Default Ubuntu applications

[Liam Proven]

On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 3:21 PM, David Sanders <dsuzukisanders at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> If good applications are the issue, then a better, or more profitable,
>> question in my opinion is why is Ubuntu using GNOME to begin with. New
>> users do not install kubuntu.
>>
>
> Because KDE looks like it was designed by monkeys banging on
> typewriters? /me ducks

Well, I wouldn't have put it /quite/ like that, but I'd basically have to agree.

More generally, apart from the pervading ugliness, KDE is full of
thousands of little options to twiddle. GNOME keeps it simple. Simple
is better for beginners. This is not really contentious or
controversial.

Also, KDE was based upon Qt, which was semi-proprietary tech from
TrollTech of Oslo, Norway. Now it is owned by Nokia & dual-licensed
under the GPL as well, so this is no longer an issue.

Personally, I found KDE 3 to be vastly complex, bloated and quite hard
to fathom, with 2 web browsers, one of which was also a file manager,
document viewer, download handler, email viewer and who knows what
else. For example, the profusion of tabs and views down the left hand
side of Konqueror is not a strength, it's a weakness; it shows an
indecisive development team who can't decide what the app needs to do,
so they threw in everything.

You have to have Konqi 'cause it's the file manager. But anyone sane
would prefer Firefox or Chrome instead, so you get 2, and have to try
to explain the difference to beginners. This is a Bad Thing.

GNOME was the better choice both for its simplicity and for licensing
reasons. The licensing is no longer an issue, but now, KDE 4 is even
more weird and complex. You don't even have desktop icons any more. Oh
no, there's a special magic window with them in, like all the other
desktop windows. I've been using KDE since 1988; I published articles
on how to build and install the thing at the time, I liked it so much.
Even so, once I closed the magic desktop window in KDE4, I never found
how to re-open it again.

Simplicity and elegance go hand in hand. It is very difficult and rare
for something very complex to be elegant, even superficially... and
KDE is very complex indeed. It is not a good environment for
beginners.

In the late 1980s to mid 1990s, it was. When GNOME was new it was
pretty poor. However, since GNOME 2, it's been pretty good, minimal
and elegant and (IMHO) rather good-looking. It's been a better choice
for a novice or beginner since then.

Personally, I think that Kubuntu should lose its "official spinoff"
status and be relegated to "Ubuntu KDE remix" or something like that.
I think the choice confuses beginners and any new migrant from the
95%+ of the computer-using world that comes to Ubuntu is a beginner in
Linux terms. KDE is not as good a choice for them as GNOME, whatever
that nice Torvalds chap might say. :¬)

-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
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