Why do programs have to be written for KDE or Gnome or neither? Look good in one and not the other?
KDE and Gnome are basically libraries and toolkits, plus desktop, control panels etc right?
Surely in the open source movement KDE and Gnome arent so opposed as to not be able to set up a standard so that Mozilla or whatever can just call something like "default menu, paramaters x, y, z ..." when you open a menu, which would point to the toolkit for whichever manager you are running?

Maybe this should be in the newbie section, I dunno, puzzles me tho.

gnome uses qt so if you write a prog using the qt liblary it will not run if you dont have qt installed as long as you have qnome installed qt will be installed thats why they are writen for a windowmanager

QT or GTK+? Wouldn't it be nice to only have one. Or would it?

Woah, bet the gnome guys will be surprised!

sorry for the wrong info Obi Perrin you can use just one like in my computer gnome is installed to use some programs but i am using fluxbox choose one you can find app for both that does the same job.

Ok, I think it's GTK+ that is used by Gnome, and QT that is used by KDE.

I hate that a lot of the decent programs need either the Gnome or KDE libraries installed. I use Waimea and would rather not have to put all the other stuff in.

KDE=QT
GNOME=GTK+

The great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.

Jup, I'd love to use 'licq' with the qt-plugin, 'cause this plugin has much more features as the 'jons-gtk-plugin'. But I will not install Trolltechs QTlib.

just use something like openbox or fluxbox so everything looks equally shitty.

I use fluxbox, but I think, it's pretty nice to see it working on my desktop.

What do you think the chances are of... one day... a set of open source development libraries being bundled with the kernel so that desktop environments can share and programs dont have to be written using libraries? GTK+ is open source isn't it? Why was it not chosen to be bundled with the kernel so as to set a standard back in the early days of desktop environments? Or does a set of equivilant libraries already come bundled (for example if you are not using KDE or GNOME) but they are insufficient/lacking compared to QT and GTK+?

Also, why cant both libraries be installed, so that programs who want to use QT libraries can and programs who want to use GTK+ can, sure different programs might adhere to a different asthetic theme, but at least they will look and feel how they were meant to look and feel, rather than be semi-castrated as it were.

By all means, install both libraries. They don't conflict. I use neither KDE or Gnome but Blackbox and apps that aren't part of either system. It's all about choice and their are hundreds.

just making a lame joke. sorry. i use openbox myself.