“There’s a split in the Linux world that transcends
distributions: the divide between the GNOME and KDE desktops. That
continues even as the two halves grow closer to each other through
shared technologies. I’m sure my allegiances have been made clear
by the many GNOME desktop screenshots that I’ve filled this column
with over the years, but I certainly don’t discount the efforts of
the KDE project. In fact, I recently thought about just how far
they’ve both come since their inceptions, and realised that for the
many Linux users that have come to the platform in more recent
years, the reasoning behind having two major desktops may not be at
all clear–it’s just something that’s always been. Of course, it
hasn’t always been this way…”