Torvalds and GNOME

[Zorak]

Does anyone understand what is going on between Mr. Torvalds and the heads of the GNOME project? I read recently that Torvalds is openly endorsing KDE over GNOME, but the article only said that it was due to some argument he was having with them. Does anyone know why?

-Zorak

 

[bmouring]

Basically, the argument boils down to this:

Linus feels that Gnome developers, as a whole, setup options and interfaces in a manner that assumes the user is an idiot (i.e. hides the nerd knobs).

The Gnome developers feel that they are just providing a clean interface while still allowing access to the nerd knobs via the gconf editor (somewhat akin to the Windows Registry but much smaller and less scary).

The Gnome developers are also fairly reluctant to receive patches which pushes any interface in the "complex" direction which can make them seem standoffish (but in reality the kernel devs/maintainers are fairly anal retentive as well when it comes to coding style for kernel patches)

In the end, I feel more than anything it is a personal preference that caused a bit of a firestorm a few years back that continues to smolder to this day, but that is just my observation.

 

[Zorak]

thanks for clearing that up for me

-Zorak