The Problem with Desktop Competition
Not to be confused with my earlier post on desktops, this one’s about what we are forgetting in the Gnome/KDE hype. Both work very hard at maintaining their own version of lots of little toys. One of the big new features of KDE 4 was Marble, an earth viewer. Each desktop keeps its own hex editor, and both seem to work in basically the same way. Same deal with the calculator program, the games menu, NetworkManager, etc. Gnome recently added window compositing, to compete with compiz.
The problem is that we lose focus on the core element – the graphical system itself. KDE seemed to be struggling to stay on schedule for version 4. Gnome hasn’t had such a revolutionary release in ages, and it comes across loud and clear when people start comparing it to Mac OS9. Granted, many of the smaller improvements have been Godsends, like the recent theming upgrades. The point, though, is that all this focus on accessories is doing damage to the Linux desktop. Now Mac has iLife, Windows its own equivalents, etc. But since we have multiple desktops, this costs us more, because we wind up writing these over and over again.
Though I have no problem with alternatives, we need to separate out the accessories and tools from the main desktop. I’m not saying these things shouldn’t exist, but that I think we need to narrow the definition for what we focus on as a desktop. Accessories, tools, and especially compisiting seem to work best as 3rd-party projects, possibly with close collaboration with the desktop teams. Not being a member of either project, I can’t say how much dev time this costs, but I can say that it steals focus. New releases should be primarily about new technology, as opposed to new trinkets. What we end up with is excessive re-implementation, and a missed change for collaboration. I, for one, would prefer that both desktops work on compatibility with Compiz rather than their own effects, and spin off Marble and the calculators to focus on the things like Plasma and GVFS.
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