GNOME is definitely more stable, and about toolkits, well gtk+ is much more polished than qt. i mean, qt has thousands of bugs, its probably most advanced gui toolkit, but thats the reason why its so unstable, and buggy. They hurry to add features without stabilizing them. While gtk+ is not that much feature rich, its perfectly stable, no glitching, no stopping bugs. I also strongly believe that gnome 3 will be much more stable than kde 4.0 was, although gnome-shell interface is horrible.

Please note that Gtk+ has likely the same number of bugs as Qt when compared on equal ground ( ie. QtGui vs. Gtk+ ) although even this comparison is still not fair as Qt has it's extremely powerful Model View architecture, and other such things, where in Gtk applications, you need many other libraries to provide equivalent functionality.

Hence comparing Qt and Gtk+ is completely unfair to Qt, as Gtk does not provide signals, slots, network access, XML processing, SQL databases, Multimedia ( audio and video playback in a platform native manner - GStreamer is not platform native ), D-Bus access, an SVG renderer or a built in web engine powered by Webkit.

bcooksley wrote:

GNOME is definitely more stable, and about toolkits, well gtk+ is much more polished than qt. i mean, qt has thousands of bugs, its probably most advanced gui toolkit, but thats the reason why its so unstable, and buggy. They hurry to add features without stabilizing them. While gtk+ is not that much feature rich, its perfectly stable, no glitching, no stopping bugs. I also strongly believe that gnome 3 will be much more stable than kde 4.0 was, although gnome-shell interface is horrible.

Please note that Gtk+ has likely the same number of bugs as Qt when compared on equal ground ( ie. QtGui vs. Gtk+ ) although even this comparison is still not fair as Qt has it's extremely powerful Model View architecture, and other such things, where in Gtk applications, you need many other libraries to provide equivalent functionality.

Hence comparing Qt and Gtk+ is completely unfair to Qt, as Gtk does not provide signals, slots, network access, XML processing, SQL databases, Multimedia ( audio and video playback in a platform native manner - GStreamer is not platform native ), D-Bus access, an SVG renderer or a built in web engine powered by Webkit.

Yes thats true, but gtk doesnt have that much major problems. I mean, lots of e.g. plasma issues are not related to plasma, but to qt. QT is glitchy and unpolished when you compare it to gtk. Also, take a look at gnome's interface - its clean, button's text doesnt overlap button's borders, looks smooth and changing some advanced ui options in gconf-editor doesnt crash the whole environment (i cant say the same about kde).
Still after all, i stick to kde, mostly because they dont have that silly feature removing mania, like gnome has. GNOME 2.30 removed lots of useful stuff, e.g. theres no longer a button to make a text based address bar in nautilus. Those tasks you use everyday. And if gnome shell wont add application menu instead of "activities" it will fail.

I'm pretty sure people do care; I've worked quite a bit on programs and ideas for KDE and converted many people over. I simply stating the flaws to why I left; some are distro specific, others seem to affect all distros (thus leading me to assume that KDE itself is at fault there)

I simply wish to highlight that KDE is very, very good, but there are a few areas where it falls down horribly.

Now; QT+GTK; I think we can all agree that QT is very capable, but I'm getting out of my domain of knowledge here; it's my understanding that generally QT will push for new features, whereas GTK will push for stability.

@Nece228. GNOME Shell is quite a change, but remember what happened at the start of KDE 4? Precisely. You'll generally find the Shell interface a lot more helpful if you take to the idea of multiple workspaces.


Mint has similar issues, but does on the whole seem a lot more stable; it's more annoyance then anything else; the KDE version is created by the community, but last time I checked it did mix and match GNOME programs for better stability. The annoyance is that if memory serves, they release a KDE version just before a new KDE version comes out, leaving me with quite a hankering for the newer KDE yet no upgrade path :/

Dante Ashton wrote:Arch always seemed a bit too advanced for me; it isn't so much that I don't want to learn new things, it's more a case of NEEDING to learn new things about Linux.

Well, if you feel Arch is too hard or you just don't wish to bother with setting things up from scratch, try Chakra.
But I would advise you to wait for a bit. Chakra is now in a very strange place, it has a CD with Arch and KDEmod built on it, and then there's the new Chakra CD with it's custom kernel built so that it works good with KDe and all.
But both are still deep in development. While KDEmod is working flawlessly, at least like I did it, used normal Arch Live CD to install Arch then added KDEmod repos and installed KDEmod on top. Don't know how Chakra live CD (with Aerch for it's base) works, but AFAIK it's in beta development.
The other Chakra specific kernel Live CD is still in alpha stage, so there's a long road to Arch independent base. But when it will be done, I think it will be one of the best KDE based distros, as it will be KDE specific and everything will be built with KDE in mind.
(Whether I'll change from Arch to in, or try and remain on KDEmod, or even use Arch KDE when the time comes, I have yet to decide...) But none the less
it's the Distro to look for.

I have heard good things about Charka, maybe I'll give it a whiz when it's ready

sayakb wrote: ...
Agreed, but that is a distro related issue.

I guess that's what it always comes down to; KDE is perfect, and everyone else just jacks it up

jglen490 wrote:

sayakb wrote: ...
Agreed, but that is a distro related issue.

I guess that's what it always comes down to; KDE is perfect, and everyone else just jacks it up

Whoah whoah, no need for such words my dear boy!

This supposed to be a friendly discussion, I'm pretty sure my issues (however bad they are) are a combination of my hardware, Kubuntu (which was my main distros) implementation of KDE, and a few negative parts of KDE the devs will (hopefully) get around to in the future.

Do remember that even now, if you want to go and get a new off-the-shelf computer, you have to do a bit of research if you want Linux. I'm willing to bet it's KDE's daemons which have caused the occasional hardware problems. (Though the entire point of my starting post was more about the usabilty of KDE)

I wasn't talking about you, Dante. You're exercising your right to choose under Linux, and I applaud you for that. There seems to be another prevailing undercurrent, though, throughout the many threads that I've read. No names.

Do not get me wrong. I really do like KDE, that's why I'm here and on Kubuntu. And I've made it a point to note that there are alternatives to those pieces and parts that misbehave. And, again, I've made a point to indicate that those alternatives are not necessarily "forever" choices; even if "choosing" is forever.

jglen490 wrote:

sayakb wrote: ...
Agreed, but that is a distro related issue.

I guess that's what it always comes down to; KDE is perfect, and everyone else just jacks it up

Relax. I never said that.
Ubuntu one not being available for Kubuntu is Canonical's choice, not KDE's. But as I already said, "Agreed". That means I am in favor of having Ubuntu one and other such services made available for Kubuntu as well.

@sayakb

Perhaps you didn't mean it that way. But way too often that kind of answer gets thrown around when no other answer is offered. I just think the worst thing that one can do is to be so wound up in your own product or own favorite thing, that no other choice could "possibly" be good enough.

Maybe it's just natural, but it just happens so often

@jglen490:

We are probably both reading different topics. To me it sounds more like "i use KDE software, so it must be KDE's fault". Which is indeed not that easy to say.

Under Windows you buy a system, and probably also buy some additional software. In that case you might know quite good who is the fault.

Under non-windows it is not that easy. There are dozens of distributions around, nearly all of them provide "optimized" kde software packages, with custom modifications.
Now let's say, one of the supporters has a different setup, and it works for him, and he even heard that distro xy could have some problems with it, what would you say?
What we (or most of us) are trying to do is simply nailing the problem down as far as possible and see where the real fault is.
And sometimes, maybe even often, it IS a fault in the downstream packages. And let's not forget, the build system is not really old, it was changed to cmake with KDE4. Also something the downstream packagers first need to get used to (i am sure they are fine with it now, just wanted to mention this).
As an example, the sftp ioslave is not working properly for me. Now, in this team i have 4 people who can't confirm this problem for me. Guess what, they have different systems.

True; my faults here, as I said, seem to be a combination of the hardware, the distros and the DE (what I neglected to mention was that OpenSUSE, Kubuntu and Mandriva all had the bugs as mentioned above, but each had their own little problems)


I'm curious though, could a particualar bit of hardware cause a daemon to not function correctly? Would said daemon not make a log of this?

Also, something I should of mentioned was that my laptops camera and Microphone (as well as my netbook's) do not function under Kubuntu (nor older versions of Ubuntu) but 10.04, with it's HAL replacement, seems to of solved that for me.

Whilst it would be very VERY tempting to think all my problems with KDE would go away with HAL's removal, I feel the need to point out that there are some basic utilites KDE lacks.

neverendingo wrote:@jglen490:

We are probably both reading different topics. To me it sounds more like "i use KDE software, so it must be KDE's fault". Which is indeed not that easy to say.

Under Windows you buy a system, and probably also buy some additional software. In that case you might know quite good who is the fault.

Under non-windows it is not that easy. There are dozens of distributions around, nearly all of them provide "optimized" kde software packages, with custom modifications.
Now let's say, one of the supporters has a different setup, and it works for him, and he even heard that distro xy could have some problems with it, what would you say?
What we (or most of us) are trying to do is simply nailing the problem down as far as possible and see where the real fault is.
And sometimes, maybe even often, it IS a fault in the downstream packages. And let's not forget, the build system is not really old, it was changed to cmake with KDE4. Also something the downstream packagers first need to get used to (i am sure they are fine with it now, just wanted to mention this).
As an example, the sftp ioslave is not working properly for me. Now, in this team i have 4 people who can't confirm this problem for me. Guess what, they have different systems.

O.K.

Well, I've met a few other people who have had similar problems to my setup. One of them resorted to building another computer (not financially possible for me) whilst the other two told me they spent around 4 hours setup of the system, only to have it destabilize in a similar timeframe. They have Compaq, Toshiba and ACER laptops, I have ASUS. I don't know, are there particualr bits of hardware that can cause a fault in KDE? My knowledge is not so good with hardware...

In my experience, Plasma tends to become more unstable as more applets are added. This is especially the case if they are non-native Plasma applets ( ie. Superkaramba, Google Gadgets ) or applets written in C++ sourced from kde-look.org. Usage of activities is also known to cause Plasma issues, at least prior to KDE 4.5 ( I haven't tested... )