“Good points are not the only road that KDE and GNOME share.
Bugs and a general “flaky” reliability were all too common in the
earlier releases. Both have been lacking features and
documentation, despite the ease of getting the most common tasks
completed comfortably. Neither has reached the standard of OS2Warp
or MACOS, but they are drawing closer by the day.”
“However, there is fighting amongst the troops from both camps.
KDE released a letter that disparages GNOME as little more than a
warmed up Motif or Common Desktop environment (CDE). It “must be
inferior” as the KDE team released their first version about a year
before the GNOME’s. Could it be jealousy on their part, as GNOME
seems to have the more sophisticated and configurable file manager
(sawfish)? GNOME was the “chosen one” that received the backing
from numerous hardware suppliers and software vendors, including
the likes of IBM and Hewlett Packard. This gave birth to the GNOME
foundation. In retaliation, KDE aimed directly for the file
manager, releasing Konquerer a more able version than GNOME,
incorporating a web browser that supports not only html, but
cookies too. KDE has the advantage of the plug-in
architecture.”
“If any sane person is not confused by the choice, then it is a
“Mad Mad Mad world”, but we can blame incoherence in the Open
Source movement for that…”