Gnome Integration, A Response
I would like to thank Aaron Topance for replacing his vague claim that "Gnome isn't integrated enough" with actual examples of areas he thinks need improvement. I'm going to deliberately avoid responding to all of his points because while some of them don't make me itch, others may agree that they are needed changes. There are, however, points I feel are inaccurate or in need of clarification.
Secure Shell GUI Functions: Nautilus has supported SFTP for years. I'm sorry, I can't give an exact number, but it has been a long time. KDE was the first to add support for file access over SSH, but originally KDE called the protocol fish:// instead of sftp://. Gnome allowed the use of sftp:// before KDE did. There are actually two ways to use SFTP in Nautilus. One is to select File > Open Location... and then enter an SFTP url. The other option is to use File > Connect to Server... and select a Service Type of SSH. The second method will create an icon on the desktop that can be used to reconnect after rebooting. However, I would argue that neither KDE's solution built on a kio-slave nor Gnome's solution built on gnomevfs is ideal. Many programs, including Vim, can't reuse these connections. The real solution should be universal. Now that the Linux kernel has added support for FUSE, it should be possible to create a solution that any program can use without depending on kio or gnomevfs.
More Command Line Tools: Konqueror doesn't implements its own terminal application. (Which is really what you mean. Terminal applications are used to interact with shells.) Konq is simply embedding Konsole. Reusing one application as a component in another application is an example of KDE being more "integrated". Theoretically, Gnome could be just as "integrated" using Corba, but I think the general consensus is that Corba on Gnome has mostly failed. Either KDE developers are masochists, or KDE's component model is easier to use.
Frankly, I don't think that embedding a terminal in a file management program is a good example of "integration". However, it might be possible to convince me that being able to embed GnuCash graphs into an OpenOffice.org document should be easy. That sort of thing seems to be popular with people that use business applications. My one hang up is that any time I tried that sort of thing in Windows, OLE (or whatever the heck technology was being used) was pretty flakey. *shrug*
As for memory usage, you can not safely assume that running two applications results in twice as much memory usage. Linux has advanced memory management that allows programs to share memory. Running a Qt based app and a GTK+ based app will resulting in very little sharing. Running two GTK+ based apps will result in most of the memory taken up by their libraries being shared. Occasionally, developers make mistakes that reduce the amount of sharing, but Gnome is actively looking for such problems and resolving them. When Gnome 2.12 was released, it actually used less memory than Gnome 2.10. Is their still room for improvement? Of course. But embedding one app in another doesn't imply that less memory is being consumed, and running two applications instead of one doesn't imply a doubling of memory requirements.
Menu Editing: Ages ago, as the glaciers were receeding and Gnome was still 1.x young, there was a menu editor. For some reason, it disappeared. I never missed it. (Well, except on SUSE with its insane menu structure and excessive number of apps.) Alacarte is a new menu editor for Gnome. Most distributions are not yet shipping it.
Eye Candy, Eye Candy, Eye Candy: I like Clearlook. I like the simple, understated design of Gnome. I don't, don't, don't want Gnome to start looking like Windows, Mac OS X, or even KDE. (Although I think we can all agree that Ubuntu is too brown and Fedora Core 5 is too blue. Standard Clearlook is nice, and Fedora Core 4 was almost perfect.)
Themeability is not a problem with the GKT+ API. Have you even looked at it? GTK+ apps do have a lot of control, however most try to fit in instead of sticking out like bruised thumbs. When I first started using Linux, XMSS was based on GTK+ 1 and it had window snapping. True translucent windows in X only recently became possible. In the past, most programs that appeared to be "transparent" were cheating. They copied the root window, but couldn't capture windows stacked under themselves. Real translucency will come with time, in moderation.
There are easy to use applications for globally changing fonts, icons, window decorations, window controls, window behaviour, file manager layout and wallpaper. What's missing? Animations?
If you want your desktop to sparkle, spin and dance, both the AIGLX and GLX projects appear to be focusing their work on Gnome. AIGLX is actively modifying Metacity, the Gnome Window Manage. GLX prefers Compiz, its own window manager, but Compiz is built on Gnome technologies like libsvg and gconf.
As for the claim that "KDE [...] is faster and slimmer than Gnome", show me the numbers. It's easy to have a form a wrong impression. Without actual benchmarking of some type, it is impossible to evaluate the accuracy of the claim. I have never noticed any speed or memory problems with Gnome, other than long standing gnomer-terminal window update issues that have (finally) largely been resolved.
Conclusion: Again, show me the numbers. How do you know that Gnome is losing users? A handful of anecdotal stories does not a trend make. Novell originally planned on only supporting Gnome on NLD. Gnome is Red Hat's preferred desktop. Gnome is the official Ubuntu desktop. (Kubuntu is a seperate but related project.) When ESR announced his intentions to move Linux on the desktop forward, he chose Gnome. It appears to me that both Gnome and KDE are very healthy and growing.
