[TriLUG] RedHat 8.0: What's the big deal? (was: Get more out of your Red Hat 8.0)

[Benjamin Reed]

On Tue, 2002-10-08 at 15:19, Josep L. Guallar-Esteve wrote:

> It does not focuses on flamewars about Gnome/KDE nor RedHat/Mosfet nor
> RedHat/Debian....

On the subject of the KDE flamewar...

I just installed RedHat 8.0 on a laptop last night, and all I've got to
say is "I don't get it".

In 4 mouse clicks KDE looks like it used to.

As far as menu placement goes, yes, RedHat picked a "default" e-mail app
and web browser, and the KDE ones aren't there.  But you can still get
to them through the menus, they're just not the ones that are put in
prominent placement.

I use KDE but I don't like kmail that much.  I use KDE but I prefer
mozilla for browsing.  That doesn't mean I'm "ruining" or "breaking"
KDE.  The other thing I've heard complained about is the about box
removal, but personally, I think it's stupid to waste menu space with
the same about dialog being stuck in every single application menu.  The
KDE about information is available from the menus still.  That's plenty.

On the other hand, the usability boosts (and reduced support costs!) of
having a single set of applications being the most directly available
make perfect sense to me.

So I guess I don't understand what all the hubbub is about.  When I had
first read all of the discussions on it, I leaned towards the "they're
ruining KDE" side.  After seeing the results, it all just seems way too
blown-out-of-proportion to me.  The KDE guys made things GPL
*specifically so people have the right to do changes just like these*. 
None of the changes "break" KDE, all they're doing is trying to minimize
the basic cosmetic/UI differences between Gnome and KDE, and I think
they succeeded without trivializing either desktop system.