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The Linux distillery Seeing Linux clearly: Demystifying KDE and GNOME
The Linux distillery Seeing Linux clearly: Demystifying KDE and GNOME | Seeing Linux clearly: Demystifying KDE and GNOME |
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| by David M Williams | |
| Monday, 19 May 2008 | |
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Page 4 of 5 Red Hat’s Fedora Linux does give a choice, but only if you opt to customise the packages it will install. Fedora doesn’t really help illuminate matters, though, with its sparse and repetitive descriptions. The recently released Fedora 9 proffers this description of the GNOME Desktop Environment: “GNOME is a powerful graphical user interface which includes a panel, desktop, system icons, and a graphical file manager.”Here’s a point of difference, however. In Fedora, GNOME has 50 optional packages – with 47 pre-selected. KDE has 25 packages, all of which are pre-selected if you choose to install KDE. These packages provide additional applications to justify the “various applications” part of a desktop manager. Here’s what they are, in Fedora at least. For GNOME, we have: NetworkManager-gnome alacarte – a simple menu editor at-spi – assistive technology service provider interface bluez-gnome – Bluetooth pairing and control applet bug-buddy – bug reporting utility compiz-gnome – integration with compiz dasher – GNOME accessibility methods eog – Eye of GNOME image viewer esc – enterprise security client smart card client (not installed by default) evince – Document viewer evince-djvu – DJVU document support for evince evince-dvi – DVI document support for evince file-roller – tool for viewing and creating archives gcalctool – desktop calculator gdm-user-switch-applet – user switcher gedit –small but powerful text editor gnome-audio – sounds for GNOME events gnome-backgrounds – background pictures gnome-bluetooth – Bluetooth subsystem gnome-media – media programs gnome-netstatus – Network status applet (not installed by default) gnome-phone-manager gnome-pilot – GNOME pilot programs gnome-power-manager gnome-screensaver gnome-system-monitor gnome-themes gnome-user-docs gnome-user-share – user file sharing gnome-utils gnome-vfs2 – ObexFTP over Bluetooth support gnome-vfs2-smb – Windows fileshare support for gnome-vfs gok – GNOME onscreen keyboard gthumb – image viewer, editor, organiser gtk2-engines – theme engines for GTK+ 2.0 gucharmap – Unicode character picker and font browser gvfs-fuse – FUSE support for gvfs mousetweaks – mouse accessibility support nautilus-cd-burner – easy to use CD burning nautilus-sendto – context manager for Nautilus notification-demon orca – Flexible, extensible and powerful assistive technology pulseaudio-esound-compat – PulseAudio EsounD daemon compatibility script pulseaudio-module-gconf – GConf support for the PulseAudio sound server pulseaudio-module-x11 – X11 support for the PulseAudio sound server scim-bridge-tk – Gtk IM module (not installed by default) tomboy – desktop note-taking application vino – remote desktop system for GNOME xdg-user-dirs-gtk – GNOME integration of special directories zenity – display dialog boxes from shell scripts Phew! On the flip side, KDE offers these packages: NetworkManager-gnome amarok – Media player digikam – digital camera accessing and photo management tool extragear-plasma – Additional plasmoids for KDE caffeine – Xine-based media player kde-settings-pulseaudio – enable pulseaudio support kdeaccessibility – accessibility kdeartwork – additional artwork (themes, etc) kdebase – core files kdeedu – educational/edutainment apps kdegames kdegraphics – graphics apps kdemultimedia – multimedia apps kdenetwork – network apps kdepim – PIM apps kdeutils kftpgrabber – FTP client kipi-plugins – Plugins to work Kipi kconversation – user friendly irc client kpowersave – frontend for power management ksshaskpass – KDE version of ssh-askpass with KWallet support ktorrent – BitTorrent pinentry – Passphrase/PIN entry dialog based on Qt3 scribes – desktop publishing app written in Qt zenity – Display dialog boxes from shell scripts Notice that zenity is offered for both – and note too that NetworkManager-gnome – despite its name – is also available for both? In fact, most all software will run under both KDE and GNOME and will correctly adopt the appropriate user interface so as not to cause offence. After all, the programs are merely requesting “a button” or any other visual element, and it is up to the window manager – within the desktop manager – to draw it as it sees fit. CONTINUED |
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