Why did Sun choose to support GNOME instead of KDE?
GNOME and KDE are both powerful desktop environments. Sun has completed a comprehensive technical review of both environments and concluded that GNOME’s architecture is a better match for Sun’s software strategy, which promotes the creation and use of highly distributed, network-savvy software, as well as easy access to data wherever it might be located. One example is GNOME’s innovative use of CORBA for network-aware interprocess communication between disparate systems. Others are the Bonobo component architecture, which enables easier creation of compound documents and system-wide scripting while promoting code reuse, and GConf, the network- and component-aware configuration management system.