Facts ?




Here are some small statements or facts that I like to point about KDE and Gnome. Beware, they are somewhat provocative. You can take them at 1st or at 2nd degree, it is up to you. I like these statements because they reflect a some key differences about Gnome and KDE.

KDE has achieved what Netscape, Sun and Gnome havn't suceeded in : a browser, an office suit and a working desktop !

KDE renders gtk themes faster than gtk itself !

KDE doesn't contain any GPL code that is copyrighted to the FSF.

KDE is more mature than Gnome. Gnome is two years behind KDE.

Gnome is controlled by the Gnome Foundation, not by the developers

Eazel spent $13 million in a file manager!
Miguel claims things while KDE produces code.

KDE has achieved what Netscape, Sun and Gnome have not suceeded in together !

KDE has a powerful browser : Konqueror. It is w3c compliant, it features Javascript, Java, CSS, SSL, it works with netscape plugins. It is not yes as mature as Netscape in certain areas but is for sure more stable and less resource hungry than Mozilla. And the missing features are coming very quickly. Don't forget that for the same price, you also get a ftp client, an info browser, a man browser, a nfs browser, a samba browser, a digital camera browser tool, a file managment tool, a post-script viewer, a pdf-viewer, a mpeg viewer, ...
It was done in two years of development by less than 10 core developers, while Mozilla is out for almost 3 years now, supported by a company and by free software, and is still not usable as a day to day browser. They should have realised, when QtScape was done in one week, that Qt was a quicker and better way to go.

Sun has tried to bring an Office suit to unix with Star Office, now known as Open Office. But look at it, it sucks ! 400 MBytes of source, more than the whole KDE project in itself ! Who wants to use such a beast ? It will eat your disk, your memory and your cpu before you can open any document. And I laugh when Miguel says they will provide Bonobo components for this.
However, Gnome already has a good Office suit project I hope they will not discontinue it to use BloatOffice instead. KDE also has a good Office suit project, named KOffice, which features a spreadsheet (KSpread), a work processor (KWord), ...

Gnome tries to compete with KDE, in bringing a desktop to unix. They promise components, Corba, Bonobo, applications, office, etc. But in KDE, we do already have a solid component model, that doesn't use Corba but is language and platform independant (XPart with DCOP), and allows powerful integration (KPart). It is rock-solid, used by more than 30 programs already. We also have lot of applications, office suite, ...
Gnome technology is perhaps for tomorrow, KDE 2.0 is here now !.


KDE renders gtk themes faster than gtk itself !

There is not a lot to say, everything is here.


KDE doesn't contain any GPL code that is copyrighted to the FSF.

First, I recognise there is no need to be especially proud of that. But given how much the FSF and RMS have been unfairly bashing KDE and praising Gnome, they deserve this little pitch. And I precise, there is LGPL code in KDE that is licensed the the FSF.


KDE is more mature than Gnome. Gnome is two years behind KDE.

In Gnome, should strings be allocated in functions calls or not ? Well, this is not clear as you can check. This kind of things is exactly why I prefer KDE and Qt to Gnome and Gtk. Gtk and Gnome still lacks a lot of things that Qt and KDE have had for years. Examples : I can continue like that during hours. This is all these kind of things that allow me to say that Gnome is 1 or 2 years behind KDE. Gnome will very probably have these things in the future but at the moment, they are under development (for the most advanced of them). In KDE, all this is there and has been stable for more than 1 year.


Gnome is controlled by the Gnome Foundation, not by the developers

The Gnome Foundation membership is open to every gnome contributor. But the reason it exists is to make sure companies like Ximian, Eazel, Sun and others can make themselves heard and can influence where the project is going. If it wasn't a problem of money, the project could still be controlled by the core developers. But now, the goal of the project is decided by the Gnome Foundation members.

Free Software is not only about freely writing software, sharing, modifying and distributing code. It is also about keeping your projects free from influences and controlling what happens to them. Free software is made and controlled by individuals, as opposed to commercial software which is controlled by companies and boards of directors.
The most successful free software projects are usually controlled by one or very few individuals (Linux, emacs, gcc, ...). Boards tend to produce drafts, discussions, reports, talks, ... Small teams of core developers tend to produce simply code. And this is what Free Software is about.

KDE makes its own decisions freely ! KDE has issued a statement on this :
Now we have been asked "Will KDE ever create a KDE Foundation in the same sense as the GNOME Foundation?" The answer to this is no, absolutely not. KDE has always been and always will be controlled by the developers that work on it and are willing to do the code. We will resist any and all attempts to change this.

Update:: KDE has now created the KDE League to support promotions and distributions of KDE, as explained in this article. One could easily draw parallels between the Gnome Foundation and the KDE league, and argue they are the same things. But this is not the case. Both associations have common goals (promote a desktop, help establish a standard), but the Gnome Foundation has a steering comitee and an advisory board for the Gnome development. KDE keeps its bazaar model ans is still lead by its core developers.


Eazel spent $13 million in a file manager!

Well, there is not much more to say about it. Eazel had great plans, a lot of money but in my opinion a very poor Business Plan. They spent their $13 million venture capital in a beautiful file manager, with more than 60 people working on it. Now Eazel is no more but Gnome has a file manager, at the cost of the bankrupt of one company. Cool!

But if we have a look at KDE, we see Konqueror, a very good file manager that can certainly competes with the best browser and file managers available. Konqueror is developed by a team of approximatively 10 people, from which one only (David Faure) is a full time paid developer.


Miguel claims things while KDE produces code.

Miguel is a very good PR guy. He claimed many things. That Ximian would produce an improved version of Gnome. That there would be some bonobo components for Star Office. He had all the attention he could dream of, from the press, from the Free Software community. But when you see the results, you can be disappointed. Bonobo is very heavy, Gnome 2.0 is late, Ximian doesn't produce an improved version of Gnome, they now sell propietary module for interconnection with Windows and work on Mono. The Star Office/bonobo integration doesn't look even started nor possible.
On the other side, look at KDE. No big promises, no big press attention, but a desktop that is there, has a stable component technology one year before Gnome, has very good technology that permits developers to now concentrate on applictions, has anti-aliasing, right to left internationalisation, has plenty of good applications. KDE just delivers features while Miguel talks about them. And KDE has never changed its direction, contrary to Ximian/Miguel.
Last modification : $Date: 2002/02/11 19:00:31 $ - $Author: philippe $