So, I have had a lot of respect for the KDE dudes for a long time. I have been incredibly happy that the core hackers in each camp have got along with cheerfulness, decorum and mutual respect – even while some overzealous members of our user communities have flamed and bickered, generating this idea of “The Desktop War”.

But this week, on the UserLinux mailing list, a bunch of real KDE hackers – not random gimps being idiots – have acted like children and dragged KDE’s good name through the mud. I’m very disappointed.

They’ve made a huge fuss, and I honestly can’t see why: UserLinux has simply chosen to ship and support GNOME. Lots of distributions make a conscious choice about this, whether the final call be GNOME or KDE (and the KDE guys have the examples to back that up). You don’t see the real GNOME hackers whining about these kinds of things, or flaming people for them. You need only look at the contrast between KDE’s reaction to Red Hat 8 and GNOME’s reaction to Sun’s Java Desktop System… If you’re remembering the sound of deafening silence, you’re remembering it right.

Very disappointed.