Timothy Murphy wrote:
> A couple of contributors to this thread have touched on what I mean,
> eg
> -------------------------------------
> Check out issues from the past that related to qt licensing problems
> in the late 1990's and the history of the GNOME project. It is great
> to have alternatives. There has to be defaults and that means one
> choice from many possibilities.
> ...
> If there are any preferences, it is probably because of being almost
> burned by qt and the financial investment in making an alternative
> to what would have resulted if qt went unchallenged.
> -------------------------------------
>
> Basically, I think Gnome is seen to be "purer" than KDE. That is
> what I meant by "political". I should perhaps have said
> "religious".
Okay. No doubt that history has played a part in which desktop is
used. To its credit Red Hat chose to invest in GTK & GNOME as the
desktop back when KDE was using the non-free QT. As a result, there
are many more GTK and GNOME programmers working at Red Hat still.
That's a problem that the KDE team caused for itself.
I don't think that the defaults for the distro are still guided by
years old grudges though. And I think it's unfair to tar the guys
writing the installer and all the other GTK/GNOME based tools for
Fedora with that brush -- unless you have some better evidence.
> My view, for what it is worth - which is not a great deal - is that
> KDE has turned out to be much better than Gnome, in the same way as
> Firefox has turned out to be much better than any "home-grown"
> alternative, and Linux has turned out to be much better than Hurd.
That's a fair argument. But you'll need to be more persuasive you
want to change the default for Fedora (or get the choice included more
prominently in the installer).
IMO, the best way to advance KDE in Fedora is to help out the KDE SIG
with creating and integrating KDE in their spins - in packaging,
testing, bug reporting, documentation, etc. If the KDE spin becomes
so much more polished and superior to the standard Fedora spin, then
it may become the default (and we can all look forward to Gnome spins
and debates here about how Gnome is getting screwed by the nasty KDE
lovers at Red Hat ;).
--
Todd OpenPGP -> KeyID: 0xBEAF0CE3 | URL: www.pobox.com/~tmz/pgp
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
...more people are driven insane through religious hysteria than by
drinking alcohol.
-- W.C. Fields
Attachment:
pgp6hOkiPKpft.pgp
Description: PGP signature
