Gnome or KDE - why not ask?

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Sat, 2009-10-10 at 16:27 -0700, Marc Wilson wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 3:56 PM, Patrick O'Callaghan
> <pocallaghan at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > I don't think that contradicts anything I've said. The fact that "system
> > applications" need parts of a specific DE (even if no actual desktop is
> > installed) means that the distro is not DE-neutral, and once again, I
> > don't expect it to be in the current state of the art.
> 
> By your definitions, it's impossible, current state of the art or no.
> It seems that as far as you're concerned, if the application is using
> GTK, it's a Gnome app, and if it's using QT, it's a KDE app.
> 
> So for a distribution to be DE-neutral, they'd have to write all their
> GUI tools using... what?  wxWidgets?  FLTK?  Motif?

I think we're drifting away from the point here, or maybe I'm not being
clear about what I mean.

As an old-timer in the Unix game, I consider a GUI as an add-on. A
system can work perfectly well without one (unless you want to do
something specifically graphical). It may not be what most users want,
but in some cases it's useful and even necessary to be able to run with
no GUI at all. Being able to do this also indicates a clear separation
of function between "system stuff" and "GUI stuff", which in my view
ought to be maintained.

I just dislike the idea that a functional system, even in these
conditions, has to have certain DE-derived libraries or apps to work
properly. Given that these libraries and apps are specific to one DE,
that means the distro is not DE-neutral.

poc