I have read a lot about the next big step for my favorite desktop environment, KDE. All about the Plasma and Superkaramba widgets, Solid hardware library, Tenor search tool, Oxygen icons, the multiple layer window manager and so on... But what I'm wondering now is... Whats going to happen with Gnome? Is there a next big step from these guys too?

Please enlighten me :-)

Gnome remains a player - however, it's big advantage for long-term survival is still it's licence. The real big step for KDE will be the elimination of the developer licence for Qt. Or is that included in the package?

Lets not have a gnome vs kde war here ... these are competing systems and not the only offerings. One of them is bound to have th particular thing that a particular user wants. So what?

And as Linux is not there to replace Windows, but rather to serve as an alternative to it, KDE and Gnome shouldn't replace each other, but just exist as alternative desktops. Nothing against a bit of diversity, right?

Each to his own =)

-A

The QT licence is not a problem for KDE in my opinion. QT is licensed under multiple licences (including the gpl), so for free software developers, this tool will always be available. On the other hand if you wish to develop closed source software with QT, I do not see a problem with paying a fee to Trolltech. For most commerical software developers, this is not much of an issue, since the license does not cost much.

I am sure GNOME devs will be planning some big changes for the 3.x release. I just hope the focus on simplicity and the HIG thing are lessened a bit because many GNOME apps now lack advanced features because of this. Simplicity is good, but when it gets a bit too far it makes it difficult for others to do stuff.

Theres no KDE vs. Gnome. I like them both. I'm just wondering what the Gnome guys have planned for the future...

The reason KDE is having such a major overhaul is because they are moving from the 3.x series to version 4. A change in the major version number for any program is a big one, you won't see a change like that in GNOME until GNOME v3 and to the best of my knowledge there are no current plans for that.

Thanks for the answer. Just hope Gnome and KDE keeps up with each other so that we have a desktop choice :-)

I don't think "keeps up" is quite right here ... lets hope the various WMs manage to maintain a credible choice. (After all, if they are clones of each other there's no really any is there?)

BTW: you all know there's more choice than just Gnome and KDE?

Of course theres more choice. If a *box fan as well. I didn't mean that Gnome should have the same features as KDE, but the same wealth of them, so that we have at least two great and different choices to pick from as well as XFCE, *boxes, enlightenment and the other WMs out there.

Gnome and KDE will never be the same (thank god) but they can have quality, usability and so on at the same level. Both is as good, but good on different stuff and good for different people...

Understand?