What is a Desktop: GNOME & XFCE
GNOME
The KDE project's basis on the Qt toolkit caused much controversy in its early days. The original Qt license was not Open Source (as defined by the Open Source Initiative, or OSI), and there was some concern that Trolltech might someday go out of business or modify its license in such a way that KDE could no longer be free. This concern was generally alleviated with the creation of the KDE free Qt Foundation, which ensure that if Trolltech ever stops developing Qt free Edition, it will be released under the BSD Open Source license. Furthermore, should Trolltech (or their successors) ever want to change Qt Free Edition's license, it must be approved by the foundation, of which KDE developers have a majority voting interest. Trolltech went even further, first by releasing Qt Free Edition under the Qt Public License (QPL), which was certified as an Open Source license by the OSI, and finally by releasing Qt under the GPL.
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| GNOME & XFCE |
These historical concern led to the creation of the GNOME project. The GNOME project set out to create a desktop.
What is a Desktop: GNOME & XFCE
Where KDE has a fairly strict style guide, ensuring that its applications conform to a consistent look and feel, GNOME thrives on individuality. Although this has allowed GNOME to often leap ahead in configurability and features, it has also generally reduced the integration of its parts. This has changed greatly recently as GNOME has moved toward Bonobo, an interface for exchanging information between applications (similar to KParts in KDE or COM in Microsoft Windows).
Today, several commercial and non-profit organization have arisen to help support GNOME. One of the most interesting is the GNOME Foundation. Foundation in 2000, the GNOME Foundation is an advisory board that helps direct the development of GNOME. It is made up of the many volunteers who work on GNOME, but also includes numerous companies such as Compaq and SUn Microsystems.
Other corporate interests in GNOME include Helix Code and Eazel. Helix Code (www.helixcode.com) has put together a distribution of GNOME that is incredibly easy to install. Eazel (www.eazel.com) is working with GNOME and Helix Code to develop a very user-friendly desktop. Founded by some of the original Macintosh team, their goal is to bring Linux to the to the masses. Nautilus, their file and desktop manager, is expected to be the default desktop in GNOME 2.0.
As KDE and GNOME evolve, they begin to resemble each other more and more. Some of this is simply good ideas being passed back and forth, but some of this is very active. Efforts are underway currently to provide grater interoperability between the two desktops, allowing applications written for one to work more seamlessly with the other. Although it is unlikely that the two groups will ever merge, it seems very likely that users in the future will be freer to pick and choose the desktop and applications that suit them best.
XFCE
GNOME and KDE are both very powerful desktops, but they also use a lot of memory and other system resources. XFce offers much of the friendliness and configurability of the larger desktops at a fraction of the resources. Based on the same libraries as GNOME (gtk+) and offering an interface similar to CDE, XFce works especially well with GNOME-based programs, but it also handles KDE applications without difficulty.
XFce is ideal for those users who want a friendly interface on an underpowered machine, or simply for those users who prefer to save their resources for their applications instead of all the extra features of KDE or GNOME.
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