Discuss : Linux desktop standards

[ujjwal]

There is an OSNews discussion running regarding the work of the Linux Standards Base and the Free Standards Organisation. What is your opinion on some of these aspects, for example

1. Common package management system
2. Common desktop environment
3. Use of a standard display toolkit (Qt/GTK)
4. Applications use standard system libraries

 

[vignesh]

Support for Internal modems.

 

[ujjwal]

Hardware support is a different issue, this is about common standards practiced by different distributions.

 

[desertwind]

Hardware management system, like YaST or Control Centre

 

[Satissh S]

1. Common package management : RPM (I have used
.DEB in UBUNTU, but more distros that i have used are using RPM. Even SUSE uses RPM. I think it should be implemented like in XANDROS. The package managing app shud be enabled to handle both .rpm and .deb. I usually prefer .gz and tarballs. Most apps i have installed have been simply done by commands ./configure and making.

2. Common Desktop Environment.
I don't want to start a fight here
I have diff. opinions, sometimes i like KDE, other times i like GNOME. But mostly to run several applications you need several desktop environs, for ex., Evolution Runs well on GNOME, whereas KOFFICE runs well on KDE.

Usually when bored or frustrated i use GNOME, with ocean mist theme ON, otherewise KDE is my choice with Keramik. I thing Redhat has done a gr8 job making both GNOMe and KDE look alike.

3. About toolkits, both have some very good apps made using them. GTK has Gimpy and qt boasts of KDE.

4. Ujjwal U left out another important Fight
Emacs or Vi(M).
Let the fight Continue.

 

[ujjwal]

Regarding package management, apart from deb and RPM you have other formats like tgz, pacman, and with differences in package naming conventions (gtk may be called gtk+ in some distributions, GTK in others and so on), handling dependencies across distributions can be a major pain for software vendors. Wouldn't it be better for software to be distributed as a binary tar.bz2 file, which can simply be extracted to a directory and run from there. "Dependencies" will have to be handled by the user, but with a simple text file listing these, it should be no major problem.

I agree with you about desktop environments, it doesn't make sense to have a single one, different people have different likes/needs. It would be better to have common settings between different desktop environments, like a common menu system (freedesktop.org works towards such things, I believe).

About toolkits, well GTK and Qt are found on nearly every distribution out of the box, but some software depend on other less common ones, which result in extra dependencies and inconsistancy in user interface.

And lastly, I didn't intend to start any fights, emacs users can go on using emacs, and vi users (self included) can go on with vi, regardless of what comes from the linux standards base and freedesktop.org