Ax0n’s Den

You must wonder why I’m relentless and all strung out
I’m consumed by the chill of solitary

So I was at BestBuy this week with a co-worker looking for Xboxes for a friend’s wedding present.

While I was waiting for the pimply teenager to scurry to the back I was looking around and I was reminded that at some point I was going to get a wireless mouse for my laptop.

There were a few options, but I didn’t really like any of what I saw. In fact, I wouldn’t have even really been seriously looking except for the fact that my USB corded mouse had just succum to death by electric shock a few days ago and I have been suffering with the built in touch pad every since.

In anycase, I picked up the Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 6000. I had some difficulties getting it working at first, and I still don’t have the Tilt Wheel working, but all of the other buttons work. I do have to load up usbmouse and plug it in before psmouse, but since it’s got a wireless dongle thing this isn’t too hard to remember.

The jury is still out on whether I like it or not.

I have been using KDE 3.5.1 for around 2 months now and am quite impressed. It is not the end all - fix all desktop. Infact there are quite a few things that are more difficult to do in KDE. I like this though. Most things default to a reasonable functionality. If I do not like this, I am free to change it. There are quite a few more advanced applications for KDE too.I think the only GNOME applications that I continue to use are Evolution, Inkscape and GIMP.

Firefox is technically a GTK app, and I continue to use it sometimes as Konquerer does not work on all websites.

I am using Kmail for my personal email, and evolution for my work email. Why? Because I love offline imap, it’s the best of both worlds however IMAP in evolution was SLOW. Kmail leaves quite a bit to be desired as far as UI compared to Evolution, but I have yet to find any missing features.

I am really looking forward to KDE 4. I am hoping a few of the most annoying things about KDE will be resolved, as well as some more polish.

So last week Linus slammed GNOME to the whole F/OSS community. Reading his words stung, and I found it hard to believe that such a popular figure would have the nerve to say such things openly. Surely his words would cause fire and brimestone, women and children to run fearful in the streets and Novell to develop all of their products for MS Windows… oh wait…

In anycase, after reading through the entire thread on the GNOME-usability list, I agree with Linus about the points me makes about GNOME. I have the same issues, and have for a long time. I guess somewhere along the line I have just got use to it. GNOME does most of what I want. What it doesn’t do I can fix with a little elbow grease.

What I couldn’t agree with Linus about was the superiority of KDE. The last time I used KDE, Qt was still commercial only. KDE was one of the first desktops I tried when I was a new linux user. It was ok, ugly gray and boxy. There were 12 or so packages, and it took a year and a day to compile. I have developed a strong alignment with the FSM’s (Free Software Movement) mentality when it comes to licensing. The fact that Trolltech has now dual licensed Qt under the GPL as well was noteworthy at the time, but by then I had moved on to GNOME. The strong community drive behind GNOME was aluring, and it was perdier. Not to mention it was modular, and even though there were like 30 packages to install, you only needed to install the ones you wanted.

If Linus suggests everyone switch to KDE, and he’s having the same problems I am, as a mere non-kernel-creator, I figured I should at least give it a spin again.

In all fairness, I have seen screenshots of KDE in the past 6 years and it has improved greatly.

What is so attractive about GNOME is Gtk, and the applications that are based on Gtk. The GNOME desktop itself is sorely lacking, compared to my recent experience with KDE. But in reality, in comparision with Windows and OSX as well.