Where can I get GNOME or KDE packages for Solaris/x86?
GNOME (and KDE) are available with the Companion CD forthe 10/00 update of Solaris 8.
For information about GNOME on Solaris or for a free download, see
http://www.sun.com/gnome/
Another source for (separately built) packages for
GNOME and GNOME extras is at
http://myweb.clark.net/pub/bent/Solaris8-X86/GNOME/
For information on GNOME, see
http://www.gnome.org/
For general KDE information, see
http://www.kde.org/
Binaries are at
ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/latest/distribution/pkg/Solaris/8.0/x86
and at mirrors elsewhere (see
http://www.kde.org/mirrors.html).
When installing KDE, make sure to install the QT library first,
which is required by KDE.
Which is better?
"Religious" wars could be fought over this question.
KDE has a more familiar M$ windows-like interface, and I used to use it.
I use GNOME now since it's most easily available on both Solaris and Linux.
KDE is more mature than GNOME and more tightly integrated,
but some say GNOME is catching up.
GNOME and Mozilla both use the GTK library.
The QT library, required by KDE, used to have stricter licensing restrictions,
but now it's licensed under GPL (not LGPL).
KDE is endorsed and supported by IBM, Caldera, and SuSE.
GNOME is endorsed and supported by Sun (and RedHat and HP).
I recommend installing and trying out both GNOME and KDE for a test drive.
You can have both installed at the same time and select which one to use
with dtlogin. You can also run KDE apps under GNOME and vice versa.
Sun picked GNOME over KDE because of Qt licensing issues,
CORBRA in GNOME, and
because GNOME uses C and KDE uses C++ (the latter causes name mangling
problems which prevents using different C++ compilers).
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