KDE vs Gnome

[Ed Cogburn]

Senectus . wrote:

> On 7/21/05, Stephen R Laniel <steve at laniels.org> wrote:
> 
>> > 4). Can apps that run on Gnome also run on KDE and vs versa?
>> 
>> No. They use totally different libraries. We *should* have a
>> single set of interoperable libraries, but it's not going to
>> happen.
> 
> That's wrong..


Umm, no that's right.  KDE and GNOME are built on top of different
foundation libraries for the most part, with Qt/GTK being only one example
of a major difference, with another notable difference being arts/gstreamer
(sound system).  There is however, nothing stopping one from installing
both sets of libraries to run apps from both DE's simultaneously.  A common
set of foundation libraries was a long held dream that has gone largely
unanswered, though freedesktop.org has chipped away at the problem a
little.  The most likely reason this has happened is because the 2 DE's are
built with 2 different languages, C and C++.  Whether one or the other
provides "bindings" or not is really irrelevant, the problem is that the
plumbing is so different underneath, interoperability becomes difficult for
one or both sides.