Alacarte Menu Editor after several years in which no menu editor was available.
Otherwise, looks and behaviors are highly customizable in both GNOME and KDE. Both allow a customized screen resolution and mouse behaviors, a selection of sounds and fonts, and the setting of preferred applications, such as web browsers, terminal emulators, and file manager.
Both, too, give an exhaustive set of options for how windows are placed, moved, minimized and maximized, stacked, and selected as active. The main difference between the two desktops is that GNOME tends to handle windows in relation to their parents or to a specific location on the desktop, while KDE is stronger in dealing with them as a group and keeping users from getting lost in them.
However, which of these methods is preferable seems largely a personal choice. A more important difference is that, in KDE, the behavior of individual windows can be customized, while in GNOME, a similar degree of control is not possible with the default Metacity window manager, unless the Devil's Pie program is installed.
For both desktops, dozens of themes and styles are available to customize the desktop with pre-defined color schemes, icon sets, and window decorations such as title bars and buttons for minimizing, maximizing, or closing windows. Dozens more are available online, and all can be further customized by users willing to take the time.
With such a thorough selection of choices, either KDE or GNOME can be customized to produce a desktop that proves, once and for all, that GNU/Linux is ready for the average user.
Which you prefer depends on what is important to you. To many, GNOME's font anti-aliasing seems smoother than KDE's, while others might prefer GNOME for its encryption and accessibility options.
Alternatively, you might prefer KDE for the ability to set the desktop-wide spellchecker or for the easy alteration of the opening splash screen compared to GNOME. Increasingly, the differences are minor, and, in many cases, can be minimized by anyone with the patience to experiment with all the configuration options.
Conclusion
KDE and GNOME both inherited the extreme individualism and love of innovation common to users of UNIX-like systems.
For much of their existence, they also played catch-up with Windows and with each other – however much their advocates might be tempted to deny the fact. After over a decade, the result is that, despite different design philosophies, the two desktops have come to resemble each other more than any of their rivals.
In terms of basic desktop features and customization, the difference is likely to come down to a matter of work habits and inclination. Increasingly, your choice may be a matter of one or two features to which another user is completely indifferent.
And what about the programs designed for each desktop? We'll examine them in Part 2 of this article.
== Part 2 ==
In Part 1 of this article, we looked at the history of GNOME and KDE, their basic features, and their customization options. In part 2, we'll look at the programs designed to run with both desktops, from the administrative tools and utilities, to the office programs and other applications designed to work with them.
Both KDE and GNOME, you'll find, have specific naming conventions for any program associated with them. In KDE, the tradition arose early of choosing a name that starts with the letter K, such as Kontact, or contain the letter somewhere in the name, such as digiKam. This practice is not only too Kute for words, but often makes it hard to remember which program is which, since only a few of these names, such as KMail, have much relation to what the program actually does. GNOME programs sometimes follow a similar practice of starting with the letter "g" as in GParted, but this practice has never entirely caught on.
One more thing: if some of the programs mentioned in this article aren't installed on your system, don't be surprised. GNU/Linux distributions vary widely in what portions of GNOME and KDE they install. A default Debian installation, for example, includes minimalist versions of KDE and GNOME that omit most of the desktop-specific applications. Other distributions choose the applications to install, and a few install the entire range of programs associated with the desktop.
Administrative Tools
While KDE centralizes administrative tools into a single window called the KDE Control Center, GNOME disperses them into separate windows, although keeping them together in the Desktop -> Administration and Preferences menus.
Despite this difference in organization, the selection of administrative tools in GNOME and KDE is similar, and has grown over the last few years -- so much so that the cry for for a cross-desktop control center has become rarer in the last few years, although distributions such as Suse and Mandriva continue to offer them.
Both desktops cover peripherals and external storage devices comprehensively, except -- for some reason -- for sound card configuration. Users, date and time, and services also have their own tools on both desktops. GNOME distinguishes itself through its Power Management and Shared Folder tools, the KDE Control Center through a system summary that is a graphical combination of the uname -a and w commands, a tab for setting locales, and -- most importantly -- a tab for installing and removing system fonts.
In both desktops, the organization of administrative tools could be improved by clarifying which tools are for system wide settings and which are for the current user account. If you are an inexperienced user, it can be hard to remember until you click which tools require logging in as the root user. In much the same way, both mix customization and administrative tools too freely for easy navigation. These problems are slightly worse in KDE because its menu items are sometimes less carefully named; for example, KDE refers to "storage media" where GNOME mentions "Removable Drives and Media."
Otherwise, choosing which tool set to use for administration depends largely on what annoys you least. For some, scrolling through the KDE Control Center is nightmarish, while others dislike having to open each GNOME administrative tool separately from the menu.
Accessories and Utilities
Once you move away from the administrative tools, the desktop-specific software depends heavily on which distribution you install.
However, my impression is that GNOME tends to focus more on small utilities. Increasingly, these small utilities are presented as panel applets, but others such as the calculator, character map, and dictionary are included in the menu. GNOME also includes some tools whose usefulness seems questionable; I doubt, for instance, that anyone interested in viewing the system logs is going to use the GNOME System Log rather than a command line text editor.
In comparison, KDE's focus in accessory and utilities is in monitoring and information. Outstanding examples include the KInfoCenter, which summarizes hardware and system settings, and KDE System Guard, which monitors system performance. These tools are not by any means unique to KDE, but their organization of information makes them easy to scan.
Both KDE's Konsole and GNOME's GNOME Terminal are emulators that support multiple tabs and whose background and foreground colors and fonts can be heavily customized. Both, too, are convenient for copying and pasting from the command line to other programs on the desktop. However, Konsole offers more comprehensive menus, with items for printing the screen, opening Midnight Commander (a text-based file manager that resembles the old Norton Commander from DOS), moving back and forth in the command history, and for bookmarking directories.
A particularly useful feature of Konsole is the ability to monitor tabs for activity or silence, which can be useful when you are compiling or running lengthy commands such as a grep search on the entire system. Next to these conveniences, GNOME Terminal seems painfully basic -- or, to put a more positive spin on the difference, designed for users who are extremely comfortable with the command line.
The same is true for the default desktop text editors. Both Gedit and Kate can handle a variety of different types of text files, such as HTML, XML, or scripts in different standard programming languages, highlight syntax in different colors and check spelling. Yet, beyond the basics, KDE's Kate offers a wealth of extras.
They include export to a mail program and tools for changing the case or indentation of selected text. Moreover, at a button click, Kate opens a pane that can list open documents, present a tree of the filesystem, a find utility with a full range of regular expressions, or a terminal. Admittedly, some distributions install a stripped down version of Gedit that limits its functionality, but, even at its best, GNOME's text editor is limited compared to KDE's Kate.
In file managers, GNOME and KDE take different approaches. GNOME's Nautilus is so tightly integrated into the desktop that all desktop folders are potentially a file manager. Although this approach is often useful, it is seriously weakened by a default view that offers a tree view in a pull-down menu available from the bottom of the window that must be navigated one step at a time if you are using a mouse. Nautilus' File Browser tool, available from the main menu as a system tool, is a traditional two-pane file manager, one of which can be configured to display the directory tree, and is consequently far more powerful.
By contrast, KDE's Konqueror also doubles as a web browser. It is also tied to the desktop folders, but its default two pane structure is more useful than Nautilus' single pane one. In addition, it includes links to a mail program, termina, and the main menu. Neither shows hidden files by default, and both support bookmarks, file sorting, and a variety of views. Nautilus also includes the ability to categorize files with emblems, although I have never known anyone to use this capacity. Both, too, have recently added CD/DVD burning capabilities.
For business use, KDE offers mail, address books scheduling, and task lists as separate small programs. GNOME, on the other hand, has chosen a more centralized approach in Evolution. Evolution could be characterized as a better organized, more easily customized version of Microsoft Outlook, with which it is constantly becoming more compatible. Divided into four views -- mail, contact, memo, tasks -- and easily synced with a phone or PDA, Evolution is designed primarily for business. However, it is memory intensive, although recent versions have been noticeably improved, and still subject to occasional fits of flakiness, all of which might make it seem overkill for a home user.
Office Suites
KDE comes with KOffice, a comprehensive office suite that includes not only a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program, and database, but also a number of smaller applications, including separate editors for rasterized and scalable vector graphics. KWord, the word processor, is probably the standout application in the office suite, being based on a series of text frames that give it advanced desktop publishing capabilities. However, the other KOffice applications are also suitable for beginning to intermediate use. The main disappointment of KOffice is that most of its applications have evolved more slowly than fans might hope, and many of them are just starting to get the advanced features that would make them a match for OpenOffice.org.
GNOME began its own office suite, but development had not gotten beyond basic functionality for either the AbiWord word processor and the Gnumeric spreadsheet when Sun Microsystems released the code that was to become OpenOffice.org. Plans for GNOME Office were quietly dropped, and, although you still hear it mentioned, it will most likely never be completed.
Today, although AbiWord and Gnumeric are not integrated with each other, both have become mature programs with a solid user base. AbiWord has found its niche as a lightweight word processor, useful on systems with lower memory or as a reader for MS Word attachments downloaded from the web. Similarly, Gnumeric has a reputation among advanced spreadsheet users for the speed of its calculations and unique functions.
Other Applications
Historically, one of KDE's advantages has been the number of programs written specifically for it. In recent releases, GNOME has started to close the gap, especially for programs. Still, it seems accurate to say that, for every three GNOME-based programs, there are at least five KDE-based ones.
Yet, increasingly, many GNOME programs are functionally equivalent to their KDE counterparts. Personal taste and the occasional difference in hardware support aside, there is little to choose between, for example, GNOME's FSpot and KDE's digiKam for uploading and organizing photos or Eye of Gnome and Kview for the quick display of graphics. The same is true for GNOME Baker and K3b for CD and DVD burning, even though K3b has the better reputation, since it was the first easy-to-use burning software for GNU/Linux.
Moreover, in many cases, desktop-independent programs are becoming more common. The GIMP has long been the main tool for rasterized graphics, regardless of the interface used. In the same way, Mozilla Firefox is shoving aside both Konqueror and Epiphany, the Mozilla-based browser that is supposed to the default for GNOME. With other large programs such as Scribus and Inkscape also being designed to be desktop-independent, this trend is likely to continue, especially given the increased cooperation between KDE and GNOME. Existing programs may continue to be oriented towards a particular desktop, but chances are that new programs will not be.
Making a decision
So which desktop should you choose? The answer must be both personal and context-based. Some users make their decision on the basis of aesthetics, arguing that one desktop is more corporate-looking or friendlier than the other. Others choose on the basis of a feature that is important to their work or habits, such as KDE's multiple clipboard or Evolution's business-like structure.
However, if neither GNOME or KDE seems decisively better than the other, why choose at all? With hard disk space no longer at a premium, you can install both desktops with all their bells and whistles in no more than six or seven gigabytes. If you are selective, the desktops and their basic utilities should occupy less than a gigabyte each. After all, not being locked-in to specific programs is part of the power of free software -- so why not take advantage of the fact to pick and choose the best of both?
Labels: Gnome, IBM, KDE, Linux, Storage, Windows
