"All future enterprise-class Linux product releases, including Novell Linux Desktop, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Novell Open Enterprise Server, will continue to ship with both the GNOME and KDE desktop environments. In upcoming versions of Novell enterprise applications, the default desktop environment will be GNOME. When customers install Novell Linux products, they will be given the option to choose either the GNOME or KDE environment during the installation process. If the user makes no explicit choice, GNOME will be installed", wrote Kevan Barney on Novell's PR blog [5].
openSUSE version 10, the latest open source version of SUSE Linux, ships with the full version of GNOME today. One can install both and choose which one to run at login time. However, the default on SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server) today is KDE. This will be a change, not a big change, but a change. A user in the future must now make a conscience decision to select KDE as the default desktop.
Sun Microsystems and Red Hat currently have GNOME as their default desktops. Even HP supports GNOME on HPUX. Red Hat ships their corporate version of Linux (RHEL, Red Hat Enterprise Linux) with both GNOME and KDE. Red Hat has even gone to great lengths to make both desktops look and feel the same via BlueCurve. Sun moving to GNOME was highly touted by Sun, and seemed to be a big deal to them. Sun for years had relied on CDE. That god awful ugly CDE. GNOME is like, light years ahead of CDE. The Common Desktop Environment (CDE) was created in the 80's so that all the Unix vendors could standardize on one common desktop. In a sense, GNOME is the successor to the throne of CDE. Except I haven't seen IBM make any statements about AIX moving to GNOME. Yes, you can run KDE on Solaris or even AIX for that matter. I used to run KDE on my Sparc workstation. Here's the catch though, GNOME will have official support from the vendor and appears to have the corporate industry behind them too. Not only that, they will have each other developing and extending GNOME.I haven't been privy to any inside information nor have I contacted Novell about their business decision. Its pretty obvious that Linux is replacing Unix [6]. Novell already has major competitors (Red Hat and Sun) that have standardized on GNOME. If you throw in the Linux Standard Base [7] (LSB) into the mix with GNOME, you pretty much have got a corporate distribution that is interoperable across platforms and distributions. This gives application vendors a standard to adhere to. A target to shoot at if you will. Write once and cross-compile for all architectures of Linux.
The rub against KDE is the dual license model of Qt [8]. Qt is the heart of KDE whereas GTK is the heart of GNOME. To write a proprietary application on KDE requires a commercial license from Trolltech. If your application is open source, you don't need one. I don't see Oracle suddenly open sourcing their database anytime soon. I did find a cost comparison of GTK versus Qt [9] on net for those inquiring minds. If you also develop Windows applications, Qt has the advantage here. A developer can write once and cross-compile to Windows, MAC OS-X and Linux.There also is the Linux Standard Base Desktop Project [10]. The Linux Standard Base Desktop Project goal is to ease the complexity by standardizing core pieces of the Linux desktop (including libraries and other non-binary application behaviors) and encouraging ISVs to use its guidelines when developing for Linux. This list of participators reads like the who's who of the computer industry. This list also includes Trolltech. I mention Trolltech because all the major Linux vendors have declared GNOME the default desktop. So it would appear that the corporate desktop will sideline KDE. The specification isn't due until next year and will be very interesting when released.
My personal preference is KDE. I find GNOME very unintuitive and overly simplistic. The developers went out of their way to hide things from the end user. Like for example, to show hidden files, one has to right click on a certain area of a window to even get to the setting. The option to "show hidden files" is not listed as an option! My thumb and other area's of my hand hurt only after 5 minutes with Gnome. "What?", you say. Yeah, using my Logitech marble plus mouse with GNOME caused me pain! Sure, I adjusted the Gnome mouse "acceleration options", it does get better, but the soreness in my thumb still comes back after only thirty minutes or so. Yes, I do have to change the mouse acceleration in KDE also, but I never have had pain from KDE. Weird huh? Also GNOME has no real file manager. Konqueror all by itself justifies using KDE. Also from my experiences with Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise, KDE is definitely not as polished as GNOME in these two distributions. Thats because Red Hat uses GNOME in house too.
Next year will be a very interesting year for the Linux Desktop.