Seems Linus has started a new little flamewar 
Among KDE developers we have always stated that anti-GNOME flamewars are only among users, and while it is technically true. It doesn't prevent users who also developers in other projects to join them. I will just comment here and hopefully not contribute to the fire.
Personally I agree with Linus basic critisism of GNOME, but not his conclusion. GNOME has always been the underdog and while they have gained a lot of recent corporate support (people always root for the underdog, right?), they very much still are among linux (power-)users and developers. Being the underdog puts a lot of presure on you, especially if you have fewer developers and therefore fewer resources. You just don't stand a chance catching up by following the leader, this has forced GNOME to go a different route than KDE.
Sure I hate everything that GNOME does different from KDE; because KDE is doing things the Unix/Linux way of empowering the user and taking pragmatic decisions, but GNOME has taken chances that KDE could not take: They have risked alienated parts of their users in order to make a distinct interface, that may or may not attract users that might not otherwise use Linux. This is good for the community as a whole!
The only really bad thing about GNOME is that a few of their developers (hello, monkey-boys!) have never let go of the "There can be only one"-attitude, and continue to attack and attempt to eliminate KDE, however futile that may be.
I can understand how the Ximians provoke a general hostile environment that would provoke some users to strike back at GNOME in general, but it is wrong: Yes, GNOME sucks, but please use it if it suits you!
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I hope that some people can read from a distance to themselves
Although I disagree with the style of Linus' post I deeply hope that some important Gnomers will read this whole thing (also of course his later posts) after the dust settles a little bit as a "Hello Gnomers I want the Linux desktop becoming a great success, please don't shot into your own legs and don't tramp on others foots. It hurts me too."
1: I hope that Ximian-Novel guys finally learned their lesson and stop spreading marketing blabla and FUD with respect to other desktops.
2: I hope that Gnomers will take the Linus' remark serious that a Desktop with too less options is not usable at all as you can't use the options if you badly need them (motsly in case something went wrong). One point why an app _badly_ needs seldom used options: If something goes wrong a newbie tries to fix the problem in the app the problem occours: He won't look into the GConf-thing. You cannot separate problem and solution and claim this is a good UI decission. But how to avoid cluttering the app with options you rarely need and then in case you need them need to be quickly and intuitive accessible? Making them consistent in wording and appearance as far as possible in all applications so that you intuitively find them and use them. So yes with Gnome of today you are in many cases not confused with options but simply let alone if you have a problem. Yesterday I meat a Linux newbie using Ubuntu and I had a hard time finding out how to prevent Gaim from beeing started after login automatically, as Gaim didn't help me, and then he wanted to change his panel menu. Well the right click menu wasn't very usable...
3: And a lot of bad feelings on fd.o are caused by not-invented-here-syndrom. Someone is throwing code (that is a duplication of other earlier working implementations) into the arena as the existing solutions were not pure enough for him and expects all to use his new untested code. I hope that this attitude can stop and people say: "Okay I see there a solution but it has to much other library dependencies or has this foobar problem. Can we please settle down and iron it out, so that everyone can inmediatly benefit?" [The ones using the code already through having a review and getting it better and not needing to change too much in existing code and the others in getting quicker results and adopting a mature solution.]
Old news
A lot of the "there can be only one" sentiment, I think, stems from back when licensing was still an issue. Gnome was originally instigated by the FSF to be the "Free Desktop, since that evil Qt license is non-free and evil". For a LONG time, there was an attitude of KDE not being really part of the Free Software "family".
Of course, that's not been an issue for years, and Gnome has long since evolved past such political origins. Some people have a hard time letting go, though. These days they argue how the GPL is a bad license instead of Qt being a bad license, even though the FSF itself says the GPL is "more free" than the LGPL.
I just find the whole situation amusing.
BTW: Ex-GNOMEr frustration unveiled
Read here for more
Oh please
That is just a GNOME troll. You see exactly the same story everywhere (check osnews.com or slashdot.org stories). In the image that he posts one of the apps is one that he developed himself.
Oh boy. The text looked
Oh boy. The text looked carefully written, with sane analysis in mind (no myths) and so on...
There can be only one
The "there can be only one" comment hits the nail on the head. Few GNOME developers have this attitude, but enough of their celebrity leadership does that it taints the reputation of the entire project. GNOME has been infected with a Redmond-like attitude that is not at all healthy.
Whether Linus really said
Whether Linus really said that or not, I still think KDE could learn something from GNOME's drive for simplicity.
For example, a basic KDE installation (kdebase+kdelibs) doesn't include a simple notepad-type program, yet it does include a powerful source-code editor which has advanced syntax highlighting, find-in-files, multi-session support and an embedded terminal - Features which really aren't needed when you just want somewhere to jot down a few ideas or aggregate a few quotes from various websites.
(No offence intended to Kate developers - I use it heavily and wish it was available on Windows)
KWrite really is in kdebase
Let kde-apps speak:
"KWrite is a simple texteditor, with syntaxhighlighting, codefolding, dynamic word wrap and more, it's the lightweight version of Kate, providing more speed for minor tasks. It ships per default with KDEBASE package."
I don't know if you're using Kubuntu (which has KWrite stripped out of the standard installation) or some other distro crippled like that, but yes, KDE does indeed include a simple notepad-type program by default.
Editor
> Yet it does include a powerful source-code editor which has advanced syntax highlighting, find-in-files, multi-session support and an embedded terminal - Features which really aren't needed when you just want somewhere to jot down a few ideas or aggregate a few quotes from various websites.
Well, there is something like KNotes or KEdit.
KEdit is for simple text files, KWrite/Kate is for programming. All three use the same base components, but present a different user-interface.
Yet, Kate does stuff more efficient then VIM. Try to search-replace text in a large file with syntax highlighting enabled. You'll beat VIM et al. Plus, other tools can build upon this editor, avoiding duplicate work. The inclusion of an embedded terminal isn't really fair. These are all separate parts, small components that integrate really well.
Lol, there's a first - "KDE
Lol, there's a first - "KDE doesn't have enough editors".