A few days ago, suddenly and totally by surprise, KDE introduced Bigscreen Plasma. Available now as a beta version, the new KDE proposal is an operating system or launcher that allows us to use KDE neon on our televisions, something that we can do through a Raspberry Pi. Today, the same developers have introduced something much more important: GNOME and KDE have teamed up to launch the graphical environment knome… But let's lower our enthusiasm a bit.
What day is today? Indeed: April 1. For those who still do not know, it is the day of the Holy Innocents in some Anglo-Saxon countries, or what is the same, a day to play jokes. When a server saw the news this morning, they began to think of an article talking about the all-important novelty. Yes, I have swallowed it for a few minutes. While it is true that they have not yet said that it is a joke, we just have to go to knome.org, the website they have created, to begin to dispel our doubts.
KNOME: good idea, but it doesn't seem like it's going to become a reality
In partnership with our friends at @kdecommunity we are thrilled to be embarking on this new endeavor. The configurability of GNOME paired with the simplicity of KDE - all rolled into a single package. Introducing KNOME, built using QTK3 and Kutter.https://t.co/JfwH0hnMNb pic.twitter.com/7BXahGqpWf
- GNOME (@gnome) April 1, 2020
Because they have even created a website explaining everything about KNOME. But it is striking that, when hovering over the «Download» button, it moves to another point. If we are still somewhat asleep, we can think that it is a bug, or simply a little joke related to the official moment of its launch, which would be scheduled for next week. The doubts disappear almost 100% when we go down to the bottom of the page, we click on another «Download», this larger one, a 10 second wait begins and takes us to a YouTube video. What video? Well, one that has been used for years as a "got you": the "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Ashley.
What if it wasn't a joke?
Well, we will get out of doubt completely throughout today, but Rick does not make us very optimistic. And is that KNOME would be the union of KDE and GNOME, which would have the best of both worlds. Personally, the graph of RAM had also caught my attention, in which they put KDE and GNOME at the same height, KNOME being far above.
KNOME would also be a graphical environment that would enjoy convergence and it would be available on mobile phones. In short, something too good to be true that we will almost certainly not mention again tomorrow. But what is curious is that articles have been written about this launch (such as this), something that we do not know if it is part of the joke or that they have sneaked it as a server, but they have investigated less.
Qt is renamed Cute ... or not
Less important news than the launch of a graphical environment would be the renaming from Qt to Cute ("Cute" or "cute" in Spanish). The difference between the two jokes is that Qt has not created any web page or advanced much information, leaving his joke in a simple tweet:
For years the pronunciation of Qt has been a hotly contested debate. Today we settle that with our new rebranding. #MeetCute ?? pic.twitter.com/domOtKw2Ze
- Qt (@qtproject) April 1, 2020
If there is any truth to all this, we will find out tomorrow. For now, the only thing we can say is that you remain skeptical and have a happy April 1, even though you reside in a Spanish-speaking country.
Older Linux users will remember the latest free versions of Red Hat that precisely the environment they had was a hybrid Gnome KDE back then.
So it's a joke of something that had already happened.
I said: Is it possible? Until I got to Rick's video :(
And yes, in those versions of Red Hat it was very similar to KDE and Gnome, with the Blue Curve icons if I remember correctly.