Re: [tlug] Desktop Wars Query

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Darren Cook writes:

 > Not at all: I've no idea what "compiz" is (and I don't need to for my
 > point here), but isn't this an argument for using gnome? In other words,
 > whatever is most popular will get more apps,

Seems very plausible.

 > and/or apps will build most easily for it?

No.  GNOME has historically been a sucky platform to build for.

There's a reason why XEmacs is stripped[1] in all distributions I know
of, while many GNOME apps spew an unending list of debugging info to
stderr.  GNOME apps are dependent on literally scores of libraries,
all of which have very finicky version requirements.  In distros
sometimes takes several months before an application can build and run
because the GNOME libraries required by that app have not yet caught
up to the mainstream of GNOME development.

Footnotes: 
[1]  So that if it *does* crash, and all apps eventually do, we get no
information that would make it feasible to debug.