Evolution is better than revolution - unless it aint
We have precious few Linux flame wars here at Oxford Archaeology; on the whole we're just all too nice and well meaning. There's one exception, however, and it's a classic - the good old KDE versus Gnome flame war stalwart.
I'm a Gnome user; I tried KDE for a whole year, but came back to the correct path. I don't think Chris was convinced by my argument (check out the only comment I got), but he's my boss, so I won't push it too far.
Some time has passed since then, although recently Chris penned a popular entry on this blog Evolution is better than revolution. Aha! Admission that the Gnome way was the way forward; nobody likes those ugly KDE releases that change to very different, yet still ugly, KDE releases. Everyone likes to keep it slow and considered. Mellow.
Slashdot picked up on the same theme, discussing Bruce Byfield's article on the "evolutionary advantage"; evolve rather than revolt by starting afresh and ditching support for all the old cruft in your software. It seems that Gnome are now going down the same route, as reported by El Reg.
So, evolution is better than revolution, unless it isn't? Ubuntu has a good core that can be evolved gradually whereas other projects need to be "evolved" in a slightly more revolutionary way? Frankly I'm just pleased that with Gnome 3.0 expected sometime in the future, there's really no reason to consider that awful KDE again 
Flames in the comments please!
Your mom is ugly.
Posted by ObjectiveObserver on April 06, 2009 at 11:42 AM GMT+00:00 #
Right when I was thinking of switching over to KDE...
I tried 3.5 for a couple of hours and thought it was crap, but 4 looks like a huge improvement. Although the default theme in Jaunty looks worse than the one in Intrepid in my opinion.
Posted by David on April 06, 2009 at 11:46 AM GMT+00:00 #
You're just fishing for flames aren't you?
Is it just my impression, or are you basing your entire argument on something as subjective as looks?
Posted by Lucian on April 06, 2009 at 11:52 AM GMT+00:00 #
Hi Lucian,
No, this was about development models; evolution versus revolution. But yes, to be honest, looks are important. I look at my desktop environment for many hours each day, the way it all hangs together has an impact on my working environment, without doubt.
Posted by Joseph on April 06, 2009 at 12:05 PM GMT+00:00 #
Hopefully there won't be much revolution in Gnome3... removing deprecated APIs should be fine I suppose, and adding new UI concepts is fine as long as the old UI is still available (so a gradual migration is possible).
For me, the problem with KDE4 is that it left non-bleeding-edge users like me with KDE 3.5 for very long time. It would have been nice to get the KDE4 changes bit by bit as soon as they are ready, instead of delaying the features until a full release is ready, and meanwhile only leaving outdated versions to the users. With Gnome staying at its 6-month cycle, I hope users will still get quite up-to-date software.
Posted by oliver on April 06, 2009 at 01:22 PM GMT+00:00 #
Imho, in software engineering, there should be a balance between evolution and revolution. Sometimes you just feel that a lot of old stuffs already become just a burden and you need to get rid of it to apply a new clean design. Unfortunately not every time you can apply the new design, as you need to maintain backward compatibility. In this regard, as a developer, I strongly agree with KDE developers, that KDE 3 -> 4 transition was the best time to apply radical changes (especially in the development framework, UI can follow later).
I think, the only mistake committed by KDE developers was they didn't really realize that demographic of Linux users is now really different from like 10 years ago, when Linux users really read (TF) manuals + news + whatever the developers put online. The rest of the mistakes were committed by some news sites (for spreading hypes about KDE 4.0 which was a "developer version"), and also by some distributions (for making KDE 4.0 as the default desktop).
If you don't like KDE, then it is fine. It is like me that, regardless of Ubuntu popularity, never install an Ubuntu on my system (of course I've tried some Ubuntu demos by some random Ubuntu freaks out there :D).
Posted by fred on April 06, 2009 at 01:49 PM GMT+00:00 #
Simple person me. Revolution when needed, evolution the rest of time. KDE 4 was a revolution, but a necessary one to allow the use of the latest QT libraries. With suitably massive resources, sure KDE 3.5 could have been reproduced in look and feel on the new libraries; apps would still have needed to be be ported but I guess it would have seemed more evolutionary. Instead they went for the revolution to 4.0 with evolution in the releases following.
And jolly nice it is too....
Now, I think it is time you admitted in public that you haven't actually tried 4.1 or 4.2. Oops, did I post that out loud? :D
Posted by Chris Puttick on April 06, 2009 at 02:16 PM GMT+00:00 #
Real constructive, "x" sucks. Way to go.
There are more gnome heads being jerks than KDE people.
Gnome is turning to apple-like elitism. ugh.
Posted by lunarcloud on April 06, 2009 at 02:30 PM GMT+00:00 #
Started out with ubuntu/gnome; used for a few years; one day my hdd got broken and i only had kubuntu livecd's... it was 3.5 or something... using it for about 2 weeks until i got a new hdd and although i thought it was too windows like and plain ugly at first... i felt in love with it after a while and converted to kubuntu. Used kde4 series as well from beta to 4.2.1 or something. Even considered gnome fugly and crap an that it must 'die' along with gtk+.
Posted by Dread Knight on April 06, 2009 at 04:03 PM GMT+00:00 #
But rather got sick of kde, being not polished enough, due to too many changes, sort of felt daunting with all those applets and such, sort of like a developer playground and when i read that Linus moved to gnome, i given gnome another try and I'm back to gnome now.
So i thought kde4 is the future of linux/desktops, but GNOME 3 seems way more 'original' and a better design overall. Really looking forward to use it.
In kde i use too many gtk apps....firefox, pidgin, inkscape, gimp, screen recorders, gnome-do, dropbox client which depends on nautilus and so on... and i had my share of plasmoids and got sick of them.
Posted by Dread Knight on April 06, 2009 at 04:03 PM GMT+00:00 #
Since it is a flame I'm going to respond with a flame :
Gnome HIG should be called IIG (Idiot interface guides).
You asked for it ;)
Posted by val-gaav on April 07, 2009 at 06:21 AM GMT+00:00 #
You asked for flames, so I will give them to you: Linux Sucks!
p.s. Written by a Linux user.
Posted by Michael "Flame" Howell on April 07, 2009 at 11:24 PM GMT+00:00 #