Linux distro/desktop competition

[markw-FJ05HQ0HCKaWd6l5hS35sQ at public.gmane.org (markw-FJ05HQ0HCKaWd6l5hS35sQ at public.gmane.org)]

 > On Fri, 17 Aug 2007 09:16:33 -0400 (EDT)
> markw-FJ05HQ0HCKaWd6l5hS35sQ at public.gmane.org wrote:
>> I know I'm just voicing a long time gripe, but isn't it time that the
>> "leaders," site down and make these things a published standard? I know
>> it
>> has been tried for a long time since LSB and other attempts, but at some
>> point it has to happen. The fact that it is a hard thing to do does not
>> mean it is not possible.
>>
>> I mean come on, why can't KDE an GNOME use the same file layout? It's
>> jut
>> petty immature crap that they don't. Why do they need different (99% the
>> same information) X start up scripts? Different menu files and
>> directories. Different icon and art directories? You can get the two to
>> use the same art work, mostly, just by copying, in my book, that's a
>> waste.
>>
>> Network configuration, environment variables, standard file locations,
>> etc. These need to make sense for corporate IT to consider Linux more.
>>
>> How does it all get fixed?
>
> We are getting into religion here.

I would hope not. I'm not saying that GNOME and KDE should be the same,
but surely they can agree on something.

> It would be really nice if both GNOME and KDE were unified, but that is
> not going to happen. They are 2 different organizations (although a
> number of the same people are involved with both).

True, and I prefer KDE over GNOME and would not *want* the GNOME metality
integrated into KDE. (Now THATS religion!)

> They all sit under
> the X Windows System supported by X.org. There are a number of
> components to consider:
> 1. The Display Manager. This is the guy that owns your keyboard,
> monitor, and mouse. There are a number of them:
> 	XDM - the older X display manager
> 	KDM - The KDE Display Manager
> 	GDM - The Gnome Display Manager
> 	Since the KDE and GNOME people are different communities, you
> will have different display managers, but both KDM and GDM work with
> either.

This is a perfect example. The old XDM system had an organization for its
startup files, and what do KDE and GNOME do? They make two more
incompatible systems that do fundimentally the same thing.

IMHO, KDM and GDM should read and understand the XDM layout so you
wouldn't need to track down three different procedures and file locations
to do implement the same functionality across Linux. XDM was first and
largely considered the reference implementation. There really is no excuse
that this works as it currently does.


> 2. The underlying libraries.
> 	KDE is written primarily in C++ and uses QT as its underlying
> graphical management where GNOME is written primarily in C, and uses
> GTK as its underlying library code.

I understand all that, that really isn't what I'm talking about.
>
> In the past, Red Hat has strongly supported the GNOME desktop
> environment where SuSE had strongly supported the German KDE group.
> Today, Novell owns both SuSE and Ximian. Ximian, based in thr
> People's Republic of Cambridge is a major developer of GNOME
> components, and as a result of this and corporate pressure, SuSE
> Enterprise now uses GNOME as the default desktop environment. But, many
> people in the Linux community prefer neither GNOME nor KDE.

Yup.

>
> The bottom line is that there are choices in Linux, and it is this fact
> that makes it more difficult for corporate IT groups. It is easier in a
> corporate environment for the IT people to say "we support Windows XP
> Professional, with Microsoft Outlook as the email client, Microsoft
> Exchange as the MTA, Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft Internet Explorer
> as the browser".

>
> We come down to the difference between political structures.
> Dictatorships can be much more efficient. "Mussolini made the trains
> run on time" in Italy. Democratic societies are much less efficiant,
> but we all have a lot of choices.

The thing I'm talking about isn't GNOME vs KDE vs whatever, it is more
like where the commonality should be.

/home/user/.menus/applications/foo.desktop
/home/user/.menus/multimedia/xmms.desktop

I'm sure, you get the idea, these things aren't rocket science and GNOME
and KDE and others already sort of agree on what they look like. Why can't
we go a few steps further and get them in the same places?

/usr/share/wallpaper
/usr/share/icons
/usr/share/menus

Or what ever, then KDE, GNOME, or what ever can just run and work the way
it is supposed too.


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