WideOpenNews: Gnome and KDE: One GUI Too Many?

Dec 27, 1999, 15:44 (21 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Paul Boutin)

"The Linux community is designing two desktop environments. Some think that's wise, some think not. First of a series."

"Linux is taking over server rooms at a dizzying rate, but its progress across consumer desktops is crawling at slug speed by comparison. Linux pegged only two percent of the $89 million desktop computer market in 1998, according to market research firm IDC. Sure, IDC's statistics only count "revenue shipments," where someone actually purchased a Linux license instead of installing a free or duplicate copy. But one in fifty sales is hardly world domination by any count."

"What's keeping Linux locked up in the server room? Besides lacking a set of productivity applications as extensive (and ubiquitously deployed) as Microsoft Office, Linux also requires a consistent, user-friendly desktop environment, one that nontechnical users can grasp and developers can count on. In that respect, Linux runs on not one, but two desktop environments, the German-born K Desktop Environment, or KDE, and the GNU Project's GNU Network Object Model Environment, or Gnome. Both are making rapid progress, but both have a way to go to meet ease-of-use demands."

Complete Story, Part 1

This story is broken into 5 parts, with the links between parts not working.
Here is Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5.

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