Hi,

I have seen that all major Linux companies Distributions (Redhat, openSuse, Ubuntu, etc.) support GNOME more than KDE, inspite of the fact that KDE is an equally good (if not better) Desktop Environment. Is there any technical reason behind this?

I don't intend to start a flame war here. I just wanna know why companies prefer GNOME?

My hunch is that Gnome has tended to target Windows converts who want things simple and uncluttered. After using SUSE for a while, I was actually quite impressed by Fedora 4 (with Gnome)--until I started discovering all the things I could not do. I am now back with KDE.

Also, for trying to win over typical Windows users, I think the whole "K" thing may be a turnoff--I does seem gimmicky.

The really neat thing about Linux is that we can chose these things...

DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD. And there are PCLinuxOS, Kanotix, FReespire, Linspire, and many others in the top 20 list at distrowatch.org that come with KDE.

DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD. DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD. So actually its just the opposite, more distros seem to come with KDE than Gnome

I think OP was referring to companies selling Linux.

A sad reality of our personal programming is that we inherently tend to distrust anything that is free. The elite inner circle knows how free Linux can be better than $$ Windows. Joe and Jill Six-pack--and the corporate IT bureaucrats--want a provider that will be there when they have problems. the concept of a vast community which can and does provide better support than anything from the big companies is lost on them (well at least on Joe and Jill)

Compared the licensing of Gnome with what Trolltech forces down developers throats?

Some of the reasons are political rather than technical. If you go back into the past, you will note that QT used to be a proprietary only app, so KDE was considered tainted because of its relationship with QT. Some people decided to build a desktop using completely free opensource tools and the GTK was chosen because of its LGPL license. Some of the big guns e.g. Redhat, Debian and the FSF put their weight behind GNOME because it fitted in with their free software philosophy. QT is now has a fully opensource version but many of the big guns are not going to change and make KDE the default because they have invested a lot of money, time and effort into GTK and GNOME development.

In terms of Novell/Suse/openSUSE, this distro used to be very KDE/QT friendly until the likes of Miguel de Icaza and Nat Friedman(both founders of GNOME and the Mono project) started working for Novell. Novell then seemed to focus a lot on GNOME and Mono related stuff.

Gnome is often popular with businesses because of it's lack of configurability. KDE is very configurable and can lead to having non-standard desktops which need to be replicated if a user moves desks. Because Gnome is very attractive but not very tweakable for regular users it is seen as the better business desktop.

Indeed---in the eyes of many IT professionals, users are a real pain to deal with....