gnome/kde

November 30, 2006

I keep wanting to like GNOME.  Every time a new version comes out, I give it a shot.  It’s never really any better.  Some new tweaks to the desktop, perhaps, but the fundamentals are still as weird/crappy/whatever as ever.  So I go back to KDE, which has always felt more natural/powerful/whatever (comfortable?).  GNOME people have consistently pointed out that they adhere to ‘HCI’ guidelines funded by Sun and whatnot, but it still always feels counterintuitive to me.  I’m not alone, apparently.

This article  talks about how Birmingham (UK) had troubles with GNOME and switched to KDE.  Well, it talks about a lot of things, but this one paragraph stuck out:

The case study also detailed the many frustrations involved in approaching an unfamiliar desktop technology, including the discovery that key applications wouldn’t run on Linux and usability problems with the original Gnome interface. At one point, realising that most of the usability issues were attributable to Gnome, which had taken three months to configure, staff ripped out Gnome and replaced it with KDE. The new interface was up and running within a week.

They don’t specifically state that the KDE solution was inherently better in the article, but I can’t think they’d have switched to something if it hadn’t better fit their needs over the GNOME situation.  For any GNOME person who will point out that new versions ‘fix’ the old problems, I’d say you’re probably not understanding people’s real frustrations with GNOME.  Two of mine are - awkward file picker and bizarre window start states.  My GNOME apps open up in random spots on the screen - they never open in the same place twice.  Additionally, many GNOME apps will start in strange sizes - gnucash insists on opening up in an almost closed state - like the window has been shrunk as small as possible, but still left on the screen.  I’m sure everyone has their pet peeves about GNOME (and KDE and whatever).  I’m just sort of surprised that GNOME would have very fundamental usability issues after so many years, especially when the GNOME crowd crows about ‘usability’ so loudly.

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