Brief diary of an F-7 installation

Timothy Murphy tim at birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
Wed Jun 20 14:01:13 UTC 2007


Todd Zullinger wrote:

> Timothy Murphy wrote:
>> I'm pretty sure the people who could offer a radio button choice
>> between Gnome and KDE actually push Gnome for
>> political/philosophical reasons.
> 
> Not that it's even relevant, but could you back up this statement?
> How do you mean political here?

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".

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.


        I have seen flowers grow in stony places
        And kind deeds done by men with ugly faces
        And the worst horse win the Gold Cup at the races
                So I hope too

        (John Masefield)






-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland




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