LinuxWorld: Two on the Differences Between GNOME and KDE

GNOME vs. KDE Revisited

"This week and next I will list my main concerns and complaints about GTK and GNOME. Jeff Waugh, a GTK/GNOME developer, agreed to review my columns and point out where he thinks I'm right, wrong, what is being addressed in future versions, what isn't, and why. If you contribute to or program with GTK, GNOME, Qt, and KDE, please send me your thoughts. I will select interesting opinions, condense them, and add my own reactions in a follow-up column. I understand that these aren't the only desktops, widget toolkits, and programming languages out there, but I would appreciate it if you'd confine your comments to GTK, GNOME, Qt, KDE, C and C++, otherwise I'll have far too much material for any follow-up. We can always address other tools and languages later.

"Before I begin with my criticism, let me assure you I understand there are several different philosophies of application development. Some people prefer GTK not because it is the better tool kit, but because the approach makes more sense to them, because GTK is more granular than Qt, prefer C to C++, or another reason. I cannot address all of these factors, but I will try to take them into account wherever they matter. There are also legitimate licensing issues that will lead someone to prefer GTK to Qt, but I do not intend to address those, either..."

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GNOME & KDE Docs & Themes

"As for the quality of documentation, I will offer my opinion, but I strongly recommend that you judge for yourself which documentation is adequate for your needs. The resources section below contains links to online documentation for GNOME, GTK, some of the libraries upon which GTK depends, some additional toolkits associated with GNOME and GTK, and some additional links to resources such as the increasingly popular C++ layers called gnomemm and gtkmm. It also contains links to various KDE libraries and the documentation for Qt.

"If I had to describe the documentation for GNOME/GTK development in three words, I'd say overwhelming, scattered, and incomplete. Add 'occasionally excellent' and that should give new developers for GNOME/GTK a good idea of what you're in for..."

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Related Stories:

• LinuxGuru.net: Two articles on Gnome and KDE configuration(Jan 24, 2002)
• ZDNet eWeek: GNOME, KDE interfaces make Linux palatable(Apr 19, 2001)
• David Mason: GNOME/KDE Interoperability (Apr 16, 2001)